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This is your brain on government funding (pace Mark Steyn). The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) gave $18k to a theatre group to put on a play called “Kill the Deniers”. Now, lucky us, we can read the e-book. Because the climate debate really needs more guns, hostages, brute force, and threats right?
Well, it does if you don’t have any evidence.
“Kill the Deniers” — All the wit and wisdom of government funded “arts”. Can’t persuade the voters? Shoot their representatives.
The Kill the Deniers e-book is coming:
…writer and theatre-maker whose work sits at the intersection of art and science, [David] Finnigan said Kill Climate Deniers grew out of discussions with Aspen Island Theatre Company’s Julian Hobba.
‘We got really interested in talking about the climate debate, and we were wondering why it was that in Australia the debate had stalled so badly; what is it about this country? And then we moved on to asking what would it take to shift the debate forward again – what would it actually take to generate real political change?’ said Finnigan.
Why did the debate stall? They could have done some research and […]
How convenient?! A new study shows that human influence on the climate started just before the major (and unerasable) heatwaves of the late 1930s, thus wrapping those awkward years under the banner of Man Made Climate. This study provides the handy peer reviewed link-bomb “answer” to that.
The inexplicable heat of the 1930s and 40s has been a constant source of pain for Global Worriers. Skeptics can point out that the decadal rate of warming was pretty much the same back then, even though CO2 was at the ideal, clima-perfecto level, of 310ppm. How could it be that massive 400ppm of CO2 was barely able to break the heat records set when CO2 was almost 25% lower?
Well, finally, mystery solved. A new Australian study compares models that don’t-explain-the-climate with CO2, to ones that-don’t-explain-the-climate without CO2. These models assume CO2 causes warming, so when they take out the CO2 factor that was added in to produce “the climate”, the models prove, ipso gloriousi, that CO2 causes warming. Indeed their method is so good, it can’t fail. As Anthony Watts says “it seems clear to me that the conclusion existed before the paper was written.” Quite.
Say hello to Climate Numerology […]
They warn that the results may floor you. Strap yourself in. The National Centre for Science Education (NCSE) surveyed 1500 teachers across the US, and were shocked that a third bring dangerous climate material in to the class.
“At least one in three teachers bring climate change denial into the classroom, claiming that many scientists believe climate change is not caused by humans” says NCSE programs and policy director Josh Rosenau.
Frankly I am amazed. After twenty years of repeating the consensus message how is it that so many teachers are still unable to recite the permitted phrasing? (And especially in a survey where everyone knows what the right answer is!).
Put on your helmet. As many as half of US teachers actually allow students to discuss the controversy. Unthinkable!
Worse, half of the surveyed teachers have allowed students to discuss the supposed ‘controversy’ over climate change without guiding students to the scientifically supported conclusion.” Scarier still: three out of five teachers were unaware of, or actively misinformed about, the near total scientific consensus on climate change.
Sorry, did I say controversy? I meant “controversy” (any resemblance this debate may have to a real debate is […]
And so it flows. Climate causes bored dogs, but warmer winters cause, er, heated cats. The randy felines make more kittens, which means more strays, more ferals, and less marsupial mice.
Track the logic. We took long showers which made more CO2, the Earth warmed and so more cats have kittens out of season. The answer then is to take cold showers to change the weather and save the Black-tailed Antechinus. Then again, we could give the cats the cold showers instead…
When Kristina Vesk started working at the Cat Protection Society of NSW in 2006, she rarely saw kittens in winter. Now warmer weather means cats are breeding all year round, increasing the numbers of unwanted kittens and the threat to native wildlife from strays and feral cats.
Hold that thought — there is another theory. Conflict coming:
Vanessa Barrs, a Professor of Feline Medicine at the University of Sydney, said … breeding can be influenced by photoperiod, the number of available daylight hours, and “cats artificially exposed to 12 hours of light indoors … can be induced to breed all year round”, she said.
So that would be all the CFL and LED […]
Things are really getting serious now. There is not only extinction and endless droughts, but there are depressed dogs. Unprecedented depressed dogs. The chain of effect goes like this: electric heaters cause climate change which makes winters wetter in England and owners don’t like mud, so ipso, ergo, garbo, dogs get stuck indoors, go stir crazy and rip furniture.
I presume the answer to this is to sell the car, cancel the heating, and wait for the world to warm cool for your dog to get happy?
Leading pet behaviourists told The Independent that the number of depressed and unsettled dogs they have seen in recent months is unprecedented.
Carolyn Menteith, a dog behaviourist who was named Britain’s Instructor of the Year in 2015, says Global Warming might be causing pets to become depressed:
“I’ve never seen our dogs or horses this bored before in 20 years.
Yes, this is the worst in recorded history, or 20 years, whichever comes first.
Horses that have lived happily outside before are saying ‘I actually can’t cope with this mud and wet anymore’…”.
For me, the unprecedented thing here is the talking horse.
[…]
Global Worriers can explain everything with CO2 (hammer: meet nail, meet hail, meet ET too).
The holy matrix theory strikes again. (h/t to Phys 1)*
With our university approved CO2 helmet we can explain things, like why there are no aliens. And we know there are none because we’ve had mass radio for 100 years out of the last 4.5 billion** and no one has picked up Alien FM. Plus we’ve landed some kind of gadget on nearly 1,000, almost 100, not quite 10, well 2 whole other planets and we haven’t found a single Klingon. Indeed we haven’t even found a cousin of e-coli. And some of the probes on Venus hunted for a full 120 minutes before they were vaporised.
Though naysayers about our knowledge of alien life point out that if intelligent life also went on to develop fibre optics, Wifi, and then entangled quark phones (or whatever) the radio transmissions window may last 500 years (or less) and thus we’re looking for intelligent life which may be a million years ahead of us which also happens to be a million light years away (and whose radio signals are still comprehendable spread over a sphere which […]
If only we had more electric cars and windmills, lives could’ve been saved.
Ponder that air conditioners can cause people to do random acts of murder. They might keep people in the room calmer, but outside that pollution* travels, heats the world, and lo, a terrorist is made.
(Call me a skeptic, but I tend to think that if we turn off all the air-conditioners (or run them on solar power, which is almost the same thing) we might get more acts of terror rather than less, but what would I know?) Bernie Sanders says that we should stop terrorists by reducing our carbon emissions. Somehow, there were people who did not laugh at him.
Time Magazine : “Why Climate Change and Terrorism Are Connected”
Drought in Syria has contributed to instability
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders used the terrorist attacks in Paris to call for action to address climate change at a primary debate Saturday. But, while the plea attracted ridicule across the political spectrum, many academics and national security experts agree that climate change contributes to an uncertain world where terrorism can thrive.
U.S. military officials refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” […]
Big news: A new endogenous forcing found for climate change — sharks. For millions of years you thought predator-prey relationships were just about big fish having dinner, but not so, they are climate forcings. Sharks cool the planet, and stop storms, floods, droughts and malaria. Crabs, on the other hand, pollute like a coal company. It’s a miracle that the planet made it through the last billion years without the EPA managing the shark-crab numbers thing. This ABC interview inspired me to channel the spirit of neolithic science.
The dusken-shark doth smite the naughty fishies and give us nice weather
New research has found that sharks play an important role in preventing climate change, warning that overfishing and culling sharks is resulting in more carbon being released from the seafloor.
“Sharks, believe it or not, are helping to prevent climate change,” said Dr Peter Macreadie, an Australian Research Council Fellow from Deakin University and one of the paper’s authors.
Sharks: Good. Crabs and Turtles: Bad. Kill those turtles!
“Turtles, crabs, certain types of worms, stingrays — these animals that are overabundant to do with loss of predators used to keep their numbers in check,” […]
Yale scientist’s big new advance is to find the 2,600 billion trees humankind had not known about. Before now, 82% of the Earth’s trees were not counted, unknown, missing. This increases the tally of known trees by 7.5-fold. Phew. They reckon there are now 3.04 trillion trees, or roughly 422 trees per person.
They also estimate that humans have deforested exactly 46% of the trees on the planet in the last 12,000 years. (How fortunate that tree density estimates and satellite records are still available from 10,000 BC.) Presumably, the human deforestation factor is around 46% plus or minus 100%. Pick a number. Spin the wheel.
The idea was dumb enough to be produced by Yale and published in Nature.
Seeing the forest and the trees, all three trillion of them
A new Yale-led study estimates that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, about seven and a half times more than some previous estimates. But the total number of trees has plummeted by roughly 46 percent since the start of human civilization, the study estimates.
Using a combination of satellite imagery, forest inventories, and supercomputer technologies, the international team of researchers […]
😉
Joy. It’s another profoundly unscientific “consensus” study. At least one person thought that the 97% PR figure was not enough, and that magic 99.9% would sway the crowds. As if there was even one fence-sitter sitting, waiting, saying, “97% was too low…”
For the herding type of human, “consensus” is magnetically convincing. Not so for the independent minds who have seen prediction after prediction fail. If a 97% consensus on a highly complex, immature science is difficult to believe, a 99.99% one is comic. More of the same unconvincing stuff will do nothing except set off the BS meter. This new study will sway no one. The supernatural purity of it will work against “The Cause”.
A consensus is the one and only argument of the unskeptical, and they are doing it to death.
One fan, James Powell, was so enthused he spent nine months reading titles and abstracts of 24,000 papers, and found only four scientists (4!) who didn’t agree with the consensus. Some 69,402 other scientists apparently endorse “the consensus” (whatever it is) because they used the terms “climate change”, or “global warming” and they didn’t also make a clear statement that it was false, or […]
Not only climate change destroy coffee, chocolate and beer, but war is going to ruin your weekends too.
When war breaks out and they come for your first-born, you may ask if you should’ve left the car in the garage more. You may wonder if you could have used public transport, and converted all the lights to LEDs sooner and only eaten locally sourced oranges. Feel the guilt. Send them your money.
Walk for Peace!
There is no end to the combinations and permutations of ways to use fear to ask for funds. Before we set up Departments of Climate Change, Global carbon trading markets, Emissions reductions schemes, and prepare our Defence Force for the wave of violent desperate climate refugees that were forecast but didn’t come, we need one thing more than any other. We need climate models that actually work.
“Climate change will destabilise our region and undermine our way of life, yet we are doing nothing to prevent it.”
Exactly, we are doing nothing, nothing useful at all. Though we are pouring billions of dollars down deep wells trying to reduce CO2, and prepare for a climate we absolutely cannot predict. (Is that the […]
More adventures in science from The Guardian. “No more beer, chocolate or coffee: how climate change could ruin your weekend”.
Obviously, since coffee, hops, and cocoa are all plants which like arctic weather and frosts, and grow mainly in Greenland glaciers, a warmer world will devastate these essential foods. I’m in tears just thinking about it.
Likewise, being alien silicon lifeforms, these plants will struggle as the pollution called carbon dioxide rises from 0.04% of the atmosphere to 0.05%. Oh the pain. If only these plants used CO2 as a basic building block like every other plant on Earth.
It must be tough being so much smarter than the rest of the world.
….
Somehow, somewhere, The Guardian become The Guard-Onion. I just can’t take these people seriously anymore. Dear Karl Matheisen, what were you thinking?
No more beer, chocolate or coffee: how climate change could ruin your weekend
Karl Mathiesen
Climate change is the biggest threat to all of civilisation our species has faced since the 80s. Scientists say rising seas will envelope major cities around the world while heatwaves will bring wildfires and torrential rains bring floods. And the global economy is stuffed.
[…]
Great news for Australians, Scandinavias, Greenlanders, Poms, and New Zealanders: all the headlines about how your home will be the hardest hit were wrong. Instead, your real estate will be the most valuable on Earth and everyone will want to visit you.
Thank The Guardian for its restrained headline: Countries most and least likely to survive the effects of climate change . Study source: Diply
…
I expect you will all be relieved. Especially after the fear you felt reading “hardest hit” headlines like these:
“Rural Australians hardest hit by climate change”
“Sydney’s urban areas to be hit hardest by global warming”
“Predictions Australia will be hardest hit by climate change”
Greenland hardest hit by climate change
“…climate change is likely to have the strongest impact on Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden.”
“Climate change is faster and more severe in the Arctic than in most of the rest of the world”
— Thanks to ClimateChangePredictions and Tom Nelson’s hardest hit list.
The original map on Diply also has a “least at risk” category, helpfully colored black and applied to no […]
… and those with scientific evidence don’t need “names and addresses” instead. Eh?
Two Dutch Arctic Ice researchers were sadly presumed lost last week. You, silly fool, may have thought it was an unfortunate accident in a dangerous profession. Not so, according to “Schatzie” they were viciously murdered by an unlikely cohort of Obama and at least 24 named “climate change deniers”. While “motive”, “means” and “opportunity” are a little thin on — premeditated intent is surely there: skeptics benefit from the PR storm about researchers dying on thin ice… oh wait.
Anyway, those responsible for heating the planet are also all murderers, which pretty much narrows down the guilty to anyone who breathes, double for those who drive, and in the end, Mr Al Gore emits a lot of CO2, right? Indeed, blame the Pacific Ocean, it releases more carbon than even Al does.
Schatzie is looking for names to add to her list.
I ask you to submit the names of known (or even little known) climate change deniers and those responsible for heating up our precious planet.
Who is responsible for heating up the planet? I dug deep to find the real culprits:
All […]
A new telescope has peered into the Sun to see solar magnetic flux ropes for the first time. Severe flux rope twists have been described as being like “earthquakes” on the sun, and are linked to eruptions of large solar flares that change magnetic fields, and cause radiation and energetic particles to rain on Earth.
We don’t know much about solar magnetic flux ropes. We know they affect space weather, but thanks to climate experts we already “know” they can’t possibly, ever in a million years, affect Earth’s weather. Even though we’ve only just been able to see them and have no long term data on them, we have Global Circulation Climate models (which don’t include these solar factors), so we have 95% certainty that none of the particles, fields or radiation changes have much impact on Earth. They might fritz satellites, electronics and communications, but Earth’s atmosphere has no electrical component (wink), and the models “work” (kinda, sorta, apart from “the pause”, the arctic, the ocean, the antarctic, and the holocene) without any of this fuzzy solar stuff. Got that? Repeat after me. The Sun does not affect Earth’s climate. (Good boys and girls. You are fit for a […]
We could have so much fun doing a show like this Busting the Religion called Climate Change.
Why recycle? “It feels good”
The show uses a few more crass words than it needs to, apart from that it’s a lighthearted satire that kills quite a few sacred cows. The first 5 minutes sets it up with a bunch of people telling us that believe it makes them a better community player, a better mom, a good example for their kids, and helps the planet etc etc. Then Penn and Teller do some creative experiments on unsuspecting victims of the Recycling Religion.
This so lends itself to climate change. We could lead people through a series of questions where they agree to statements revealing they believe windtowers stop storms and solar panels hold back the tide.
9.1 out of 10 based on 101 ratings
Be warned. Don’t write this off as the usual exaggerated hype from Nature.
Zoology: Here be dragons Andrew J. Hamilton, Robert M. May & Edward K. Waters Nature 520, 42–43 doi:10.1038/520042a Published online 01 April 2015
Emerging evidence indicates that dragons can no longer be dismissed as creatures of legend and fantasy, and that anthropogenic effects on the world’s climate may inadvertently be paving the way for the resurgence of these beasts.
Figure 2: The rise and fall and rise again of dragons. The relative frequency of ‘dragons’ in fictional literature (thick red line), as determined as a unigram probability4, with two historical reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere temperature (decadal smoothing) shown in blue5 and purple6. Global temperatures have been measured since 1855 (thick black line5). Temperature anomalies represent deviations from the 1961–90 reference period. The rising incidence of dragons in the literature correlates with rising temperatures, and suggests that these fire-breathing lizards are being sighted more frequently. As a result, the large-scale ‘Third Stir’ is deemed to be imminent.
Ominous signs are there:
Further work has revealed that the early medieval period was a veritable paradise for dragons. This can be attributed to the […]
The UK Met Office went to some effort to graph the last 160 years, from hottest calendar year to coldest.
Name the scientific reason:
1. Because the order of the calendar years is important.
The graph reveals mysterious patterns — Years ending in 3, 4, or 5 are more likely to be hotter. Years containing a six are statistically more likely to be green.
OR
2. Because climate models show a linear rise in temperatures, and no “pause”, and this graph does too. Glance at it sideways and be afraid!
The Met Office used to say one year doesn’t mean anything, only long term trends matter.
Now they graph the noise.
…
Thanks to Barry Woods for pointing me at this, and carefully putting the years back in their chronological order in the graph below.
See the pause? See the noise?
8.7 out of 10 based on 98 ratings
Reader William York points out that Dr Xargle’s Book of Earth Weather (published 1992) is a similar vintage to the IPCC FAR report. Xargle’s job was to explain Earth’s climate to the Planet of Queeqians. Like the FAR report, Dr Xargle was turned into a fictional TV series.
Perfect fodder really for a Holiday Unthreaded. – Jo
——————————————————————————————–
From William York,
The following work, first published in 1992 is arguably one of the best interpretations of the 1990 IPCC First Assessment Report.
The book appears to be based on the earlier work of Mark Twain who wisely said “climate is what you want and weather is what you get”.
Dr Xargle from another planet should be well aligned with our climate modelers.
8.3 out of 10 based on 50 ratings […]
UPDATE: See Tony Thomas’s views on the course as it runs: UQ’s Denial 101x : Putting the stink in distinction. The course is living up to all expectations!
Would you too like to learn how to misinform people, mangle English, and toss cherry-picked factoids that avoid the real point? How about studying to be an apologist for scientists who take your taxes, but hide their data? Or perhaps you’ve always dreamed of being an obedient useful fool for the State, to help promote propaganda that governments can change the weather if the people just pay enough money?
Are you looking for a cause to pick up that you can brag about at parties to prove your social superiority, impress teenage girls, or hide your low self-esteem? Do you crave an outlet where you get the thrill of being a namecalling bully, but with the excuse that you are “saving the planet” and “being scientific”?
Good news, Queensland University is dumping any pretense that its science faculty uses logic or reason or has an interest in observable evidence. The university is advertising that abusing English definitions and words meets its standards of higher education. After all, no one […]
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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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