Resisting Climate Hysteria

[noco]

Good piece on the back page of the Fin today along these lines.


Andrew Bolt
Monday, January 17, 2011 at 02:42pm

Greens leader Bob Brown thought it was too soon to (correctly) blame soft boat people laws for luring people to their deaths:

Andrew Bolt’s call, while bodies were still in the ocean, for Julia Gillard’s resignation ... lacked human decency. He should resign.

But Brown did not think it too soon, when the fires were still burning, to blame global warming for the deadly Black Saturday fires in Victoria last year:

Greens leader Bob Brown says bushfires like the ones raging across Victoria and New South Wales this weekend will be more frequent if climate change continues…

“Global warming is predicted to make this sort of event happen 25 per cent, 50 per cent more,” he told Sky News. “It’s a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change.”

And he does not think it now too soon, with bodies still being recovered, to blame coal miners for the Queensland floods, either:

Senator Brown says the coal-mining industry should foot the bill for the Queensland reconstruction efforts, claiming their operations are partly responsible for the floods.

”It’s the single biggest cause, burning coal, for climate change and it must take its major share of responsibility for the weather events we are seeing unfolding now,” he said.

Bob Brown is a hypocrite as well as a fool.

(Thanks to readers Peter, Owen, Simon, Kevin, Anton, John McLean and astonished others.)

UPDATE

Four years ago, Bob Brown claimed global warming could give us a “permanent drought”:

From melting polar ice to the spectre of permanent drought in previously productive farmlands, the report makes clear that climate change is not just a future threat, it is damaging Australia now.

He was also warning of possibly no water at all in the Murray-Darling system:

Already, (Ross Garnaut’s) daunting data of a 10 per cent chance of no flow at all in the Murray–Darling river system in future years is being overtaken by data indicating that drought is the new norm across Australia’s greatest food bowl.

But when drought is replaced by floods, and rivers meant to be empty are overflowing, well, global warming caused that, too.

(Thanks to reader Simon.)

UPDATE 2

Brown rebuked:

Minerals Council of Australia deputy chief Brendan Pearson accused Senator Brown of ”rank opportunism”, unworthy of a serious political leader.

And Australian Coal Association director Ralph Hillman said domestically-mined coal made a tiny contribution to global carbon emissions.

Liberal Senator Eric Abetz said the Greens leader should apologise for his “insensitive” comments.

“Senator Brown’s comments expose the Greens and his leadership as shallow and cynical; willing to peddle political propaganda in the face of a natural disaster,” Senator Abetz said.

UPDATE 3

Tony Barry has a question:

Where’s Bob Brown? Every national leader (including Julie Bishop) has been to Brisbane and Queensland except, as best I can ascertain, Bob Brown.

UPDATE 4

Emeritus Professor Cliff Ollier, a geologist and geomorphologist, explains why Brown should be laughed out of town:

There are at least three arguments against relating the Queensland floods to Anthropogenic Global Warming.

1. Even other people in the Global Warming game realize there is no relationship between broad disasters and carbon dioxide…

2. The second problem is that this is not an isolated event. There was another flood of about the same dimensions in 1974. There was no peak of CO2 at that time. It was not an especially warm year, so Global Warming cannot be invoked (1998 was a hotter year, but no flood).

But there were even greater floods in 1841 and 1893. This is well before any possible Anthropogenic Global Warming, which began, according to its adherents, in 1945…

3. A third problem is that just a few years ago, global warming was blamed for causing droughts. This opinion was extolled during the last drought especially by Tim Flannery, another non-expert.

In 2003 Professor Karoly published, under the auspices of the World Wildlife Fund, a report that claimed that elevated air temperatures, due to CO2, exacerbated the drought.

“...the higher temperatures caused a marked increase in evaporation rates, which sped up the loss of soil moisture and the drying of vegetation and watercourses. This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed...”
and
“This drought has had a more severe impact than any other drought since at least 1950.... This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.”

So Anthropogenic Global Warming can apparently be used to explain any current disaster. Any hypothesis (like AGW) that uses the same mechanism to explain opposite effects is untestable, and therefore not science.

How true! How very true. I hope Australians wake up soon to this fake Brown for what he really stands for!!

 

[wayneL]

The Punch: Who needs Pauline when you’ve got Bob Brown?

 

[noco]

The Punch: Who needs Pauline when you’ve got Bob Brown?

Well, for a start Pauline, at the time, spoke a lot of sense of what many of people were thinking but were afraid to say. Unfortuneatly in the end it only caused her a lot of grief. Nobody could say Pauline was the fake Bob Brown has turned out to be.She was down to earth and spoke her mind.

 

[Sean K]

Well, for a start Pauline, at the time, spoke a lot of sense of what many of people were thinking but were afraid to say..

What % of the vote did she receive at her fish and chip shop?

 

[noco]

What % of the vote did she receive at her fish and chip shop?

Suggest you do your own research kennas. From memory she secured some 11 seats with 25% of the vote in Queensland.

 

[derty]

Well, for a start Pauline, at the time, spoke a lot of sense of what many of people were thinking but were afraid to say. Unfortuneatly in the end it only caused her a lot of grief. Nobody could say Pauline was the fake Bob Brown has turned out to be.She was down to earth and spoke her mind.

I thought this was a thread on climate change and those hystericals that argue for and against it. Aren't there better threads to argue the merits,evils and shortcomings of this very caring potato?

 

[wayneL]

More totalitarian politics from the Alarmists:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/17/china-style-dictatorship-of-climatologists/?page=1

 

[Knobby22]

More totalitarian politics from the Alarmists:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/17/china-style-dictatorship-of-climatologists/?page=1

Lad you fund a nut on the climate change size, Wayne. Help even up the numbers.

The USA will change, but it will be when the powers that control that country decide it will be in their interest to; which will occur when they can make money out of it.

 

[derty]

Here is an article form June 2010 forecasting that cold winters in Europe, East Asia and East US are to be the norm in the years to come due to the warming of the Arctic and reduction of sea ice extents. Whilst the weather is a surprise to some, to those that study the Arctic it was to be expected.

More Cold and Snowy Winters to Come in Europe, Eastern Asia and Eastern North America

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2010) ”” A warmer Arctic climate is influencing the air pressure at the North Pole and shifting wind patterns on our planet. We can expect more cold and snowy winters in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America.

"Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception," says Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States. Dr Overland is at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference (IPY-OSC) to chair a session on polar climate feedbacks, amplification and teleconnections, including impacts on mid-latitudes.

Loss of sea ice causes major climate change

Continued rapid loss of sea ice will be an important driver of major change in the world's climate system in the years to come.

read the article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100611093710.htm

 

[Sean K]

Suggest you do your own research kennas. From memory she secured some 11 seats with 25% of the vote in Queensland.

I very much respect the fact that she received 25% of the vote in QLD.

 

[wayneL]

Here is an article form June 2010 forecasting that cold winters in Europe, East Asia and East US are to be the norm in the years to come due to the warming of the Arctic and reduction of sea ice extents. Whilst the weather is a surprise to some, to those that study the Arctic it was to be expected.


read the article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100611093710.htm

IIRC, the Arctic lost the most ice up to 2007; up to that point, the northern hemisphere was experience warm winters (remember the "snow is a thing of the past" claim?).

Although Arctic ice is not at 70's levels, it has rebuilt to an extent since 2007. So since 2007, it's a bit of a stretch to say that the arctic is still "losing" ice.

With precious little actual science in the article, it reeks of opportunism as the trend to colder winters establishes itself.

Antarctic ice studiously ignored.

 

[wayneL]

Lad you fund a nut on the climate change size, Wayne. Help even up the numbers.

I can't make any sense of what you are saying here. Can you rephrase please?

 

[OzWaveGuy]

Here is an article form June 2010 forecasting that cold winters in Europe, East Asia and East US are to be the norm in the years to come due to the warming of the Arctic and reduction of sea ice extents. Whilst the weather is a surprise to some, to those that study the Arctic it was to be expected.


read the article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100611093710.htm

Nothing like having a foot in both camps to cover all bases. It also goes completely against the IPCC AR4 "playbook"...and this special IPCC report:



Seems to be about hot air, global warming and droughts. Nothing about colder days and nights.

But don't worry, going forward you'll see plenty more references from team IPCC on "extreme weather events" to cover anything that the hypothesis climate "models" can't predict (nor can they "predict" past climate variations either)

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

I can't make any sense of what you are saying here. Can you rephrase please?

Its all a load of Gaiabothering nonsense.

gg

 

[Smurf1976]

How true! How very true. I hope Australians wake up soon to this fake Brown for what he really stands for!!

Quite a lot of Tasmanians worked that one out 30 years ago... Unfortunately, "quite a lot" doesn't mean "all".

I'll have to see if I can find it but somewhere I've got Bob on (VHS) tape arguing that coal-fired power actually isn't so bad, at least not as bad as Bob's pet hate - hydro.

That would be circa early 1995 from memory and it made the local news headlines at the time. It's even stranger when you realise that the coal he was referring to would have been mined from within a National Park that was proclaimed during the Labor-Green Accord (1989-1992) for what most assumed to be the purpose of preventing mining of the coal.

A few years later, the Greens were opposed to coal and had come up with the slogan "clean green hydro".

Let's just say I'm speechless on that one. The Greens saying something good about dams, especially hydro-electric dams, really is in the category of the Pope opening an abortion clinic, AC/DC saying there's something wrong with loud music or Labor trying to ban unions. I nearly fell off my chair when I read that one, but it really was a slogan the Greens used at one point.

A lot of the Greens ideas seem reasonable in isolation. But step back and take a look at them overall through the past 30 or so years (ie the Greens and their directly associated predecessors and related organisations (TWS etc) and it's somewhat ridiculous. One of those "don't know whether to laugh or cry" moments...

 

[Knobby22]

I can't make any sense of what you are saying here. Can you rephrase please?

Sorry, quick typing on dodgy keyboard.

Not much of a point. Just saying there are nuts on both sides. You finding one on the climate change side evens up the score a bit.

 

[Calliope]

The Queensland coal industry seems to have avoided the brunt of the cyclone, except for temporary shutdown of the loading facilities. Bob Brown will not be happy about this seeing that the coal industry actually caused the cyclone..and the floods... and the drought.

Or perhaps Brown is just another one of Knobby's nuts.

 

[Knobby22]

Calliope.

Knobby's nuts - good one!!! Like it.

The reinsurance industry has an organisation (Munich GEO risks research) that keeps tabs on worldwide natural catastrophes. If you can get today's Age or SMH you can see the graph that shows natural disasters in Australia caused by meterological events (weather), hydrological events (floods) and climatological events (heat, bushfires) has risen expontentially in Australia.

These are business people, not greens, and the facts are used by the re-insurance industry to price risk. Take a look. I wish I could publish the graph. I can tell you one thing, our insurance premiums for these factors are going up.

If anyone can get the graph and publish it, I would be very grateful.

 

[wayneL]

Calliope.

Knobby's nuts - good one!!! Like it.

The reinsurance industry has an organisation (Munich GEO risks research) that keeps tabs on worldwide natural catastrophes. If you can get today's Age or SMH you can see the graph that shows natural disasters in Australia caused by meterological events (weather), hydrological events (floods) and climatological events (heat, bushfires) has risen expontentially in Australia.

These are business people, not greens, and the facts are used by the re-insurance industry to price risk. Take a look. I wish I could publish the graph. I can tell you one thing, our insurance premiums for these factors are going up.

If anyone can get the graph and publish it, I would be very grateful.

Have you read Freakanomics?

 

[Chris45]

If anyone can get the graph and publish it, I would be very grateful.

Is this the one?
http://hauntingthelibrary.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/trends_in_natural_disasters_004.jpg

Andrew Bolt's comments:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/...w_disasters_that_dont_fit_its_warming_script/