Resisting Climate Hysteria

[wayneL]

Which .... etc etc

Ghoti

Hey Ghoti

Don't go thinking I've piked on our debate here. It's just I don't really feel much like arguing about CC for a while after what has happened over here.

Though not personally affected, many of my clients and friends have been.

I'll get back to it in due course.

 

[ghotib]

Hey Ghoti

Don't go thinking I've piked on our debate here. It's just I don't really feel much like arguing about CC for a while after what has happened over here.

Though not personally affected, many of my clients and friends have been.

I'll get back to it in due course.

There are effects and effects. I think all Kiwis must be affected, and a great many Australians; Gillard got one thing right when she said that New Zealand is family.

Hang in there Bro.

Ghoti

 

[Julia]

Hang in there Bro.

Ghoti

What's this current vogue of addressing people as 'Bro"? All the years I lived in NZ I never once heard it. Mentioned it to a Christchurch relative yesterday. Neither have they, so it's not something that has evolved in my absence.

 

[trainspotter]

What's this current vogue of addressing people as 'Bro"? All the years I lived in NZ I never once heard it. Mentioned it to a Christchurch relative yesterday. Neither have they, so it's not something that has evolved in my absence.

Not sure if I have got this right or not but I call a lot of my "mates" by "Bro" or "Brother" or "Brother from another mother" and they are not from NZ?

I have noticed in many movies in regards to the lifestyle or the culture of the NZ people (Maoris in particular) that the vanacular was strewn with "F Bombs" and "Cuzzy Bro". Think of the movies Once Were Warriors and Boy.

I am pretty sure it has little to do with NZ and more like trying to sound "street wise" or something like that. Also used as a term of endearment between blokes IMO.

Hey sista girl !

 

[ghotib]

What's this current vogue of addressing people as 'Bro"?

I was thinking of the cartoon Beached Az (pron. Bitched Ez) that runs at odd moments on the ABC and this week has been calling for donations to the earthquake appeal. Every character in it calls every other character Bro (pron. Bru). It's not Kiwi, but it fooled at least one Aussie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcGUg4tNR2M

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/beachedaz/#/background/home

 

[basilio]

Is there a way of coming to a conclusion on Global Warming ? Coming to a definitive truth by pulling together all the data and making a fresh independent assessment of what has happened and where we might be going?

Just came across this project at the University of California which is attempting to do just that. And just to make it interesting one of the financial supporters (amongst others) is the founder of a Charles Koch foundation. The Koch brothers are incredibly rich American businessmen who to date have attacked any suggestion that climate change is real or should be a concern.

It will be interesting to see the results and how they are viewed by the both climate scientists and skeptics.

Can a group of scientists in California end the war on climate change?

The Berkeley Earth project say they are about to reveal the definitive truth about global warming

For the past year, Muller has kept a low profile, working quietly on a new project with a team of academics hand-picked for their skills. They meet on campus regularly, to check progress, thrash out problems and hunt for oversights that might undermine their work. And for good reason. When Muller and his team go public with their findings in a few weeks, they will be muscling in on the ugliest and most hard-fought debate of modern times.

Muller calls his latest obsession the Berkeley Earth project. The aim is so simple that the complexity and magnitude of the undertaking is easy to miss. Starting from scratch, with new computer tools and more data than has ever been used, they will arrive at an independent assessment of global warming. The team will also make every piece of data it uses – 1.6bn data points – freely available on a website. It will post its workings alongside, including full information on how more than 100 years of data from thousands of instruments around the world are stitched together to give a historic record of the planet's temperature.

Muller is fed up with the politicised row that all too often engulfs climate science. By laying all its data and workings out in the open, where they can be checked and challenged by anyone, the Berkeley team hopes to achieve something remarkable: a broader consensus on global warming. In no other field would Muller's dream seem so ambitious, or perhaps, so naive.

"We are bringing the spirit of science back to a subject that has become too argumentative and too contentious," Muller says, over a cup of tea. "We are an independent, non-political, non-partisan group. We will gather the data, do the analysis, present the results and make all of it available. There will be no spin, whatever we find." Why does Muller feel compelled to shake up the world of climate change? "We are doing this because it is the most important project in the world today. Nothing else comes close," he says.

...For the time being, Muller's project is organised under the auspices of Novim, a Santa Barbara-based non-profit organisation that uses science to find answers to the most pressing issues facing society and to publish them "without advocacy or agenda". Funding has come from a variety of places, including the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (funded by Bill Gates), and the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Lab. One donor has had some climate bloggers up in arms: the man behind the Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation owns, with his brother David, Koch Industries, a company Greenpeace called a "kingpin of climate science denial". On this point, Muller says the project has taken money from right and left alike.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/27/can-these-scientists-end-climate-change-war

 

[wayneL]

What's this current vogue of addressing people as 'Bro"? All the years I lived in NZ I never once heard it.

Very prevalent amongst young whitefella of low socio-economic strata and particularly Maori.

The middle class never utter it.

However it's prevalence has a direct correspondence to atmospheric co2 levels</ridiculousattempttobeontopic>

 

[Julia]

Very prevalent amongst young whitefella of low socio-economic strata and particularly Maori.

So what's that about? I know you're American and have only lived in NZ for about a minute and a half, but why is it apparently fashionable for low status white Kiwis to attempt to adopt what they think is the Maori vernacular?

True Maori would not use such a banal term. They have way more dignity.

 

[Mickel]

Hi Wayne. I think we should forget about the "Bro" references. They are irrelevant on this thread at this time.

I understand your concern for your clients and friends to some extent. I also had friends and a relative who were affected by the floods in SE Qld. However , the death toll here was much smaller than the current one in Christchurch, which appears will increase substancially.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Christchurch. I hope that they will still be able to host the Rugby World Cup games later this year as it will mean so much to them.

 

[DB008]

Hypothetical;

The world is warming

Floods/Cyclones/Natural Disasters in QLD/North QLD recently, fair amount of houses taken out in Brisbane--->Cairns region

If the climate is warming, then shouldn't the houses that are being rebuilt, be rebuilt to better/higher standards than current ones because if the temp is indeed rising, then that means that in the next 50 years, Brisbane will have a Cyclone Yasi (or equiv) and more of them and also further south than at present?

As an example, they have seen box jelly fish further south than previously????

Box Jellyfish found in northern NSW
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/box-jellyfish-found-in-northern-nsw/story-e6freuy9-1226013091600

 

[trainspotter]

A NASA satellite that aimed to study the impact of aerosols on climate has plunged into the Pacific Ocean, delivering a $US424 million ($418.43 million) blow to the US space agency.

The failure of the Glory satellite launch overnight was the second bungle for NASA climate science efforts in two years, and closely resembled a botched carbon satellite launch involving the same company, Orbital Sciences Corp, in 2009.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-new...it/story-e6frfku0-1226016257320#ixzz0hGNdPufu

Anyone else see the irony in this? Or is it just my cynical brain working overtime again?

 

[wayneL]

Anyone else see the irony in this? Or is it just my cynical brain working overtime again?

Perhaps cynicism and the irony are not mutually exclusive? :

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Why don't we see talk on the heating of the rest of the planets in the solar system?

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Why don't we see talk on the heating of the rest of the planets in the solar system?

Because it is not politically correct mate, good point.

I have noted Mercury increase in temperature of late, although my thermometer is half assed, and may be influenced by Uranus.

gg

 

[DB008]

Found this;

Global warming: 10 little facts

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/03/bob-carter

Control the language, and you control the outcome of any debate
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ten dishonest slogans about global warming, and ten little facts.

Each of the following ten numbered statements reproduces verbatim, or almost verbatim, statements made recently by Australian government leaders, and repeated by their media and other supporters. The persons making these arguments might be termed (kindly) climate-concerned citizens or (less kindly, but accurately) as global warming alarmists.

Despairing of ever hearing sense from such people, some of whom have already attributed the cause of the devastating Japanese earthquake to global warming, a writer from the well regarded American Thinker has badged them as “idiot global warming fanatics”.

Be that as it may, most of the statements below, self-evidently, were crafted as slogans, and all conform with the obnoxious and dishonest practice of political spin – in which, of course, the citizens of Australia have been awash for many years. The statements also depend heavily upon corrupt wordsmithing with propaganda intent, a technique that international Green lobbyists are both brilliant at and relentless in practising.

The ten statements below comprise the main arguments that are made in public in justification for the government’s intended new tax on carbon dioxide. Individually and severally these arguments are without merit. That they are intellectually pathetic too is apparent from my brief commentary on each.

It is a blight on Australian society that an incumbent government, and the great majority of media reporters and commentators, continue to propagate these scientific and social inanities.......

More on the link above.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Because it is not politically correct mate, good point.

I have noted Mercury increase in temperature of late, although my thermometer is half assed, and may be influenced by Uranus.

gg

Found this;

Global warming: 10 little facts

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/03/bob-carter

Control the language, and you control the outcome of any debate
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ten dishonest slogans about global warming, and ten little facts.



More on the link above.

An inconvenient truth without a mob of Scientologists to fund the movie, that's why.

gg

 

[Calliope]

Found this;

Global warming: 10 little facts

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/03/bob-carter

Control the language, and you control the outcome of any debate
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ten dishonest slogans about global warming, and ten little facts.
More on the link above.

Thanks for that Danny. These slogans and facts should be writ large.

1. We must address carbon (sic) pollution (sic) by introducing a carbon (sic) tax.
Fact
The argument is not about carbon or a carbon tax, but rather about carbon dioxide emissions and a carbon dioxide tax, to be levied on the fuel and energy sources that power the Australian economy.

Carbon dioxide is a natural and vital trace gas in Earth’s atmosphere, an environmental benefit without which our planetary ecosystems could not survive. Increasing carbon dioxide makes many plants grow faster and better, and helps to green the planet.
Fact
To call atmospheric carbon dioxide a pollutant is an abuse of language, logic and science.

2. We need to link much more closely with the climate emergency.
Fact
There is no “climate emergency”; the term is a deliberate lie. Global average temperature at the end of the 20th century fell well within the bounds of natural climate variation, and was in no way unusually warm, or cold, in geological terms.

Earth’s temperature is currently cooling slightly.

3. Putting a price on carbon (sic) will punish the big polluters (sic).
Fact
A price on carbon dioxide will impose a deliberate financial penalty on all energy users, but especially energy-intensive industries. These imaginary “big polluters” are part of the bedrock of the Australian economy. Any cost impost on them will be passed straight down to consumers.

It is consumers of all products who will ultimately pay, not the industrialists or their shareholders.

4. Putting a price on carbon (sic) is the right thing to do; it’s in our nation’s interest.
Fact
The greatest competitive advantage of the Australian economy is cheap energy generated by coal-fired power stations.

To levy an unnecessary tax on this energy source is economic vandalism that will destroy jobs and reduce living standards for all Australians.

5. Putting a price on carbon (sic) will result in lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Fact
Economists know well that an increase in price of some essential things causes little reduction in usage. This is true for both energy (power) and petrol, two commodities that will be particularly hit by a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

Norway has had an effective tax on carbon dioxide since the early 1990s, and the result has been a 15% INCREASE in emissions.

At any reasonable level ($20-50/t), a carbon dioxide tax will result in no reduction in emissions.

6. We must catch up with the rest of the world, who are already taxing carbon dioxide emissions.
Fact
They are not. All hope of a global agreement on emissions reduction has collapsed with the failure of the Copenhagen and Cancun climate meetings. The world’s largest emitters (USA and China) have made it crystal clear that they will not introduce carbon dioxide tax or emissions trading.

The Chicago Climate Exchange has collapsed, chaos and deep corruption currently manifests the European exchange and some US states are withdrawing from anti-carbon dioxide schemes.

Playing “follow the leader” is not a good idea when the main leader (the EU) has a sclerotic economy characterised by lack of employment and the flight of manufacturers overseas.

7. Australia should show leadership, by setting an example that other countries will follow.
Fact
Self-delusion doesn’t come any stronger than this.

For Australia to introduce a carbon dioxide tax ahead of the large emitting nations is to render our whole economy to competitive and economic disadvantage for no gain whatsoever.

8. We must act, and the earlier we act on climate change the less painful it will be.
Fact
The issue at hand is global warming, not the catch-all, deliberately ambiguous term climate change.
Fact
Trying to prevent hypothetical “dangerous” warming by taxing carbon dioxide emissions will be ineffectual, and is all pain for no gain.

9. The cost of action on carbon (sic) pollution (sic) is less than the cost of inaction.
Fact
This statement is fraudulent. Implementing a carbon dioxide tax will carry large costs for workers and consumers, but bring no measurable cooling (or other change) for future climate.

For Australia, the total cost for a family of four of implanting a carbon dioxide tax will exceed $2,500/yr* – whereas even eliminating all of Australia’s emissions might prevent planetary warming of 0.01 deg. C by 2100.

10. There is no do-nothing option in tackling climate change.
Fact
Indeed.

However, it is also the case that there is no demonstrated problem of “dangerous” global warming. Instead, Australia continues to face many self-evident problems of natural climate change and hazardous natural climate events. A national climate policy is clearly needed to address these issues.

The appropriate, cost-effective policy to deal with Victorian bushfires, Queensland floods, droughts, northern Australian cyclones and long-term cooling or warming trends is the same.

It is to prepare carefully for, and efficaciously deal with and adapt to, all such events and trends whether natural or human-caused, as and when they happen. Spending billions of dollars on expensive and ineffectual carbon dioxide taxes serves only to reduce wealth and our capacity to address these only too real world problems.

Preparation for, and adaptation to, all climate hazard is the key to formulation of a sound national climate policy.

Professor Bob Carter is a geologist, environmental scientist and Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.

 

[DB008]

Another one;

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Professor Bob Carter on the carbon tax debate

Alan Jones speaks to Professor Bob Carter about the ongoing carbon tax debate.

Link here; http://www.2gb.com/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=8366BODY

 

[Julia]

Thanks Danny. It would be good if more media gave equal exposure to Prof Carter as that they offer to Prof Garnaut.
Prof Carter at least, as far as I know, not being paid by a political party and is completely independent in his thinking.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

One of my lads has dengue, and I've had to drive a 2b in and out to the Isa and I've noticed that when the sun shines, there are more shimmering shapes on it between 4 and 4.30 of an afternoon.

Are there more solar flares about atm?

This could explain all the weather and earthquakes we've been having.

gg