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It’s a case of Big-Spin and Bluster. It’s what they do: aggressively push a simple message, a theme, a piece of marketing, and like all the rest of their audacious PR, it’s at best a half-truth, and in this case, a lie.
Rajendra Pachauri states:
IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.
As usual, it’s honest volunteers who have conscientiously tested the IPCC by going through 18,500 references. And the final total? Fully 5,600, or 30% of their references are not peer reviewed. Donna LaFramboise at NoConsensus has coordinated the dedicated team (that is a lot of references to go through).
How many times do we need to show they are incompetent and dishonest?
9.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings […]
A little under half (typically about 45%) of the dry weight of any plant is carbon, and almost all that “C” came from CO2 in the atmosphere. No wonder plants love more CO2.
Trees and bushes can grow out of cracks in rocks because they suck the carbon right out of the air. Likewise hydroponics is only possible because the building blocks come from liquid and aerial fertilizer.
CO2 is about the only “pollution” you can pump around plants and watch them grow faster, stronger, taller and indeed more resistant to most of the stresses that normally bother a plant.
8.2 out of 10 based on 24 ratings […]
Last week I was invited by the ABC to respond to Clive Hamilton and the Parliamentary Committee report on ClimateGate. It was published a couple of hours ago on the ABC Drum. (Or Try this link, who knows why the article moved? 14-4-09)
The issue of the ClimateGate emails leaked or hacked from the East Anglia CRU is not that complicated. The emails are damning because anyone who reads them understands that they show petty, unprofessional, and probably criminal behaviour. We know the guys who wrote them are not people we’d want to buy cars from. They are hiding information. We don’t need a committee to state the obvious.
The emails show some of the leading players in climate science talking about tricks to “hide declines”, they boast about manipulating the peer review process, and “getting” rid of papers they didn’t like from the IPCC reports. It’s clear the data wasn’t going the way they hoped, yet they screwed the results every way they could to milk the “right” conclusion. Above all else, they feared freedom of information requests, and did everything they could to avoid providing their data. ClimateGate shows these people were not […]
British campaigner urges UN to accept “ecocide” as international crime
Some British lawyer thinks that the UN or another undemocratic body ought to have the right to try someone for crimes against “peace”, which would apparently include crimes against non-humans too: you know, harm to flat-fish, garden-variety weeds, fungus, and algae.
It’s easy to imagine the “law” descending into high farce: People call for trials of oil CEO’s for raising CO2 levels; the price of energy rises. People in Scotland build tidal energy generators; Children in Mongolia freeze, and kids in Bolivia can’t afford to go to school. The tidal energy generators go on to destroy the habitat of the yellow bellied mud lark; the Bolivian kids go on to become cocaine farmers; the Mongolian kids don’t go on to become anything, and the UN calls for trials of the people who called for trials of the oil CEOs.
Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers” who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.
Trials for people who twist, deny, and distort science? Bring it on, I say. Skeptical […]
Get all the information on his main Global Cooling Radio Page
// // The clocks above are central daylight savings time USA, so you can figure out what the time will be in your own zone. The interview starts at 10am (and a copy will be available on the site later). You can send in questions to Mark, or phone in 646-727-3170 and ask a question.
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
This is a glorious NASA image from The Earth Observatory. The Himalayan Mountains in Southern China on Christmas Day, 2009. If you’d like a large version, you can soak in 4Mb of detail. I’ve posted it just because it’s captivating and we are so fortunate (for all NASA’s failings) that we can marvel at a view like this.
Note the scale (bottom right). These are rivers of ice one kilometer wide “unnamed”. Imagine what it would take to melt this ice?
7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
Did I say a few days ago there would be more feature articles? Well already, here is another long professional article.
Don’t be put off by the start. The sympathetic treatment of Jones is faint praise, not unreasonable, and in the end, taking an impartial line means telling something of both sides of the story. Articles like this will help skeptics far more than they will help the Big Scare Campaign.
There is plenty of ammo, and punches are landed:
On balance, the entire profession has been seriously harmed by the scandal. “We are currently suffering a massive erosion of trust,” concludes German climatologist Hans von Storch. “Climate research has been corrupted by politicization, just as nuclear physics was in the pre-Chernobyl days, when we were led to believe that nuclear power plants were completely safe.”
That any reasonably unbiased view ends up being supportive of skeptics is, of course, just what you’d expect of a topic where skeptics have so much of that essential ingredient reality on their side. I found the whole article worth reading, and I expect Parts 3 & 4 are the most interesting to skeptics. It’s good to finally see the work of people like […]
Green Left Weekly has attacked the lone voice of reason at the Australian ABC (Chairman Maurice Newman), and demanded he be removed, all because Newman dared to suggest to ABC reporters that they might want to present both sides of the story. How scandalous!
Green Left is an Australian magazine that’s been in publication since 1990. In 2005, it apparently won an award as “Australia’s most popular political site”. How times have changed.
The story: “ABC chair pressures journo’s on climate change” Green Left effectively claims that Newman is a nasty man who’s trying to “influence” journalists. So what does the Green Left team think it’s trying to do… err, influence journalists? The single point that sucks the moral foundations out from under Green Left is that Newman is not trying to suppress anyone, but the greenies sure are.
Only a few weeks ago, they were claiming to fight for free speech in Brunswick, Melbourne, and a few days ago, for free-speech at Sydney University. When Barkly Square Management confines them to just one stall “in a dead location”, that’s an attack on freedom of speech, but when the ABC chairman suggests reporters interview scientists on […]
Watch out people. Greenpeace resorts to threats. Even The Guardian called it a “car crash”.
In their own words:
“We need to hit them where it hurts most, by any means necessary: through the power of our votes, our taxes, our wallets, and more.”
“‘We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It’s not working. We need an army of climate outlaws.’
“The proper channels have failed. It’s time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism.
“If you’re one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let’s talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.
“If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:
“We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
“And we be many, but you be few.”
So the […]
Mark Gillar who writes the Hootville Gazette has taken the initiative and arranged a set of radio interviews with the who’s who of skeptics, like Lord Monckton, Patrick Michaels, Ann McElhinney, Marc Morano, Chris Horner, Steve Milloy, Joseph D’Aleo, and yours truly. The first one starts tomorrow morning (US time). You can e-mail or phone in questions. Some details are below, but most are on the Global Cooling Radio site and, of course, details may change in the future, so check in at his site.
Lord Christopher Monckton
Date: April 3, 2010 Time: 10:00 am Central DST To Listen: Visit our BlogTalkRadio Page Call 646-727-3170 to ask a question./p>
OR email to ask in advance [email protected]
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
The UK Parliamentary Committee was always going to be a whitewash. They put no skeptics on the committee; they interviewed no skeptics; they didn’t ask Steven McIntyre to speak. The chairman was the “impartial” Phil Willis, who had already made up his mind in January and announced it in the Telegraph:
“There are a significant number of climate change deniers, who are basically using the UEA emails to support the case this is poor science that has been changed or at worst manipulated. We do not believe this is healthy and therefore we want to call in the UEA so the public can see what they are saying”
It’s no wonder the committee made a spin-like press release with wishy-washy weasel words. What’s amazing is that under the spin, they can’t help but bust all of modern climate science.
The UK report: [press release]
“The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.
This is the beginning of many full feature length articles that will come as the House of Mann-Made Global Warming collapses. It’s long, but when it’s a professional feature writer drawing a story of a professional scam-buster who works at the highest levels, it’s a great read. Enjoy 🙂 It’s not a grand scientific expose, but it does turn ClimateGate into a human interest story with momentum, and as such, it may reach a wider audience than any scientific expose could.
Photo: Mackenzie Stroh
This Man Wants to Convince You Global Warming Is a Hoax
Marc Morano broke the Swift Boat story and effectively stalled John Kerry’s presidential run. Now he is working against an even bigger enemy: belief in climate change. Somehow, he seems to be winning.
By John H. Richardson
Early on the morning of November 17, Gavin Schmidt sat down at his computer and entered his password. It didn’t work. Strange, he thought. He tried a few other accounts and none of them worked, either. Now he was alarmed. As a leading climatologist with NASA’s Goddard Institute in Manhattan, he’d been hacked before. He was used to e-mails from people who disapproved of his work, threatening […]
Art Robinson is a rare man. He’s risen above and laid bare the creeping failure in the infrastructure of modern science over the last 50 years. He describes how the control of the quest for knowledge itself has been usurped from individuals and private industry and taken over by the government.
At the end of the day, what does being a scientist mean if there is nothing other than a certificate? Where is the code of conduct? Where are the professional associations which stand up and decry those who breach the basic requirements? What sense of duty and honor is left in science when high ranking members can make statements that are dishonest and yet keep their jobs and their reputations?
I was struck with Art’s description of a true scientist–where the most important attribute is honesty, where humility is inevitable in anyone who understands how little we comprehend, and where being a scientist is a lifelong search, rather than a 9 – 5 job.
The 10 page paper How Government Corrupts Science is worth reading in full.
Below are some select parts that especially struck a chord with me.
How Government Corrupts Science
Isaac Newton was the greatest […]
I attribute much of the recent rapid rise of the skeptics to the ongoing effects of ClimateGate, yet in a sense the emails that were sprung from East Anglia did nothing more than confirm what most skeptics already suspected. Despite that, I’m convinced it was instrumental, and Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, has written an unusually good summary in the form of a speech for the Colorado Mining Association.
With his permission, I’ve included my favourite points here, as well as a copy of the full speech. His blog is a part of the Energy Probe team.
The Climategate emails confirmed much of what the sceptics had been saying for years.
They confirmed that the peer review process had been corrupted, that scientists were arranging friendly reviews. They confirmed that the science journals had been corrupted. That journals that refused to play ball with the doomsayers faced boycotts and their editors faced firing. They confirmed that sceptical scientists were being systematically excluded from the top‐tier journals. The Climategate emails confirmed that journalists were likewise threatened with boycotts if they didn’t play ball. The Climategate emails confirmed that the science itself was suspect. That the doomsayers themselves couldn’t make […]
The London Science Museum has abandoned it’s fort like barricade–the “NoDebateCorral” and many skeptics are rejoicing that the formerly Gung Ho institute seems to have done a major about-face. I remain highly skeptical of their new “skepticality”.
Remember, this is the same museum that was blatantly telling you the UK taxpayer which policy you were supposed to vote (and pay) for:
Note the claim about “seeing the evidence”. I have seen the light!
This is the team that only last October launched the Proveit Exhibition to “help” Copenhagen. They were not even remotely equivocal then about their political aims and beliefs:
““The Copenhagen conference is a crucial opportunity to find an international solution to the threat of climate change and to transform the way we generate and consume energy…
Dr Vicky Carroll, Prove It! Project Leader and Curator of Science at the Science Museum said: “Scientific evidence shows that climate change is happening. We need to tackle it urgently. Prove it! allows visitors to explore the evidence for climate change in the Science Museum and online, get to grips with the Copenhagen conference, and make their view count.”’
See that phrase: Make their view count? They were […]
Picasso-Brain-Strikes-the-Climate-Debate: Can’t think. Can’t reason.
Stephan Lewandowsky’s ABC article on climate change was headlined “Opinion Versus Evidence“. Then with dead-pan delivery, he lists the “evidence” but it’s all … opinions.
The question of “delusion” is looming. I mean really, is this a cry for help? There are not many laws of reason that Stephan leaves unbroken. He appeals to authority, attacks the “man”, and talks about everything bar the evidence on climate change. Is he serious? “Trust me” he says, the world is warming because AIDS is real, mass-murderer Ivan Milat was guilty, Lord Monckton is only a non-voting member of the House of Lords, a few skeptics are burko, 97% of paid climate scientists agree that we ought to be worried and keep paying them, and someone has discussed the actual money that climate scientists earn (how could they) and to top it off, the IPCC report is 3000 pages long (!).
Not to mention that Google Scholar (“I’m so technical”) finds lots of hits (thanks to Vice President Al Gore who arranged for the US Government to pay billions of dollars to his favorite researchers, and who also is on the Google advisory team), plus the world […]
Record-breaking rain means huge Australian arid-land lakes are visible from space.
Australia has one of the most unpredictable rainfall patterns in the world, and this is one of those unpredictable years. For the past few months, the repeated downfalls have left large pools of water lying in arid lands in Western Queensland. It’s great news for farmers. The water will, over the next year, flow south through the Darling River system, restoring parched watercourses, swamps, and dams. The Darling River system flows from Queensland through New South Wales and into South Australia.
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology announced that the rains were “exceptional”:
The most remarkable aspect of this event was the area covered by the heavy rainfall and the total volume of rainfall that fell. Daily totals exceeded 100 mm over 1.7% of Australia on 1 March and 1.9% on 2 March. The latter is the largest area of 100 mm-plus daily totals on a single day in the Australian meteorological record, breaking the previous record of 1.7% set on 22 December 1956. 28 February was the wettest day on record for the Northern Territory with an NT-wide average of 29.23 mm, while 2 March set […]
Ken Stewart has scanned the trend maps at BOM (Bureau of Meteorology), and his point is spot on. As soon as I saw the neat joint six page advertising pamphlet for the climate-theory-backed-by-bankers, I wondered what happened to the first 60 years of last century, and Ken found it. Did the BOM forget they have hundreds of data points from back then? Did they forget to use their own Website, where you can pick-a-trend, any-trend, and choose the one with err…more convenient results? Or is it the case that their collective mission is not necessarily to provide Australians with the most complete and appropriate information available, but with what the bureaucracy needs them to know? And what they need them to know, apparently, is the carefully censored version of the truth that will keep government ministers happy (Let us tax them more!), keep department heads smiling (Let the climate cash cow continue!), and last, but not least, help staff feel good (We’re sure we’re helping the environment!).
Why censor half their own data?
The trend map page works exquisitely well (I am happy to praise the BOM Web site team). Compare these two trend maps:
Australian Rainfall Trends 1960-2009
[…]
What a surprise: The free-market-that-is-not-free leaps from one scandal to the next. In a real free market where salesmen sell something real, and buyers buy something they want, people can’t get away with cheating, or not for long.
If someone sold you a bulk carrier of coal, and it turned up empty, you’d notice.
10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
Frank Lansner has done some excellent follow-up on the missing “decline” in temperatures from 1940 to 1975, and things get even more interesting. Recall that the original “hide the decline” statement comes from the ClimateGate emails and refers to “hiding” the tree ring data that shows a decline in temperatures after 1960. It’s known as the “divergence problem” because tree rings diverge from the measured temperatures. But Frank shows that the peer reviewed data supports the original graphs and that measured temperature did decline from 1960 onwards, sharply. But in the GISS version of that time-period, temperatures from the cold 1970’s period were repeatedly “adjusted” years after the event, and progressively got warmer.
The most mysterious period is from 1958 to 1978, when a steep 0.3C decline that was initially recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. Years later that was reduced so far it became a mild warming, against the detailed corroborating evidence from raobcore data.
Raobcore measurements are balloon measures. They started in 1958, twenty years before satellites. But when satellites began, the two different methods tie together very neatly–telling us that both of them are accurate, reliable tools.
10 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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