A correspondent has informed me that the ACT Government has awarded Aspen Island Theatre Company $18,793, to assist with costs of the creative development of a new theatre work, ‘Kill Climate Deniers’. Since in some quarters I am thought to carry the marker of ‘climate denier’ (one of the stupidest epithets of our time) I was naturally alert, and alarmed as well. Perhaps the play is to be a comedy. Who knows. Maybe I’ll wear a disguise and go to see it.
But it raised for me once again the question of accountability. There is a lot of dire warning of ‘climate change’ about, and a lot of abuse of sceptics. In what sense are the Cassandras and abusers accountable for their actions? David Suzuki has asserted that politicians who don’t ‘take action’ on climate change should be jailed. Robert Kennedy Jnr has described such people as committing ‘treason’. The doom-laden utterances of Professor Flannery are familiar to all of a sceptical bent.
What if they’re wrong — quite wrong? If people have acted in particular ways because of what these people have said, and it all proves nugatory — and expensive — what then? Suppose, just suppose, that we are in for a long cooling spell. After all, the Antarctic ice sheet is now at the largest level ever witnessed (though that’s only thirty years or so). Do any of us have redress?
Anthony Watts’ website has run a thoughtful piece on accountability by Tim Ball, whose work I have mentioned before. Ball points out that engineers, in order to practice, must belong to a professional organisation, and that they are responsible for the quality of what they do and produce. So do lawyers and doctors. But not scientists, and especially not climateers.
Vaclav Klaus, the former President of the Czech Republic, and the only outspokenly sceptical national leader there has been in the past fifty years, wrote in his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles:
Environmentalism is a political movement that originally began with the intent to protect the environment – a humble and perhaps even legitimate goal – but which has gradually transformed itself into an ideology that has almost nothing to do with nature.
This ideological stream has recently become a dominant alternative to those ideologies that are consistently and primarily oriented towards freedom. Environmentalism is a movement that intends to change the world radically regardless of the consequences (at the cost of human lives and severe restrictions on individual freedom). It intends to change humankind, human behavior, the structure of society, the system of values – simply everything.
The great assertion of the climateers is that humans have caused a problem that threatens the whole planetary eco-system. It is a belief for which the evidence is tenuous and ambiguous, but those who believe it do so passionately. Who decided that humans are the cause of the ‘problem’? Ball says that the climateers did, using scientific methods that are clearly wrong because the predictions are wrong. It is a classic circular argument.
There are leading environmentalists in every country who practice political abuse of environmentalism, as Klaus defined it. These individuals and their organizations have done great social and economic damage with environmental misinformation and false claims, for a political agenda of total government control under the guise of saving the planet. They are effectively a green fifth-column, the enemy within. Sadly, their exploitation and misuse of environmentalism is putting the entire paradigm in jeopardy, as people stop believing anything they’re told.
Worse, many of these organisations bare defined as charities, and are thus exempt from income taxation. And the big ones seem to be very wealthy indeed. I know that I’ve said all this before. But this time I want to raise the question of redress. What if they are all completely wrong, both about warming, and about the human contribution to it? How can they be held to account?
Dr Ball devotes much of his essay to the question of salmon fishing and farming in British Columbia, where once again the David Suzuki Foundation has been an aggressive foe of the industry, making (according to Ball) completely false statements about, for example, sea lice, climate, global warming and the rest. David Suzuki himself referred to farmed salmon as ‘poison’.
We seem to be in a repetitive cycle. A small minority makes a great fuss about something, and call on ‘science’ as its witness. Pressure grows in the media for the government to ‘do something’. Something is done, but there is little interest in the broad consequences. In the case of climate action in Australia, one outcome was the carbon tax, which cost most people a good deal of money, and had no effect whatever on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, let alone on global temperature.
Yes, the Abbott Government has now repealed the tax, and a smidgin of money is being returned to us by energy companies. But who is to be held accountable for the mess in the first place? There is no enquiry, as with pink batts. And the doomsayers keep preaching disaster.
It’s a hard one, because so much of the doom is about what will happen at the end of the century, when few of us will be around. Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking about the right of free speech, pointed out that no one had the right to call out ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre: there needed to be also a sense of responsibility to go with the right.
Most days it is clear to me that the climateers see the notion of personal responsibility as almost laughable. They are SURE, and we must BELIEVE. It is so like the evangelist Christian revivalists of my youth, Canon Bryan Green, Billy Graham, and that ilk.
Agree all that. To the carbon tax we can add the various Desal plants that cost a fortune and will probably never be needed, and the RET that, like the carbon tax, has made no measurable difference to anything but our power bills. We are talking here about billions of dollars spent with scant cost-benefit analysis and no accountability by those promoting the programs.
Is it a bridge too far to compare the certainty and appeals to higher authority of the most fervent climateers with that of the ISIL murders in the Middle East? Probably yes, it’s a different type of fanaticism, though sometimes I find them just as irrational. And so far the climateers have attacked only our wallets and intelligences and we all still have our heads. Perhaps, given the type of abuse sometimes levelled at sceptics, we should be thankful for this small mercy.
I don’t know much about the rest of Australia but things were getting grim around Brisbane and desalination plants could well have been needed if the last drought continued. Not only were enormous amounts spent on Desal but also on sewage treatment plants and associated pipelines taking decontaminated water to industry and coal fired power stations hundreds of kilometers away. If things got really bad this treated water could be diverted into the normal water storage reservoirs. Then there was the construction of the water grid, again hundreds of kilometers of pipe linking reservoirs in SE Qld, not to mention upgrades of dams for more capacity.
It is all very well to say desalination will never be needed, but until we understand the ENSO cycle, long droughts could well bring us to our knees.
Yes, There’s a lot in that. I expect much the same incidence of floods and droughts in the next fifty years as I have observed in the past fifty. Why? Well, just an extrapolation from the past. But it seems a better basis for expectation than the computer models, given their record of success.
Supposedly the Gold Coast plant operated at 100% capacity for a time during the January 2013 Brisbane floods to provide clean drinking water to some of the suburbs and is used off and on now. However, its design and construction was another of those Labor ‘pink batt’ green projects characterised by overspending, under-design, and generally ruinous results:
http://prelive.goldcoast.com.au/article/2013/06/06/452794_gold-coast-news.html
It is a pretty expensive and inefficient use of money for a back-up system.
Even the LNP Govt has decided to run it at one third capacity instead of mothballing it for a future drought. I would like to think they have a considered reason for doing so.
Hi dlb,
Early white settlement in Australia really struggled in drought, until water tanks and dams became more widespread. Lack of accessible water always constrained Aboriginal movements, and of course wildlife populations.
I think in this country a bit more focus on dam building, and a little less grieving over the habitats of the endangered winkle-eared Corroboree train turtle (overall length 10-15 mms), might go a long way.
Peter, I don’t know if more dams are the answer. They would be fine if we could guarantee good rain every four years or even eight for one of very large capacity. They are also very expensive. But as I said before we don’t have a handle on the ENSO cycle, a 10 to 15 year drought is a possibility.
I think with dams NIMBYs are a bigger political concern than endangered fauna. I don’t know if you heard about the Traveston dam that was to be built north of Brisbane during the height of the last drought? The State Labor Govt at the time was hounded by the farmers who would be displaced by the proposed dam. I thought the proposed site was rather poor in that it would have produced a large shallow lake prone to evaporation and cynically thought, well they probably would only be NP voters in this area. Anyway the protest campaign gathered strength and the State Govt realised politically it was a bad decision. Fortunately for them the Federal ALP came to the rescue with Peter Garrett producing the get out of jail card, being the endangered Mary River turtle, thus saving the State Government’s skin. Unfortunately for the Govt it wasn’t a free get out of jail card as they had spent countless millions on engineering proposals, consultants and the buy up of properties. I highly doubt the Mary River Turtle would have mattered if it wasn’t for the protests of people whose livelihood and lifestyles were to be affected.
dlb – I think that properly located dams can work for consistent water supply even in cyclical drought areas. Hetch Hetchy is a good example: it flooded a wilderness area to an average depth of over 90m and has been providing 80% of San Francisco’s water for 90 years. The water is unusually clean and the dam also generates hydroelectric power. Of course, as with any new impoundment, HH caused a major change in the ecology of the area. Not that much was known about those effects back in the early 1900’s, and it is highly unlikely that the public would have cared much about any threats to a few flowers and fish anyway.
The Traveston Crossing Dam, however, would have been mostly very shallow, destroyed a lot of good agricultural land, probably negatively affected fishing and tourism at its mouth, and was opposed by a broad coalition of conservationists, local governments and industry. The Mary River Tortoise wasn’t the only poster child – there was also the Lungfish, Mary River Cod, Dugong and a host of smaller animals that would have suffered. With polls in Brisbane running 85% against the dam, I agree Garrett was probably doing the Qld Labor government a favour when he cancelled it.
I think the Traveston dam is yet another example of poor planning and fiscal irresponsibility (the State has lost hundreds of millions on the land they purchased) on the part of a Labor government. Labor really does seem dominated by political opportunists and hacks who could care less about the future of Australia and have no real political philosophy other than to grab for power and wallow in the public purse.
Caveat – I live in the Mary River Valley, and so NIMBY may be part of it, but I do not think the catastrophic conservation and economic effects were overhyped in this case. There may be other areas where a dam would make more sense and cause less environmental damage.
Dave, just looking at topographic maps I’ve often thought 4km south of Kenilworth would be the ideal site for a Mary River Dam. But I could imagine flooding the Conondale Valley would be affecting NIMBY central. Any thoughts? Apologies if this is where you live.
dlb – I don’t know what the engineers would think about the Conondale Valley. Traveston was poorly sited on potentially leaky soil and Borumba had its spillway cracked by an earth tremor, so there may be good reasons not to build in that area. But I’d agree with Peter K that deeper makes more sense in this climate.
Ah yes, the Travesty Dam. I see DaveW offers a few more thoughts about that one. But, dlb, I put more value in large and deep dams for water storage. You’re quite right about he NIMBY problem. Best solution is to buy folk out at a really decent price, so they end up being as well off. Yes, beautiful valleys and views will be flooded. But we can’t have it both ways. I remember camping with mates beside the river that is now flooded by the Blowering Reservoir as part of the Snowy scheme, and old Jindabyne and Adaminaby as well.
Now here’s a site for you: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/approval-given-for-extra—wind-turbines-20111106-1v20p.html . It’s a bit out of date, but evidently the plan for all that power from these wind farms was for Sydney’s desalination plant. So in the near future, will we see that 200 kms of country between the wind farms and the plant, to be bookended by two white elephants?
And what of a the fanatical adherence to “growth”. Growth of what? Its never even defined, much less a cost benefit analysis ever conducted.
Don,
This article reveals much about your lost ability an analyse objectively. You object to the phrase ‘climate deniers” then proceed to use terms like “Cassandras” and “Climateers.
Then this quote,
“This ideological stream [Environmentalism] has recently become a dominant alternative to those ideologies that are consistently and primarily oriented towards freedom. Environmentalism is a movement that intends to change the world radically regardless of the consequences (at the cost of human lives and severe restrictions on individual freedom).”
with little editorial comment.
“…regardless of the consequences…” really?? I cant agree!
You should like ‘Cassandra’ as a metaphor, because she did in fact prophesy correctly. I use ‘climateer’ for people like Professors Steffen, Flannery and Karoly, and their counterparts elsewhere, who do seem to have made preaching about climatic doom their true vocation. I need a shorthand term, and that one seems to fit the bill — like ‘engineer’ for those who work with engines 🙂
Ok from now on I will wear the Cassandra label with pride 🙂
Hi David
Have a look at the comment above from Jala Painter, posted 30 September 2014. Would you care to respond?
🙂 I was looking at that comment. I am glad you thought of me when you read that polemic 🙂
Wow, I let that one go through to the keeper 🙂
Every time a political ideology invokes “science,” you can be certain that what they really want is to impose a fascist dictatorship on your country, and, ultimately, the world. The Nazi regime, of course, was very “scientific,” its abhorrence of international and domestic Jewry proven by Nazi “science” of Jewish inferiority and evil. Communism, another fundamentally fascist ideology, also derived its legitimacy from the “science” of Marxism-Leninism. It never bothered the “science” protagonists that their drivel completely violated real scientific principles, common sense, and plain every-day observation. Communist economies were in no way superior to the capitalist ones, quite on the contrary, and a large number of Jews amongst Nobel Prize winners and other distinguished citizens, put a lie to Nazi propaganda.
Let the time roll, from the death of the Third Reich in 1945 to 1970s, the birth of the Green Movement in Germany, wherefrom it spread to other western countries, sprouting roots in the English speaking world more than anywhere else (the French and the Italians, as usual, wouldn’t care less, bless them). The movement was invented, founded and financially supported by East German Stasi agents, Petra Kelly and her dear husband, Gert Bastian, in the first place, but others, less prominent, too. It was the East German money that paid for “Peace Marches” and for “Save the Earth Marches” at the time.
Then, as the Berlin Wall fell, and the leftists of Europe scattered in panic, it downed on them that this Stasi organized Green movement was going to be their next home. The science of “Marxismus-und-Leninismus” was laid bare as the great fraud of the 20th century, but here was a new budding “science” which could be wielded to hit capitalism where it really hurts: not by proposing a better economic formation, because there isn’t any that would be more successful, but by making the claim that capitalism delivered prosperity hurts the Earth and all life on it, and that if it is allowed to continue and, worse, spread around the globe, to China, Eastern Europe, India, Brazil, this would produce a climatic calamity that would end life on earth as we know it. What made it even better than the old communism was its global reach. Everybody had to toe the line in this self-imposed green poverty and denial: the Chinese as much as the Americans, for this is “our shared planet,” which is “our greatest value of all.”
Another day, another lie.
As the previous fascist movements, this one is also elitist: it doesn’t care about the working man (neither did, in fact, communism). It is a movement of rich-spoiled-kids, almost exclusively white[1], who have everything without having to work for it, whose main concern is… their playground: the jungles and savannahs of Africa, the Amazon.
Who pays for this new “Hitlerjugend” and their “Marches” (Mussolini’s “March on Rome” comes to mind)? There’s plenty of money flowing in their direction from some very rich people[2]–as was the case with the Nazis and even with communists in their day–who do not like at all the idea of China becoming the #1 economy in the world, and who do not like the idea of working people in the US and in Europe driving around in their own cars and living in their own homes. But what the rich and their new “Hitlerjugend” pupils object to most is that there should be so many people, encroaching on their playground, to begin with. Calls for reducing the size of human population that emanate from this camp are deafening, and bordering on incitement to holocaust. And, in true admission to their real heritage, calls for killing their opponents, as well.
Perhaps this is something that the new Australian government should have a look at: isn’t the slogan “Kill Climate Deniers” a clear incitement to murder, a clear incitement to terrorism? Aren’t there laws about it in Australia?
REFERENCES
[1] “Within mainstream environmentalist groups, diversity is lacking” by Darry Fears, The Washington Post, March 24, 2013
[2] “The Chain of Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA,” US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Minority Report, July 30, 2014
Your references don’t relate much to your highly speculative comments. Petra Kelly a Stasi agent? Got a reference for that one?
Reference on Petra Kelly? Yes, Stasi archives. It all came out after the fall of the Berlin wall. This is why Petra Kelly and her husband committed suicide. The two references above relate to other matters, to elitism of the environmental movement and to how it’s funded today. Also see another interesting article on the topic by Joel Kotkin[1] and this WSJ Editorial[2].
REFERENCES
[1] “Fixing California: The Green Gentry’s Class Warfare,” Joel Kotkin, Union-Tribune San Diego, October 26, 2013
[2] “Climate Change Unreason: Policies invoked in its name are grossly immoral,” Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2014
Germany’s Green Party Sets Up Hotline…For “Sexual Violence Victims” Of Its “Staunch” 1980s Pedophilia Rights Advocacy
“No political group in Germany promoted the interests of men with pedophile tendencies as staunchly as the environmental party. For a period of time in the mid-1980s, it practically served as the parliamentary arm of the pedophile movement.” […]
When the Green Party was founded in 1980, pedophiles were part of the movement from the start […] were joined by the so-called ‘Urban Indians,’ who advocated the ‘legalization of all affectionate sexual relations between adults and children’.”
http://notrickszone.com/2014/08/22/germanys-green-party-sets-up-hotline-for-sexual-violence-victims-of-its-staunch-1980s-pedophilia-rights-advocacy/
An Early History Of The Australian Greens
“In 1984 the fiery parliamentarian and champion of the West German Greens, Petra Kelly, made her second visit to Australia. She urged that the various Greens in Australia develop a national identity.”
http://australianpolitics.com/1999/01/01/an-early-history-of-the-greens.html
Well blow me down, Petra Kelly aiding the setup of the Australian Greens, I’ll never. Almost as ridiculous as Al Gore sharing the stage with Clive Palmer.
Don’t be surprised. They’re all in cahoots. It really is “Green International.” Always has been.
I think you missed my sarcasm. Talking of being in cahoots, I’ve yet to be paid by big oil, have you?
Hi dlb
What Gus has written here is worth thinking over, and deserving of further reading. His comments are plausible, especially given how readily the well-intentioned can be led. It seems that the more a person is likely to be caring about the world as a whole as well as of other people, the faster is the rush to judgment. Not true of everyone, but just my observation – one reason for so much shallow thinking.
So if Gus is right, activists seeking change are drawn from that pool. The left tends to seek change, the right tends to support the status quo. It is axiomatic that activists very often gain positions of influence (an interesting aside: I notice in today’s news that two greens are standing for election to the council of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria).The scenario Gus describes is quite plausible.
Hi Peter, I certainly agree with you and Gus that activists will try and infiltrate organisations to seek change. But will these organisations and their supporters accept them? I highly doubt there is enough discontent in places like Australia for them to prosper, if there is discontent then they will strike a chord and change will happen. The green activists had a win for a while in convincing many people including myself that there was an issue in global warming, fortunately nature appears to “think” otherwise.
In the West there has certainly been change since the 1950s in part due to progressive activists. Fortunately it has been
largely evolutionary rather than revolutionary and I think you would agree much of it has been beneficial. Imagine if all this change happened in one year, there would have been blood in the streets. I think it is our job as a society to ensure change is at a pace we can handle and loopy ideas and shallow thinking called out for what they are. The Left certainly does not have a monopoly on crazy ideas, the last Iraq war and this years Federal budget come quickly to mind.
Hi dlb
Yes, society needs progressives, and as you imply, we need balance. However, I have been for a few years now been wondering whether in the West we have over the last fifty years or so been soaking ourselves in some thinking that arises from the comforts of a highly urbanised and technologically supported society. I notice this particularly here in Canberra, where I think many people would struggle to change a wheel on their car, or unplug a simple blockage in the piping under their kitchen sink. Sounds trivial, I know, but those are little indicators of the huge shift from the world of their grandparents.
Now I’m not suggesting that a return to the home mechanic and home handyman days will sort out our social blind alleys, but when you turn to all kinds of initiatives that are proposed and followed with great enthusiasm and very little reflection, they would have failed what we call the “pub test”, the test of common sense.
These enthusiasts looking for simple solutions, readily championing one cause or another, are an ideal and very large pool to serve as foot soldiers to agendas that may be less visible in the normal social and political discourse. As one example, consider who profits from the Green agendas of AGW, and renewables. And are there shadows behind those agendas? That’s part of what Gus is getting at. I don’t readily subscribe to conspiracy theories, but I try to keep an open mind.
And for an example on the opposite side, consider high frequency trading on the stock market. Cui bono? Not you and me, mate. No, the very bodies whose business thrives on turnover, and skimming the pennies. So keep your fridge magnets, and stay “alert, but not alarmed” – wasn’t that the messsage?
dlb,
Yes you do have a point; the IPA getting one of their employees nominated as Human Rights Commissioner.
Oh I think that was a real lark, a conservative appointed to a leftie organisation. A bit like when the some conservative students got into the the student union at UQ a few years back – Oh the howls of protest.
Gus
I see you have “gone off the reservation”, as they say. I was surprised that you did not mention the faked moon landing while you were it. What happened did you run out of puff? 🙂
I can smell fascism from miles. And I do know history. Intimately. I was there.
For more on this see “The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism: The Left’s Plan to Frighten Your Kids, Drive Up Energy Costs, and Hike Your Taxes!” by James Delingpole, ISBN-10: 1621571610. Also see “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science” by Tim Ball, ISBN-10: 0988877740. This one, somewhat older, is good too: “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” by Jonah Goldberg, ISBN-10: 0385511841. Kotkin’s “The New Class Conflict,” ISBN-10: 091438628X, is worth perusing too, also see his article on “Green Gentry.”
The more things change…
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (May 18, 1872 – February 2, 1970)
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt”.
“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?”
Thanks for this important post. Vaclav Klaus says it brilliantly and he speaks with direct knowledge of confronting a totalitarianism and winning. Some comments below illustrate that there are no none so blind as those who will not see.
Well we’ve got a reasonable idea of the costs, and they’re not terrible.
Keep in mind a coal-fired power plant has a 50+ year life, massive capital costs and low running costs. So if you build one today, and decide in 25 years that greenhouse is a problem, then the cost of mothballing it with 25 years of life left is high. Gas turbines have 20 year lives so it’s not nearly so bad. Cars have 10 year lives and heavy trucks about 5-10 so they’re not terribly important in the scheme of things.
For the most part there are alternative technologies which are more “greenhouse friendly” and the cost is on par. It becomes a problem when you’ve got capital costs as well.
Let’s give a simple example. Suppose you’re a small shopkeeper who’s just installed a new fridge. You don’t know a thing about refrigerants. But you’ve happened to have chosen that fridge with a 20 year life with apparently pernicious greenhouse gases as refrigerants, as opposed to the fridge with greenhouse friendly refrigerants. The costs of the two and performance are roughly the same.
Suppose tomorrow out comes the evidence that convinces you, Don, that greenhouse is a problem – and as a sceptic as opposed to a cynic you must admit that this is a real possibility, and the “consensus” should indicate to you that this is at least reasonably possible, even if you don’t believe it is likely. You come to the conclusion that as a matter of public policy we should price the greenhouse cost of running the fridge, which is well beyond the remaining cost of the fridge.
Then either:
1. the shopkeeper would have to wear the cost of the fridge replacement
2. the public/taxpayer will wear the cost of the fridge replacement vis a subsidy, or
3. the public will wear the cost of the greenhouse gas emissions (much $$$$ – so we go for 1 or 2)
Now the alternative to this scenario is to put in place today regulation/laws restricting the kinds of fridges which can be sold. We already have similar restrictions that say that fridges have to pass various safety tests and restrict refrigerants for numbers of reasons. So it seems reasonable to me to restrict refrigerant emissions today, (and similarly carbon dioxide other industrial gases), so as to cut this potential for our shopkeeper or the public having to wear this big cost.
It’s not clear to me how an additional restriction on refrigerants – and similarly for other industrial gases – amounts to something worthy of Mr Klaus’ rhetoric. We’ve seen “total government control” in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. The Stazi locked people up and tortured them! In this context the environmental movement want some restrictions on the release of various industrial gases into the atmosphere.
It’s really not clear to me how a policy tilt in favour of low emissions technologies via emissions trading or whatever to avoid the pubic wearing the cost of writing off a lot of capital equipment – which is probably reasonable given what we know, even from a sceptic’s viewpoint – amounts to a totalitarian policy.
[…] saw a ref to this at Don Aitkin’s blog – and a quick look in google found this – 4th from top. I wonder if readers think this […]
Patrick Caldon….
The CAGW movement can very easily be cast as totalitarian in its nature because it has all the hallmarks — demanding adherence to the cause—shutdown of alternative information by the high priests, with their almost 100% leftist MSM comrades enforcing that—intimidation of politicians who look like daring to stray from the dogma, effectively making pretence of belief compulsory—no tolerance of dissent— and in fact calls for retribution against those who merely disagree or question—-threats of ostracism or dismissal of non-conforming scientists actually carried out—special committees [ like Flannery’s Climate Council], cast as people’s information bodies but operating as a vehicle for silencing dissent or even discussion on the ‘set-in-concrete’ dogma–setting up of sham , show inquiries led by warmists with vested interests , both professional and personal wealth interests—set up in order to dodge accountability for their refusal to comply with FOI , fraud and misrepresentations—-shutting alternative scientists out of the peer review process in order to prevent the corruption of it by pal review from being revealed…disgraceful treatment of dissenting scientists like Clive Spash and Murry Salby, by universities and research institutes that are cosy closed shops for warmists on the government drip, with no tolerance of dissenters…and on and on…
Here in Australia, the government-owned broadcaster ABC, compulsorily paid for by all of us, but operating as a 100% Left wing campaign tool for GreenLabor, has deliberately made this issue into a weapon with which to indoctrinate the population —force-feeding us the information that bolsters their political ideological CAGW agenda, and militantly depriving us of information that shows the flaky, fragile nature of the dodgy consensus, and would alert Australians to the carpet-baggers and vested interests, the true facts and the criminal gatekeeping that is all that allows the scam to continue.
Some of the questions that these powerful people of totalitarian bent won’t answer…
…How could warmists have formed this consensus-that-must-not-be-denied, decades ago, claiming that all that needed to be known about the earth’s climate was known to the extent that they remonstrated to the world that “the science is ‘over’…’closed”—no alternative science welcome or tolerated—long before the science was even done—when many of the elements and processes of the earth’s climate system were still unknown[ as many still are—when clouds had hardly been studied, the sign of their feedback unknown, as it still is– –when the oceans had hardly been studied etc etc.?
…..Since satellite measurement of temperature only began in the 70s, and the early 70s were awash with alarm about ‘the coming ice age’— and then a completely natural warming event called ‘The Great Pacific Climate Shift’ impacted on climate in the late 70s and early 80s, followed by a very strong El Nino[ natural] in ’97-98, and since the IPCC itself –in the body of AR5 [ not the Summary for Policy-makers]—admits the earth hasn’t warmed for > 16 or 17 years—-how insane is it to proclaim that this blip in time constitutes a catastrophic warming trend?
How mad is it to continue to say the rise in CO2 is causing GW when it hasn’t caused global temperature to rise for > 16 or 17 years?
Since CO2 lags T rise, why is the rise in CO2 not just the lagging rise from the temperature rise [ from admitted unknown cause] that caused the end of the LIA?
The oceans comprise the largest part of the earth system , so how is it that warmist scientists claimed to know the whole globe was warming catastrophically before it was even possible to measure the ocean heat content reliably—which only became possible with the advent of the ARGO floats in 2003? They know that for a large part of the period they’re comparing today’s OHC with, it was measured by dipping water out with buckets here and there—if at all.
At least 14 research studies now conclude that climate sensitivity is much lower than was factored in to all of the models—ie that temperature of the globe is much less sensitive to a rise in CO2 than was ever thought—which explains why the models have proved wrong, and CO2 rises while temperature is in hiatus. It fits with the long-held logarithmic nature of any temperature rise caused by CO2.
Warmists ,in their desperation to alarm us , resort to the Arctic melt, with all else crumbling, but why are they so silent about the black carbon[ soot] —not from CO2 but from burning of wood and other biomass—that’s blanketing the ice and cutting down albedo, causing melting, resulting in dark water where once there was white, reflective ice and thereby setting up a catastrophic feedback cycle that causes warming globally.
The BC problem is relatively easily-mitigated, yet it’s never mentioned by warmists, and they will not answer a question about it.
Could it be that mitigation of BC would be inconvenient, as it would show that ~ 50%[ many scientists say] –maybe more — of the Arctic and glacier and permafrost melt is caused by BC and can be infinitely more easily mitigated than can CO2–and CO2 would not appear anywhere near as alarming to the folks as warmists want it to be—and a seriously-alarmed population, hysterical about CO2 and fossil fuels is oxygen to the warmist agenda—necessary for total compliance.
There are myriad questions these post-normal ‘scientists’, whose MO owes more to social science than natural science, will not allow to be asked—and if asked , militantly will not answer, like …
If there’s such catastrophic warming on land as claimed , why have the oceans not warmed , as the ARGO floats revealed in 2003? How is it possible?
How is it that there’s no significant acceleration in SLR?
Why is there no forecast hot spot in the troposphere?
Why is there no increase in severity and/or frequency of cyclones and hurricanes?
Why won’t BoM explain why the adjusted temperatures in Australia are always so much warmer than the raw data which reveals no CAGW?
Why won’t they explain why changes to a completely different measuring system, and changes in the nature of the locations [ new buildings, air conditioner exhausts etc] are not the reason for any perceived warming?
Patrick Caldron, since the warmist agenda will not be costly, what renewable energy will power Australian industry if warmists haven’t killed it stone dead—when you kill off fossil fuels? Not Solar and wind, that’s for sure.
There isn’t any developed country in the world that can survive without FF unless they have nuclear and comprehensive hydro, which we do not—certainly not poster child Germany, where they’re opening new brown coal mines and building new coal-fired power stations.
And where do you propose that our export income will come from —to fund schools hospitals, welfare system , NDIS etc, without revenue from FF and manufacturing industry??
Until there’s a massive change in this authoritarian, totalitarian treatment of the Australian [ and other ] people, the credibility and any remaining trust in research on this issue, and trust in the institutions[ once revered and wholly trusted] that are its gatekeepers —will sink without trace—and credibility in, and respect for all science will suffer catastrophically.
Gus & Don,
I think you are far too generous with your ‘Climateers’ and all it suggests. At least Bucaneers will rob you honestly, not flogging you with flawed models then enriching themselves while pretending it’s for your own good.
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