As the new badger cull shows, we revert to irrational destruction as soon as our economic interests are threatened.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 19th January 2010

There’s a story which almost all of us believe: that beyond a certain state of development, we re-learn a respect for nature. It is true that some of the excesses of the early modern age – attempts by gamekeepers to kill all competing species, mass slaughter by white hunters in the colonies, the grubbing up of hedgerows and ancient woodlands – have lessened, though we still eat endangered fish and buy timber from clearcut rainforest. It is also true that we give more money to conservation projects and spend more time watching wildlife films than we have ever done before. But as soon as we perceive that our economic interests are threatened, our war against nature resumes.

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. The Welsh Assembly Government is celebrating the occasion by launching a project to exterminate the badger. I won’t pretend that this story ranks alongside the catastrophe in Haiti or the meltdown in Afghanistan, but it casts an interesting light on humanity’s continuing impulse to conquer nature, and shows how, even when cloaked in the language of science, our relations with the natural world are still governed by irrationality and superstition.

--------------

too right...

from Paul Shehan, SMH

Facts conveniently brushed over by the global warming fanatics

Here are 10 anti-commandments, 10 selected facts about global warming which have been largely ignored amid the orthodoxies to which we are subjected every day. All these anti-commandments are either true or backed by scientific opinion. All can also be hotly contested.

1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.

2. The US President, Barack Obama, supports building nuclear power plants.

Last week, in his State of the Union address, he said: ''To create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.''

3. The Copenhagen climate conference descended into farce.

The low point of the gridlock and posturing at Copenhagen came with the appearance by the socialist dictator of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, whose anti-capitalist diatribe drew a cheering ovation from thousands of left-wing ideologues.

4. The reputation of the chief United Nations scientist on global warming is in disrepair.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is being investigated for financial irregularities, conflicts of interest and scientific distortion. He has already admitted publishing false data.

5. The supposed scientific consensus of the IPCC has been challenged by numerous distinguished scientists.

6. The politicisation of science leads to a heavy price being paid in poor countries.

After Western environmentalists succeeded in banning or suppressing the use of the pesticide DDT, the rate of death by malaria rose into the millions. Some scholars estimate the death toll at 20 million or more, most of them children.

7. The biofuels industry has exacerbated world hunger.

Diverting huge amounts of grain crops (as distinct from sugar cane) to biofuels has contributed to a rise in world food prices, felt acutely in the poorest nations.

8. The Kyoto Protocol has proved meaningless.

Global carbon emissions are significantly higher today than they were when the Kyoto Protocol was introduced.

9. The United Nations global carbon emissions reduction target is a massively costly mirage.

10. Kevin Rudd's political bluff on emissions trading has been exposed.

------------------------

CRAP. Mr Shehan and you know better...

1. the polar bear population fluctuates. An increase over one year does no prove anything, and the species has been "protected" rather than shot on sight.

2. Obama supports nuclear energy. This is a stylistic decision that can be agreed or disagreed with as a proper solution to "global warming" but is an iffy solution to reduction of emission of CO2...

3. The Copenhagen conference descended into a farce. Don't we know that!!!. From the start, the imagery was over the top and the seriousness of the problem was swallowed by fanfares, buffoonery and politics.

4. The reputation of the chief scientist, etc. There is certainly some data that has not been up to standard. But this is only a tiny drop in a sea of solid research (and we need more of it, not less). That there is financial irregularities et al who knows?

5. Many who challenge global warming theory have an agenda to pursue. There are far more "distinguished" scientists on the side of global warming theory than those who support "emission of CO2 are harmless".

6. Bringing in DDT in this debate is a low blow. DDT is a killer of life, including humans and insects. More could be said here including in the statistical record but I will leave this for another day...

7. The biofuel has exacerbated world hunger. Yes it has.. AND WE KNEW IT WOULD. The biofuel is only a cheapskate solution to a major problem. But the world hunger of recent time was sparked by the 95 % failure of crops of rice in Australia, due to "non-seasonal" continuing persistent drought, probably due to increase in climatic extreme event associated with global warming...

8. The Kyoto Protocol has helped reduced emissions that would have gone far more gangbusters without its controls — as not ideal Kyoto Protocol is...

9. The targets are costly but not as costly as the possible rise in temperature. You ain't seen the bill yet.

10. Kevin's bluff is no more bluff than trying to give industry time to fiddle their books and reduce their carbon footprint in the long term. Malcolm knew the terms for industry were 'generous" enough. The Green lobby were horrified because it was seen (it was not) as a licence to pollute. The Liberals (with marching Abbott) believed it was a way to hammer Australian industries — which the ETS were not.

--------------------

 Beyond that all the guff about Lord Monckton is a bit glib and buffoonery like the man himself, although i liked the bit:

In 2007 the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the former US vice-president Al Gore. The prize committee, in citing its selection of the IPCC, said: ''Through the IPCC … thousands of scientists and officials from over 100 countries have collaborated to achieve greater certainty as to the scale of [global] warming.''

Thousands of people were thus collectively and anonymously part of the prize process.

So what lie did Monckton tell about the prize? Despite the gravity of the accusation, the Herald never published the offending remark. Here, for the record, is what he actually said:

Monckton: ''I found out on the day of publication of the 2007 [IPCC report] that they'd multiplied, by 10, the observed contribution to sea-level rise of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet. By 10! I got in touch with them and said, 'You will correct this.' And two days later, furtively, on the website, no publicity, they simply relabelled, recalculated and corrected the table they'd got wrong.''

---------------------

Now that the table is corrected (I'd suggest the committee wanted to make sure Lord Monckton was paying attention and would get him a Nobel Prize at the same time), we can get on with life and deal with global warming SERIOUSLY.

Remember the ice in the whisky conundrum. As the ice temperature goes up, it may not melt just yet. Remember the old fashioned non defrosting fridges. the less cold efficient they are, the more ice they cake up...

 

Abbott pencils in date with Monckton

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott plans to meet high-profile controversial climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton, who will be visiting Canberra over the next few days.

Mr Abbott's planned meeting with the sceptic, who has been on a speaking tour of Australia, comes as the Opposition Leader tries to sell his new climate change policy as an alternative to the Government's emissions trading scheme.

Debate over climate change between Mr Rudd and Mr Abbott dominated Parliament yesterday, with the issue high on the agenda for both sides at the start of the election year.

Mr Abbott has branded the Government's ETS as a "great big tax" while Mr Rudd counter-attacked by describing Mr Abbott's plan as a "con job" from a man who thinks climate change is "absolute crap."

Lord Monckton, a former journalist and political adviser to Margaret Thatcher, disputes the UN Climate Panel's findings that the planet is warming.

--------------------------

Hopefully, the good lord will self-erase before the pencilled meeting... But may our climate crappist monk, in a leap of non-duplicitous faith, realise that global warming need for solutions is a serious issue — not just a cheap vote catching exercise to be dismantled once the budgie smuggling is in the saddle. May the liberal senators, those with the small l in their board shorts, vote with the government on the ETS. Not the best solution in the world but nonetheless a start to tackle what is a very SERIOUS issue... see serious comments above....

According to provisional figures from the Met Office, the Britain's national weather service, January 2010 was the eighth coldest on record for the UK - the worst since 1987. A swath of northern Europe and parts of the US also experienced unseasonably cold temperatures.

And yet, explains Met Office research scientist David Parker, many areas, including large parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and Canada, had a warmer January than usual.

It's all an issue of different patterns affecting the weather. In the UK's case, the culprit is wind.

"It boils down entirely to which way the wind blows, especially for the first half of the month," says Mr Parker.

"The winds blew from the north and north east, created an area of coldness, which covered Europe and a lot of Siberia, relative to normal."

THE ANSWER
In the UK, the typical westerly flow across the Atlantic was "blocked", enabling cold surface winds from the north and northeast

Key to the block was a persistent trough on the Jet Stream above the UK, bringing air straight from the Arctic

Throughout the Tropics - half of the area of the globe - El Nino has caused a warm January

------------------

see toon at top.

Are these signs of "global warming"? In the global warming models, the western flow across the atlantic is likely to slow down with a slowing of the gulf stream, leading to cooling in the UK. And El Nino is likely to intensify cycles and strength. Presently the temperatures of eastern Australia are "warmer" on average by 2 degree C (my observtion). Soon see what the Aussie met bureau says...

The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests.

The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, a rise of 8% since a similar poll was conducted in November.

The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.

And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and "now established as largely man-made".

----------------------

We cannot afford to let public opinion rule on this issue. What is at stake is far more important. Depending on what we do, we could limit global warming at plus 2 degree C by 2100 (this is a tall order — bigger than what we realise considering all the factors against us. including population growth and our inate sense of "greed") or we can let a temperature creep upwards in the magnitude of 0.05 to 0.1 per annum. "This creep is not really much per annum" but over 90 years ahead of us, the compounded temperature creep will become catastrophic, yet not Armageddonish... Trust me.

with ridicule...

see there for transcripts of Media Watch... But so should all the media cooks be charged with ridicule — like the Miranda Devine and of all people Alan Jones... Alan usually blurts rightwing stuff and anti-socialist stuff yet he, himself, is very generous to causes and individuals who are down on their luck. Media-wise, he sometimes hits the mark, but more often does not. When he supports buffoons like Lord Monckton and his dippy-silliness against a very important and serious subject, Jones falls in the pits of crap and takes his audience moronically with him and glorifies himself as if he was doing a public service! Sad sad sad... And when the ABC also talks to the silly Lord as if he had something right to say, I say bollocks to all the presenters and their producers. The controversy is not worth the time, nor the discussion but since the media has chosen to laud the Lord of the silly stand up, we have to respond and drag him throught the tar pits and feather him...

I present you here with the full transcript of the ABC MediaWatch...

Alan Jones: I mean that rubbish program which is called Media Watch, and it is rubbish, and the people in charge of it are rubbish, and the researchers are rubbish... They're rubbish, and junk, have been and always will be, but then they run around sniffing, as I think Paul Keating once said, sniffing bicycle seats to see if they can find out a little bit of rubbish and grub on someone.

— Radio 2GB, The Alan Jones Show, 5th February, 2010

======

Sniffing bicycle seats? Alan, I think you're getting over-excited.

Welcome to Media Watch, 2010. I'm Jonathan Holmes.

And even before we got to air we managed to upset Mr Jones.

We had the temerity to ask if he was being paid for MC'ing the appearances of the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley - free market ideologue, professional controversialist, and debunker-in-chief of climate change science.

Well, we're happy to pass on to you the news that...


Alan Jones: No, we don't get paid for doing any of this. Pleased to do it as a public service to offer a viewpoint that has been denied... Freedom of speech? You're kidding aren't you? Our ABC? You are kidding.

— Radio 2GB, The Alan Jones Show, 5th February, 2010

=====

Lord Monckton himself had a rather different take on that:


Lord Monckton: ... in fact let's be fair to ABC they have in fact given me quite a lot of coverage around Australia...

— Radio 2GB, The Jason Morrison Drive Show, 3rd February, 2010

====

They have indeed...


Deborah Cameron: He's here on a paid lecture tour and he joins me this morning. Christopher Monckton, good morning.

— ABC Radio 702, Mornings with Deborah Cameron, 25th January, 2010


Virginia Trioli: He's in Australia on a month-long speaking tour and he joins us now. Lord Monckton, good morning. Thanks for joining us.

Lord Monckton: Good morning, Virginia.

— ABC2 News Breakfast, 1st February, 2010


Fran Kelly: Also joining us in the Breakfast studio this morning is Lord Christopher Monckton. Lord Monckton, good morning.

Lord Monckton: Good morning, Fran.

— ABC Radio National, Breakfast with Fran Kelly, 28th January, 2010


Tracy Bowden: You say you are not a scientist, you're a mathematician. Would it be fair to say you're also a showman?

Lord Monckton: I don't think that's for me to say. But if you give me an audience, the larger the better, I do enjoy myself.

— ABC 7.30 Report, 3rd February, 2010

And enjoy himself, he certainly has.

Adoring crowds have flocked to his lectures, and climate change sceptics on commercial talkback radio around the country have fawned on him ...


Michael Smith: Lord Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is in Brisbane today. I met with him with two lovely blokes...

— Radio 4BC, Drive with Michael Smith, 29th January, 2010


Jason Morrison: This man has had an enormous impact, again not that you would necessarily know it in the broader media...

— Radio 2GB,The Jason Morrison Drive Show, 3rd February, 2010


=====

You wouldn't know it? It's been hard to escape his Lordship, wherever you looked and whatever you listened to.

 

What's worried us is not that he's been given airtime, but that some of his most contentious statements have gone almost unchallenged in the Australian media.

For example:


Lord Monckton: I think the United Nations Climate Panel is now a busted flush. For instance, Rajendra Pachauri, its chairman, Sir John Houghton, its former chairman, and a number of other people associated with it, are now under formal criminal investigation in the United Kingdom for filing false accounts of a charity known as TERI Europe of which they are all trustees. For the last three years they have under-declared their income of that charity saying there was less than ten thousand pounds income each... We've now discovered they were getting income certainly in the millions and this wasn't being disclosed.

— Radio 2GB, The Alan Jones Show, 25th January, 2010

=====

Those are serious allegations to be throwing around.

But Sir John Houghton has told Media Watch:


I am not and have never been a Trustee of Teri Europe...
I have never received any money at all from Teri Europe...
I am writing to Lord Monckton demanding an apology and a public retraction of the libelous statements about me that he has broadcast.

— Email from Sir John Houghton to Media Watch, 5th February, 2010

Read Sir John Houghton’s response to Media Watch’s questions


It is true that, following complaints made by Lord Monckton among others, the UK Charity Commission has, it tells us...


...contacted the charity and its advisers for further information and are currently assessing this to determine the Commission's role.

— Response from Sarah Gibbs (Press Officer, UK Charity Commission) to Media Watch, 1st February, 2010

Read the UK Charity Commission’s response to Media Watch’s questions


That's it. Hardly a 'formal criminal investigation'.

According to TERI Europe:


Neither TERI Europe nor its trustees have received any complaint from the Charity Commission about its activities, let alone any allegation of criminal conduct.

— Response from TERI Europe to Media Watch, 5th February, 2010

Read TERI Europe’s response to Media Watch’s questions


=====

And then there are Monckton's attacks on global warming science. Few interviewers are equipped to challenge his pronouncements.

And even when opposing experts take him on, they find it hard to puncture his iron-clad self-confidence.


Lord Monckton: The Barrier Reef Authority has established that sea temperatures in the region of the reef have not changed at all over the last 30 years.

Jon Faine: Rupert?

Rupert Posner: That's simply not true, I mean...

Lord Monckton: I have the figures from the Barrier Reef Authority. I have their chart. I've got it in my slides. I'll be showing it at the ball room of the Sofitel Hotel at 5.30 in Melbourne today.

— ABC Radio 774, Mornings with Jon Faine, 1st February, 2010

=====

Well, we weren't at his Lordship's lecture, so we don't know what figures were on his slide.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says it doesn't measure sea temperatures itself, and doesn't know where his figures come from.

But its chief scientist says that what's important is the trend over the past century or so.


The peer reviewed science we rely on indicates that there has been an increase in ocean temperatures in the last 130 years and this significantly impacts on the health of corals in the Great Barrier Reef.

— Response from Dr David Wachenfeld, (Chief Scientist, Great Barrier Reef Authority Marine Park Authority) to Media Watch, 5th February, 2010

Read Dr David Wachenfeld’s response to Media Watch’s questions


And in fact the leading authority on the topic has sent us this chart which does show a recent rise in sea temperature.


View the chart '10-year average sea surface temperatures: Great Barrier Reef'


=====

The fact is, Monckton is a superb showman, and radio is not the forum for complex scientific argument.

So he's enjoyed a free ride, especially on commercial talkback radio. His hosts bleat about how sceptics are excluded from the mainstream. But do you think any champion of the majority scientific view on this crucial issue is given similar access to their listeners?

As Alan Jones would say, you are kidding.

------------------

Gus: see toon at top and believe me: CLIMATE WARMING IS REAL AND 99 % human made... And Jonathan Holmes, please note that Lord Monckton is a silly showman full of holes, and that radio IS a forum for complex scientific argument. This has been the case with Robyn Williams' "The Science Show" for 30 years or so... Cheers.

U.N. Climate Panel and Chief Face Credibility Siege By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: February 8, 2010

Just over two years ago, Rajendra K. Pachauri seemed destined for a scientist’s version of sainthood: A vegetarianUnited Nations’ climate change panel, he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the panel, sharing the honor with former Vice President Al Gore.

But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest from climate skeptics, right-leaning politicians and even some mainstream scientists. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, called for Dr. Pachauri’s resignation last week.

Critics, writing in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere, have accused Dr. Pachauri of profiting from his work as an adviser to businesses, including Deutsche Bank and Pegasus Capital Advisors, a New York investment firm — a claim he denies.

They have also unearthed and publicized problems with the intergovernmental panel’s landmark 2007 report on climate change, which concluded that the planet was warming and that humans were likely to blame.

The report, they contend, misrepresents the state of scientific knowledge about diverse topics — including the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers and the rise in severe storms — in a way that exaggerates the evidence for climate change.

------------------

Gus: etc... When dealing with flux science — that is to say a science where the data is so huge and shifting within various potential — one has to be cautious. One can make some small errors of compilation and interpretation that could influence our conclusions. Climate change science is thus more difficult to compute than Gallileo's earth orbiting the sun... So the deniers are out in force, and like the pope during Galileo's pronouncements, claim heresy and poop on the bastards who want to stop us burning fossil fuels till hell comes on earth... That the earth rotates around the sun or vice versa has no bearing on economic activity, just on beliefs systems that can be tweaked with fairy dust to suit the new narrative.

However, when dealing with Global Warming Theory, the first part of the game is very costly (in terms of dollars) and strongly interferes with our greedy bent, while nature could not care less in the end game. So, many intelligent people will shy away from the comprehension of the obvious: There has been warming, there is warming and humanity is releasing emission of CO2 far in excess of what can be reabsorbed naturally. Any sane person in tune with the totality of the problem would start worrying like hell, because the computation — even with the margins of error factored in and correction of the various "mistakes" made in the collection of the data — point to a warming of about 6 degrees C by 2100 IF WE DO NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

But we're not a majority of clever people either, we are a majority of Thomases and don't-ask-don't-know greedy people. And as science goes, the theory of global warming cannot give the "killer argument" that says a = b + c. It's more complex yet the resultant is scary. The Global Warming Theory is still in its infancy. Yet if we wait for the "killer argument" there is a good chance it will be TOO LATE. I know it will be too late.

The present modelling is very CONSERVATIVE in order to account for small errors of data collection and interpretation, yet the truer pointers show that the earth is warming faster that we can predict. As mentioned on this site before, a rise of 9 or 12 degrees C by 2100 is not out of the question. A rise of say 0.05 degree C per annum (on average) represents a rise of 5.5 degrees C over 90 years to 2100 (with compounding efect). a rise of say 0.06 degree C per annum over the same period lead to a rise of nearly 7 degrees C by 2100. A rise of say 0.1 degree C per annum can lead to a rise of 12 degrees C average IF WE DO NOT DO ANYTHING about it...

Open your eyes Mr Jones, you are in the box seat. The future of this planet could be in your hands — actually in your motor mouth. Take care... Look at the details and talk with the real chimate change theory scientists who presently despair at not being heard because the chattering noise from you, the jocks, and from some of the vociferous political animals is clamouring way above the sounds the proper scientists can ever make.

Stop trying to demonise the science of global warming by using loonies like Lord Monckton and the likes. You got sucked in didn't you? I am waisting my time, Am I not?

From the Guardian

Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate emails has been based on soundbites publicised by professional sceptics and their blogs. In many cases, these have been taken out of ­context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to.

Elizabeth May, veteran head of the Canadian Green party, claims to have read all the emails and declared: "How dare the world's media fall into the trap set by ­contrarian propagandists without reading the whole set?"

If those journalists had read even a few words beyond the soundbites, they would have realised that they were often being fed lies. Here are a few examples.

The most quoted soundbite in the affair comes from an email from Prof Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, to Prof Mike Mann of the University of Virginia in 1999, in which he discussed using "Mike's Nature trick" to "hide the decline". The phrase has been widely spun as an effort to prevent the truth getting out that global temperatures had stopped rising.

The Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in the Washington Post on 9 December, attacked the emailers as a "highly politicised scientific circle" who "manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures". She was joined by the Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma – who has for years used his chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee to campaign against climate scientists and to dismiss anthropogenic global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people". During the Copenhagen climate conference, which he attended on a Senate delegation, he referred to Jones's "hide the decline" quote and said: "Of course, he means hide the decline in temperatures."

This is nonsense. Given the year the email was written, 1999, it cannot be anything of the sort. At that time there was no suggestion of a decline in temperatures. The previous year was the warmest on record.

------------------

compute the ooflah from his silliness, the Lord of Monckton... see toon at top...

from the SMH

Visiting climate change denier Christopher Monckton experienced a very real global warming moment while seeking some relaxation at a remote township in South Australia's Flinders Ranges at the weekend. Australia's very own champion of climate change scepticism, Ian Plimer, had taken Monckton to see the rock formations at Arkaroola. In Plimer's words: ''That's where there are no phones, that's where he can't be pestered and that's where he can have a bit of a rest.'' Well, not quite, as it turned out. The pair happened upon a crew shooting director Jim Loach's feature film Oranges and Sunshine, starring Hugo WeavingDavid Wenham, who persuaded Monckton to take part in an impromptu variety show as part of their celebrations at the end of their shoot. Apparently Monckton agreed to recite a Gilbert and Sullivan number - in Latin, no less. But come show time, Monckton - who is not usually shy of an audience - was a no-show. ''We were informed by his wife that he had needed to retire early, with suspected heat stroke,'' the film's stills photographer, Matt Nettheim, told the Diary. and

----------------

Arkaroola is the place where most of the uranium for the Manhattan Project (first US atomic bombs) came from... It is a mountainous part of the flinders wedged in between two huge salt lakes, Lake Eyre (9690 square kilometres) and Lake Frome. It is a place of rugged rock, of dusty tracks and when it's hot, it can be stinking hot... but not as hot as say Marble Bar in Western Australia. In places like those one needs to be ready...

May the good Lord of Brenchley recover fully and come to his senses: global warming is real.

Temperature so far this summer in Australia have been at least 2 degrees C above average in the mid and southern regions, following a "spring" where temperature was about 4 degrees C above average and a winter with temperature at least 2 degrees C above average. Sure, one can say "it's a one off", but there are reasons to bet your last dollar that it's not and the process is part of the trend of rising temperatures due to global warming.

Peace and be prepared.

Good Lord!. I thought that Lord Monckton of Brenchley had a tendency to be moronic when talking about global warming but, after having watched the debate with Tim Lambert, I have come to believe Lord Monckton is a fraud and he knows it. He parades as a knowledgeable count (easy to make a Freudian slip on this one) expert — a "mathematician", who in all fairness appeared to be confused about statistics 101... He just blabbed nonsense con brio.

One of his grandiose argument relates to an event that happened 750 million years ago when the earth started to freeze — a big ice age that nearly covered the entire earth with ice according to the geological record. The process was fairly complex but in a nutshell, the good Lord has not even bothered to understand why this event happened and how it sorted itself out. Tim Lambert had no idea about that particular event thus did not know what to say, leaving the awful Lord smug as a pork pie with tomato sauce oozing from the top.

I must say here that my knowledge of this time was also sketchy. I am far more familiar with what happened from 570 million years ago onwards till today. So I went back to my reference books and the net.
I knew that life-forms in the oceans had MODIFIED the atmosphere quite a lot earlier than this — around 4 billion to 3.5 billion years ago. There was of course a continuum of this process but probably less pronounced after this. The event 750 million years ago would have been part of this process too, possibly with a very small trigger — say a period of low activity of the sun, who knows. But from present serious theoretical analysis, one has to say that the ice was most likely encouraged to form by an over-abundance of oxygen created by photosynthesis of CO2 — oxygen being a cooling gas in the greenhouse atmospheric equation... So the atmospheric "balance" was tipped towards cooling. But as anyone knows when freezing a fizzy cool drink, the CO2 is somewhat rejected by the ice forming in the bottle. And sea water contains a lot of CO2. Thus as ice was formed on the surface of the earth, vast amount of CO2, dissolved in the water, would have been be pushed into the atmosphere, leading to the Lord Monckton's clamouring there was a cool period and oodles of CO2 in the atmosphere... (300,000 ppm was his tooted figure). Thus, according to him, CO2 in the atmosphere does not equate global warming... Idiot.

What probably ended this ice age, 750 million years ago, was that excess of CO2 in the atmosphere, creating a global warming... Allowing for the melting oceans to reabsorb the CO2... Thus this warming was decelerated by less CO2 in the atmosphere... SEE, less CO2 less warming.. etc. and more oxygen being pumped up by new photosynthesis. Thus the warming being complexed by a lot of conflicting elements, but warming nonetheless...
If one does not understand these processes (simplified here) one is either a moron or a fraud.

But in this debate the moderator, Alan Jones, of course was leaning towards the awful Lord of Whatever... When the Lord and Tim agreed on a figure, Jones encouraged the Lord to argue vigourously against it.  Mr Jones...!!! Bias???

More of Lord Monckton arguments could be debunked here but I reserve those for another day.

And considering the level of questioning from the audience, one can despair that either the crowd was full of morons or they only picked the moronic questions... Argh...

Cheers. Peace

From Tim Lambert

Peter Gleick argues that global warming skeptics are practising pseudo-science because no matter how much evidence piles up for warming, their position does not change. John Quiggin says that the latest evidence ends the scientific debate. Evidence for this can be found at Backseat Driving , where Brian Schmidt finds that warming skeptics just won't put their money where their mouths are and bet against future warming when when offered odds.

Meanwhile the Australian has printed a rather silly article by Ian Plimer:

Does it matter if sea level rises a few metres or global temperatures rise a few degrees? No. Sea level changes by up to 400m, atmospheric temperatures by about 20C, carbon dioxide can vary from 20 per cent to 0.03 per cent, and our dynamic planet just keeps evolving. Greenpeace, contrary to scientific data, implies a static planet. Even if the sea level rises by metres, it is probably cheaper to address this change than reconstruct the world's economies.

Plimer omits to mention that those huge changes took place over hundreds of millions of years and that while the planet kept evolving, that evolving involved mass extinctions of things like the dinosaurs. Living through a mass extinction is unlikely to be pleasant. Plimer also pretends that the other side in the debate is just Greenpeace rather than pretty well all the climate scientists.

For about 80 per cent of the time since its formation, Earth has been a warm, wet, greenhouse planet with no icecaps. When Earth had icecaps, the climate was far more variable, disease depopulated human settlements and extinction rates of other complex organisms were higher. Thriving of life and economic strength occurs during warm times. Could Greenpeace please explain why there was a pre-Industrial Revolution global warming from AD900 to 1300? Why was the sea level higher 6000 years ago than it is at present? Which part of the 120m sea-level rise over the past 15,000 years is human-induced? To attribute a multicomponent, variable natural process such as climate change to human-induced carbon emissions is pseudo-science.

Again he pretends that the other side is just Greenpeace. This may be a bit too complicated for Plimer, but the existence of natural climate change does not disprove the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Nor is the huge amount of research on the attribution of recent climate change "pseudo-science".

Meanwhile, Tim Blair has continued to tout his law that "global warming protests invariably result in local colding". He apparently generalized this "law" from the case of Montreal where global warming protests were followed by a snowstorm on Dec 16 where it was warmer that the average for Dec 16. Oddly enough, Melbourne's walk against warming was followed by Melbourne's warmest December ever recorded, while Sydney's walk against warming was only followed by Sydney's second warmest December ever recorded and hottest New Year's day. Not to worry, Blair counted this as an example of his law as well.

ONCE upon a time there was an evil genius who was worse, far worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao or the Bogey Man.

His name was Joseph Fourier and in 1824 he came up with a way to make the world a Marxist slave state - which shows just how evil his genius was, given that Marx was only six years old. But Fourier was a long-term thinker. His wicked idea was to frighten the world's population into abdicating the democratic rights that almost nobody had at the time - to hand over the government of the world to Marxist demagogues in the distant future. Fourier would monger fear via some spurious claptrap called the Greenhouse Effect, another pseudo-scientific "theory" like evolution. And now, 186 years later, we're just hours away from it happening.

I'm grateful to Britain's Lord Monckton for alerting us to the plot. Here's how it came into being. In the beginning, Fourier persuaded a few fellow scientists to join him in engineering his scary plans. A Dr Frankenstein gave up his scary plan - of building monsters from dead bodies - as did Dr Jekyll, who'd been turning his own body into a monster. The three of them started faking evidence of the so-called "effect" and signing up other scientists willing to lie and dissemble. Soon there were hundreds of them all over the world producing hoax research; by the middle of the next century there were thousands of them and, today, tens of thousands! This is the biggest conspiracy in history - bigger even than George Bush's conspiracy to blow up the Twin Towers. All these scientists, in scores of disciplines, are joined in a vast web of deceit funded by gulled governments, naive corporations and ignorant universities to cause global panic. Praise the lord for Lord Monckton! For Ian Plimer! For Andrew Bolt!

--------------

Hey Phillip, fair go... we've been hiding this tongue-in-cheek conspiracy for more than 180 years and now you let the world know all about it! Struth!... Yes...! I admit, my tantrums are fraudulent and the good Lord Monckton is a saint sleuth... My beans are baked... See toon at top and read more of Phillip Adams... 

from someone who does not like Tim lambert's views

Lefty computing lecturer Tim Lambert thinks Professor of Geology Ian Plimer has produced a silly, deliberately misleading article on global warming for The Australian – Lambert's scared of me for some reason and bounces my links; copy and paste http://timlambert.org/2006/01/global-warming-roundup/ . It's obvious from the tone and content of Lambert's post that he has no respect for Plimer or his position on global warming.

...

Lambert's research focusses is in three areas: algorithms for the triangulation of planar straight line graphs; algorithms for 3d convex hulss; and, virtual reality. The latter explaining his detachment from non-virtual reality.

A quick Google led me to Wikipedia, the entry confirming Lambert's status as self-appointed fact-checker of international repute. But there's nothing about any qualifications related to the study of global warming. Interestingly, Wikipedia does not have an entry for Ian Plimer: maybe Lambert's right about this guy.

Despite not having a Wikipedia entry Plimer is something more than your garden variety academic:[etc]

-------------------

PLEASE NOTE: Tim Lambert wikipedia entry has been "deleted" and one entry for Plimer exists.

------------------

from wikipedia

Plimer is a director of three Australian mining companies: Ivanhoe,[4] CBH Resources[4] and Kefi Minerals.[5] In 2008 and 2009, Plimer earned over AU$400,000 from these interests, and he has mining shares and options worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.[6] Plimer rejects claims of a conflict between his commercial mining interests and his view that man-made climate change is a myth.[4] Plimer has said that the proposed Australian carbon-trading scheme could decimate the Australian mining industry,[3] and probably destroy it totally,[7] as well as creating massive unemployment.[7]

Affiliations

Plimer is listed as an associate of the Institute of Public Affairs,[8][9] a free market think tank. In 2007, Plimer was listed as an "allied expert" for the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, a Canadian advocacy group that opposes the Kyoto Protocol.[10]

In November 2009, Plimer was named as a member of the academic advisory council for Nigel Lawson's global warming skeptic group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.[11]

Plimer is a life member of the Australian Skeptics.[12][13]

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From wikipedia

Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, PC (born 11 March 1932), is a British Conservative politician and journalist. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) representing the constituency of Blaby from 1974-92, and served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government of Margaret Thatcher from June 1983 to October 1989. He was made a life peer in 1992.

Lawson is the father of the food writer Nigella Lawson and the journalist Dominic Lawson.

-------------------

Please note that the "Australian Skeptics" (see Plimer wikipedia entry above) make no mention of global warming theory being wrong or right — as far as I can gather...

I ment to explain with clarity in this article the links in this "family" of sceptics (skeptics, who knows?) from Nigel Lawson, his progeniture (Dominic Lawson — I'm not an agent for MI5), in-laws (Rosa Monckton — Princess Diana's "confidante") and Lord Monckton (a puzzling man) and by association such as Ian Plimer... But on the sideline of this sceptic (skeptic) family, George Monbiot, cousin of Dominic Lawson (via the Salmons) stands like a defying beacon of sanity...

Climate data 'not well organised'

 

Phil Jones, the professor behind the "Climategate" affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised.

He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics - a decision he says he regretted.

But Professor Jones said he had not cheated over the data, or unfairly influenced the scientific process.

He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made.

But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.

These statements are likely to be welcomed by people sceptical of man-made climate change who have felt insulted to be labelled by government ministers as flat-earthers and deniers.

'Bunker mentality'

Professor Jones agreed that scientists on both sides of the debate could suffer sometimes from a "bunker mentality".

He said "sceptics" who doubted his climate record should compile their own dataset from material publicly available in the US.

-------------------

Read more at the BBC and see toon at top and all articles below it. Please note I forgot to highlight the ramblings of Ian Plimer quoted in Tim Lambert's piece and some confusion may arise... But I'm sure you can work it out...

-----------------

On another level one can understand the data not being well organised. Climate change theory is a flux-science in which there would be INCOMPLETE data. There is an immense amount of data but also large amount of information we should have is not recorded or not even studied at this point in time. Thus one has to make educated statistical guesses akin to making predictions in a "Chaos Theory" situation in which a system changes and those changes influence the system AND change THE FACTORS that changes the system in the first place. There is resonance, interference and stable levels... All this is child's play for proper mathematicians but still amazingly complex to achieve certainty.

As there is still a lot to be known and quantified about the process of global warming and the sceptics (skeptics) play on the uncertainty of what is known and the lack of data in other area and the relationship of influences — and, like Lord Monckton, make some silly prediction of the reverse effect —such as going towards an ice age (old "prediction" made till the late 1940s by some people and proven wrong).

---------------

In Sydney presently the temperature today (25) is about 1 degree C below maximum average and will stay at that level for most of the day (although forecast to be 26). But the minimum temperature (22) for the day is about 4 degree C above minimum average. And a temperature of 24 degree C at say 9 AM is already 2 degree C above average for this time of the day. Thus although the day maximum temperature will be below (or on) average, the heat-energy of the day is far in excess of an average day for that time of the year. But a day does not make a trend, although the trend has been similar all summer so far, with a few really stinky hot days in between.

It has been my humble observation that usually in summer the dominant weather patterns are coldish wet southerlies alternating with clear hot inland-coming windy days. So far, the dominant weather has been stinky humid hot days (a few with rain but mostly dry) from the north interrupted from time to time by weak southerlies, warmer than "usual". To me, this could be an indication of a shift between subtropical and temperate boundaries, by about 400 kilometres southward, especially after a winter at least 2 degrees C above average and a "spring" 4 degrees C above average..

This by no means is a certainty of global warming and could be due to local conditions including the Eastern Australian current, that is presently (15/02/10) running at 25.7 degrees C along the coast of Sydney and dipping slightly to 25.1 degrees C at the NSW/Victoria border. This current still runs at 21 degrees C at the tip of Tasmania while Bass Straight temperatures hovering between 18 and 19 degrees C. Temperatures of sea surface of the Barrier reef are between 29 and 30.3 degrees C.

--------------

But the major trends are :

glaciers have been retreating fast in the last 100 years.

There has been warming on earth — 1999 being the warmest on record

Human activity has increased the level of CO2 by 39 per cent (Lord Monckton and Tim Lambert own figures) in the atmosphere — although still below 400 ppm.

There is still warming happening but the distribution of air masses, of continents and the seas shifts (hides) some of the patterns — remixing weather events where some will be colder than usual and others warmer than usual at the same time. For the Winter Olympics, snow had to be trucked in, as Vancouver has a "warmer" weather than usual at the moment.

There is a warming of the seas, contrary to the ludicrous claims from Lord Monckton.

Remember the changes in global warming are only incrementally small. WE NEED TO MONITOR more the process rather than rubbish the science of global warming. We owe our existence to the greenhouse effect. But too much heat will make things more uncomfortable for some, and quite disastrous for some of nature's "things".

An organised cyber-bullying campaign, including abusive emails, is targeting Australian climate scientists who speak out on climate change, according to author Clive Hamilton.

The 2009 Greens candidate says the attacks are arranged by "denialist organisations" and are aimed at driving climate scientists from the public debate.

Professor Hamilton says aggressive, abusive and sometimes threatening emails are being sent to distinguished scientists each time they speak out on the subject.

"Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features - it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated," he wrote in ABC's The Drum.

Professor Hamilton quotes an email received by University of Melbourne Professor David Karoly which compares the scientist's actions to those of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.

"It is called treason and genocide," the email says.

"Oh, as a scientist, you have destroyed people's trust in my profession. You are a criminal. Lest we forget."

But some attacks are more personal.

Professor Hamilton says a young woman opened her email to receive threats against her children.

Meanwhile at the climate change front:

The Bureau of Meteorology says Western Australia will have had its hottest summer on record by the end of today.

Duty Forecaster Graham Oakley says Perth will have also recorded the equal hottest summer.

He says the Perth will hit a maximum of 35 degrees today.

Mr Oakley says it should cool down for the official start of autumn.

"We've got tops of 35 for Monday and Tuesday but Wednesday 32, Thursday 29 and Friday also 29 so gradually cooling down during the week," he said.

-------------------------

I won't be surprise if the same is announced for New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The temperatures in Sydney have been constantly higher than average this summer (my observation)...

Meanwhile in the US:

-------------------

Feb 27, 2010; 5:00 AM ET

A massive storm lashed the Northeast with flooding, damaging winds, and heavy wet snow. Angelica Campos takes a look at the storm.

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But the Washington Times comes to the rescue:

-----------------

Mr. Chu took great pains in a Feb. 19 speech to a Denver energy summit in arguing the case for human-induced climate change. "We have to convince all of America that this is a nonpartisan issue. ... This is our economic future," he said.

You have to feel for a man of science trying to make the jump to politics. In science, facts speak for themselves. In politics, facts are often run to ground by baloney. As energy secretary, Mr. Chu has traded fact for fiction and now spends his days selling President Obama's discredited climate-change policy.

Surely, Mr. Chu must be aware that the case for human-induced climate change, the cause that he has embraced as the paramount mission of his secretariat, has been exposed as fraught with fraud. Two weeks ago, Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' pre-eminent climate-change official, announced his resignation amid a groundswell of derision over his failure to confront the global-warming hoax.

---------------------

And  a hoax it is not. Believe me.

Climate change is real and does affect fifferent parts of the world in different ways, including "cooler" weather than usual (in fact the weather is not so much cooler but gets saturated with water vapour — possibly from higher evaporation due to warming, then cooled by dry cold air mixing into it — that lead to snow storms and heavy rain. One needs to know the Washington Times ws created by the Unification church leader Sun Myung Moon to promote conservative ideals (mostly republican) in Washington in opposition to the Washington Post, a paper than tends to be a bit more "liberal" (left).

But as we sweat it out here in Aussieland, France, Spain and Portugal are getting strong winter storm as well... Nothing like The Day After Tomorrow though... Professor whatisname and his snow rackets got it totally wrong — but for making a movie sake, who cares... More science fiction in that movie than in Star Wars...

But I digress, I was thus astonished that the Washington Times got this article published...  Are they trying to stir the possum? A conspiracy theory trying to blame dark right-wing elements for 9/11, unless they eventually pin this on the evil democrats?...

From the BBC

A number of ships, including ferries with thousands of passengers on board, have become stuck in ice in the Baltic Sea, officials say.

The vessels are grounded in the waters between Stockholm and the Aland Islands, Radio Sweden reports.

Many of the vessels are not likely to be freed for hours, Swedish maritime authorities were quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

It is reportedly the worst Baltic freeze for 15 years.

Both Sweden and Finland have deployed ice breakers in the area to help the stranded vessels.

"The ice wouldn't usually be a problem for the merchant ships, the problem now is that it's very windy, about 20 metres per second," Jonas Lindvall, controller of the ice breaking unit at the Swedish maritime authorities, told Radio Sweden.

---------------------

A field day for the skeptichsshhts... See, it's cooling up there... Let them have their cake... but remind them that cooling of the UK and some of the nordic areas is predicted in global warming models... Meanwhile I would not be surprised if somewhere else on the planet, there is an event that shows there are turbulent unusual atmospheric activity such as big waves in the Med???...In the Med???

 

from the Independent
Humans must be to blame for climate change, say scientists

No possible natural phenomenon could have caused the huge rise in temperatures experienced in last half-century

The study updates a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has discovered several new elements of the global climate which have been influenced by humans, such as an increasing amount of water vapour evaporating from the warmer oceans into the atmosphere and a corresponding increase in the saltiness of the sea.

"There is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is dominated by natural rather than anthropogenic [man-made] factors," the scientists concluded in their study, published in the journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews of Climate Change.

Scientific observations based on temperature recordings on every continent, as well as thermometer readings on, in and above the oceans, leave "little room for doubt" that the earth is warming, but trying to attribute a cause for this global warming is not possible unless man-made activity in the form of carbon dioxide emissions is taken into account, the scientists said.

The review, led by Peter Stott of the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, found the "fingerprints" of human activity on many different aspects of climate change, including the overall warming of the Antarctic recently documented for the first time by other researchers.

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So whar are we going to do about it? Do we need to do something about it? Carefully read all climate change related articles in this site, including the line of comments above...

One of the effect of global warming is an increase of moisture in the atmosphere at certain times and certain places...: here are a few more watery disasters...

------------------

Two Britons were among dozens of tourists on a luxury Kenyan safari holiday to be airlifted to safety after their camp was hit by flash flooding.

Campers staying at the popular Samburu National Park in the north of the country were forced to clamber up trees or onto roofs as 4x4s were swept away.

The Royal Air Force and UK army, who train in the area, joined the rescue.

Hours of torrential rain caused the Uaso Nyiro River to burst its banks, submerging luxury lodges.

The floods also destroyed an important elephant research centre.

------------------

Five of Britain's rarest butterflies are on the road to extinction after three sodden summers in a row, the charity Butterfly Conservation reveals today.

Headed by the rapidly vanishing Duke of Burgundy, a small but very attractive insect whose wings are a lattice of marmalade-orange and black, the threatened species continued to plummet in numbers or remained at near rock bottom levels during the course of last summer.

----------------

The entire population of the southern Queensland town of St George may have to be evacuated later today ahead of what is expected to be the area's worst flood in more than 120 years.

The town's Balonne River is expected to peak at 14 metres, almost a metre higher than the 1890 flood level, later today.

The weather bureau is also warning more water could be on its way, as rain clouds move westward again over the weekend.

Authorities say up to 80 per cent of the homes in St George could be affected by floodwaters.

Premier Anna Bligh says helicopters have gone to St George for evacuations and to supply isolated properties.

"We have two helicopters on their way, we've got the SES on standby should they be needed," she said.

"Right now the people of St George are working systematically house by house, doorknocking and moving people to safer ground.

---------------------

And the "worst flood in 120 years" is at least one metre ABOVE the level of 1890...

Meanwhile the report from the scientists is worrying...

-------------------

"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.

"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."

Extreme events

The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.

According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."

The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.

"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."

ABC chairman Maurice Newman has attacked the media for being too willing to accept the conventional wisdom on climate change.

In a speech to senior ABC staff this morning, Mr Newman said climate change was an example of "group think".

He says contrary views on climate change have not been tolerated and those who express them have been labelled and mocked.

"It's really been the question of what is wisdom and consensus rather than listening perhaps to other points of view that may be sceptical," he said.

But he believes the ABC has been more balanced than other media organisations when it comes to reporting on climate change.

"I think that we've listened to the words of sceptics as well as those who are scientists in the field," he said.

"Climate change is at the moment an emotional issue.

"But it really is the fundamental issue about the need to bring voices that have authority and are relevant to the particular issue to the attention of our audiences, so that they themselves can make decisions."

Mr Newman has doubts about climate change himself and says he is waiting for proof either way.

----------------------

He will wait a long time for proof...

Climate change is not an emotional issue. Climate change is a flux-science issue. Only those who want to dispute the evidence of warming of the planet make it an "emotional" issue.

The deniers make it very difficult for the proper science to come out, in the same way as the campaign that "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction" issue was touted when we knew he did not have any.

The media played along with the UK, the USA and Australian governments porkie departments because it was sexy to go to war. Presently, the scientists of global warming are dispairing that their message is getting muddled, muzzled even, by a media too eager to "balance" a strong scientific point of view with the flat earth theorists arguments for the sake of biffo... Should we follow the concensus of the Scientologists for example, then the reality of anything is an agreement, not a fact...

But in fact, the statistics are there to indicate  — (there is no proof and there will be "no proof" even if by 2100 the temperature has gone through the roof, say 6 degree C higher than now) — there is warming and there will be more warming with more CO2 from human activity. Meanwhile nature does not care, It's only our comfort that will suffer badly, as well as that of many other species...

And as far as "conventional wisdom", climate change theory is far from being "conventional" and it is not "wisdom". Global warming is proper science, very difficult flux-science to boot, that needs to be pursued with vigour so we don't muck up the future — too much.

In response to the ABC chairman errant ways (read above)...

A deputy director of China's most powerful economic ministry has come out swinging against climate change denial.

Senior Chinese government figures have described the view that climate change is not man-made as an "extreme" stance which is out of step with mainstream thought.

The comments were made during China's annual sitting of the National People's Congress.

During the congress, a series of press conferences are held which, in many cases, are the only chance to put questions to members of China's power elite.

Last night, one such press conference was held on the subject of climate change.

The ABC asked the panel what they thought of the view that climate change had nothing to do with human activity and was in fact a natural phenomenon.

Xie Zhenhua, a deputy director at China's powerful economic ministry, the National Development and Reform Commission, answered that he believed that made-made climate change denial is, at best, a very marginal view.

"Climate change is a fact based on long-time observations by countries around the world," he said.

"There are two different views regarding the causes for global warming.

"The mainstream view is that climate change is caused by burning of fossil fuel in the course of industrialisation.

"There's a more extreme view which holds that human activity has only an imperceptible impact on the natural system."

He said the responsibility for this climate change rested squarely with the Western world, so the onus was on it to clean up the mess caused in the rush to industrialisation.

"The climate in China is warming. It's something every one of us can feel," he said.

-----------------------

I trust the Chinese more than I trust Mr Maurice Newman, (Chairman of the ABC) who may never have investigated properly the concept of "global warming" but blurts idiotic crap about "balance" reporting about it...

And as Wikipedia tells us:

Maurice Lionel Newman AC is the current Chairperson of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation[1], as well as former chair of the board of the Australian Stock Exchange[2]. He was Chancellor of Macquarie University[3]. until 2008

He is a close personal friend of past Australian Prime Minister John Howard[4].

The UN called in the world's top scientists today to review a report by its climate body, four months after public confidence in the science of global warming was shaken by the discovery of a mistake about the melting rates of Himalayan glaciers.

In an announcement at the UN in New York Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and Rajendra Pachauri, the much-criticised head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the InterAcademy Council, which represents 15 national academies of science, would conduct the independent review.

The announcement follows months of controversy which, while not altering the scientific consensus on climate change, has given fresh ammunition to opponents of action on global warming.

Pachauri has faced calls for his resignation, a controversy he acknowledged obliquely today. "We have received some criticism. We are receptive and sensitive to that and we are doing something about it," he said.

The review, which is to complete its work by August, will not undertake a dissection of the 2007 report, which has been pored over by climate sceptics, or re-examine the scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change, said Robert Dijksgraaf, the head of the InterAcademy Council.

"It will definitely not go over vast amounts of data," he told reporters. "Our goal will be to assure nations around the world that they will receive sound scientific advice on climate science."

Instead, he said it would focus on putting in place better quality control procedures for the next report, which is due in 2014.

---------------------

Since the crunch dates in Gus' estimates are 1996, 2015, 2032 and 2070 before 2111, the 2014 report will need another report within a couple of years after its publication, pronto.

The head of Australia's peak science body has spoken out in defence of climate scientists, saying the link between human activity and climate change is beyond doubt.

The head of the CSIRO, Dr Megan Clark, says the evidence of global warming is unquestionable, and in Australia it is backed by years of robust research.

Dr Clark says climate records are being broken every decade and all parts of the nation are warming.

"We are seeing significant evidence of a changing climate," she said.

"If we just take our temperature, all of Australia has experienced warming over the last 50 years. We are warming in every part of the country during every season and as each decade goes by, the records are being broken.

"We are also seeing fewer cold days so we are seeing some very significant long-term trends in Australia's climate."

Dr Clark says the long-term data across a number of measures stacks up in favour of climate change proponents and against those who say the planet is not warming.

I do not know if I should but let me add here powerful global warming denier organisations and people who push, secretly and grandstandly, any rubbishy arguments to oppose what has to be done to minimise global warming. But eventually I think they need to be exposed, despite and specially because of their political strength and use of misnomer title like the "Australian Environment Foundation" — an organisation designed to "manage the environment" in favour of industrialisation and timber cutters.

Here it goes:

---------------------------

Tony Smith (Australian politician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the member for Casey since 2001.
The Honourable Tony Smith
Member of the Australian Parliament for Casey
Incumbent Assumed office
10 November 2001
Preceded by Michael Wooldridge
Born 13 March 1967 (age 42)
Melbourne, Victoria
Nationality Australian
Political party Liberal Party of Australia
Alma mater  University of Melbourne
Occupation Political advisor

Anthony David Hawthorn (Tony) Smith (born 13 March 1967) is an Australian politician who has been a Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2001, representing the Division of Casey, Victoria. He was born in Melbourne Victoria, to parents Alan Smith, a Chemistry teacher, and Noel Smith, a Secretary. Smith was the youngest child, with two older sisters: Christine (born 1960) and Heather (born 1962). He was educated first at Carey Grammar School in Melbourne, and then later at the University of Melbourne, where he was president of the Melbourne University Liberal Club, and is now an honorary life member. Along with Sophie Mirabella he has been one of the strongest advocates for Voluntary Student Unionism in the Parliament[citation needed].

After completing his education, he was a Research Assistant at the Institute of Public Affairs, a conservative think-tank, before becoming first a Media Adviser and then a Senior Political Adviser to Peter Costello, the then Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and Treasurer.

He was interviewed extensively in the ABC documentary The Howard Years.


---------------------------------

Institute of Public Affairs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History
The IPA was founded in the early 1940s, partly in response to the collapse of Australia's main conservative party, the United Australia Party. The IPA was one of a number of groups which came together to form the Liberal Party of Australia, and was, for many years, primarily a fundraising conduit for the Liberal Party, particularly in Victoria, [1]. The IPA returned to prominence as a thinktank in the 1990s, following a merger with the Australian Institute of Public Policy, headed by John Hyde who became Executive Director.

Funding

There have been questions raised about the accountability and transparency of think tanks, including the Institute of Public Affairs see Brad Norington, "Think Tank Secrets", The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 August 2003, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/11/1060588322537.html

It is funded by its membership which include businesses. Among these businesses are ExxonMobil,[1] Telstra, WMC Resources, BHP Billiton, Phillip Morris,[2] Gunns Limited, Monsanto Company,[3] Murray Irrigation Limited,[4] and Visy Industries.

In 2003, the Australian Government paid $50,000 to the Institute of Public Affairs to review the accountability of NGOs.[5]

Ideology

The IPA advocates right-wing economic policies such as privatisation and deregulation of state-owned enterprises, trade liberalisation and deregulated workplaces, climate change skepticism (through its environmental subsidiary the Australian Environment Foundation), and the accountability of non-government organisations (NGOs).[citation needed] In its own words, the Institute believes in "the free market of ideas, the free flow of capital, a limited and efficient government, the rule of law, and representative democracy."[6]

Political links

The Institute has close ideological and political affinities with the Liberal Party in Australia.

John Roskam, the IPA's Executive Director, worked on the Liberal Party's 2001 election campaign. He has also run for Liberal Party preselection [7].

Prime Minister John Howard (Liberal Party) delivered the 60th CD Kemp lecture to the Institute in 2004, titled Iraq: The Importance of Seeing it Through.[8]

With the demise of the Howard Government, the Institute has played a significant role in generating intellectual analysis and criticism of the Rudd Government's policies.

---------------------------

Australian Environment Foundation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Australian Environment Foundation is an Australian environmental lobby group founded by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a conservative Melbourne-based think tank.

The director of the environment unit of the IPA, Jennifer Marohasy was the founding Chairwoman and is listed as a Director in the organisation's documents with the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). Mahorasy is also the listed registrant of the group's website, although the address and phone number for the website registration are identical to the address and phone number for the Victorian office of the logging industry lobby group, Timber Communities Australia. [1] [2]

In July 2005, the month after AEF's official launch, it was announced that former television celebrity Don Burke had been appointed chairman. [3]

ASIC documents also listed Mike Nahan, the former Executive Director of the IPA, as one of the other founding directors. The documents also listed AEF's registered place of business as the IPA office. (Nahan was ED of the IPA until mid-2005). Pdf copy of ASIC registration - 11kb

In a column by Nahan in the Herald-Sun, he described AEF as "pro-biotechnology, pro-nuclear power, pro-modern farming, pro-economic growth, pro-business and pro-environment." [4]. The head of the AEF stated that it is a group set up to protect timber interests and stop resources being taken away from the industry in an interview on ABC Radio station Triple J's Hack program

History

The AEF was formally launched on World Environment Day (June 5 2005) in the northern New South Wales town of Tenterfield. "This new group will be vastly different to the established environment organisations that have had the ear of governments for some time. The AEF’s focus will be on making decisions based on science and what is good for both the environment and for people," the group stated in its press release.[5]

The formation of the AEF was first mooted at the 'The Institute of Public Affairs Eureka Forum' organised in December 2004 by the Institute of Public Affairs.

The Australian Environment Foundation was registered by Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC)as a business in February, 2005. Its formation was also announced during the May 2005 Annual conference in Launceston of Timber Communities Australia.

AEF was officially launched on World Environment Day, 5 June, 2005. Reporting on the AEF's launch, the Melbourne broadsheet newspaper, 'The Age' reported that Jennifer Marohasy is the group’s chairwoman. "Dr Marohasy said she acted as the group's leader as an individual and not part of the IPA," the Age reported. [6]

The launch was covered on Michael Duffy's conservative ABC radio show, ‘Counterpoint’ on the 6th of June in a story called ‘Putting People First’. [7]

 

--------------------

Gus: the last in this line of "more all in the family" is a very clever scientist who argues with passion, yet her premises and development are out of bound of reality. She's part of a group of "journalists" helping to feed the climate-sceptics and pro-developers with well thought-out arguments in the same vein of intelligent designers moving up from creationism. The bullshit is well hidden under the tarmac. Here Jo Nova is talking about fraud in the carbon trading scheme. Nothing new. THAT'S THE WAY THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM WORKS... Fraud has been the way the system operated till it nearly collapsed from 2007. The fraudsters had to be rescued by governments around the world, otherwise we'd all be surviving on baked beans, SO WHEN SHE SAYS PEOPLE CAN'T GET AWAY WITH CHEATING, THAT IS AL LOT OF CRAP.

--------------------- From Jo Nova...

Carbon market chaos strikes again

 

What a surprise: The free-market-that-is-not-free leaps from one scandal to the next. In a real free market where salesmen sell something real, and buyers buy something they want, people can’t get away with cheating, or not for long.

If someone sold you a bulk carrier of coal, and it turned up empty, you’d notice.

But, if someone sold you two million Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) that were worthless, how could you tell? They are “certified”. They are real “certificates”, and as long as you believe they exist, perhaps they do? Welcome to the world of fiat currencies, where confidence doesn’t just make or break a market; it’s its sole underwriter.

Times Online reports on the Chaos in the carbon market over recycled permits.

The Hungarian Government, the cheeky sods, figured out that if CERs were issued by the UN (and not the EU), they could use them to write off the obligations of some Hungarian companies, and then, apparently, sell them again, so others could use them to write off their obligations, too.

It’s like reselling a three-course meal after it’s been eaten.

When confronted, the Hungarian Government claimed the used CERs were only sold to non-European investors. (So that makes it alright then?  Someone outside Europe wasted money?)

Except that, as things do in a “free” market, the used CERs turned up in the EU market anyway, and eventually someone noticed.

-----------------------

Gus: as we all know, unless any damage to environment is accounted for in the "free market", the free market is a lot of codswallop, and on top of that, the free market is salted with subsidies, trade barriers (some invisible, some obvious), currency trading manipulations, so there is no such thing as a "free market", only bullying... That a country (Hungary) decided to manipulate carbon trading to its advantage does not mean carbon trading is bad. It should not give the deniers any warm glow. Mind you, most deniers are also part of the system that rapes the earth with abandon.

---------------

Global Warming, The skeptics handbook.

The handbook is obviously attractive to skeptics. It is a list of arguments that skeptics make, including counters to the counter arguments made by people who believe AGW is real. Many of these points have been argued on this and other web sites. I didn't find anything that I haven't seen before in it.

It seems to me that Joanne Nova is not up on the science. There are many inaccurate statements about the status of the science in her handbook. It is not a surprise, since she is not a climate scientist, or any kind of scientist. Her advanced degree is in communications or public relations.
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=62

Joanne Nova, BSc (Hons, Microbiology, University of Western Australia), Grad Cer. (Sci Comm, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia), Director, ScienceSpeak, Science presenter on TV, radio, and professional conference keynote speaker, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

To pick on one inaccuracy that stands out in my mind, there is the statement, that the upper troposphere in the tropics has not been getting warmer; and this shows that the models, which show CO2 is responsible for warming are wrong. That is based on obsolete data from Roy Spencer, which is derived from measurements that were not properly processed. This data since been corrected by Spencer himself, and others and now shows the expected profiles and warming of the upper troposphere in the tropics. It can be shown that any source of global warming will cause the upper troposphere in the tropics to become warmer and the increase of temperature with height in the tropical troposphere is a fundamental physical phenomenon to be expected.

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Gus: so there you are, re-read all comments on this line of blogs and see toon at top... and send a letter to all senators...

 

In the comment above I say : "The bullshit is well hidden under the tarmac. Here Jo Nova is talking about fraud in the carbon trading scheme. Nothing new. THAT'S THE WAY THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM WORKS... Fraud has been the way the system operated till it nearly collapsed from 2007. The fraudsters had to be rescued by governments around the world, otherwise we'd all be surviving on baked beans, SO WHEN SHE SAYS PEOPLE CAN'T GET AWAY WITH CHEATING, THAT IS AL LOT OF CRAP."

Here is one more example:

From Frank Rich...

What’s remarkable is that Larsson wrote all this in a book completed years before the meltdown of 2008 — and was referring only to Sweden. And yet the overlap with our recent history is profound — so much so that surely both his prescience and the universal resonance of his villains account for some of his novel’s marathon ride through the zeitgeist, its ability to touch the nerves of so many readers in America and throughout the West.

If anything, the animus driving “Dragon Tattoo” seems more timely every day. The more we learn about the shell games practiced by our own C.E.O.’s during the pre-crash bubble, the more we share Larsson’s outrage that none of them are doing time. For instance, we now know, as we didn’t in September 2008, that Lehman’s collapse wasn’t exactly an unexpected, unpredictable calamity to those in its executive suites. The 2,200-page bank examiner’s autopsy released 10 days ago concluded that Lehman, in league with its auditor Ernst & Young, used “materially misleading” accounting gimmicks to mask its losses, duping investors and the ever-credulous Securities and Exchange Commission alike.

Far from being held liable for the chicanery and recklessness that would destroy their company and threaten their country’s economy, these executives benefited big time. In a study late last year, three Harvard Law School researchers examined public documents to assess whether one “standard narrative” of the crash was true — that “the meltdown of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers largely wiped out the wealth of their top executives.” It turned out to be a fairy tale. “In contrast to what has been thus far largely assumed, the executives were richly rewarded for, not financially devastated by, their leadership of their banks during this decade,” the Harvard Law team wrote. The top five executives at both Lehman and Bear collectively took home $2.4 billion in bonuses and equity sales — that’s nearly a quarter-billion dollars each — between 2000 and their 2008 demise.

--------------------------

Gus: so there you are, re-read all comments on this line of blogs and see toon at top... and send a letter to all senators and world politicians...

A British parliamentary inquiry has cleared the climate change scientists at the centre of last year's email hacking scandal of conspiring to hide evidence.

But the committee found that the East Anglia University mishandled the way it dealt with freedom of information requests.

The scandal began when hackers broke into the computer server at the University of East Anglia and stole thousands of personal emails from climate scientists late last year.

They were published online and caused a major international row. This led to accusations that the scientists were manipulating data to bolster their arguments about global warming.

Some people saw it as proof that scientists were either faking evidence that climate change was caused by humans, or were trying to hide evidence that contradicted their theories.

Now a British parliamentary committee has published its findings into the incident.

The chair of the committee, MP Phil Willis, said no evidence could be found to suggest there had been a manipulation of the scientific data.

-------------------

Gus: so there you are, re-read all comments on this line of blogs and see toon at top... and send a letter to all senators and world politicians...

from an unleashed sceptic

"So what it boils down to is that the world is thinking of developing a two trillion dollar market to dramatically change your choices (and those of everyone you know). It will affect the food you buy, the holidays you take, the way you heat your house, the cost of your clothes… and their core reason for this is that climate models run by guys like Jones predict things will get warmer. Right now, we don't even know if the temperature record fed into those models was accurate, and they're asking us to go all the way with them, based on "trust" of guys who are essentially untrustworthy.

We're supposed to "trust" that guys who wish harm on their opponents, who are hell-bent on finding support for their personal favourite hypothesis, who fear and thwart any effort to audit them, we're supposed to believe these guys care about getting the research right?

If they were directors of a small publicly listed company that refused to give up "receipts" they would have been issued with a summons. But when the global economy hangs on their pronouncements, they don't have to provide the data, we'll forgive them, and they get to keep their jobs too. I say put them in front of a jury. You don't need to be a scientist to spot rampantly suspicious behaviour. The public is not fooled, and that's why the Big Scare Campaign is running aground, and why pre-ordained whitewash committee reports won't change anyone's mind.
------------------
Gus: what a load of rot.
This writer, once again, having missed the boat by a couple of oars-lengths. wades in the mud... Joanne Nova is a sceptic with an agenda — possibly working for the CO2 generating industry — and writes about it on our ABC. Annoying that the ABC lets her get away with it.... Anyway, at one point, she grinds the figures on three graphs saying:

"This is supposed to be "verification"? Which graph independently confirms the CRU work? (Take your pick.) "Agreement" is not the same as  verification. Just because two graphs agree doesn't make them both right. In any case, these "independent" graphs are created from overlapping data sets, and by people who email each other their "tricks"."

So it's about trickery? and deception? To be amusing? To be annoying? The climate scientists have nothing to gain by being right or wrong while the the big carbon industry — supported by the deniers who are often paid by the said industry to deny or profess the same ideology of burn-carbon-burn — has much to loose. Thus the scientist who are doing a great job at being moderate and conservative in their modelling of possible future temperature rise, know also that things can change rapidly, apart from the change presently imported from CO2 emissions. And rise of temperature there has been in the last few years and there still is. Modest up and down fluctuations are like waves on a giant swell. And all known factors influencing climate have also been taken into account in the modelling — from sun spots to my sister's cooking...

The "big scare campaign" is the one coming from the big carbon industries.
One thing for sure is that the Chinese have done their own research on climate change and arrive to similar conclusions as the rest of the proper scientists: There is global warming and CO2 is a major culprit.


One thing that can be done to help reduce our carbon expenditure is to create carbon neutral individual "energy sources", such as solar energy panels for water heater and for electricity supply... But the big carbon producers are sneakily fighting this exciting possibility — because, once we are all independent of the grid, they become obsolete. This is where the real fight is: independence of choice. And thanks for Ms Nova to remind me of choice... So far we have not had REAL choice. For example, the carbon producers will make claims about base load and such but the reality is that battery storage/life can be improved by about ten fold than the average present car battery. But the incentive to produce such items at a competitive price (which is possible) is sunk by the lack of "repeat" business by lack of inbuilt obsolescence. proper batteries associated with a 3kw solar panel installation could supply us with the average household electricity demand all year around. Another 3kw installation could supply enough recharge power for a smaller electric vehicle that we could use to go from A to B in our daily city life. The technology of electric cars is more than 95 years old, but it has always been pushed back by the big oil companies. Newer technology has also improved the electric car...

Global warming? may-be-may-be-not... for some carbon tricksters...

For me and the Chinese... Sure is —

http://econogoelectricscooters.co.uk/

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/04/econogo_yogo_electric_scooter.html

Econogo's Yogo electric scooter holds the distinction to be the first of its kind in the world to be powered by a detachable lithium iron phosphate battery. The reason behind this? You won't need to tether your scooter overnight, since the battery can be removed and brought indoors to recharge. Apart from that, you can also carry around a spare battery just in case your current one goes bust along the freeway. According to Econogo, the Yogo’s 11kg battery will power the scooter for 22 miles. Pricing for the Yogo electric scooters start from £1,999 upwards, depending on the configuration of your choice.

From the SMH

TONY ABBOTT is under pressure to justify telling students it was considerably warmer when Jesus was alive after leading scientists said his claim was wrong.

He urged year 5 and 6 pupils at an Adelaide school to be sceptical about the human contribution to climate change, saying it was an open question.

In a question-and-answer session on Friday, the Opposition Leader said it was warmer "at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth" than now.

Leading scientists said there was no evidence to suggest it was hotter 2000 years ago.

The president of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Kurt Lambeck, said true scepticism was fine, but required looking at published data with an open mind. "To make these glib statements to school students, I think, is wrong. It's not encouraging them to be sceptical, it's encouraging them to accept unsubstantiated information." Tas van Ommen, who as principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division collects climate data from ice cores, said any definitive statement about temperatures 2000 years ago was "completely unfounded".

-----------------------

And this ignoramus, with a delft sneaky grinding machine in his swimming trunks, will become PM one day...

Dear god (I am an atheist) what did we do to deserve such punishment, that half of our population is contemplating swinging back to the stick of slavery, believing it's honey — believing it would be better than a few "bumplings" from a Rudd government while ignoring the fact that during the financial crisis, ministers like Lindsay Tanner and Swan steered their good old ship through shark infested waters, between icebergs and rocky submerged outcrops. Had you, the good people of this country, been living under the coalition, the banks would have made packets while you would have had to swallow mud. May Malcolm boot the crap out of Tony as Tony ceased to be funny long ago... But the media, as usual naggles the ruddles to make it fail, encouraging Tony to stop anything the government proposes. The sneak... the untruthful sneak, the glib idiot on the mount...

 

David Karoly, a Melbourne University federation fellow and climate panel lead author, said Mr Abbott's statement appeared to be based on "Heaven + Earth", a 2009 book by the geologist and climate change contrarian Ian Plimer. It has been embraced by sceptics, but criticised by scientists working in the fields it covers.

-----------------------

WHO? Ian Plimer? the same Ian plimer, as presented as a "fraud" here on this line of comments?...

-----------------------

Professor Karoly said: "It seems strange to me that the leader of a political party would be seeking to disagree with Australia's chief scientist, the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists and Australia's support of the work of the IPCC. He obviously knows better."

------------------------

Look, I was prepared to believe that the temperatures for the month of May in Sydney would be below or on average for a change... So far in the first 10 days, the temperature has been at least 2 to 3 degree above average. On a month to month basis this could be seen as an aberration... But the same pattern has been happening for the past 9 months or more...

An article based on facts; reason; logic and commonsense but - how does truth fight its way through the lies and blatant misinformation of the Murdochracy?

While this forum continues to brief the Australian public with the international issues, it nevertheless maintains a strong factual picture of the current situation in politics Australia.

The power of the evil media.  When Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister, the conservative shambles looked for a way to destroy the confidence with which this person came to power. They denigrated him; his Mother; his Wife and his family.  Mark the fact that nothing there had anything to do with the policies which he respresented other than the long overdue removing of the crimes that the Howard "New Order" forced on the Australian working classes.  Joe Hockey's WorkChoices is a perfect example.

We are unfortunate in Australia to have one and a half controlled national media.  My parents always respected the Herald - but the latest attack, without explanation, on the Party trying to balance the books is being ostracised in the manner that was so anti-Australian by Frank Packer's anti-democratic attack on the "Buy back our debts" by Gough Whitlam.  Now that we have matured somewhat - does Goldman Sach say that borrowing is unwise?  Or does it depend on who you owe?

After winning two elections in three years and the constitutional right to govern, this reformist government of the Australian people, was soundly crucified by the all powerful media.

Take notice Gus and John, the elements for the media to bypass democracy could be again available to them?

It is interesting to note that the media advocated the team of Howard/Costello when, if fact, they hated each other.

Every dirty trick that only Corporations can think of is about to be blazened across their media.

I don't know if our, perhaps pitiful, objections in this forum against the only "for profit media" to decide our future, offends me dearly. 

God bless Australia and lets remove the cabletow from our independence.  NE OUBLIE.

 

From George Monbiot at the Guardian

Whenever you suggest that renewables could one day supply a large proportion of our electricity, scores of people jump up to denounce it as a pipedream, a fantasy, a dangerous delusion.

They insist that the energy resources don't exist; that the technologies are inefficient; that they can't be accommodated on the grid; that the variability of supply will cause constant blackouts.

I suspect that no amount of evidence will sway some of these people. There's a large contingent which seems to hate renewables come what may.

However often you point them to papers showing how a European supergrid, which could one day stretch from Iceland to North Africa, allows us to balance renewable resources against each other, ensuring constant supplies; however often you explain the potential of smart appliances, a smart grid and new energy storage technologies, they just clamp their fingers in their ears and shout: "No, no, no!"

I don't know how to explain this unreasoning antagonism, but it casts an interesting light on the oft-repeated myth that it is environmentalists who are hostile to new technologies.

But even the defeatists might be swayed by some of the findings of the Offshore Valuation report, just published by the Public Interest Research Centre (Pirc). It's the first time anyone has tried to work out how much electricity could be produced by offshore renewables in the UK, and the results are fascinating.

It examines only existing technologies – wind turbines with both fixed and floating foundations, wave machines, tidal range and tidal stream devices – and the contribution they can make by 2050.

--------------------

from the Independent

Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen to lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests – and runaway global warming? Why are their staff dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic"? Why are they clambering into corporate "partnerships" with BP, which is responsible for the worst oil spill in living memory?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups such as Conservation International (CI) and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) are among the most trusted "brands" in the world, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organisations meant to be leading the fight are busy shovelling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters – and simultaneously burying science-based environmentalism. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That's where my house was... I had to [abandon it] six months ago." I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millennia crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, "The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left." While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path – one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.

US environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair – the president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995 – was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters.

from the BBC

Climate change will trigger a dramatic and sudden decline in the number of polar bears, a new study has concluded.

The research is the first to directly model how changing climate will affect polar bear reproduction and survival.

Based on what is known of polar bear physiology, behaviour and ecology, it predicts pregnancy rates will fall and fewer bears will survive fasting during longer ice-free seasons.

These changes will happen suddenly as bears pass a 'tipping point'.

Details of the research are published in the journal Biological Conservation.

Educated guesses

Until now, most studies measuring polar bear survival have relied on a method called "mark and recapture".

----------------------

For those who have study extinction of species in the wild, including local koala communities in proximity with "development", there is a "tipping point" from which a species cannot recover. For some species like rabbits and cockroaches, the tipping point is very very low... They can survive and multiply from near extinct conditions — same with the fruit fly. But for species like the polar bear, minute change in the environment can send the species packing the way of the megafauna in this country and the wooly mammoths in the northern hemisphere. see toon at top and artilce below it...

from the ABC

A recent study showing climate change is unlikely to cause an increase in the spread of malaria has been criticised by one of Australia's leading tropical disease experts.

Appearing in the latest issue of Nature, the study casts doubt on the widely held view that climate change will see a surge in the tropical disease around the world, including northern parts of Australia.

The researchers from the University of Oxford-led Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) found that since 1900, the incidence of malaria has been on the decline, despite a warming of the planet during that time.

Lead author Dr Pete Gething, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, says the recession in malaria since 1900 is of little comfort to the billions of people still at risk, but it is important when thinking about the effects of climate on the future of the disease.

"We know that warming can boost malaria transmission, but the major declines we've measured have happened during a century of rising temperatures, so clearly a changing climate doesn't tell the whole story."

Malaria downturn

Dr Simon Hay, who leads the MAP group in Oxford, says the decrease in malaria is due to better prevention strategies.

"When we looked at studies measuring the possible impact of bed nets or drugs, it was clear that they could massively reduce transmission and counteract the much smaller effects of rising temperatures," Dr Hay says.

But Professor Tony McMichael, of the Australian National University's National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, disagrees.

"It would be naive if anyone concluded from this paper we are on a long-term and inexorable downturn in malaria, I don't think that's happening," Prof McMichael says.

Prof McMichael, who chaired the team that assessed the health risks of climate change for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says while the new study has a valid argument there are many variables the modelling does not take into account.

---------------------------

I might have mentioned this before but having contracted malaria in Africa, I can tell you it's not a pleasant disease and one very hard to get rid off...

A "global pattern" of change in the Earth's climate began 2.7 million years ago, say scientists.

Researchers found that, at this point, temperature patterns in the tropics slipped into step with patterns of Ice Ages in the Northern Hemisphere.

They report in the journal Science that atmospheric CO2 could be the "missing link" to explain this global pattern.

The findings, they say, reveal a "feedback process" that could have been magnified by greenhouse gases.

This loop of feedback could have intensified both the Ice Ages in the Northern Hemisphere, and temperature fluctuations in the tropics.

Professor Timothy Herbert from Brown University in Rhode Island, US, led the research.

He and his colleagues, in the US and China, analysed mud cores from the seabed in the four tropical ocean basins - the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, the eastern Pacific and the equatorial Atlantic Ocean.

-------------------

see toon at top and read http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8985#comment-11713...

The Federal Government has appointed a corporate banker as the CSIRO's new chairman.

Simon McKeon is executive chairman of Macquarie Bank's Melbourne office, specialising in mergers and acquisitions.

Despite admitting he has "no scientific pedigree", Mr McKeon says he wants to see the issue of climate change elevated to the top of the political and public agenda.

Mr McKeon is also a well-known philanthropist.

He was a director of World Vision for 15 years and volunteers as a counsellor for heroin addicts at the First Step Clinic in St Kilda, Melbourne.

------------------------

Gus: let's hope Simon wont push for the privatisation of the CSIRO and that he will increase public funding and research, unlike our little previous Rattus and his heir...

The Pennsylvania university received a number of complaints about its professor's conduct and it launched two separate investigations in response.

They looked broadly at whether Dr Mann had falsified, suppressed or destroyed data, or deviated from accepted research practices.

Both reports have now cleared the scientist and Professor Roger Jones, from the University of Victoria in Melbourne, has welcomed the findings.

He was advisor to the Garnaut Climate Change Review and a lead author for the last two reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"The sort of questions they were asking is what's standard practice in the community who study paleoclimates, especially about data and model sharing," he said.

"One of the things that Michael Mann said was, which is referred to in the emails, he referred to when you're just running the models and testing everything out, dirty laundry, should you make that available?

"It's still generally accepted that you don't make the workings available but you can make the final model and code available."

But Professor Jones says he expects climate change sceptics will pay little attention to the university investigations and he does not think the 'climategate' scandal has been ended.

"One of the things that informed [sceptics'] conclusions was that Michael Mann has got a number of National Science Foundation grants," he said.

see toon at top...

A Channel 4 documentary accusing the green movement of causing mass starvation in Africa by getting it wrong on genetically-modified food has been attacked as "malicious" and "ridiculous" by farm groups on the continent.

"What the Green Movement Got Wrong", broadcast this week, by the same channel that aired the hugely controversial "Great Climate Change Swindle" suggests that the Western green consensus against GM foods had impoverished the southern hemisphere.

"The programme suggests that were it not for the external pressure of northern environmental organisations, Africans would be happily eating genetically modified foods by now, and hunger would be a distant memory," said a statement from the African Biodiversity Network. "We oppose these ridiculous and malicious claims."

Several groups including Greenpeace, which called the documentary "comically misleading" and one of the programmes contributors, Adam Werbach, have suggested they may complain to British regulator Ofcom.

A storm of similar complaints followed the screening of the "Great Climate Change Swindle" when Ofcom ruled in 2008 that the channel had breached section seven of its code by failing to inform participants the programme was polemic.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/greens-angered-over-c4-claims-they-caused-starvation-2126716.html

See toon at top and read all articles below it...

from the SMH column 8

Mike Sandy, of Terrey Hills, passes on this marvellous posting he's spotted on Facebook: ''First an earthquake, then a volcanic eruption, then a tsunami all in like 48 hours. And to think there are still climate change sceptics.''

--------------------

One could dismiss the Facebook posting at ludicrous but it raises an interesting conundrum...

The plate tectonic theory leaves us with an interesting relationship between climate and continental "events". For example one should not be surprised that at the edge of the "Australian plate", Indonesia is being ruffled... The "Australian plate" is moving 7 centimetres per year (7 metres per century) northward placing enormous pressures on the other plates. Now, why is the Australian plate moving northward: that's the million dollar question. Possible the ducting of slow magma currents below the thin crust of the earth are, but then why are these currents acting the way they are... Is the spin of the earth forcing all plates towards the centre, and those that can still "move" are moving? etc...

The geological record indicates than up to only 45 million years ago the Australian plate was still merged with the Antarctic plate and the India subcontinent was still attached to Antarctica 90 million years ago.

It is recognised the plates position interfered (and still interfere) with general climatic conditions. For example there was no circumpolar ocean like the one that regulates the southern hemisphere climatic conditions. Thus the climate would have been influenced by continental rather than maritime factors.

Another theory comes into play in regard to weather and tectonic changes. For example a continental mass like Greenland is like all other continental mass — "floating" on the magma of the planet. But Greenland also has an enormous amount of ice riding on top. The weight of this ice is not quite negligible. Should the ice melt entirely due to global warming, the continental mass of Greenland would be "lighter", thus floating "higher" on the magma, possibly changing or interfering with the magma flows below, leading to possible earthquakes or even break up. All this also would depend on the thickness of the plate there too as well as other factors.

Another point to consider is that a volcanic eruption will often lead to dimming or reduction of sun-light hitting the earth. Dimming usually induce cooling.

Overall, there is a certain relationship between climate and earth geological "events". That relationship is far greater than the non-existant relationship between a god and the planet, but at large far more people are prepared to believe a god has more to do with it than the natural dynamics of the earth...

 

From Spiegelonline

...

Singer is a traveling salesman of sorts for those who question climate change. On this year's summer tour, he gave speeches to politicians in Rome, Paris and the Israeli port city of Haifa. Paul Friedhoff, the economic policy spokesman of the FDP's parliamentary group, had invited him to Berlin. Singer and the FDP get along famously. The American scientist had already presented his contrary theories on the climate to FDP politicians at the Institute for Free Enterprise, a Berlin-based free-market think tank, last December.

Singer is one of the most influential deniers of climate change worldwide. In his world, respected climatologists are vilified as liars, people who are masquerading as environmentalists while, in reality, having only one goal in mind: to introduce socialism. Singer wants to save the world from this horror. For some, the fact that he made a name for himself as a brilliant atmospheric physicist after World War II lends weight to his words.

Born in Vienna, Singer fled to the United States in 1940 and soon became part of an elite group fighting the Cold War on the science front. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Singer continued his struggle -- mostly against environmentalists, and always against any form of regulation.

Whether it was the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain or climate change, Singer always had something critical to say, and he always knew better than the experts in their respective fields. But in doing so he strayed far away from the disciplines in which he himself was trained. For example, his testimony aided the tobacco lobby in its battle with health policy experts.

'Science as the Enemy'

The Arlington, Virginia-based Marshall Institute took an approach very similar to Singer's. Founded in 1984, its initial mission was to champion then US President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as "Star Wars." After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the founders abruptly transformed their institute into a stronghold for deniers of environmental problems.

"The skeptics thought, if you give up economic freedom, it will lead to losing political freedom. That was the underlying ideological current," says Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied Singer's methods. As scientists uncovered more and more environmental problems, the skeptics "began to see science as the enemy."

Oreskes is referring to only a handful of scientists and lobbyists, and yet they have managed to convince many ordinary people -- and even some US presidents -- that science is deeply divided over the causes of climate change. Former President George H.W. Bush even referred to the physicists at the Marshall Institute as "my scientists."

Whatever the issue, Singer and his cohorts have always used the same basic argument: that the scientific community is still in disagreement and that scientists don't have enough information. For instance, they say that genetics could be responsible for the cancers of people exposed to secondhand smoke, volcanoes for the hole in the ozone layer and the sun for climate change.

Cruel Nature

It almost seems as if Singer were trying to disguise himself as one of the people he is fighting. With his corduroy trousers, long white hair and a fish fossil hanging from a leather band around his neck, he comes across as an amiable old environmentalist. But the image he paints of nature is not at all friendly. "Nature is much to be feared, very cruel and very dangerous," he says.

 

At conferences, Singer likes to introduce himself as a representative of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). As impressive as this title sounds, the NIPCC is nothing but a collection of like-minded scientists Singer has gathered around himself. A German meteorologist in the group, Gerd Weber, has worked for the German Coal Association on and off for the last 25 years.

According to a US study, 97 percent of all climatologists worldwide assume that greenhouse gases produced by humans are warming the Earth. Nevertheless, one third of Germans and 40 percent of Americans doubt that the Earth is getting warmer. And many people are convinced that climatologists are divided into two opposing camps on the issue -- which is untrue.

So how is it that people like Singer have been so effective in shaping public opinion?

...

"Imagine Einstein having to defend the theory of relativity on a German TV talk show," [Hans Joachim Schellnhuber] says. "He wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,721846,00.html

Gus: yes it's easier to con people with the "existence" of heaven and hell, rather than make sure they understand what Einstein means. Most people buy simplistic lies rather than understand the complex truth. Even some people whounderstand the Theory of Relativity would still believe in the simplistic lies. That's the bane of humanity...

see toon at top...

"What I'm not trying to do is extinguish the BBC's right to freedom of speech.

"I was for many years myself a journalist and it is not appropriate to say a programme should not be broadcast. I am merely asking for a right to reply to which I say I am entitled."

He said it was the least remedy that would meet the case as the damage to his reputation would otherwise be "grave".

Desmond Browne QC, for the BBC, production company Fresh One Productions Ltd and film maker Rupert Murray, said that changes had been made to the film in the light of Lord Monckton's concerns about accuracy and bias.

He told the court that the October 2010 contract provided for absolute editorial control by Fresh One and the BBC, there had been advance publicity for tonight's broadcast and it would be problematic to show it at another time.

He said that an injunction should not be granted as, though "dressed up" as a claim in contract, the real complaint was one of defamation.

The judge refused the application on the basis that the agreement on which Lord Monckton relied lacked the clarity which he submitted it had.

The "balance of justice" also favoured its refusal, he added.

The programme filmed Lord Monckton over past year as he travelled across Australia and the US challenging the proposition that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes climate change and global warming.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-wins-battle-over-climate-show-2199930.html

See toon at top and all articles below it....

Support for nuclear power has fallen among the British public by 12 per cent since the Fukushima disaster, according to a new poll. But the UK nuclear industry has reason to cheer regardless, because left-wing environmentalist George Monbiot has today explained why he now supports nuclear power.

Monbiot has written extensively on climate change and the radical steps needed to avert disaster. Among his other works are attacks on corporations and the dangers of Bob Geldof and Bono.

In his column for the Guardian today headed 'Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power', Monbiot explains that he still loathes "the liars who run the nuclear industry" but he accepts that nuclear power has to be part of a green energy mix.

Monbiot argues that the risk of meltdown at a nuclear power station is small in comparison to the damaging effects of coal power and even renewables. "Deep green energy production - decentralised, based on the products of the land - is far more damaging to humanity than nuclear meltdown," he writes.

As an example he explains how the damming of rivers in Britain before the industrial revolution was "renewable, picturesque and devastating", since it wiped out stocks of migratory fish.

Read more: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/76702,people,news,george-monbiot-goes-nuclear-after-fukushima-meltdown#ixzz1HPW1ETmt

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I must be getting old... Mombiot and Abbott start to rhyme with idiot. See toon at top...

From Trevor Danos, a lawyer who is studying the history and philosophy of science.

...

Science has a wonderful story to tell, including that it is open to new ideas, that it has some truly charismatic practitioners and that its learned academies and scientific bodies (such as the CSIRO) represent some of the finest of human achievements.

Science really needs to get out the message that while it is not perfect, it is worth being listened to and that scientific evidence and the application of the scientific method are the best way to get to the truth and to eliminate error.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/no-turning-back-to-the-dark-ages-20111222-1p73i.html#ixzz1hLmMjuHU

Good article with a small reservation...
As I have mentioned before, when imbeciles control the commercial airwaves, when Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the printed press in this country, when the ABC is "encouraged" (forced) to have a bet each way, there is very little room for scientists to be heard or read properly by the largest audience possible. Even the best charismatic scientist of them all will be publicly torn apart by the shockjocks nuts in front of their greater ignoramus audience, because it's comfortable to reject the "uncomfortable" truth.
And as soon as scientists start to talk of "probability" — even to 99 per cent of being correct — the pundits of idiocy fall upon them like a ton of bricks with massive public spruiking power, grabing the one per cent of flux as proof the scientists do not know what the're talking about. For example, Channel Ten's skeptic Andrew Bolt is being supported to the hilt by Gina Rinehart, a miner who is the wealthiest person in Australia. Andrew Bolt is smart (unfortunately) but he is paid to defeat science with smooth uneducated wordage. To some extend he does not care as long as he lines his pockets with money or has "influence" with the prominent political idiots, such as Mr No...
Most media (including the ABC) does not want to properly explore the depth of threat that we are facing, without having the "proof" that the sky is gonna fall on our heads... It is not... but there is a very uncomfortable future ahead of us (millions could die) if we do nothing. And this problem should be the subject of a daily reinforcement by all media. Not just a few titbits of windmills and solar panels that are "contrariated" by a massive anti-science campaign. I must say here that the SMH seems to be the most aware media in Australia on this important subject, but much much more needs to be done.

Scientists, in general, have a hell of a time to be heard, no matter how well they explain what they do and if they mention the word "error" in their research, it's grabbed by the grunchy-crappy shock jocks as if the scientists were full of shit... But when a scientist mentions a "margin of error", especial in timing predictions from solid data and verifiable experiments, this margin is quite minimal and is part of "normal sciences".
For example, scientists can say without flinching that by 2100, the world temperature average will go at least 2 degrees Celsius up from what it was in the 1950s. That is the bottom line and this "low" estimate can only happen if we reduce our emissions of EXTRA CO2 (from fossil fuel) by quite a lot more than fifty per cent by the year 2050, on what they were in 1990 or so.
I'm sorry to say we're not even making a dent on this "target". Last year, despite world economic troubles, our worldwide emission rose by about 6 per cent on those of the previous year...

Sure the figures are not "precise" — like telling us that on 12 december 2043 the temperature will be such in New York, as long as a cow in Kentucky stops farting.
On the other side of the ledger, should we do nothing to reduce our CO2 emissions, science can tell us the range of temperature increase can be estimated between 4 and 6 (and even 9 by some — including me) degrees Celsius. This "uncertainty" resides in the vast amount of data needed to go beyond what we know already. This "uncertainty" is also influenced by many feed-back mechanisms, such as methane release from permafrost by warming, such as the darkening of polar areas when loosing ice and the duality of water vapour — clear or cloudy)... Including the "melting" in some areas which retards the warming in other areas.... None of these feed-back mechanism will go towards "cooling". These feed-back mechanism will only affect an accelerated or slower rate of temperature increase...
But try to explain this to an Andrew Bolt or an Alan Jones...!!!!
The reality of this "uncertainty" — in which THERE IS a certainty of "important" warming, though — cannot penetrate their mildewed peanut brains — brains that are designed and daily cultivated to reject anything scientific that is contrary to their silly stupid "beliefs" — all grabbed from a few loonies and most merchants of the EXTRA carbon ...
May these idiots swallow their microphones and choke...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX2kMAfJggU&feature=player_embedded

 

see all articles on this line of blogs...

From Robert Manne

...

In July 2011, one of the most extreme climate change denialists, Lord Monckton, accepted an invitation to take a trip to Australia – a country that matters greatly in the struggle against global warming because of its vast deposits of coal. According to several reports, his trip was funded by Gina Rinehart, the coal and iron ore billionaire, now one of the wealthiest people on the globe and the devoted daughter of the Western Australian mining magnate, the late Lang Hancock, one of the most right-wing Australians of the postwar era. As reported recently by Jane Cadzow in the Good Weekend, Hancock once suggested enticing unemployed Aborigines, and in particular “no good half-castes”, to a central location for the collection of their welfare cheques: “And when they had gravitated there, I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future.”

In Perth, Lord Monckton delivered for Gina Rinehart the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture. He also attended a strategy meeting of the fundamentalist free market think-tank, the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation, whose Chairman, Ron Manners, was once a close friend of Lang Hancock and is now a close friend of Gina Rinehart.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog-lord-monckton-and-future-australian-media-robert-manne-4575

 

IT’S DIFFICULT to really know where to start in describing Lord Christopher Monckton, one of the planet’s most outspoken deniers of the risks of human-caused climate change.

You could say he’s the leader of the Scotland branch of a fringe UK political party, for example.

Or describe him as the chief policy adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute, a climate science-mangling organisation in the US which doesn’t disclose its funders.

But last week, Lord Monckton gave himself another title.

In an opinion column about how climate change had nothing to do with the deadly superstorm Sandy, Lord Monckton wrote how he was

‘…an appointed expert reviewer for the forthcoming “Fifth Assessment Report” to be published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.’

Now that’s pretty impressive stuff. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gathers and summarises the world’s research on climate change.

I wondered how one might be “appointed” as an “expert reviewer”, so I asked the secretariat at the IPCC about the process.

Here’s what they told me (my bolding).

Anyone can register as an expert reviewer on the open online registration systems set up by the working groups. All registrants that provide the information requested and confirm their scientific expertise via a self-declaration of expertise are accepted for participation in the review. They are invited to list publications, but that is not a requirement and the section can be left blank when registering. There is no appointment.

Hang on. No appointment? But Lord Monckton just… but, he says that he… right there, he just said he was appointed … all official, like.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/christopher-monckton-wrongly-claims-he-was-appointed-to-the-ipcc/

 

Gus: The sea level could rise by twenty metres and Lord Monckton and his friend Alan Jones would still deny that the sea level rose... These people are dangerous idiotic twats especially in the light that the IPCC will release a scary report on what is happening to the planet... Here, on this site, one does not have to wait for the report.

Gus has compiled and analysed the evidence of the future.

In my unhealthy obsession I investigate how some crazy organisations are manipulating doubt using pseudo-science and plain lies. In my other articles such as global warming is baloney (my main article disappeared) but the gist was there to say "that that the globe was becoming HOT, not just warm..."

In spittle from shockjocks I show how science does not have a chance to be seen, with the fog machine of the shockjokery going on at full bore... In and now for the weather I show how water vapour influenced by CO2 is increasingly disruptive and warming the globe... In albedo I present some scientific information about the various factors influencing the planet's atmosphere in relation to the exchange of heat between the planet and space.

In present global warming is CO2 induced I explore the fact that after considering all the factors past, present and future, CO2 is the main culprit in global warming at this point in time. On global warming I define the various layers of the atmosphere in which changes are occuring due to the anthropogenic extra CO2... In a letter to prue, I explain a few things to a TV socialite commetatoress who has no understanding of global warming but talks about it at length... In of farts and nitrogen, I show how small quantity of stuff can change entire environments.... And many other articles I have written on this site will tell you the reality of global warming...

 

Read it all again very carefully. Oh, and read all articles in this line of comments from the cartoon at top ...

Lord Monckton is an idiot.

Alan Jones is an idiot.

Tony Abbott is an idiot.

 

 

 

from Tory Shepherd at the merde-och press...

From the land that brought us Lord Monckton comes this: Climate change denial is “almost a national pastime in Australia”.

Well, it’s not just Mr Abbott’s fault – even though he does tend to want things both ways; to have climate change policies while questioning the science. It’s not even just his party’s fault. This is a broad-spectrum blame situation.

In the wake of the week’s bushfires and heatwaves, George Monbiot, a seriously impressive and prolific commentator, journalist and activist,writes in The Guardian that Australia’s “new weather demands a new politics”.

He – rightly – points out that climate change is likely to have had an effect on recent record-breaking temperatures, and then pins the blame for stagnating climate action squarely on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott:

The Australian opposition leader has repeatedly questioned the science and impacts of climate change. He has insisted that “the science is highly contentious, to say the least” and asked – demonstrating what looks like a wilful ignorance – “If man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn’t there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph?” He has argued against Australian participation in serious attempts to cut emissions.

I hate to say this – Monbiot being somewhat of a journo crush of mine – but he has tunnel vision on this one.

In the context of deadly fires and (deadlier) heatwaves, you can’t start pointing fingers at individuals. It’s as opportunistic as the nasty cretins who cry that the Prime Minister had blood on her hands for the Christmas Island tragedy.

It’s not Mr Abbott’s fault we are so far from any sort of meaningful action on climate change that it’s unlikely we’ll be able to turn the ship around on time.

Well, it’s not just Mr Abbott’s fault – even though he does tend to want things both ways; to have climate change policies while questioning the science. It’s not even just his party’s fault. This is a broad-spectrum blame situation.

Don't read more of that crap please...

----------------------------------------------------------------

A broad spectrum blame situation? Are you serious?... I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU, TORY... IT IS MR ABBOTT'S FAULT. FULL STOP. SHOULD HE COME TO SOME REALITY, HE WOULD NOT BEHAVE LIKE A MANIAC WITH IFFY IDEAS ON THIS SUBJECT... Monbiot is part of the "family" mentioned at the top (read article) and he is by far the more cogent of the lot... Trying to "demonise" Monbiot and trying to give space to Abbott by claiming some "Broad spectrum situation" is ludicrous...

Abbott destroyed the ETS agreement between the Libs (conservatives) and Labor and at every opportunity has doubted the science of global warming. He has demonised beyond belief the only Australian real effort so far. Abbott takes refuge behind Ian Plimer and Cardinal George Pell... That should tell you something: Tony Abbott is an iddiott...

Less finger pointing? How Childish of Tory...

 

 

Those whom the gods love die young: are they trying to tell me something? Due to an inexplicable discontinuity in space-time, on Sunday I turned 50. I have petitioned the relevant authorities, but there's nothing they can do.

So I will use the occasion to try to explain the alien world from which I came. To understand how and why we are now governed as we are, you need to know something of that strange place.

I was born into the third tier of the dominant class: those without land or capital, but with salaries high enough to send their children to private schools. My preparatory school, which I attended from the age of eight, was a hard place, still Victorian in tone. We boarded, and saw our parents every few weeks. We were addressed only by our surnames and caned for misdemeanours. Discipline was rigid, pastoral care almost non-existent. But it was also strangely lost.

A few decades earlier, the role of such schools was clear: they broke boys' attachment to their families and re-attached them to the institutions – the colonial service, the government, the armed forces – through which the British ruling class projected its power. Every year they released into the world a cadre of kamikazes, young men fanatically devoted to their caste and culture.

By the time I was eight those institutions had either collapsed (in the case of colonial service), fallen into other hands (government), or were no longer a primary means by which British power was asserted (the armed forces). Such schools remained good at breaking attachments, less good at creating them.

read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/28/rich-born-to-rule-fatal/print

 

see toon and story at top... Don't worry George, we, old codgers on this site, are much older than you are and we're still radical and pushing new ideas...

From Mungo...

...

And then there is Danny Nalliah, the Sri Lankan born rock drummer who claims to have been a clandestine Christian preacher around Mecca in Saudi Arabia. We have only his word for this and as he also claims to have healed the sick, lame and blind and on at least one occasion to have raised the dead it might be wise to suspend judgement.

But what is certain is that he came to Australia, invented the Catch the Fire Ministry and has urged his followers to pray for and participate in the destruction of works of Satan – brothels, casinos and grog shops, but also temples and mosques. He is in frequent communication with the Almighty, and thus knows that the Queensland floods were God’s response to Kevin Rudd’s criticism of Israel and the Victorian bushfires His retaliation for the state’s abortion laws.

And having previously won the support of such right wing luminaries as Peter Costello, he is now into politics. In 2010 he founded the Rise Up Australia Party, but nobody noticed; so this year he did it again, this time with the deranged climate change denier, Gibbering Lord Monckton, as guest speaker. But the pseudo-aristocrat alienated one dedicated fan: conservative attack dog columnist Andrew Bolt warned him that, by associating with fringe groups, he risked giving climate change denial a bad name.

Can the right get any sillier? Watch this space.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog-loonies-mungo-maccallum-7573

See toon and story at top...

Conspiracies against the public don't get much uglier than this. As the Guardian revealed last week, two secretive organisations working for US billionaires have spent $118m to ensure that no action is taken to prevent manmade climate change. While inflicting untold suffering on the world's people, their funders have used these opaque structures to ensure that their identities are never exposed.

The two organisations – the Donors' Trust and the Donors' Capital Fund – were set up as political funding channels for people handing over $1m or more. They have financed 102 organisations which either dismiss climate science or downplay the need to take action. The large number of recipients creates the impression of many independent voices challenging climate science. These groups, working through the media, mobilising gullible voters and lobbying politicians, helped to derail Obama's cap and trade bill and the climate talks at Copenhagen. Now they're seeking to prevent the US president from trying again.

This covers only part of the funding. In total, between 2002 and 2010 the two identity-laundering groups paid $311m to 480 organisations, most of which take positions of interest to the ultra-rich and the corporations they run: less tax, less regulation, a smaller public sector. Around a quarter of the money received by the rightwing opinion swarm comes from the two foundations. If this funding were not effective, it wouldn't exist: the ultra-rich didn't get that way by throwing their money around randomly. The organisations they support are those that advance their interests.

A small number of the funders have been exposed by researchers trawling through tax records. They include the billionaire Koch brothers(paying into the two groups through their Knowledge and Progress Fund) and the DeVos family (the billionaire owners of Amway). More significantly, we now know a little more about the recipients. Many describe themselves as free-market or conservative thinktanks.

Among them are the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Hudson Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Mont Pelerin Society and Discovery Institute. All pose as learned societies, earnestly trying to determine the best interests of the public. The exposure of this funding reinforces the claim by David Frum, formerly a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, that such groups"increasingly function as public relations agencies".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/18/charities-pr-rightwing-ultra-rich

 

See toon and stories from top...

Wasn't there a lengthy inquest? Yes. It lasted more than 90 days before concluding on 7 April 2008 with an unlawful killing verdict from the jury. French chauffeur Henri Paul, who was drunk on pastis and driving at twice the speed limit, and also died in the crash, was found culpable, as were the posse of photographers pursuing the car. A French judicial investigation in 1999 had also blamed the chauffeur, but cleared the photographers of direct involvement.

Have Diana and Dodi's relatives responded to the latest news? A royal spokesman said there would be no comment from either of Diana's sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, nor from Prince Charles, who had been divorced from Diana for exactly a year when she died. A spokesman for Mohamed Fayed said he would "be interested in seeing the outcome" of the scoping exercise.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/54676/diana-sas-murder-conspiracy-why-met-taking-it-seriously#ixzz2cOksyevk

 

-----------------------------

I can say with confidence that a French ivre or a betrunken German can drive at twice the speed limit without necessarily crashing a car. Aussies are good at it too... Drunk is a lot to say as well... One can be above the .05 limit by twice the amount and still drive with extraordinary aplomb and/or dexterity with adrenaline pumping... In order to be completely pasted beyond this level, the pastis loving Henri Paul would have had to drink more than seven pastis in less than an hour and one can say it's nearly impossible. A pastis is quite a full on taste of aniseed and although mixed with water and it's somewhat weaker in alcohol content than Ouzo.

 

Henri knew he was on call despite being "at rest", and like pilots, Henri would not have indulged beyond the "allowed" limit (for pilots it's zero before 24 hours of duty). So what happened if Mr Paul "was not drunk"? Why was Mr Paul hired to drive the Princess and Dodi and who hired him?... Surely, PAUL WAS A PROFESSIONAL driver, no?... And did he appear to be drunk, in the videos of him walking to the car? NO ! Not at all... He walked in a straight line, with no sign of being pissed !... Was he driving at twice the speed limit? Most likely, considering the damage... BUT ! But! Driving a car at 120 km/h in a 60 km/h zone, is A PROFESSIONAL driver going to be flustered?... NUPE ! Especially when the car is a "SAFE" Mercedes... I am sure tests would show that driving in that tunnel at 150 km/h would be possible in this sort of car... One of my German friend regularly drives his Merc at 250 km/h on the autobahns... Apparently, he just bought the new two-seater, with a 6 litre engine... 

Would an exploding tyre do the trick and send the car flying off the road?... Not likely... There was mention of a "bright light", like a flash... Where did it come from? Could it have come from inside the car ?... Speculations... and yet all the accepted hypothesis do not add up well, unless in an unfortunate series of many circumstantial events... Unlikely.

 

See article at top, especially the bit relating to Princess Diana...

 

Two secret funders of Nigel Lawson’s climate sceptic organisation have been revealed. This is the first time anyone financing the group has confirmed their contributions. Both are linked to a free-market thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which has admitted taking funding from fossil fuel companies and has also argued against climate change mitigation.

Lord Lawson has steadfastly refused to name the funders of the Global Warming Policy Foundation since its inception in 2009, stating only that none have significant fossil fuel interests. The GWPF has become the most prominent climate sceptic group in the UK, but critics of the GWPF argue that funders’ names should be made public in the interest of transparency.

The names were uncovered by the investigative blog Desmog UK. Neil Record, the founding chairman of a currency management company Record and an IEA trustee, confirmed he has given money to the GWPF but said the amount was a “private matter”. Record gave the IEA £36,000 to support a seminar featuring Lawson in November 2009 and on the same day Lawson launched the GWPF. Record told the Guardian: “I personally regard the continuing contribution of the GWPF to the climate change debate as very positive in assisting balance and rationality in this contentious area.”

Lord Nigel Vinson, a wealthy industrialist and life vice-president of the IEA, has given the GWPF £15,000 according to Charity Commission records. “I am very proud to fund [the GWPF],” he told the Guardian. “You have to put a question mark over climate change if over the last 14 years the world has not got any hotter.” Scientists argue this “pause” in air temperatures is an illusion, based on cherry-picked data and ignoring the fact that over 90% of trapped heat enters the oceans.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/02/nigel-lawson-climate-sceptic-organisation-funders

 

See toon and story at top.

 

British climate change sceptic Christopher Monckton has thrown his support behind the hard-right, anti-multiculturalism party Rise Up Australia, one of many micro-parties hoping to win a seat in Victoria’s upper house.

Lord Monckton has been in Melbourne for the past three months specifically to help the party with their campaign for the 29 November election.

On Thursday night, Monckton was in the public gallery for the Casey council meeting to support councillor Rosalie Crestani, Rise Up’s upper house candidate for south-east metropolitan region.

Crestani had a motion before the council proposing communications material supporting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities be banned on the grounds it discriminated against heterosexuals.

The council rejected the motion.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/21/lord-monckton-lends-support-to-victorian-micro-party-rise-up-australia

 

We do not need liars or ignoramuses from abroad... We have enough with our own grown crop that include Tony Turdy... read from top and see where Lord Monckton mucks up...

As a new film about the tactics of climate change denialists is released in the United States, leaked emails by these same people further underscore the movie's message. Kevin Grandia from DeSmogBlogreports.

Merchants of Doubt, a new film from Food Inc. director Robert Kenner, hit the big screen this month in the Unites States and it is already making controversial headlines as the climate deniers go on the attack, as predictably as possible. 

Merchants of Doubt zooms in on the anti-science campaign outlined in Naomi Oreskes' book of the same name, and has some pretty shocking and frank interviews with some of the more colorful and influential operatives in the climate denier movement.

Apparently the film sent such a wave of indigestion through the climate denial cabal that, back in October, S. Fred Singer and a small group of his chosen deniers and PR spindoctors discussed via email the opportunity to sue the film into oblivion.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/merchants-of-doubt-film-release-further-exposes-climate-denialists-tactics,7522

 

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Lord Monckton seems to be propping everywhere as the grand priest of crap when denialism is becoming a religious duty for the ignoramuses... See stories and toon from top...

 

 

By and large, journalists, like most people, reflect the values embedded in their social milieu. And the fact is, in the Beltway, climate isn’t that important. Most journalists have absorbed the judgment that it’s somewhat gauche to be a denier (which is progress, I guess). But few wake up thinking about climate. Few hear friends and associates spontaneously raise the subject in conversation, or hear colleagues ask about it at press events, or see politicians benefit or suffer from any particular position on it. It’s an “issue” that belongs to one faction of the left base, and D.C. journos are acculturated not to take such things very seriously.

In a sane world, politicians would lose credibility after denying climate change. It wouldn’t be a “normal” position, but an extraordinary one, the province of kooks and eccentrics. But that doesn’t happen. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) can pull his absurd snowball stunt one day and complain about how the federal government assesses the social cost of carbon the next — and have his complaints treated respectfully! (Hint to reporters: If he thinks the social cost of carbon is zero, his real objection is probably not to the exact process the government used to determine its number.) At no point do D.C. journalists seem to think, much less say, “You know what, this guy is kind of a loon, maybe we should take what he says with a grain of salt.” Denialism carries no consequence in the sociopolitical ecosystem in which Inhofe operates.

http://grist.org/climate-energy/how-american-journalists-deal-with-climate-deniers/

See articles from top. I will reiterate here that "should we feel global warming with our senses, we would cook within five years".

Global warming is a scientifically studied phenomenon and the increments of rise are quite minimal but calculable. But to a great extend, even a two degrees rise in the earth climate would not be perceived by our senses — except that from time to time we would note "some (very) hot days". So why panic and do something about "climate change"?

First, 99.9 per cent of the evidence to global warming is that it is presently anthropogenically induced.

Second, a rise of two degrees Celsius by 2100 on 1900 temperatures WILL NOT STOP AT TWO DEGREES C should we not do something about it.

Third, should we do nothing about it, it is likely that temperature could rise to above 5 degrees Celsius by 2100, due to sudden increments and plateau-ing, induced by interference of other climatic factors, masking the relentless trend on short period. The equation of human population, energy, nature and supply of resources will be more and more critical. This equation which is ignored by our systemic economic relationship (capitalism) will prove that we are dumb — unless we understand the true destructive values of the future in what we're doing.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbW-aHvjOgM#t=199

 

Read from top...

 

See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/19279

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/27224

 

Former prime minister Tony Abbott was brought down because of his anti-global-warming views and would have pushed back against plans to form a world government at the Paris climate summit if still in the job.

These are the views of leading sceptic Christopher Monckton who, in an interview with Fairfax Media, also said Australian institutions such as the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO were being examined by "a formidable team of scientists and lawyers" for possible fraud over manipulating their climate data.

It's naive to assume that [Malcolm Turnbull] has not been in contact with the UN. 

Lord Monckton, climate sceptic

Lord Monckton claimed fellow sceptic Ian Plimer​, now an emeritus professor of geology at the University of Melbourne, phoned Mr Abbott in 2009 as "the final persuader" to urge him to run against the then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull.

"Ian Plimer had been the last person to speak to him before he was appointed leader, because he wasn't sure he wanted to run, and Ian told him he should," Lord Monckton said.

The comments came during a day-long conference held by climate sceptic groups at the elegant Hotel California, just off the Champs-Elysees in Paris. 

Billed as a "day of examining the data", the meeting of about 15 people got off to a rowdy start when anti-coal protesters from Australia tried to gate-crash it. The opening media conference was also disrupted by heated exchanges between speakers and those supporting the climate summit  being held in the northern outskirts of Paris, with ministers and officials from nearly 200 countries attending.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/un-climate-conference/paris-un-climate-conference-2015-tony-abbott-was-brought-down-by-the-un-christopher-monckton-says-20151207-glhtco.html#ixzz3tjCCAr9I
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook


Please read from top and give Lord Monckton a good kick up the arse for being a grandstanding ignoramus idiot on the world stage.

 

see:

 

2032

 

we shall fight them on the beaches...

 

hockey's magic...

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Greenpeace investigation uncovers a complex climate science denial machine involving cash from big business in exchange for "peer review" studies. Graham Readfearn from DeSmogBlog reports.

AN UNDERCOVER INVESTIGATION by environment group Greenpeace has found some of the world’s most vocal climate science denial groups were willing to accept cash from fossil fuel interests in return for writing articles and reports that reject the impacts of greenhouses gases.

Greenpeace operatives posing as representatives of coal and oil companies were told that while the reports could be produced, there were ways that the sources of funding could be hidden.

Academics affiliated with leading U.S. academic institutions Princeton and Penn State universities are implicated in the Greenpeace research.

According to a report on the investigation at Greenpeace's EnergyDesk website, Princeton's Professor William Happer had revealed he had accepted cash from coal company Peabody Energy in return for providing testimony to U.S. congress but had routed the cash through a climate denial group. Happer also offered his services but said that a new climate science denial group, CO2 Coalition, should be used to channel the funds.

Groups including the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Donors Trust are also alleged to have been complicit in providing “peer review” services for fossil fuel clients and, in the case of Donors Trust, in providing an untraceable route for the fossil fuel payments.

The story comes as Happer is preparing to give evidence to a congressional hearing of the Senate Subcomittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness,chaired by Republican and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. That hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, 8 December, also calls fellow “sceptics” Dr John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr Judith Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology and conservative commentator Mark Steyn.

A DeSmogBlog investigation into Donors Trust and its partner group Donors Capital Fund found that between 2005 and 2012, some $479 million of income to the two groups was untraceable. Of the amounts that were traceable, DeSmog found that $7.65 million had come from the Knowledge and Progress Fund(KPF).

On the KPF board are oil billionaire and major Republican benefactor Charles Koch, his wife Liz and son Charles Chase Koch. Richard Fink, a Koch company director and long-standing aide to Charles Koch, is also a KPF director.

The Greenpeace investigation raises questions about the use of the Donors funds in financing climate science denial groups. Donors Trust, together with oil giant ExxonMobil, have also funded the work of Harvard-Smithsonian affiliated researcher Dr Willie Soon, who claims carbon dioxide cannot change the climate.

Academic charges fossil fuel companies $15,000 for research paper that promotes burning coal https://t.co/oE4NzaWotb pic.twitter.com/idd78iGDg7

— Energydesk (@Energydesk) December 9, 2015

Greenpeace also claims that CO2 Coalition board member William O'Keefe, a former Exxon lobbyist, had suggested in an email to Happer that Donors Trust be used as a route to conceal cash from a fictional Middle eastern oil and gas company.

The investigation also targeted Happer's work with the London-based contrarian group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by former UK chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Greenpeace wrote:

'Professor Happer, who sits on the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, was asked by undercover reporters if he could put the industry funded report through the same peer review process as previous GWPF reports they claimed to have been “thoroughly peer reviewed” '.

Happer explained that this process had consisted of members of the Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal.

 

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/follow-the-money-to-climate-science-denial,8472

 

Soon all this will become irrelevant. The state of the planet's climate will dictate urgent action to take, late as it may be, but necessary nonetheless. The list of idiots from Lord Monckton to Lord Lawson will dwindle to just a handful of guests appearing on Andrew Bolt's rabid show. By then my belief is that, in a volte-face, someone like Alan Jones would change their tune like Alan did on the Sydney "toaster" building. On global warming someone will explain to him clearly where he is wrong and with a good explanation he will accept that. Alan Jones is far more intelligent than Andrew Bold who preaches crap to the, unfortunately, too many small-brained gnats in our society.

read also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/19279

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is to give the annual lecture to a London-based climate sceptic group.

Abbott will give his speech, entitled Daring to Doubt, to the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) on 9 October.

The GWPF is led by former UK chancellor Nigel Lawson, who recently incorrectly told the BBC the global temperature had “slightly declined” in the past decade. The BBC was heavily criticised for allowing Lawson to make factually inaccurate assertions unchallenged.

Abbott becomes the second former Australian prime minister to be hosted by the GWPF. In 2013, John Howard – Abbott’s old boss and political mentor – delivered the annual address.

In his speech, called One Religion is Enough, Howard also incorrectly claimed global warming had stalled and expressed deep scepticism about the possibility of an international agreement on climate change. Two years later, the Paris climate treaty was struck.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/02/daring-to-doubt-t...

Read from top. Note that Lord Monckton is a liar or an imbecile or both... Nigel Lawson is not far behind or in front. Turdy Abbott is an imbecile with the tiny brain of a devious gnat. He is dangerous. Read also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

Pass it on to your friends (I'm sure you have plenty of these) and enemies (I'm sure your don't have any of those)...

Climate science denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has apparently been left with a hole in its finances after a major donor did not renew its funding.

The Atkin Charitable Foundation had given the GWPF £20,000 each year between 2012 and 2016. But the foundation pulled its funding in 2017, its latest accounts filed with the Charity Commission show.

The GWPF was founded by climate science denier Nigel Lawson in 2009 with the purpose of combating what the foundation describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change.

The Atkin Charitable Foundation was set up in February 2006 to fund efforts towards the “relief of poverty, distress and sickness, the advancement of education, the protection of health and for any other charitable purpose”, according to its annual trustees’ report.

Edward Atkin sits on both the Atkin Charitable Foundation and GWPF’s board of trustees. He made his money through selling his baby-feeding business Aventa for £300 million in 2005.

 

Read more:

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/09/17/charitable-donor-pulls-funding-clima...

 

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Climate science deniers have been invited to speak at an unofficial hearing in the Italian Senate this week by a politician from former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.

A group of scientists are due to deliver a letter on Friday describing carbon dioxide as “plant food” and claiming that climate change has not increased the intensity or frequency of natural disasters.

The majority of signatories are geology professors with no direct expertise in climate science, and several are listed as employees of the Italian oil major Eni. 

The event on October 18 has been organised by the senator Maurizio Gasparri, and is set to coincide with the launch of a “European Climate Declaration” in Oslo, part of a campaign being coordinated by the Netherlands-based Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL). DeSmog revealed plans for the campaign at the start of September.

CLINTEL says there is “no cause for panic and alarm” because the world will have “ample time to reflect and adapt”, and opposes the EU adopting a 2050 carbon neutrality target.

A similar event was held in 2009 ahead of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen and enjoyed the support of two Forza Italia senators, Lucio Malan and Guido Possa, who have also backed the current campaign. 

Oil ties

Uberto Crescenti, who is leading the effort, has worked closely with the oil and gas industry over the course of his career as a geology professor. Between 1998 and 2005, he collaborated on a major industry-funded research project called TaskForceMajella, analysing an oil and gas reservoir in the Appennine mountain range in central Italy.

A former president of the Italian Geological Society, Crescenti has also contributed to the Independent Committee on Geoethics, a fringe group run by climate science deniers including Philip Foster, Christopher Monckton and Patrick Moore.

 

Read more:

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/10/17/climate-science-deniers-links-big-oi...

 

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See also:

frack-turing the environment...

 

leaking like a bucket flat-pack to assemble with a lying key...

 

drought...

 

the weather: a coal front from scummo...

 

mister bean investigates global warming...

 

alan jones' little brain cannot understand that global warming is real and anthropogenic...

 

 

liberal (CONservative) government policy failure: australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen...

 

a climate emergency...

 

 

embracing porkies from an idiotic porkyist called patrick moore is easier than understanding the sciences...

 

and of course:

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

 

 

See also:

no palm trees yet on the new islands... in the battle for the north pole...

In its latest end of year accounts, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s most prominent climate science denial group, has reported that its total income has increased by around £75,000 over the last year – an increase of almost 20 percent.

The thinktank was founded by Conservative peer Nigel Lawson in 2009, due to his concerns about “extremely damaging and harmful policies” to deal with global warming.

GWPF accounts, published last Friday on Companies House, show a rise in total income from £351,642 in 2018 to £426,244 in 2019 – an increase of £74,602.

...

The GWPF is famously secretive about its funding sources, and is under no obligation to reveal where it gets its income.

It has previously defended its donors’ right to financial anonymity saying, “the soil we till is highly controversial and anyone who puts their head above the parapet has to be prepared to endure a degree of public vilification”. 

DeSmog and others have previously revealed some of the organisation's funders, including hedge fund manager Sir Michael Hintze, currency trader and chairman of the libertarian Institute of Economic Affairs Neil Record, and Lord Nigel Vinson. Hintze and Record are also both major Conservative Party donors.

The 2019 accounts show the foundation spent £345,632 on “charitable activities”, up by £46,388 from the previous year

In September 2014, concerns about the political stance of the GWPF were raised to the Charity Commission, which concluded that the charity lacked balance and neutrality.

In a case report, the Charity Commission found that “the website could not be regarded as a comprehensive and structured educational resource sufficient to demonstrate public benefit”.

In response, Lawson launched the Global Warming Policy Forum, a non-charitable arm of the foundation to be used for campaigning purposes.

Celebrating Climate Inaction

In a statement accompanying the report, GWPF director Benny Peiser claimed the foundation had “an incredibly busy and productive time” over the reporting period.

Peiser singled out the election victories of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and Australian PM Scott Morrison, adding: “the last 12 months have seen a number of international, high-profile defeats for carbon taxes and other policies aimed at fighting global warming.”

Peiser also discussed the energy tax protests in France and the impact of the “gilets jaunes” on the UN climate conference in Poland which “subsequently failed to make any real progress,” he claimed

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/03/02/membership-income-triples-uk-s-mai...

 

 

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