JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax — 521 readers — #climate #science #politics
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Election over, so US, China agree to make unenforceable long term commitment with no consequences
… Now that the mid-term elections are over in the US, Obama is free to
announce the climate commitments that voters didn’t need to hear. (I
did say this would happen.) It’s a “landmark” agreement and a
“gamechanger”, but no one can point out what happens if either country
doesn’t stick to its agreement. The end-point of this grand theater of
intent and glorious promises is Paris 2015. What matters is the
appearance of “momentum” — and this show ticks all the boxes. The two
global superpowers make a sudden, unexpected agreement to reduce
emissions and the press can call it “remarkable”, as
Where have those fossil fuel emissions gone?
Oh the paradox! Human emissions upset the delicate balance and drive up
global CO2 levels by 2ppm a year, but lordy, at the same time, that
delicate balance roils and rolls with the seasons by a far larger range.
Get the feeling there is more to Life on Earth than humans? There are
places on Earth when CO2 swings every year by 16ppm or more – like Point
Barrow. Then there are places like the South Pole, where it barely
changes all year round — a bit like the level of greenery there which
varies from white to white. And there’s a clue. The other part of the
world where CO2 levels don’t swing is
Big lesson for Australia from US voters. Climate change is over as an election issue.
Remember how we were told people everywhere are “waking up to the
threat of climate change”? Welcome to 2014. In Charles Krauthammers
words “The National Weather Service has upgraded the election from
tropical storm to tsunami, especially the results of the governorships.
If you look at the bluest states in the country, Maryland, Illinois,
Massachusetts, all gone Republican.” Australians may have missed what
happened this week in the US (especially if they only watch the ABC).
Climate Change is over as a voting issue. Will Australian Opposition
Leader, Bill Shorten, get the message? Just last
Yesterday
Nov 10
Desal: no water provided but Victorian families pay $450pa for bikies and drunks
The scale of government waste is spectacular, even on a global scale.
Desalination in Victoria, Australia, might be the worst example, per
capita, of climate waste anywhere in the world. I challenge foreign
readers to outdo it. With all the wisdom of the best Soviet-style
governance, giant desalination plants on the east coast of Australia
were built because of prophecies of drought. Experts said
Nov 08
The rising catastrophe of The Pause Refugees
“Whole communities of climate modellers, activists, investors,
accountants, lawyers, wind farmers, super funds and importers face
oblivion… John Spooner Never underestimate the power of art to reach a
new audience. The best artists, of course, are those ahead of the crowd.
Source: SMH The Pause continues: Christopher Monckton with RSS data
October 2014 h/t Bob Carter with Thanks to John Spooner (s
Nov 06
Excuses Excuses! Neville Nicholls and the Stevenson screens that didn’t exist or did and were “cracked”?
Neville Nicholls and Sophie Lewis are striking back at George
Christensen, MP, who accused the BOM of “wiping” the official records of
heat waves in 1896 and demanded an inquiry. For some reason, despite
their world class work, Nicholls and Lewis still don’t seem keen on
having an inquiry — so they go to some length to explain why it’s
“false” to say it was hotter in 1896 than it was in 2013. Oddl
Nov 05
Political bias in peer reviewed science
An excellent article in The New Yorker: Is Social Psychology Biased
Against Republicans? It’s an article about the failings of peer review
and research design in psychology due to the dominance of one particular
political ideology (rather than having a spread more representative of
the total population). You won’t be shocked to find there is a dominance
of liberal left-leaning views in the profess
Nov 04
Fact Checking the ABC — the Big-Myth about the “World’s Scientists”
The ABC bias is now so obvious, everyone with an open mind and an
Internet connection knows that the ABC report the parts that suit, and
hide the rest. They even edit the words of skeptics to produce sentences
that were never actually spoken. But what I saw last night was a
flagrantly wrong statement, counter to the truth, reported as if it were
so above question it did not even need explanation,
Nov 02
IPCC recycles global doom and wants a small part of everything you own
Gullible journalists are swooning today with more and glorious
prophesies of disaster. This from the team that relies on simulations
that not only fail on global scales1, but they can’t predict regional2,
local3, short term, continental, or polar effects4 either. They are also
wrong about humidity5, rainfall6a,6b,6c, drought7 and clouds8, as well
as the all-important upper tropospheric patterns to
Weekend Unthreaded
… Rating: 8.0/10 (22 votes cast)Rating: 8.0/10 (22 votes cast)
Nov 01
Depressed Climate Scientists advised to use F-word
What do you get when you believe a failed theory? Climate Depression
Instead of being a bad thing, climate depression is a normal healthy
response when the data doesn’t match the theory. Either the theory has
to change or the scientist has to stop pretending to be a scientist. Too
bad there is a whole industry of depressed “journalists” propping up
depressed scientists. They award them with preten
Oct 31
George Christensen, Australian MP, calls for an inquiry into the BOM: The media finally notices
Momentum is growing. In Federal Parliament this week George Christensen
(Nationals party, Qld) gave an excellent summary of questions Jennifer
Marohasy and I have been raising about the Bureau of Meteorology, and
announced he would be calling for an inquiry. It’s long past time. Why
does the BOM have so little curiosity about the burning Australian heat
before 1910? Why do older thermometers seem
Oct 30
“Modern seas unprecedented”: An insult to geology and sea level research
Is the latest sea-level rise unusual? Kurt Lambeck said it was, based
on his version of the Holocene seas, calculated with modeled crustal
movements (to try to guess the rises and falls of the beaches where the
sea levels were changing). Obedient science reporters broadcast his
message to the world without asking a single hard question. But when the
error bars are 2 meters wide and the dating esti
Oct 29
The Clive Palmer Deal and Direct Action — Billions wasted
Clive Palmers done a deal to pass the Direct Action plan. Earlier this
year Palmer declared that Direct Action was “hopeless” and “dead” –
saying it would be too expensive and achive little for the environment.
Now he’s done a deal to pass it, insisting we get a review of an
emissions trading scheme, something not so long ago he would have mocked
too. The man has no principles. In the end, this
Quantitative easing bleeds the poor and feeds the rich
In the past, David and I have written about how money supply is
rampantly expanding, and how this benefits the spenders and the
speculators while punishing the producers and the savers (in a relative
sense of course). We’ve been called conspiracy theorists for pointing
out systematic problems with paper currencies. Today in The Australian
we find some more people who agree with us: Rupert Murdoch
Oct 28
Global Placebo Effect: Windmills, taxes, solar panels — slowed global warming before they were built.
New Global Placebo Effect (GPE) announced by Baroness Verma in the UK.
It’s a scientific breakthrough. Global warming may be stopped by the
mere thought of trying to reduce CO2, even if that thought fails to
bring down actual CO2 levels. The central dilemma: CO2 levels have been
rising “faster than expected” for the last twenty years, yet global
warming has been rising “slower than expected” for a
Oct 27
Billionaires club fund Green Blob “Climate Works”
David Rose at the Daily Mail has been following a network of money. The
big machine funding climate activism is Climate Works, which was kicked
off with a half billion from a Hewlett Foundation in 2008 (as in
Hewlett-Packard). Other donations are in the order of $60 - $100
million, any one of them vastly larger by orders of magnitude than
budgets that skeptical groups operate on (if they have a
Oct 26
Last magnetic flip of Earths poles happened fast: less than 100 years?
Using layers of ash in lake sediments in Italy, researchers claim to
have dated the last flip of the Earths magnetic field more accurately
than ever before — at 786,000 years ago. The spot has unusually high
resolution during the right 10,000 year era, which gives better detail
on the process of this major event. Curiously the flip started with two
periods of magnetic instability that spanned firs
Weekend Unthreaded
… Rating: 8.3/10 (20 votes cast)Rating: 8.3/10 (20 votes cast)
Oct 25
The Ebola Wars: The best article I’ve seen yet
The New Yorker has the best article I have read yet on the Ebola
outbreak. Finally we get human story and details of how this outbreak
started and spread, along with the outstanding heroic efforts of those
on the front line. The article has details on everything, the genetics,
the virology, the story of escalating fear as health workers started to
get infected, and the hard decisions. Who would ge
Oct 24
Which scientists are bad at sharing? 92% of environmental scientists
… Sharing data is one of the most essential principles of good science
and has led to remarkable advances in areas like genetics. But one
recent study showed the worst sharers were ecologists, as only 8% shared
their data. This new paper by Soranno et al describes sharing data
through publicly available datasets as “ethically obligatory”. (Did we
need a paper to say that?) And she further claims e
Oct 23
ANU spurns Fossil Fuel investments, why not be a Fossil Fuel Free Zone too? Demand action now!
The Australian National University (ANU) created a bit of media storm
in Australia in the last week when it declared it would divest itself of
“socially irresponsible investments“, with a focus on fossil fuel use.
ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young was emphatic: “I have
repeatedly said climate change is the most serious issue ever to have
faced humanity.” And later, “fossil fuel-reliant c
Oct 22
Panic! 2014 hottest year ever (Not so fast, say the satellites)
What’s almost as good as an actual record? A could-be-a-record
Headline! “2014 could become the hottest year on record” – said CBS, The
Guardian, Time, Washington Post, Discover Magazine, The Japan News,
Wired, and 319 other outlets. None of the investigative hardened
editors or science reporters knew enough to ask the question, “what do
the satellites say?” Which would have been interesting beca
A good news moment – paralyzed man walks again with stem cell transplant
In case you’ve missed this — stem cells have been used to partially
restore movement in a 38 year old man who had his spinal cord completely
severed by a knife attack in 2010. The cells came from his nose, and
are technically olfactory ensheathing cells (OEC). They are unique cells
— the only nerve fibres we know of that grow and make connections with
the central nervous system. It’s no magic ins
Oct 21
Kill Santa for the climate. Is that ISIS or Nobel Peace “Scientists” ?
The Eco-jihadi’s are back. In the latest creative, artistic work of
genius to save the Earth, cartoon Santas get gunned down in shopping
malls by the heroine. Blood splatters. The enviro-killers stand over the
dead body of one Santa and the caption reads: ” “Making conservation a
positive factor in the future would require a huge change in political
direction.” Indeed. That’ll cool the world. It’
Nigeria declared free of Ebola, but do the maths
I am glad that Nigeria is officially free of Ebola now. The story is
reassuring. New outbreaks of Ebola are stoppable. But the numbers are
sobering. They show how far gone the situation is in West Africa. The
index patient (as the source of the outbreak is known) arrived in Lagos,
a megacity of 21 million people, on July 20th — a recipe for disaster.
Over the next six weeks 19 further people were
Oct 20
Sea level rise “unprecedented” when modeling the ancient past
Kurt Lambeck at ANU scored a Climate Bingo moment in the modern media
last week with declarations that the 20cm rise in sea levels last
century was “unprecedented” in the last 6,000 years! But sea level is
fiendishly difficult to measure thanks to rising and falling bits of
land. Present day scientists argue over sea level changes in the last 10
years, yet Lambeck seems to have figured out the sea
Oct 18
Company stops Ebola, Bureaucracy puts it on a plane
Compare the response of The Firestone Rubber Plantation in Liberia to
the Hospital in Dallas, Texas. The rubber plantation has 8,000 workers
with 71,000 dependents. It is an hour north-east of Monrovia,
surrounded by Ebola outbreaks. The virus arrived on the plantation in
March. Knowing that the UN and the Liberian government were not going to
save them, the managers sat around a rubber tree and
Weekend Unthreaded
Hope you are having fun… Rating: 8.0/10 (21 votes cast)Rating: 8.0/10 (21 votes cast)
Oct 17
Ebola: a relentless tide we have to stop while we still can
The bad news -Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said the disease was still
out of control. Thanks to the mistake with a plane, a few US schools
have closed, and whole neighborhoods are being roped off. How fast does a
19Kb string of information spread? Outside Africa, Norway has one case,
Germany has had one death, one survivor, and one case. Spain has lost
two, and is treating one. France and the UK
Catalyst – raising public awareness of science, or promoting big-government science instead?
The global warming segment on the ABC last night marks a new direction
for the Catalyst ABC Science-unit. In the past, their method of dealing
with skeptics was to pretend they didn’t exist (see the transcript of
July 2013), but apparently they’ve realized they are losing the war. Is
this the first time they’ve acknowledged that there is a skeptical view,
and that there are questions to answer? Co
Oct 16
Gallup poll: Voters rank “climate change” last
Despite rallies in New York, despite the relentless propaganda, the
people just don’t seem to be scared anymore. In the latest Gallup Poll,
Climate Change is ranked 13th out of 13 issues. As the strident messages
of doom roll out, 60% of the public simply don’t believe what the
professors are telling them. Science has lost a lot of its aura and
credibility. The US midterm elections are nearly here
Oct 15
Ebola is potentially airborne
I’ve been watching Ebola with concern. I hoped we’d have more time. We
can still gain control but every week matters. What we do now will be so
much easier than what we have to do if we leave it to run. The
summary: The WHO warns that there may be 10,000 new cases a week in West
Africa by early December. Can you imagine trying to set up new beds to
cope with that each week? Meanwhile the Centre f
Global warming dumps late snow in Australia. Fires one year. Flood the next.
A major stormfront in NSW has dropped 170mm on rain on Ulladulla,
ploughed down trees, drove waves 8m high onshore, and put the airport
underwater in Sydney. It has carpeted the Blue Mountains in 20cm of
snow. 30,000 homes lost electricity and 60 people were stuck in a train
for two hours. This time last year the region was burning. Amazing
photos at the Daily Mail. Proof of man-made global warmin
Oct 13
Patrick Moore in Australia – book your tickets now
Have you booked your place? He’s in Melbourne today and Monday;
Canberra, Thursday; Perth next Friday and Saturday; Hobart, Brisbane and
Noosa the next week. Post bumped up as a reminder. Book Now! -Jo
Patrick Moore explains why, 15 years after co-founding it, he left
Greenpeace to establish a more sensible, science-based approach to
environmentalism. His book: Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropo
Australia becomes a climate pariah and yet tourists flock to visit the Axis of Carbon!
According to the Guardian, Australia is almost a Climate Pariah TM, and
owes the world an apology for voting to repeal the Carbon Tax. What
chilling effect, I wondered, did being a pariah have on international
tourists? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in July 2014
as the Carbon Tax was finally removed, tourists voted with their feet …
and flocked to come. A record 573,100 visitor
Oct 12
As I’ve repeatedly posted this year, there is a strange coincidence
between geothermal activity and warming in Antarctica. We are still
discovering volcanoes underwater, so we can’t pretend we have accurate
data on their contribution in joules or the trends in that. On
Antarctica almost all the headlines of doom and collapse come from West
Antarctic peninsula or the ice sheet nearby which also hap
by Joanne Nova
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