Embattled Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull still believes ETS will pass this week
ANGRY resignations from the Shadow Cabinet last night propelled Malcolm Turnbull closer to a leadership showdown which opponents to an ETS could ensure he loses.
Four MPs quit the front bench so they could fight the amendments to legislation creating an Emissions Trading Scheme negotiated with the Government by Mr Turnbull and senior colleagues.
Three senior figures, including Liberal Senate Leader Nick Minchin, who also quit the front bench, said they would vote against the ETS in defiance of Mr Turnbull. Read more.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Why 'climategate' won't stop greens
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
If you're wondering how the robot-like march of the world's politicians towards Copenhagen can possibly continue in the face of the scientific scandal dubbed "climategate," it's because Big Government, Big Business and Big Green don't give a s*** about "the science."
They never have.
What "climategate" suggests is many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't either. Apparently they stifled their own doubts about recent global cooling not explained by their computer models, manipulated data, plotted ways to avoid releasing it under freedom of information laws and attacked fellow scientists and scientific journals for publishing even peer-reviewed literature of which they did not approve. Read more.
If you're wondering how the robot-like march of the world's politicians towards Copenhagen can possibly continue in the face of the scientific scandal dubbed "climategate," it's because Big Government, Big Business and Big Green don't give a s*** about "the science."
They never have.
What "climategate" suggests is many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't either. Apparently they stifled their own doubts about recent global cooling not explained by their computer models, manipulated data, plotted ways to avoid releasing it under freedom of information laws and attacked fellow scientists and scientific journals for publishing even peer-reviewed literature of which they did not approve. Read more.
Obama drinks Kool-Aid - Warmist Juggernaut seems unstoppable!
Obama to set goals to reduce emissions
The White House announced Wednesday that President Obama will attend U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen next month and commit the United States to specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The administration's decision to identify a series of goals, including cutting emissions over the next decade "in the range of" 17 percent below 2005 levels, is a calculated risk, given that Congress has never set mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. Read more.
The White House announced Wednesday that President Obama will attend U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen next month and commit the United States to specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The administration's decision to identify a series of goals, including cutting emissions over the next decade "in the range of" 17 percent below 2005 levels, is a calculated risk, given that Congress has never set mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. Read more.
CRU Emails - Searchable here
On 20 November 2009, emails and other documents, apparently originating from with the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.
If real, these emails contain some quite surprising and even disappointing insights into what has been happening within the climate change scientific establishment. Worryingly this same group of scientists are very influential in terms of economic and social policy formation around the subject of climate change.
As these emails are already in the public domain, I think it is important that people are able to look through them and judge for themselves. Until I am told otherwise I have no reason to think the text found on this site is true or false. As of today, Saturday 21 November, there have been no statements that I have seen doubting the authenticity of these texts. It is here just as a curiosity!
View and Search emails here.
If real, these emails contain some quite surprising and even disappointing insights into what has been happening within the climate change scientific establishment. Worryingly this same group of scientists are very influential in terms of economic and social policy formation around the subject of climate change.
As these emails are already in the public domain, I think it is important that people are able to look through them and judge for themselves. Until I am told otherwise I have no reason to think the text found on this site is true or false. As of today, Saturday 21 November, there have been no statements that I have seen doubting the authenticity of these texts. It is here just as a curiosity!
View and Search emails here.
'You've Taken the Words Out of My Mouth'
The massive University of East Anglia global-warmist archives are now searchable at this site, and one particular email demonstrates the nexus between the scientific shenanigans and the popular press, on which most people rely for their information on global warming. This email, dated Sept. 29, 2009, is from Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University to New York Times warm correspondent Andrew Revkin. The crucial exchange begins with this question from Revkin (quoting verbatim):
I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.
peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree? Read more.
I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.
peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree? Read more.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
“Climategate” and the Social Validation of Knowledge
Recent evidence that prominent climate scientists have tried to intimidate academic journals into not publishing papers submitted by “climate change” skeptics have caused a major brouhaha in the ongoing political battle over global warming. At least some of the scientists in question certainly seem to have put ideology above the search for truth. The effort to keep skeptical articles out of academic journals also raises the issue of whether the academic “consensus” supporting global warming theory is genuine, or a product of systematic exclusion of dissenting voices.
I lack relevant scientific expertise on global warming, so I don’t have anything useful to say about the scientific issues involved. The question I want to address is what impact these revelations should have on our views of the global warming issue. If, unlike me, you have enough expertise in climate science to assess the scientific literature for yourself, I don’t think “Climategate” should have any impact on your views at all. You can read the mainstream literature, as well as the skeptics’ writings (which certainly exist in print, even if the Climategate culprits have kept some of them out of peer-reviewed journals) and make an informed decision for yourself. Read more.
I lack relevant scientific expertise on global warming, so I don’t have anything useful to say about the scientific issues involved. The question I want to address is what impact these revelations should have on our views of the global warming issue. If, unlike me, you have enough expertise in climate science to assess the scientific literature for yourself, I don’t think “Climategate” should have any impact on your views at all. You can read the mainstream literature, as well as the skeptics’ writings (which certainly exist in print, even if the Climategate culprits have kept some of them out of peer-reviewed journals) and make an informed decision for yourself. Read more.
Obama to go to Copenhagen for climate talks
President Obama will travel to Copenhagen Dec. 9, a day before accepting the Nobel Peace Price in Oslo, to help launch a U.N.-sponsored global climate change summit, a White House official said.
The president will meet with other world leaders gathered for the summit, which is scheduled for Dec. 7-18.
This is really starting to look like a setup - I guess Global Warming is going to happen come Hell or High Water!
The president will meet with other world leaders gathered for the summit, which is scheduled for Dec. 7-18.
This is really starting to look like a setup - I guess Global Warming is going to happen come Hell or High Water!
What Is — and What Isn’t — Evidence of Global Warming
All the evidence we've heard regarding global warming never constituted, in any manner, actual evidence that it was taking place.
by William M. Briggs
“Climategate” has everybody rethinking global warming. Many are wondering — if leading scientists were tempted to finagle their data, is the evidence for catastrophic climate change weaker than previously thought?
Actually, the evidence was never even evidence.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding — shared by nearly everybody about the nature of anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) — over exactly what constitutes evidence for that theory and what does not.
Remember when we heard that the icebergs were melting, that polar bears were decreasing in number, that some places were drier than usual and that others were wetter, that the ocean was growing saltier here and fresher there, and that hurricanes were becoming more terrifying? Remember the hundreds of reports on what happens when it gets hot outside?
All of those observations might have been true, but absolutely none of them were evidence of AGW.
Diminishing glaciers did not prove AGW; they were instead a verification that ice melts when it gets hot. Fewer polar bears did not count in favor of AGW; it instead perhaps meant that maybe adult bears prefer a chill to get in the mood. People sidling up to microphones and trumpeting “It’s bad out there, worse than we thought!” was not evidence of AGW; it was evidence of how easily certain people could work themselves into a lather.
No observation of what happened to any particular thing when the air was warm was direct evidence of AGW. None of it.
Every breathless report you heard did nothing more than state the obvious: Some creatures and some geophysical processes act or behave differently when it is hot than when it is cold. Only this, and nothing more.
Can you recall where you were when you heard that global warming was going to cause an increase in kidney stones, more suicides in Italy, larger grape harvests in France, and smaller grape harvests in France? How about when you heard that people in one country would grow apathetic, that those in another would grow belligerent, and — my favorite — that prostitutes would be on the rise in the Philippines? That the world would come to a heated end, and that women and minorities would be hardest hit?
Not a single one of these predictions was ever evidence of AGW.
For years, it was as if there was a contest for the most outlandish claim of what might happen if AGW were true. But no statement of what might happen if AGW is true is evidence for AGW. Those prognostications were only evidence of the capacity for fanciful speculation. Merely this and nothing more.
So if observations of what happens when it’s hot outside don’t verify AGW, and if predictions of what might happen given AGW were true do not verify AGW, what does? Why did people get so excited?
In the late 1990s, some places on Earth were hotter than they were in the late 1980s. These observations were indirect — and not direct — evidence of AGW. The Earth’s climate has never been static; temperatures sometimes rise and sometimes fall. So just because we see rising temperatures at one point does not prove AGW is true. After all, temperatures have been falling over the last decade, and AGW supporters still say their theory is true. Rising — or falling — temperatures are thus consistent with many theories of climate, not just AGW.
Climate scientists then built AGW models, incorporating the observed temperatures. They worked hard at fitting those models so that the models could reproduce the rising temperatures of the 1990s, while at the same time fitting the falling temperatures of the 1970s, etc. They had to twist and tweak — and with the CRU emails, it now appears they twiddled. They had to cram those observations into the models and, by God, make them fit, like a woman trying on her favorite jeans after Thanksgiving.
They then announced to the world that AGW was true — because their models said it was.
But a model fitting old data is not direct evidence that the theory behind the model is true. Many alternate models can fit that data equally well. It is a necessary requirement for any model, were it true, to fit the data, but because it happens to is not a proof that the model is valid.
For a model to be believable it must make skillful predictions of independent data. It must, that is, make accurate forecasts of the future. The AGW models have not yet done so. There is, therefore, no direct evidence for AGW.
The models predicted warmer temperatures, but it got cooler. One of the revealed CRU emails found one prominent gentlemen saying, “We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
It is. But only if you were concerned that the AGW theory will be nevermore.
by William M. Briggs
“Climategate” has everybody rethinking global warming. Many are wondering — if leading scientists were tempted to finagle their data, is the evidence for catastrophic climate change weaker than previously thought?
Actually, the evidence was never even evidence.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding — shared by nearly everybody about the nature of anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) — over exactly what constitutes evidence for that theory and what does not.
Remember when we heard that the icebergs were melting, that polar bears were decreasing in number, that some places were drier than usual and that others were wetter, that the ocean was growing saltier here and fresher there, and that hurricanes were becoming more terrifying? Remember the hundreds of reports on what happens when it gets hot outside?
All of those observations might have been true, but absolutely none of them were evidence of AGW.
Diminishing glaciers did not prove AGW; they were instead a verification that ice melts when it gets hot. Fewer polar bears did not count in favor of AGW; it instead perhaps meant that maybe adult bears prefer a chill to get in the mood. People sidling up to microphones and trumpeting “It’s bad out there, worse than we thought!” was not evidence of AGW; it was evidence of how easily certain people could work themselves into a lather.
No observation of what happened to any particular thing when the air was warm was direct evidence of AGW. None of it.
Every breathless report you heard did nothing more than state the obvious: Some creatures and some geophysical processes act or behave differently when it is hot than when it is cold. Only this, and nothing more.
Can you recall where you were when you heard that global warming was going to cause an increase in kidney stones, more suicides in Italy, larger grape harvests in France, and smaller grape harvests in France? How about when you heard that people in one country would grow apathetic, that those in another would grow belligerent, and — my favorite — that prostitutes would be on the rise in the Philippines? That the world would come to a heated end, and that women and minorities would be hardest hit?
Not a single one of these predictions was ever evidence of AGW.
For years, it was as if there was a contest for the most outlandish claim of what might happen if AGW were true. But no statement of what might happen if AGW is true is evidence for AGW. Those prognostications were only evidence of the capacity for fanciful speculation. Merely this and nothing more.
So if observations of what happens when it’s hot outside don’t verify AGW, and if predictions of what might happen given AGW were true do not verify AGW, what does? Why did people get so excited?
In the late 1990s, some places on Earth were hotter than they were in the late 1980s. These observations were indirect — and not direct — evidence of AGW. The Earth’s climate has never been static; temperatures sometimes rise and sometimes fall. So just because we see rising temperatures at one point does not prove AGW is true. After all, temperatures have been falling over the last decade, and AGW supporters still say their theory is true. Rising — or falling — temperatures are thus consistent with many theories of climate, not just AGW.
Climate scientists then built AGW models, incorporating the observed temperatures. They worked hard at fitting those models so that the models could reproduce the rising temperatures of the 1990s, while at the same time fitting the falling temperatures of the 1970s, etc. They had to twist and tweak — and with the CRU emails, it now appears they twiddled. They had to cram those observations into the models and, by God, make them fit, like a woman trying on her favorite jeans after Thanksgiving.
They then announced to the world that AGW was true — because their models said it was.
But a model fitting old data is not direct evidence that the theory behind the model is true. Many alternate models can fit that data equally well. It is a necessary requirement for any model, were it true, to fit the data, but because it happens to is not a proof that the model is valid.
For a model to be believable it must make skillful predictions of independent data. It must, that is, make accurate forecasts of the future. The AGW models have not yet done so. There is, therefore, no direct evidence for AGW.
The models predicted warmer temperatures, but it got cooler. One of the revealed CRU emails found one prominent gentlemen saying, “We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
It is. But only if you were concerned that the AGW theory will be nevermore.
Global Warmists Dig in Their Heels over Climategate — Kind of
Coby Beck, author of How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (PJM’s fisking of his work here):
I hear the conspiritorial cat is well out of CRU’s bag and the jig is up on the Global Warming hoax. I guess the Greenland ice sheet will be well refrozen by now, and the sea levels have stopped rising. Oh well, it was fun scaring you all while it lasted! Read more.
I hear the conspiritorial cat is well out of CRU’s bag and the jig is up on the Global Warming hoax. I guess the Greenland ice sheet will be well refrozen by now, and the sea levels have stopped rising. Oh well, it was fun scaring you all while it lasted! Read more.
Machine Converts CO2 into Gasoline, Diesel, and Jet Fuel
This machine could encourage us to put more CO2 into the atmosphere.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a machine that uses the sun's energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The system could provide an alternative to carbon sequestration; instead of permanently storing CO2 underground, the CO2 could be recycled and put to use. Read on!
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a machine that uses the sun's energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The system could provide an alternative to carbon sequestration; instead of permanently storing CO2 underground, the CO2 could be recycled and put to use. Read on!
Climategate and the “T”-word
We all know the “t”-word. Our President has used it many times, as did former UN Secretary General Annan. It’s – all together now – transparency. Now the “t”-word is promised us in almost every campaign by politicians (and mega-bureaucrats like Kofi) and never delivered, so we’re used to looking at it with a jaundiced eye from them. But scientists, scientists, they are the big brains, the honest ones, the ones who, unlike cheap pols, work for eternity, like Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein. Read more.
Nomenclature
Some have noted, and I agree that it’s a misnomer to call this “ClimateGate.” In addition to the fact that simply adding “Gate” to a scandal is so late twentieth century, calling it a “Gate” would imply that it’s something that the media will go into a frenzy over, because it’s a scandal about something politically incorrect (e.g., Nixon). No, a better name for it (again, not original with me — I think it showed up in comments at one of the PJM pieces) is “Climaquiddick.” In other words, expect the media to try to whitewash and minimize it. Read more.
The Climate E-mails and the Politics of Science
For years, the left has spun the debate over global warming in the starkest Manichean terms. Those who disagree with the scientific and policy orthodoxy have been maligned as greedy capitalists bent on raping the earth of its natural resources for cheap material gain; they have been cast as the benighted enemies of reason itself. Efforts to publicly challenge the science behind global warming have too often resulted in professional and political character assassination. To be skeptical about the fashionable scientific and policy platform aggressively advocated by the mainstream media and self-indulgently championed by the Hollywood elite is nothing less than an “assault on reason,” to borrow Al Gore’s hyperbolic rhetoric. In predictably technocratic fashion, the left has claimed its own peculiar position as the only scientifically legitimate one—everything else reduces to craven interest, manifest dishonesty, or antiquarian faith. Read more.
Deconstructing ClimateGate’s Smoking-Gun Email
The evidence that the human-caused global warming/climate change effort may constitute one of the biggest scams in all of human history continues to mount. The contents of emails and other data surreptitiously obtained from a UK climate research facility add further fuel to that already burning-hot fire. Read more.
Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud
In the geological past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher than at present. It is clear that the colorless, odorless, non-poisonous gas called carbon dioxide did not drive past climates. Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant. Read more.
Venus Flytrap Climate Scam
Among my favorite emails in the last couple of days are those coming from people who say if I am willing to trust the science on Vaccines, why I do I shrug off the science on Man Made -Sorry EVIL Man made-Sorry Evil Planet polluting Polar Bear hating Climate change. A scientist is a scientist I am told. So let me get this straight. All scientists are the same? James Hansen is with NASA. He is Al Gore's favorite Scientist.
James Hansen may be at Nasa and may be a poster child for the ARMAGEDDON crowd. But just because he is at NASA doesn't make him a rocket scientist. He is not. -- James Hansen won't get you to the Moon. James Hansen won't get you to North Bay - James Hansen we are told is an expert on radiative transfer models and attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. This we are told led him to the same computer codes being used to understand the Earth's atmosphere . Read more.
James Hansen may be at Nasa and may be a poster child for the ARMAGEDDON crowd. But just because he is at NASA doesn't make him a rocket scientist. He is not. -- James Hansen won't get you to the Moon. James Hansen won't get you to North Bay - James Hansen we are told is an expert on radiative transfer models and attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. This we are told led him to the same computer codes being used to understand the Earth's atmosphere . Read more.
Climategate: MSM Writers Try to Ignore Scandal in Global Warming Stories But Readers Bring Them Back to Reality
An hilariously bizarre situation is happening in the wake of the growing Climategate scandal. Many of the mainstream media stories about global warming are simply pretending it doesn't exist. Perhaps they feel that by ignoring Climategate entirely that it will just go away. Unfortunately for them, the readers of these global warming stories keep bringing up the inconvenient truth of Climategate by mentioning the scandal in the comments section over and over and over again. Read more.
Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails
A few days after leaked e-mail messages appeared on the Internet, the U.S. Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories misrepresented the truth about climate change.
Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.
Read more.
Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.
Read more.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A classic video for our times - The Great Global Warming Swindle
The Ice is Melting, the Hurricanes are blowing. and it is all YOUR FAULT
SCARED
Don't Be, Its not True
Watch the video.
SCARED
Don't Be, Its not True
Watch the video.
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