Drug Scientists Have More Integrity Than CC Scientists

The point I was trying to make in posting the link to the original article is this ecological economist's view that - as the Opposition and others have been attempting to suggest for some time - the government's proposed ETS is deeply flawed. Viz in particular, the following extract:

Dr Spash said trading schemes did not efficiently allocate emission cuts because their design was manipulated by vested interests. For example, in Australia, large polluters would be compensated with free permits while smaller, more competitive firms would have to buy theirs at auction. The schemes were also flawed because: global warming was caused by gases other than carbon; emissions were difficult to measure; carbon offsets bought from other countries were of dubious value; and the schemes "crowded out" voluntary action by individuals. He concludes that more direct measures, such as a carbon tax, regulations or new infrastructure would be simpler, more effective and less open to manipulation.

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Further, yesterday there was a report that the government's costings on the scheme are now way over original budget.

I'm more and more alarmed that they are so intent on proceeding with this tax on all of us, and that the Opposition - to save their political skin in not having to face up to a double dissolution early election - are going to essentially support it.

I wonder if the substantial fall in today's opinion polls, showing the government's primary vote is down 7 points, might offer Mr Turnbull enough encouragement to consider holding out and not passing the ETS legislation?

Well, Roger Pielke Jr, the son of Pielke Sr, who Wayne keeps mentioning, has thrown out a series of questions to Real Climate/Joe Romm et al, for debate.

1. There is no greenhouse gas signal in the economic or human toll record of disasters.
2. The IPCC has dramatically underestimated the scale of the stabilization challenge.
3. Geoengineering via stratospheric injection or marine cloud whitening is a bad idea.
4. Air capture research is a very good idea.
5. Adaptation is very important and not a trade off with mitigation.
6. Current mitigation policies, at national and international levels, are inevitably doomed to fail.
7. An alternative approach to mitigation from that of the FCCC has better prospects for success.
8. Current technologies are not sufficient to reach mitigation goals.
9. In their political enthusiasm, some leading scientists have behaved badly.
10. Leading scientific assessments have botched major issues (like disasters).

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OK guys here is your chance to step up and show the world where I am wrong based on a substantive discussion of issues that really matter. What do you say? All are welcome

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Worth keeping an eye on imo.

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/open-invitation.html

wayneL said:

You haven't read me very well then. I have explicitly stated that co2 may have some role in CC, but that it is minor with no relation to the IPCC model. I have posted links which discredit IPCC modelling on a number of fronts. The IPCC model is essentially dead and kept in an upright position - Weekend AT Bernie's" style - by a corrupt organisation with an ulterior motive

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As I see it, you've posted links that fail to show a minor role for CO2 in climate change, or to discredit IPCC modelling. As I've pointed out before, there is no such things as "the IPCC model". There are many models of many different systems which are developed and used by many different scientific groups whose work goes into the IPCC reports. Most of those models have been refined over decades as more information and more computing power becomes available. And the IPCC reports don't rely only on models; they also include observations from our own times, historical records, and records such as ice cores from the geological past.

The major player is land use and general pollution.

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That's a big enough statement that I can agree with it, but then the question becomes: HOW are land use and general pollution generating climate change? I don't recall, or perhaps I didn't understand, your answer to that.

I think it's worth saying that some of the really disconnected discussions about climate happen because people are thinking in different time scales. I think that a big reason CO2 is regarded as so critical is that it persists in the atmosphere for centuries, which is why we keep hearing about temperature rises that are "locked in". The smallest unit of time for considering climate is 10 years, which is longer than elected politicians (or electors) usually look ahead.

Meanwhile these people (IPCC) condone all sorts of pollution by their silence, and sometimes actively create bigger problems.

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It's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not on general pollution. Their mandate is

... to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change. The IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they need to deal objectively with policy relevant scientific, technical and socio economic factors. They should be of high scientific and technical standards, and aim to reflect a range of views, expertise and wide geographical coverage.

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(http://www1.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm)

Ethanol as fuel is a prime example of gross the stupidity and counter-productive measures espoused by "them".

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Isn't the stupid part of ethanol the growing of crops (notably US corn, which is a host of land use problems in its own right) for the sole purpose of making it? I don't know - I read today (http://www.newsweek.com/id/220552/ that Al Gore acknowledges in a new book that corn ethanol was a mistake. I also read today reports from 2005 about CSIRO scientists being forbidden from publicly discussing their work on climate change and its effects (they turned up when I googled CSIRO censorship).

Cheers

Ghoti

Julia said:

The point I was trying to make in posting the link to the original article is this ecological economist's view that - as the Opposition and others have been attempting to suggest for some time - the government's proposed ETS is deeply flawed.

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Fair enough, but not the discussion I thought we were having. I responded to Wayne's claims about the science of climate change. Policy issues are a whole different argument.

Cheers,

Ghoti

ghotib said:

As I see it, you've posted links that fail to show a minor role for CO2 in climate change, or to discredit IPCC modelling. As I've pointed out before, there is no such things as "the IPCC model". There are many models of many different systems which are developed and used by many different scientific groups whose work goes into the IPCC reports. Most of those models have been refined over decades as more information and more computing power becomes available. And the IPCC reports don't rely only on models; they also include observations from our own times, historical records, and records such as ice cores from the geological past.

"IPCC Model" is a generic term. Please don't split hairs. Actually model is a laugh as the link I posted in another thread shows. Computers do not yet have the capability to model climate. As far as "observations" go, as sorts of incorrect conclusions can be derived when cherrypicking observations.


That's a big enough statement that I can agree with it, but then the question becomes: HOW are land use and general pollution generating climate change? I don't recall, or perhaps I didn't understand, your answer to that.

I think it's worth saying that some of the really disconnected discussions about climate happen because people are thinking in different time scales. I think that a big reason CO2 is regarded as so critical is that it persists in the atmosphere for centuries, which is why we keep hearing about temperature rises that are "locked in". The smallest unit of time for considering climate is 10 years, which is longer than elected politicians (or electors) usually look ahead.

Once again, the totality of climate factors is ignored, in favour of a singular factor



It's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not on general pollution. Their mandate is (http://www1.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm)

And therein lies an enormous problem!


Isn't the stupid part of ethanol the growing of crops (notably US corn, which is a host of land use problems in its own right) for the sole purpose of making it? I don't know - I read today (http://www.newsweek.com/id/220552/ that Al Gore acknowledges in a new book that corn ethanol was a mistake. I also read today reports from 2005 about CSIRO scientists being forbidden from publicly discussing their work on climate change and its effects (they turned up when I googled CSIRO censorship).



Any school kid with a calculators could have worked out that corn ethanol was counter productive. Another destructive cat out of the bag.

Ghoti

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I'm not going to repost everything I've posted in disparate corners of this site. I'll let Messrs Pielke et al take up the argument... the rightful place for it.

ghotib said:

I think it's worth saying that some of the really disconnected discussions about climate happen because people are thinking in different time scales. I think that a big reason CO2 is regarded as so critical is that it persists in the atmosphere for centuries, which is why we keep hearing about temperature rises that are "locked in". The smallest unit of time for considering climate is 10 years, which is longer than elected politicians (or electors) usually look ahead.

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Apparently it is only the IPCC who think that atmospheric CO2 remains there for centuries.

Thanks Spooly. Like Wayne, you sent me off on a chase for better understanding.

My first response to the chart was to wonder why there's a 15-year gap between the newest of the background papers (1992) and the wildly different IPCC report (2007). If the IPCC results were very similar to the papers that suggest no dispute, but it's very unlikely that nothing was published for 15 years to produce such an huge difference.

To track down the reasons, I used Google with search terms "CO2 persistence", "carbon cycle", and "CO2 residence time". I followed up a number of links, but I didn't keep detailed notes of everything I read. Here's where I've got to.

My language was sloppy when I said the CO2 "persists". Persistence, like "residence time" (the heading of your chart) refers to the average time an individual CO2 molecule is likely to stay in the atmosphere before it becomes part of some chemical process that locks it up on land or in water. That's what all those papers in the chart are talking about.

The IPCC reports do not use "CO2" persistence, and they say why. One reason is that climate is affected by the total quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, which depends on how much is being added and subtracted as well as how long each molecule stays there. The other is the "residence lifetime" of a molecule of CO2 is not constant: it depends on location, temperature, what's around for it to react with, and a whole lot of other variables which all change as the total quantity of CO2 changes. That means "residence lifetime" is both impossible to calculate and not useful for assessing climate effects of atmospheric CO2.

Instead the IPCC reports use "atmospheric lifetime" of CO2, which is the time required to restore equilibrium following an increase in its concentration in the atmosphere. Obviously that also depends on a multitude of variables, so the IPCC uses its standard 4 emissions scenarios to produce sample projections. They all show a wide range of lifetimes, all of them in centuries.

I don't which of the IPCC projections Spooly's chart purports to show. It doesn't matter, because the chart is comparing apples and a lobster. It's hardly surprising that the lobster looks out of place.

Worthwhile exercise. Thanks again.

Ghoti.

ghotib said:

Thanks Spooly. Like Wayne, you sent me off on a chase for better understanding.

My first response to the chart was to wonder why there's a 15-year gap between the newest of the background papers (1992) and the wildly different IPCC report (2007). If the IPCC results were very similar to the papers that suggest no dispute, but it's very unlikely that nothing was published for 15 years to produce such an huge difference.

To track down the reasons, I used Google with search terms "CO2 persistence", "carbon cycle", and "CO2 residence time". I followed up a number of links, but I didn't keep detailed notes of everything I read. Here's where I've got to.

My language was sloppy when I said the CO2 "persists". Persistence, like "residence time" (the heading of your chart) refers to the average time an individual CO2 molecule is likely to stay in the atmosphere before it becomes part of some chemical process that locks it up on land or in water. That's what all those papers in the chart are talking about.

The IPCC reports do not use "CO2" persistence, and they say why. One reason is that climate is affected by the total quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, which depends on how much is being added and subtracted as well as how long each molecule stays there. The other is the "residence lifetime" of a molecule of CO2 is not constant: it depends on location, temperature, what's around for it to react with, and a whole lot of other variables which all change as the total quantity of CO2 changes. That means "residence lifetime" is both impossible to calculate and not useful for assessing climate effects of atmospheric CO2.

Instead the IPCC reports use "atmospheric lifetime" of CO2, which is the time required to restore equilibrium following an increase in its concentration in the atmosphere. Obviously that also depends on a multitude of variables, so the IPCC uses its standard 4 emissions scenarios to produce sample projections. They all show a wide range of lifetimes, all of them in centuries.

I don't which of the IPCC projections Spooly's chart purports to show.IPCC 2007. It doesn't matter, because the chart is comparing apples and a lobster. It's hardly surprising that the lobster looks out of place.

Worthwhile exercise. Thanks again.

Ghoti.

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Perhaps not apples and lobsters. All I produced was a cherry.
Nice work

spooly74 said:

Perhaps not apples and lobsters. All I produced was a cherry.
Nice work

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Thanks. It's tough stuff.

Enjoy the fruit.

Letter to today's "The Australian":

It’s looking increasingly like the sole purpose of the “hoax of the century” (climate change), so passionately promoted by bankers and governments, is to divert our attention from the crime of the century (GFC), so artfully perpetrated by the very same bankers and governments.
Richard Fisher, Sinnamon Park, Qld

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ghotib said:

Thanks Spooly. Like Wayne, you sent me off on a chase for better understanding.

My first response to the chart was to wonder why there's a 15-year gap between the newest of the background papers (1992) and the wildly different IPCC report (2007). If the IPCC results were very similar to the papers that suggest no dispute, but it's very unlikely that nothing was published for 15 years to produce such an huge difference.

To track down the reasons, I used Google with search terms "CO2 persistence", "carbon cycle", and "CO2 residence time". I followed up a number of links, but I didn't keep detailed notes of everything I read. Here's where I've got to.

My language was sloppy when I said the CO2 "persists". Persistence, like "residence time" (the heading of your chart) refers to the average time an individual CO2 molecule is likely to stay in the atmosphere before it becomes part of some chemical process that locks it up on land or in water. That's what all those papers in the chart are talking about.

The IPCC reports do not use "CO2" persistence, and they say why. One reason is that climate is affected by the total quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, which depends on how much is being added and subtracted as well as how long each molecule stays there. The other is the "residence lifetime" of a molecule of CO2 is not constant: it depends on location, temperature, what's around for it to react with, and a whole lot of other variables which all change as the total quantity of CO2 changes. That means "residence lifetime" is both impossible to calculate and not useful for assessing climate effects of atmospheric CO2.

Instead the IPCC reports use "atmospheric lifetime" of CO2, which is the time required to restore equilibrium following an increase in its concentration in the atmosphere. Obviously that also depends on a multitude of variables, so the IPCC uses its standard 4 emissions scenarios to produce sample projections. They all show a wide range of lifetimes, all of them in centuries.

I don't which of the IPCC projections Spooly's chart purports to show. It doesn't matter, because the chart is comparing apples and a lobster. It's hardly surprising that the lobster looks out of place.

Worthwhile exercise. Thanks again.

Ghoti.

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Hi Ghotib
You may be interested to read an essay by one of the IPCC's lead authors and a scientist without peer on climate and recognised as such by both sides of the Climate Change discussion.
He is Professor Richard Lindzen from MIT and his essay is titled "A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action".It is dated July 26 2009.

Here is the link- http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria

Mickel said:

Hi Ghotib
You may be interested to read an essay by one of the IPCC's lead authors and a scientist without peer on climate and recognised as such by both sides of the Climate Change discussion.
He is Professor Richard Lindzen from MIT and his essay is titled "A Case Against Precipitous Climate Action".It is dated July 26 2009.

Here is the link- http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria

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Fantastic article Mikel. Thanks.

"Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well."

We saw this principle (in bold) used with disturbing effect beginning some 75 years ago when an entire nation went somewhat mad and changed the phsych of humans for generations. (Hitler/Goebbels et al if the reference was too oblique).

wayneL said:

Fantastic article Mikel. Thanks.

"Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well."

We saw this principle (in bold) used with disturbing effect beginning some 75 years ago when an entire nation went somewhat mad and changed the phsych of humans for generations. (Hitler/Goebbels et al if the reference was too oblique).

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Spot on, Wayne.

Professor Lindzen has a reference to Goebbels in a presentation two weeks ago.

Here is the link - http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/cooler_heads_lindzen-talk-pdf.pdf

Look closely at page 5.

wayneL said:

We saw this principle (in bold) used with disturbing effect beginning some 75 years ago when an entire nation went somewhat mad and changed the phsych of humans for generations. (Hitler/Goebbels et al if the reference was too oblique).

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Goebels and gang drew from Edward Bernays.
Harold Lasswell's work was also of importance to the beginnings of modern propaganda.

Harold Lasswell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lasswell

..he argued that democracies needed propaganda to keep the uninformed citizenry in agreement with what the specialized class had determined was in their best interests.

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Edward Bernays:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

..One of Bernays' favorite techniques for manipulating public opinion was the indirect use of "third party authorities" to plead his clients' causes. "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said.

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Propaganda is everywhere and according to Chomsky in one of his books "Hegemony or Survival", the PR industry dwarfes that of Goebbels and gang and the Soviet Union.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4K2uBI61z4

“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”

Vaclav Klaus
Blue Planet in Green Shackles

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Talk about an over-read of the situation. Let's break it down.

"essentially a debate about freedom." There must be millions of debates that are directly related to freedom. The wording is such as to invoke fear that ones freedom is in jeopardy.

Continuing on ...

"The environmentalists would like to mastermind" Absolute rubbish. Environmentalist concerns are with the environment folks. Anyone with a respect for their environment would be contributing in some way to ensure there is clean water, clean land, clean air and abundant flora and fauna for the people of tomorrow.

They chose that passage to sow fear as both sides have done and I'm sure Klaus has more worthwhile things to say but any truths are continuously buried under a mountain of fears, lies, assumptions and bull dung.

Here is an interesting article form the Sydney Morning Herald today -

Science cooks the books, driving sensible people to screaming point

November 11, 2009
Kevin Rudd went over the top last week in a speech to the Lowy institute, declaring it was "time to remove any polite veneer" from the climate change debate, which he claims is the "moral challenge of our generation".

Then he launched an extraordinary tirade against "the climate change sceptics, the climate change deniers" who he claims are "powerful", "too dangerous to be ignored", "driven by vested interests … quite literally holding the world to ransom … Our children's fate - and our grandchildren's fate - will lie entirely with them."

If he had any shame, the Prime Minister would be mortified to be associated with such a hysterical, undergraduate piece of ad hominem hyperbole. History will record his embarrassment and the debasing of his office. But the speech shows Rudd's desperation in the week before his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Emissions Trading Scheme) is debated in Parliament and less than a month before the Copenhagen climate summit at which he wants to parade a signed-off scheme. As the public cools towards this new energy tax, politicians, green groups and other alarmists with the real "vested interest" in this debate are stooping ever lower in their attempts to shun dissenters.

One of the few public figures with the courage not to conform, the Liberal senator Nick Minchin, was smeared by anonymous sources in his own party this week as "crazy" for expressing scepticism about the extent of man-made climate change.

As the impacts of the global warming scare already are being felt at home in rising food and energy costs, taxpayers will be demanding credible evidence of the necessity of an ETS. It is unlikely the one-party state Rudd is attempting to fashion will be popular.

Rudd claimed in his speech there would be only "modest cost rises" associated with his scheme. The facts tell a different story.

The "most significant" price rise in the CPI index for the September quarter was for electricity, up 11.4 per cent. The Business Council of Australia's infrastructure report last month predicted prices will double by 2015, with the "first and most significant" driver being the ETS.

I have looked at my Energy Australia bills for the past two years and found large and unheralded price increases already.

From October 2007 to October 2009 the price per kwH of my electricity soared from 10.84 cents to 15.60 cents for the first 1750 KWh, and from 14.76 cents to 23.10 cents for the rest, which usually accounts for one-third to half of electricity used in the average three- or four-bedroom house. This is an increase of 44 per cent and 57 per cent respectively.

That's hardly modest.

Against the apocalyptic rhetoric pushed by Rudd comes a cool-minded new book which unpicks the science underpinning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports. Global Warming, False Alarm by Ralph Alexander, an Australian-born US scientist with a PhD in physics from Oxford, is subtitled ''The bad science behind the United Nations' assertion that man-made CO2 causes global warming". Alexander wrote the book, "because I'm a scientist. Because I'm offended that science has been perverted in the name of global warming."

He became a sceptic when he taught a course on physical science and found the textbook presented the "alarmist line on man-made global warming without question".

"To me that made a mockery of the history of science presented in the course, which featured several examples of how mainstream scientific thinking has been wrong in the past."

The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change says the earth has effectively developed an allergy to CO2. The effect of a tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is amplified by water vapour and clouds - in a positive feedback loop which enhances the climate's sensitivity to extra CO2 and causes "runaway global warming". That is the big Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change hypothesis.

Alexander explains the three problems with the hypothesis.

First, recent satellite observations show cloud feedback to be a negative loop, that is, clouds reduce global warming, rather than amplify it in a positive feedback loop, as the panel's models predict. Second, the panel has used flawed data. It "stooped to trickery and rewrote history" to make the temperature and CO2 records correlate over the past 2000 years, creating the notorious "hockey stick" graph that wiped out the well-documented Medieval Warm Period (a warm spell about the year 1000) and Little Ice Age (cool period in about 1650). The graph relied on data from a few tree rings to estimate historic temperatures, which have since been shown to be inaccurate. The third problem for the panel hypothesis is that CO2 lags behind temperature in the Ice Age era, which has been explained by the delayed release of stored CO2 from oceans, but the panel model has CO2 and temperature rising together since 1850. "Either temperature and CO2 go up and down at the same time or they don't … You can't have it one way during the ice ages and another way today."

Alexander says data manipulation has been the panel's main tool of deception. For instance, it has ignored the bias in the modern temperature record caused by the "urban heat island effect" that inflates warming near cities.

The panel has also ignored the bias in its temperature data caused by the shutting down of weather stations in cold parts of the world in the 1990s - from about 5000 to 2000 or so - most notably in the former Soviet Union. Again, this artificially increases the recent warming rate. Alexander says the panel has "cherry-picked" 19th century CO2 data to exaggerate the rise in CO2 levels since pre-industrial times, and has trivialised the sun's contribution to the present warming trend.

Don't get him started on computer climate models which he says are "full of unfounded assumptions". He points to the drop in the earth's temperature since 2001 which wasn't predicted by the models.

Ultimately, "trillions of dollars could be wasted to fix a problem that doesn't exist''.

Alexander's book is a useful tool to make sense of climate change.

As they did in the republic debate, regardless of elite consensus, Australians make up their own minds, and are probably turned off by official attempts to stifle dissent.

devinemiranda@hotmail.com

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Link http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opi...-people-to-screaming-point-20091111-i9vo.html

Mickel said:

Here is an interesting article form the Sydney Morning Herald today -

Science cooks the books, driving sensible people to screaming point

November 11, 2009 devinemiranda@hotmail.com

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Link http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opi...-people-to-screaming-point-20091111-i9vo.html

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miranda divine

now who's talking extremism.

...

Mickel, thanks for posting the SMH article. There have been several similar in The Australian. Gradually there is becoming a greater awareness of the costs to ordinary Australians of an ETS.

I'd rather see Nick Minchin as leader of the Libs than Malcolm Turnbull.
He's at least prepared to stand up for what he believes in.

I've just begun reading "Heaven and Earth: Global Warming; The Missing Science" by Professor Ian Plimer. I wonder if anyone has sent Mr Rudd a copy.

2020]speaking of miranda divine[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Julia from the copenhagen thread said:

We weren't.
There is absolutely no one in the entire history of ASF who has the capacity to hijack threads with so many utter irrelevancies as you, 2020.

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https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=509381&highlight=irrelevancies#post509381

https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=509390&highlight=smh#post509390

Julia
when you say " it was quoted in SMH" , and
"thanks for posting etc"

don;t you think it would be reasonable to also state who the reporter was?
and it was Miranda Divine.
So Mickel's entire post back there is entirely written by Miranda Divine

and when you congratulate him for doing so, you are agreeing with Miranda Divine.