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Resisting Climate Hysteria

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Knobby22 said:
You say manipulation of data is widespread and you cannot believe the scientists and should instead believe the propagandists who have an interest in slowing change as they tried to resist the medical evidence against cigarrettes, fridges causing the hole in the ozone layer, DDT in food etc. .

You are the one being manipulated, Wayne.
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The above statement is fitting of any budding politician.

i.e. pure BS
 
Calliope said:
Thanks Smurf. You've cleared up one mystery for me. I often wondered why Turnbull favoured an ETS. I thought is was because he was a closet Green. But they hate the banks too and all Big Business. I guess it was because he is still a banker at heart.

So Swan, Gillard and Combet are secretly in bed with the banks.;)
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Maybe not in bed with them, but when it comes to money and votes versus actually helping the environment, politicians take the former every time.

I wonder how many ETS supporters would support it actually being implemented properly? To implement it properly, you need the same price on carbon regardless of what fuel it comes from, thus tipping the balance in favour of lower (or no) carbon energy sources through the price mechanism. Creating this situation is central to the notion that it can work as a means of driving a shift toward lower carbon energy sources.

Just one problem. To implement it as intended you need to remove any existing tax on carbon, especially if it is on some fuel other than the absolute most polluting (ie coal). Now, that means petrol and diesel excise being cut to the same rate as the excise on brown coal, after which the carbon price is then added back in.

I wonder how keen any of our politicians would be on that? A nice new system that just happens to cut tax revenue rather than increase it (but don't forget this is all about the environment). Thought not...

The whole scheme as it is actually proposed amounts to little more than a tax. In principle it could work, but only if it is set up properly and not manipulated to achieve non-CO2 related "objectives", which is not how it will be set up in practice. It's not as though we're about to see the hurdles to actually building large scale non-carbon power generation removed. It's not as though the carbon price will even be set so as to hit the most polluting fuel hardest. It's a tax... :2twocents
 
sails said:
And I think the libs could lose more votes than they gain from the labor supporters as I feel many conservative voters would be afraid of Turnbull being a wolf in sheeps clothing.
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Perhaps we will never know the real Malcolm Turnbull. He has to perform a fine balancing act. If he hadn't been elected in Wentworth, he would never have been in parliament. Now Wentworth is an electorate, where , in the absence of Turnbull, it would elect a Green.

He has to perform a juggling act. He has to try to persuade the conservatives that he can be trusted, and at the same time convince his electorate that he is one of them.

Being two-faced is not an easy game to play. Sooner or later you have to show your hand.
 
wayneL said:
The above statement is fitting of any budding politician. i.e. pure BS
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Yes the trouble with case studies as argument is that there are always counter-studies, or counter-propaganda:

- Galileo was run out of town by the science establishment. Now we have footage of astronauts on the moon dropping a rock and a feather at the same speed.
- Columbus, another crackpot at odds with the establishment, took a long time at the Spanish Court to get some ships.
- Ulcers until very recently, were almost universally thought to be the result of stress, but some renegade Aussie scientists proved that bacteria were the cause.

The point is that the science is never decided. Anyone who says that is actually saying that it's the politics that is decided (in their minds).
 
re: science is never decided, Logique...

Turns out lactic acid actually assists muscles to perform when fatigued, as opposed to hampering them. Strange but true. Dr. Smooth was wrong all this time!

Way back, scientists had noticed a build up of lactic acid in fatiguing muscles. They put 2 and 2 together and assumed that this meant lactic acid was a waste by-product which hampered muscle performance. In actual fact, the body produces it to enable the fatigued muscle to continue working in a less than optimal situation. It has an enabling effect.

Regarding climate change, I think we may be creating it through some sort of mass observer effect. The collective unconscious is dreaming this into reality. How's that for a theory! :p:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious
 
Logique said:
- Galileo was run out of town by the science establishment. Now we have footage of astronauts on the moon dropping a rock and a feather at the same speed.
- Columbus, another crackpot at odds with the establishment, took a long time at the Spanish Court to get some ships.
- Ulcers until very recently, were almost universally thought to be the result of stress, but some renegade Aussie scientists proved that bacteria were the cause.

The point is that the science is never decided. Anyone who says that is actually saying that it's the politics that is decided (in their minds).
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Another way of looking at it would be to say that great discoveries have been made because these people took a sceptical view and didn't accept conventional wisdom as fact.
 
the conventional wisdom being that we couldn't possibly be harming the ozone layer

or that earth was the center of the universe

or that "640K ought to be enough for anybody " Bill Gates 1981
 
noco said:
My oh my, this link shows how the Global Warming Alarmist fudge the figures to suit their own interest. Why can't they be hoest for once and admit defeat!


http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermai...to_make_97_per_cent_of_climate_experts_agree/
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It appears you still haven't read the pdf of the original report by Doran & Zimmerman as I recommended a month ago. If you did you could easily see how the numbers were obtained, what they represent and their significance. As for that piece posted by Bolt, it just reinforces Bolts lack of mathematical understanding and his willingness to use irrelevant information for point scoring.

Please revisit my post #1395 in this thread for a relatively easy to understand summary of why Bolt and those he links to are misrepresenting the survey.
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17955&p=603451#post603451
 
wayneL said:
There are usually scaggs of interesting article on sceptical blogs that come up every week. I don't bother posting them... probably for the same reason the vast majority of pro AGW articles don't get posted here.

This one is worth following IMO; for our mutual amusement:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/...d-of-the-australian-bom-and-csiro/#more-34117
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Crikey Wayne, you want to be careful some real sceptical bloggers don't sue you. The Watts blog isn't sceptical; it's gossip. The best and simplest clue is that he publishes too fast to be able to think about what he's saying. Sceptical articles take time; gossip doesn't.

Ghoti
 
ghotib said:
Crikey Wayne, you want to be careful some real sceptical bloggers don't sue you. The Watts blog isn't sceptical; it's gossip. The best and simplest clue is that he publishes too fast to be able to think about what he's saying. Sceptical articles take time; gossip doesn't.

Ghoti
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The above statement adequately illustrates a closed mind.

Watt's blog is... a blog, and certainly contains some elements of gossip. It has become an enterprise and commercial imperatives dictate some of the more frivolous content. But to disregard the bona fide content and to label it entirely as "gossip", is puerile, petty and asinine

Also, Watts is not the only contributer, there are several authors now which accounts for some of the quantity.

So come on ghoti, step up and debate properly rather than playing silly "attack the credibility" games.
 
wayneL said:
The above statement adequately illustrates a closed mind.

Watt's blog is... a blog, and certainly contains some elements of gossip. It has become an enterprise and commercial imperatives dictate some of the more frivolous content. But to disregard the bona fide content and to label it entirely as "gossip", is puerile, petty and asinine

Also, Watts is not the only contributer, there are several authors now which accounts for some of the quantity.

So come on ghoti, step up and debate properly rather than playing silly "attack the credibility" games.
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I repeat, sceptical articles take time. Did you yourself follow through on the article you linked to? Do you know how many times the New Zealand Institute for Weather and Atmospheric Research has answered the questions of its critics and how many times they have simply ignored the replies? Have you noticed that this behaviour echoes that of critics and self-described climate skeptics on dozens of issues in climate science, including Watts' failure to acknowledge that data from his own weather station project showed that the warming trend in the US is steeper than previously thought?

I've tried to debate the issues with you before, including on this thread. My earlier posts here have taken me a lot of time and I didn't see that you addressed the points I raised. As I've said before, I'm grateful to you for pushing me to research the science of climate to the extent that I have and continue to do. I started because you posted a link to The Great Global Warming Swindle. When was that - 2006ish? That was my first encounter with what I have come to see is an orchestrated but internally contradictory and deeply dishonest attack on science and scientists whose work happened to lead to the realisation that human activities have led to the release of so much fossil carbon that human civilisation, millions of human lives, and thousands of other species are under threat. That is not alarmist. That is a cause for alarm.

Ghoti
 
ghotib said:
I repeat, sceptical articles take time. Did you yourself follow through on the article you linked to? Do you know how many times the New Zealand Institute for Weather and Atmospheric Research has answered the questions of its critics and how many times they have simply ignored the replies? Have you noticed that this behaviour echoes that of critics and self-described climate skeptics on dozens of issues in climate science, including Watts' failure to acknowledge that data from his own weather station project showed that the warming trend in the US is steeper than previously thought?

I've tried to debate the issues with you before, including on this thread. My earlier posts here have taken me a lot of time and I didn't see that you addressed the points I raised. As I've said before, I'm grateful to you for pushing me to research the science of climate to the extent that I have and continue to do. I started because you posted a link to The Great Global Warming Swindle. When was that - 2006ish? That was my first encounter with what I have come to see is an orchestrated but internally contradictory and deeply dishonest attack on science and scientists whose work happened to lead to the realisation that human activities have led to the release of so much fossil carbon that human civilisation, millions of human lives, and thousands of other species are under threat. That is not alarmist. That is a cause for alarm.

Ghoti
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Ghoti

You see people like you see climate change as some sort of binary argument:

1/ We will all be crowded on the mountain tops surrounded by boiling seas.

2/ Nothing to see here folks move along (denial).

As evidenced by this thread there are those who inhabit those extremes, but sans any financial or ideological incentive, most people fall in between those extremes.

Only a buffoon will deny climate change or man's effect on climate in at least a regional sense. I have outlined my own thoughts on here many times and still get labelled a denier by warming extremists. :eek:

Sheesh even the likes of Pielke Snr and Curry are attacked as heretics.

The crux of sceptical arguments is the questioning of grossly overstated disaster scenarios motivated by ideology, politics and financial self interest in an effort to arrive at a sound conclusion and appropriate responses.

.
 
wayneL said:
Ghoti

The crux of sceptical arguments is the questioning of grossly overstated disaster scenarios motivated by ideology, politics and financial self interest in an effort to arrive at a sound conclusion and appropriate responses.

.
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I agree, and there are many scientists who agree that the models are definitely not worth much. I read New Scientist and it is very interesting how there are continually new factors such as iceberg behaviour and its effect on the wind, that come up that lead to the scientists involve saying that the models must include this and often the new factors are naturally slowing any global warming.

There is a huge difference between denying what has happened already and trying to
look through the fog of the future. What gets my goat is when you get people saying that the gases we are putting in the atmosphere have no effect and any global warming is caused by other factors. This is obviously an industry agenda.

In my career I see a lot of what the Europeans do to mitigate greenhouse gases and make life better for their citizens at the same time - I am talking about more efficient lighting, lighting control systems, trams to the centre of all major cities (including free carparking at the tram terminus). Sure,their trading system isn't too crash hot but at least they are achieving.

My view is that we should tax the heavy polluters at the source and give that tax money back to the ordinary citizens directly and transparently so their energy costs do not increase. Over 20 years, all the inefficient generators would be out of business and replaced with gas generators and other alternatives - pretty much by market forces alone.

The US and Australian position seems to be lets do nothing but if we do something, lets make sure all the polluters are protected by giving them huge numbers of credits and we set up some obtuse financial crediting sytem that the merchant bankers can make money out of. The ordinary citizens can get screwed. This is what upsets many people in this thread and fair enough.

Something is going to give, we are the lucky country though luck and good decisions. I am hopeful our wooly headed politicians (and I include pretty much all of them whether they be Green, Liberal or Labour in this category), can get their act together and work something out to lead the world rather than lag it. Australia used to lead the world in many things once, we can again.

(You say Wayne, my comments suit a budding politician, I know it was meant as an insult but sometimes I think I should have been one. The present lot is generally so pathetic. I don't know what has happened to the Liberals in particular who used to be full of extremely well read intelligent people, we seem to have quite a few with the intellect of George Bush II at present.)
 
One of the most difficult characteristics of the discussion is the way so much of it rests on generalisations about people and assumptions about their motives and what they think. That's easier than grappling with the scientific, or even the policy, questions because we all have quite a lot of expertise in dealing with people, but it obviously doesn't get us very far in assessing the facts or how we might need to respond to them.
wayneL said:
Ghoti

You see people like you see climate change as some sort of binary argument:

1/ We will all be crowded on the mountain tops surrounded by boiling seas.

2/ Nothing to see here folks move along (denial).

As evidenced by this thread there are those who inhabit those extremes, but sans any financial or ideological incentive, most people fall in between those extremes.
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I'll resist the bait of "people like you" and just say that this is not the way I see things and I'm glad to have confirmation that it's not the way you see them either.
Only a buffoon will deny climate change or man's effect on climate in at least a regional sense. I have outlined my own thoughts on here many times and still get labelled a denier by warming extremists. :eek:

Sheesh even the likes of Pielke Snr and Curry are attacked as heretics.
Click to expand...
You get labelled, I get labelled. Pielke Snr and Curry get called heretics; Jones, Mann, Hansen, Steig, Schmidt - shall I go on? - get called fraudsters and liars. None of that nonsense says anything about what's happening to the climate or what we might need to do about it.

Is it fair to summarise your thoughts like this: many human activities are affecting the planet in ways that will hurt humans sooner or later. These include excessive clearing of forests for building and for agriculture, non-sustainable agricultural practices, overuse of non-degradable materials, emissions of toxic gases to the air and into the water, and many others. These impacts are more harmful than the emission of fossil carbon and should be addressed first.

I'd be very happy with policy and behavioural changes that tackled all those issues because most of them would reduce carbon emissions at the same time. I agree that those are serious problems and that some of them will hit many of us before the warming effects of carbon show unambiguous harm. Trouble is the time lag between carbon emissions and warming, and the lag between reducing carbon emissions and ending warming. I think we need to tackle carbon emissions directly because we've already delayed so long.
The crux of sceptical arguments is the questioning of grossly overstated disaster scenarios motivated by ideology, politics and financial self interest in an effort to arrive at a sound conclusion and appropriate responses.
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No. There are many cruxes - cruces - and you've entangled at least three of them. One crux is about the collection, verification, analysis, and interpretation of data. Another is the preparation of scenarios and scientific advice for policy makers. Another is examining the political and financial implications of policy, including the implications of continuing as we are. Maybe the motivations of some of the noisier players is another, though personally I just find that a distraction.

What "grossly overstated disaster scenarios" do you question? In what way do you think they are grossly overstated? Who have you questioned about them? What evidence do you see that they have not included? What reasons have been given for excluding this evidence? What effect would the evidence have on the scenarios? How old are the scenarios? How do they match with intervening reality?...

Ghoti
 
Knobby22 said:
Over 20 years, all the inefficient generators would be out of business and replaced with gas generators and other alternatives - pretty much by market forces alone.
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There are plenty of people who would argue that, regardless of CO2, burning gas to generate baseload electricity is itself something that ought to be very strongly discouraged, if not outright banned.

What are we going to use for transport as oil declines? Realistically, it will be gas.

Where do our fertilizers and many other critical chemicals come from? Gas.

What natural resource is two thirds concentrated in the hands of Russia and the OPEC members? Gas.

What resource can be easily distributed for direct use with far higher efficiency than turning it into electricity? Gas.

Australia may well have quite a bit of the stuff, but the supply situation for the Western world as a whole is far more concerning. It seems an almost criminal act to burn it to generate baseload electricity. Future generations won't thank us, especially once you realise that we're letting all the rare gases such as helium go in the process.:2twocents
 
Fair point - what do you think then we should do Smurf?

Wait for solar to get more efficient? I read an interesting article in New Scientist about a completely new type of solar cell using tiny miniature aerials to pick up the energy and convert it to an AC waveform, the great thing is that it can work off IR radiation which means it will work at night!!

The energy then has to be converted to DC which is one of the stumbling blocks.
It needs a new type of diode as the standard silicon diodes are not suitable; but a different group of scientists is working on that.
 

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