Watching the Deniers and Deceivers.

My Wife calls it my Sunday School. On Sunday mornings I watch the round of political programmes; Meet the Press, Laurie Oakes' Interview and the ABC's Insiders. There was an amount of decepttion in all these programmes.

Due to Julie Gillard's evident breaking of an Election promise (Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said there will not be a tax on carbon while she leads the federal government) all three programmes addressed the issue of a carbon tax.

Carbon tax? Tax on Carbon? What is carbon? The two most common allotropes of carbon are graphite and diamonds. So they are going to tax carbon? Tax Diamonds and Graphite? No, they are going to tax carbon dioxide: two oxygen atoms bonded to a single carbon atom. That means there are twice as many oxygen atom than carbon. Why aren't they calling it an oxygen tax. Water is H20. Do you ask someone for a glass of hydrogen?

It is deception to call it a carbon tax. It is a carbon dioxide tax.

The other deception was talking about the polluters. During the programmes, there were background images of pollution and cooling towers.

 

This image is of pollution. It is deceptive to show an image like this when you are talking about CO2 emissions. It is deceptive to say pollution when you are meaning carbon dioxide emissions.

 

These are cooling towers. It is deceptive to show an image like this when you are talking about CO2 emissions. It is deceptive to say pollution when you are meaning carbon dioxide emissions. 

Carbon dioxide is colourless. Any image intending to show carbon dioxide emissions should show...er...nothing. Breathe out into your fist. Can you see anything? Part of that is carbon dioxide. Look at a clear cloudless sky. A small percentage of that sky is carbon dioxide. An even smaller, almost infinistesimal proportion is man's contribution to atmospheric CO2.

To realise how small the anthropogenic proportion is, 2UE's Mike Smith, in Aug 2008, made a graphic representation.

Imagine one kilometre of atmosphere that you want to clean up.   For the sake of the discussion, imagine you could walk along it.
The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres are Oxygen.
That’s 980 metres of the 1 kilometre.   Just 20 metres to go.
The next 10 metres are water vapour.   Just 10 metres left to go.
9 metres are argon.   1 metre left out of 1 kilometre.
A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.
The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre – that’s carbon dioxide.
A bit over one foot.
97% is produced by Mother Nature.   It’s natural.  It has always been in the atmosphere otherwise plants couldn't grow.
Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left.   About half an inch.   Just over a centimetre.
That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in .18 of a millimetre.
Less than the thickness of a hair.   Out of a kilometre.
So in every kilometre of atmosphere, complete with green-house gases regulating the climate - in every kilometre reflecting back and retaining the sun's heat on earth, just .18 of one millimetre is contributed by Australia's carbon dioxide emissions.

So, everytime someone mentions carbon tax, call them a deceiver. Everytime someone talks about a carbon dioxide emitters but actually say polluter, they are deceiving you.

Greg Combet on Insiders continually talked about polluters. Listen to the bit of rhetoric.

GREG COMBET: Well I think one thing is to get straight with this discussion about compensation and assistance to households: a price tag on carbon pollution, which is what a carbon price is, is directed at the big businesses that are polluting the most into the atmosphere in our economy, and it is from there that the carbon price is paid.

The commitment we have made of course is that every dollar raised by the payment of the carbon price will be used to assist people, households, industries most affected and to help assist with other climate change programs, so that we can cut pollution and drive investment in clean energy.

OK, CO2 emissions are not pollution, but just imagine that they are. So the carbon (dioxide) tax is aimed at reducing CO2 emissions. How?  " directed at the big businesses that are polluting the most.."

So naturally, big business put up prices to protect their owners' (shareholders) interests.  The price rise will make consumers think twice about spending, or will it? "every dollar raised by the payment of the carbon price will be used to assist people, households, industries most affected.. " Oh, that's OK then. No-one will have to change their habits. Does that make sense to you?

"....(aimed) at large industrial polluters, if you like, that a carbon price mechanism is targeted, in order to bring about change behaviour at that level, in order to drive the investment in clean energy technology, to reduce pleases in our existing electricity generation sector, to provide business certainty for investments to be made in things like gas-fired base-load power generation, to drive further investment in wind power and other renewable energy sources."

As we have seen Windpower is hellishly expensive, so what carbon dioxide tax will we have to pay "to drive further investment in wind power and other renewable energy sources."

Also, this morning on ABC's"insiders," they said that Julie Bishop had said the ex PM Bob Hawke addressing a public meeting had expressed his disapproval of Ms Gillard and said that Greg Combet would be her replacement. They then said that Hawke had denied it and they had a snigger at Bishop's expense. I was screaming at the screen - "You said It was a public meeting -  you're journaliists, find some others from the meeting and check the facts." Later I checked the Sunday paper. The story was -here.

At the UWA dinner, Ms Bishop claims Mr Hawke "stunned" guests at his table, including Janet Holmes Court, her partner Frits Steenhauer and the Chief Justice of the High Court Robert French, when he said Ms Gillard was in trouble.
"I can certainly confirm that at the dinner he was very open about his views that Julia Gillard would not go the distance. And that Bill Shorten was not the answer, but that Greg Combet would be the leader of the Labor Party sooner rather than later," Ms Bishop said.

Just snigger at Julie Bishop. Not check with Janet Holmes a Court, not check with a  Chief Justice of the High Court? Just snigger at Julie Bishop. True Deniers.

UPDATE:

The Labor Party's Spin Machine has moved into top gear trying to justify this reversal of an election promise.
JULIA Gillard's decision this week to introduce a carbon tax was the best decision she has made as Prime Minister. HERE

Gillard: From policy dud to economic hero  HERE

Watching the deniers (WtD) and Censorship.

Further to my post "Watching the real deniers deny the truth..." I have ceased posting on the blog.

Why?

Well, the Chief denier, Mike, denied me right of reply. I submitted a comment that, although the original post slandered TCS president Leon Ashby, Leon's reply was censored. Is that fair, Mike? You do a whole post trying to tear strips of Leon but censor his reply.

Also two comments on the science countering some of the statements on WtD was censored - more of that below.

So why would the chief WtD denier, Mike, censor Leon's rebuttal? Let's look at part of what Mike said:

Brutish in the fact it uses harrowing images of Black Saturday and the charred remains of dead animals to try and bludgeon the viewer into believing “greens” caused the death of 173 Victorians in 2009.  

 I have responded to "“greens” caused the death" in my previous post.

I wonder if Mike thinks the same of the first video in this post: Child abuse in schools. I wonder if Mike has concern for our children being forced to watch that tripe? Has Mike written about the abuse of our children being made to watch an horrendous movie of a kangaroo committing suicide because of less than 2ºC of warming?

When I made my original post, I linked it to WtD. So Mike made a reply, on the surface, a very reasonable reply. He wanted a robust discussion.  He started with:

First of all, welcome Geoff! 
I have no intention of censoring what you have to say.

Obviously his intention changed very quickly. Not publishing my comments came fairly quickly, didn't it, Mike? And not publishing any of my colleagues' remarks. It is really below contempt that you write a whole column about Leon and then don't allow him the courtesy of a reply.

Then he set a few ground rules:

• Keep it civil
• Don’t resort to ad hominem/personal attacks
• Respect the other, even if they have widely differing views to yours
• Foul language or personal abuse will not be tolerated.

I will apply the same rules to “warmist” and “denier” alike.

 Yet he uses the contemptible term "denier" both in the title of his blog and in that last sentence. The Alarmists dreamed up the "denier" tag as a tactic to subliminally link us with the Holocaust deniers. Mike, however, goes further. He actually talks about the Holocaust in his post.

Although he sets those rules for Alarmists and realist alike, he doesn't censor the alarmists and allows John Byatt great scope -"standby for the climate goons spam and sock puppets..."  Another one not abiding with Mike's rules is "Sou." Incidently, Sou says that we should call ourselves "The Climate Change Denier Party." Just shows how little Sou understands. We are the ones who KNOW climate changes, it is the Climategate CRU who tried to suppress the MWP - ie suppress climate change - in order to make the late twentieth warming look unusual.

John Byatt often adds links that do not say what he claims they do. Byatt also often misquotes. There is a post here - The hypothesis was falsified years ago - with Professor Carter six times falsifying "The hypothesis that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming." Mr Byatt re-invents this as: "Carter is claiming that each of his tests falsify AGW “enhanced Greenhouse effect from human fossil fuel emissions and deforestation ‘ that is the claim"

 Here are two of the submitted comments that Mike didn't publish in his "robust debate."

Forcing out of LIA:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html
http://www.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/papers/uvmm-2col.pdf

Even the IPCC accepts TSI as the primary forcing upto the latter 20thC:
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig6-5.htm

The 2nd-4th questions all deal with past warm periods; in respect of the MWP and the last 2000 years McShane and Wyner’s paper would seem to have definitively prioritised the statistical hierarchy of temperature over that period based on Mann’s own data: see here for published paper and various comments:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/13/mcshane-wyner-hockey-stick-smackdown-redux/#more-29354

Temperatures during the Holocene interglacial generally are shown to have been warmer during both the Roman and Minoan warm periods:

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/Gisp-ice-10000-r..png

http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/DATA/Obrien.html
============================================================

“The civil MR Byatt has referred to the van Dorland and Forster effort. As if this un-peer-reviewed, inhouse effort rebuts Miskolczi. On page 2 van Dorland and Forster say:

“As a next step using his quasi radiative equilibrium model, Miskolczi calculates the relationship between outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and the infrared flux originating from the Earths surface (Su). The relationship is a function of infrared optical depth (τA) only”

This is wrong; on page 17 of Miskolczi’s 2nd paper, figure 10:

http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/E&E_21_4_2010_08-miskolczi.pdf

Miskolczi measures changes in “the true greenhouse-gas optical thickness”. This is made up of two parts which are depicted in Figure 10. The first is τA which is defined as “the total IR flux optical depth” [page 5 Miskolczi 2007]. This is a measure of the total amount of infra-red or LW radiation which is absorbed between the surface and the TOA. The second is A which is the flux absorbance [page 3 Miskolczi 2010] and is a measure of what wavelengths of LW are being absorbed and transmitted in the atmosphere.

So van Dorland and Forster can't even get Miskolczi's basic point right!

The rest of van Dorland's ‘paper’ merely restates the SH and OLR disputes from the viewpoint of AGW. In short it is a farrago and Miskolczi stands.”

UPDATE:  Leon's reply has now been posted at WtD: http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/leon-asbys-post-im-not-going-to-hide-it-really/

Mike said he had been busy. Thanks, Mike

Poll: 7PM Poll: Does Australia need a carbon tax?

Poll: 7PM Poll: Does Australia need a carbon tax?
As usual, this poll asks the wrong question. One of the answer is that "global warming is a con."

Well,  I KNOW that the hypothesis of man-made emissions of carbon DIOXIDE causing runaway global warming is a con, but I also acknowledge that generally it has been warming since we came out of the little Ice Age at ~1850.

So I agree that there has been global warming but I also agree that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a scam. So, do I therefore lie and tick "Global Warming is a con?" I certainly don't agree with any of the other statements? Or do I just skip this rather dishonest poll?

7PM Poll: Does Australia need a carbon tax? (For carbon tax - read Carbon dioxide tax.)

Yes, we must reduce our economy's reliance on carbonNo. Global warming is a conOnly if the whole world gets one tooI'm all for fixing climate change, as long as I don't have to pay for it

Wind Energy: Is It Green Or Brown

John Mikkelsen asks: How 'green' is wind power?

My forebears the Vikings harnessed the wind to explore and settle parts of the globe other inhabitants could only dream of for another few centuries, but times change.
Ask any sailor slicing through waves on a fast tack while the sails strain and the wake stretches silently behind…Beautiful, clean and green - there’s nothing quite like harnessing the wind - until some yob in a power boat or jet ski, blasts past and shatters the natural harmony.
Unfortunately, the reality of wind power as an alternative energy source seems just like that.
Backed by Greens - inspired government subsidies and tax breaks, it is supposed to play a key role in meeting Australia’s Renewable Energy Targets of 20 percent by 2020.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday reneged on a key pre-election promise and announced another Greens-backed proposal to introduce a price on “carbon pollution” by July 1 next year, as a measure to promote alternative energy.
She said there would be a fixed carbon price for three to five years, then an emissions trading scheme with a “flexible'' price linked to international markets.
But there is ample evidence to suggest wind power as one major alternative is unreliable, uneconomical and very unfriendly to the environment.

Experience from places investing heavily in wind farms such as Denmark and California, shows they are inconsistent power generators, needing back-up from conventional energy sources.
 Studies have also raised serious concerns about human health, and a devastating effect on bird life.

Courtesy Windtoons .com

According to the American Bird Conservancy, new draft voluntary US federal guidelines focussing on wildlife impacts of wind energy will result in continued increases in bird deaths and habitat loss from wind farms.
“Bird deaths from wind power are the new inconvenient truth. The total number of birds killed and the amount of bird habitat lost will dramatically increase as wind power build-out continues across the country in a rush to meet federal renewable energy targets,” the organisation’s vice-president, Mike Parr said.
The Telegraph in Britain reported results of a study claiming wind turbines could cause heart problems, tinnitus, nausea, panic attacks and headaches among people living nearby. 

Dr Nina Pierpont, a New York paediatrician, said she was convinced vibration and noise emitted by wind turbines could produce a range of symptoms she had named "Wind Turbine Syndrome" or WTS.
She examined the health of people living near wind farms in the US, UK, Italy, Ireland and Canada. As a result, she recommended wind turbines should not be built closer than 2,000 metres to housing.
"There is no doubt my clinical research shows that the infrasonic to ultrasonic noise and vibrations emitted by wind turbines cause the symptoms,” she said.
Another damning indictment of wind farms involves pollution created in forging rare earths into the powerful magnets they utilize to generate electricity. The Mail Online reports:

“The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China.
This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.
Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.
This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

Back in Australia, more questions over Federal and State Government subsidies for wind farms were raised this week by chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Viv Forbes, who said they should compete equally with other forms of power generation.
A qualified geologist and soils scientist, Forbes said there was no proof wind farms reduced carbon dioxide emissions, and it was ludicrous to believe a few windmills in Australia would improve global climate.

“The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity.
Wind power is intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. To cover the total loss of power when the wind drops or blows too hard, every wind farm needs a conventional back-up power station (commonly gas-fired) with twice the design capacity of the wind farm to even out the sudden fluctuations in the electricity grid.
Why bother with the wind farm? Just build the backup and achieve lower costs and better reliability,” he said.

Meanwhile submissions to a Senate Inquiry into the social and economic impact of rural wind farms closed this month (February 10). The report is due on April 30.
Maybe that will go some way to answering the question: How “green” is this alternative energy source?
As Bob Dylan sang in his anthem of angst back in the Sixties, “ The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind…”

John Mikkelsen is a long-term journalist, former regional newspaper editor (Gladstone Observer) now regular columnist and freelance writer. Mikko is a friend who offered this article for reprinting. He is not a member of our party.  First published at Menzies House.


See also: Wind Energy and KISS
               Viv Forbes' Why Wind Won't Work.  (Mentioned above)

                The Perils of Wind Farms.

Is our Prime Minister GILLARD a liar?

Before the last election, Ms Gillard made a promise. From ninemsn - one of many reports at that time:

Kym Smith Source: The Australian

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said there will not be a tax on carbon while she leads the federal government.

Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan last week said if Labor won the August 21 poll, there would not be a carbon tax during its next three years in power.
Ms Gillard seemed to go a step further on Monday.
"There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead," she told Network Ten.

So, after having today declared AUSTRALIA will have a carbon tax for three to five years before a full emissions trading scheme is introduced.... I must ask - Is she a liar?

Well, theoretically, no. You ask what is my reasoning? Well, she would have to still be in power at 1st July next year. Now, it is up to the backstabbers that did the Rudd ridding to save Julia's honour honesty.
If they rid us of Julia as well before July 1st next year, it won't be a lie, will it?

What we all should do is write to our local MP, to our State's Senators and express our disgust about this dishonest about turn. while you're at it, tell them also calling it a carbon tax is dishonest. It is a tax on colourless, vital-to-life carbon DIOXIDE.

Notice the gang in the picture from Kym Smith Source: The Australian. The two "Indepedents" Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott,  and the galloping Greens.

 Did you know that state Labor MP Kerry Hickey handed out "How to Vote" cards for "Independent" Oakeshott?

Nationals advertising for the 2008 by-election that saw the "independent' win the NSW north coast seat of Lyne attacked him as a Labor stooge.
Their fears appeared confirmed when Kerry Hickey, the Labor MP for the state seat of Cessnock, a three-hour drive away, was spotted on a polling booth in an Oakeshott T-shirt handing out how-to-vote cards.

Julia (or should that be JuLIAR?) had a shouting match with Alan Jones  hear here.

The Daily Telegraph says

PM's broken promises to cost

Accused yesterday by the Opposition of betraying Australians, Ms Gillard formally broke a key election pledge and announced that the Government would impose a price on pollution from July 1, 2012, with a full emissions trading scheme to be operating as early as 2015. It will be the most complex and broad-ranging carbon tax of almost any country in the world.

In the Alan Jones' interview (above) Ms Gillard defended the tax saying that business leaders supported it. In the Herald-Sun, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Peter Anderson

slammed the plan, labelling it "a blow for the competitiveness of Australian business, especially small and medium-sized enterprises".
"The extra lead in the saddlebags of Australian business will not reduce overall global emissions, nor will it help save the jobs that will be exported offshore to countries without a carbon scheme," he said.

Carrying on the business theme, in  Business Spectator, Alan Kohler says:

If a material carbon tax really is imposed on July 1 next year, and commodity prices and the Australian dollar have not corrected by then, manufacturing will be devastated.

In fact this whole carbon emissions issue is looking more and more like either a national emergency as great as any we have faced, or a reason for concerted national procrastination.

As well as lying with her election promise, Julia deceptively calls it a carbon tax when, in fact, it is a tax on colourless vital-to-life Carbon Dioxide. Carbon dioxide ie one part carbon to two parts oxygen. More oxygen than carbon. Why doesn't she call it an oxygen tax?

Mr Bean - a heretic or Climate Realist?

In the Theatrical Review pages (link in title above) of the AGW-promoting UK Guardian, there is a review of a play (dated 17/2/11) called the Heretic. It was sent to me by a young chap with the great name of Geoffrey. It was written by Mr Bean - no, not him - Mr Richard Bean.

He starts from a promising premise: the isolation of Dr Diane Cassell, a leading light in the earth sciences department of a Yorkshire university. Her speciality is measuring sea levels in the Maldives, and her pragmatism leads her to conclude they have not risen in 20 years.

So far it is accurate. 
  

Nils-Axel Mörner, born 1938, is the former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University. He retired in 2005. Commission on Neotectonics (1981–1989). He headed the International Association for the promotion of cooperation with scientists from the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union Project on Geomagnetism and Climate (1997–2003). He is a critic of the IPCC and the notion that the global sea level is rising. He's also been the Chairman of INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution. He also led the Maldives Sea Level Project. He was president of the International Union for Quaternary Research.

Maldives Tree - Photo Nils-Axel Morner

Nils-Axel Mörner showed that the Maldives were not sinking. There was an old tree on a reef ledge that some (and I disown them) Australian pseudo-environmentalist cut down because it showed that the oceans were not rising.

Inevitably her climate-change scepticism lands her in trouble: she gets death threats from Sacred Earth Militia, is at odds with her anorexic Greenpeace daughter, and is eventually suspended by her faculty boss and former lover. Her consolation is a student, Ben, whom she induces to share her strictly scientific approach to global warming.

It was ever thus. Although we sceptics rely on science, the Alarmists, the Flat Earthers who ignore the latter-day science, the true Deniers will not admit that Global Warming PRECEDES the rise in atmospheric CO2. To misquote Dr David Evans, the scientist who changed from being a AGW alarmist to actively fighting the falsified hypothesis - "It's not rocket science."

Watching the real deniers deny the science and the truth.

You would think that people running a website called "watching the deniers" (link in title) would do a little investigating before posting lies. You would also think that, in the name of honesty, they would call their site - "Watching by the deniers."

In a blogpost called:

Nasty, brutish and short: The Climate Sceptics television ad pleads for us to “stop the green slaughter” 

They say:

The Intergovernmental body

"TCS is adamantly opposed to any carbon reduction schemes while obviously denying the reality of global warming."

They (Mike?) have made a false statement here. Denying the reality of Global Warming?  No, we KNOW that the Globe has been warming since it came out of the Little Ice Age (LIA) ~1850. Do the "watchers" deny the MWP and the LIA. If you take these events into account, the late twentieth century warming is not unusual.

In an interview just on a year ago, Phil Jones of Climategate fame, stated that although there has been a modest warming trend since 1995, it is not statistically significant. Further, there is no statistically significant difference among the four warming trends of 1860-1880, 1910-40, 1975-1995, and 1975-2009. Thus, one can not use the global surface temperature record to statistically establish that the recent warming was different from past warming periods. 

The Climategate Cabal tried to suppress these events in order to make the 20th century warming look more striking to scare the populace. See here...

The Watcher goes on to dispute our connecting the severity of the Victorian fires to the Greens.

Well, Ray Evans, who lost a home in Maryville addresses it here.

Considering Green groups and councillors have actively prevented fire mitigation burn-offs, it was interesting that Fire Mitigation experts weren't allowed to address the Royal Commission: (Jennifer Marohasy)

In response to the news that experts in bushfire mitigation and management, in particular Forest Fire Victoria Inc and the Bushfire Front Inc, will not be given leave to appear before the commission, David Ward commented, with some sarcasm at this blog earlier this week, that given we already know that the Victoria fires were caused by global warming and arsonists and that the purpose of the Royal Commission is to confirm this, of course the Royal commission won’t want to hear from practical bushfire experts.

From Max Rheese from the Australian Environment Foundation:

The extent of this horrific disaster - by far the worst Australia has experienced - has been magnified by indifference to basic rules of fire management, ignoring the wisdom of expert fire managers and political acquiescence to the pressure of city-based green lobby groups.
This week Australia has witnessed the fatal results of misguided green activism over three decades that is steeped in ideology rather than forest science. A dogged determination to oppose realistic prescribed burn targets has produced fuel loads in many parks and reserves that are a disaster waiting to happen.

It is tragic that the "denier watchers" deny that there is a large element of blame to be attributed to the (Red) Green Movement.  We need to be aware of the danger to the community of the build-up of undeegrowth, of forest fire fuel. The aboriginals were aware of the dangers and did control burns.

Finally, I would ask the "denier watchers" if the deny:

• the historic facts of the MWP and the LIA like the Climategate Cabal CRU?
• that science has moved on and we now know that global warming precedes the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide?

Update:

The Chief Denier at "watching the Deniers" has answered at Deniers.

New Discussion: HERE

Thanks to John Byatt for pointing me to the Denier watchers.

Wind Energy and KISS

John Droz, jr. is a physicist who has also been an environmental activist for some 25 years. He's a member of the Sierra Club, the Adirondack Council, the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, and the Resident’s Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, among others. 

Adirondack Park.

For Australian readers, The Adirondack Park is the largest protected area in the United States. 


It’s larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon and Great Smokies combined – and it covers 7 counties and 2 Congressional districts.”).



John is the author of a Web Page called Wind Power Facts and subtitled Toolkit of Information.  There is a link to Wind Power Facts in the title above.

"A critical fact to understand is that just because a power source is an alternative, or a renewable, does NOT automatically mean that it is better than any conventional or fossil fuel source! In other words, electrical energy alternatives/renewables should not be given a free pass on common sense scrutiny, and the use of scientific methodology, in objectively evaluating their merits. "

John has also created a series of short videos that discuss some common topics.

Our hero is citizen Jane. I’m calling the video series “Jane Discusses Energy.” The first is where she talks with a friend about some wind energy issues. The second is where she meets with her town board supervisor about a proposed wind energy project in her community, and shares with him her research findings.

Give yourself a few free days and investigate John's sensible fact and link brim filled site.

See also: Viv Forbes' Why Wind Won't Work.

                The Perils of Wind Farms.

 

ABC Bias hits the news.

This week on Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That (WUWT) there is a guest post by Mike Jonas. Mr Jonas compares the rates of temperature change in Australia at rural and non-rural weather stations.

Over those periods in which there were increasing temperatures, the rural stations appear to have warmed at about 60-70% of the warming rate of the non-rural stations.

My question is: Will this post be reported by the AGW propagandist ABC? My answer is no.

Recently, I made comments on the ABC's Drum Unleashed. The comments were spread over three different stories. None of the comments was published. NONE. Speaking to two of the authors, they had both heard from people who had made comments that went unpublished.

On Feb 21, the Australian published an opinion piece by Dr Marc Hendrickx entitled: 

Bias at the national broadcaster is as easy as ABC

I found it hard to get constructive comments published at the ABC. In this piece Marc describes how hard it is to get an erroneous, defamatory and abusive comment - made contrary to the blog rules - removed. After a struggle of to-and-fro, with all the accuracy on Marc's side, the offending comment was removed.

On December 23 ABC advised that the offensive comments had been removed.
The level of bias and base ignorance inherent in the views of a senior ABC journalist, in supporting the defamatory comments, are truly astonishing.
The affair leaves one questioning the credibility and objectivity of ABC's environmental reporting, along with the independence and efficacy of ABC's system of self-regulation.
Why did it take so much effort to remove the offensive comment? How did Phillips obtain permission to run such a biased and unbalanced opinion page at the taxpayers' expense?

The question is: Who's ABC is it? The ABC says that it is "Your ABC" but treat it  as if it is their ABC. Complaints often get the brush-off and, unless you persist as Marc did, nothing happens.

Marc Hendrickx runs the great blog ABC Newswatch.

Update:

Des Moore, Director of Institute for Private Enterprise has a similar story posted at Quadrant On Line.

I decided, however, that I would send a brief complaint to the ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs asking that the Lateline program stop being one-sided and give its viewers the opportunity to hear the other side. I noted that there are numerous scientists (and others) who reject the dangerous warming theory and referred to the Oregon petition signed by over 30,000 scientists (including 9,000 with PhDs) who have done just that (there are, of course, other such documents).

Worth a read.


See also - ABC and BBC - AGW Propaganda
                  Radio National - Big Ideas? I don't think so.
                   Unbalanced Broadcasters ABC√ and BBC?
                     ABC Bias
                      Loopy Virginia Trioli doesn't know who she is

 

Carbon Credits in 2011: Hype or the Biggest Investment of the New Millennium?

I started reading the Green Guide (Where ethics & Innovation Meet) (link in title) as was a little surprised by their first sentence:

According to a recent New York Times article, the carbon (dioxide) trading market is now worth an estimated $30 Billion and could grow to $1 Trillion within a decade.

I knew of the collapse of the  Chicago Climate Exchange and of some of the frauds in the European trading system and so I googled "New York Times carbon trading market." So far I can't find the story quoted by Green guide. Why, oh why didn't they give a link to the story?

My search did find the following stories.

Europe's Carbon Emissions Trading -- Growing Pains or Wholesale Theft?January 31, 2011

NEW YORK -- Have criminals found a lucrative niche in carbon markets?
Previously, many bankers and traders said no, insisting that one-off incidents involving theft or cheating in Europe's Emissions Trading System (ETS) were isolated events attributable mostly to the youth of the market. Advocates of a cap-and-trade approach to tackling climate change said that such growing pains are inevitable, but regulators and legitimate market participants would get better at warding off abuses.

 

Carbon Trading Lurches Off Course 

September 1, 2010

SINGAPORE — In July 2007, the Australian Climate Exchange, known as the A.C.X., introduced the first electronic trading system for greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. Voluntary Emission Reductions, or VERs, generated by abatement projects verified by the government-sponsored Australian Greenhouse Office, had been introduced a few months earlier and initial business on the exchange was brisk. It set up a registry for Australian VER certificates and soon was also trading similar instruments from overseas But this January, the A.C.X. discreetly halted business, and what had started like a lion went out like a lamb. “We had to close the business down because we’d run out of funds to continue,” said Tim Hanlin, the former managing director of the exchange. “The government of Kevin Rudd had indicated the focus would move toward a mandatory market and we had made significant investments to get ready for that eventuality. That was our downfall.

 

Carbon Market Players Urge Caution in Financial Regulatory Overhaul March 19, 2010

Hunter expressed concern that a financial regulatory reform bill rolled out by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) this week could put heavy restraints on trading customized derivative contracts banks and traders say will be the financial lubricants needed for a fully functioning U.S. carbon market. 

 

The Stakes of Carbon Trading Are Losing Their Sizzle  March 12, 2010

NEW YORK -- Global carbon dioxide emissions offsetting markets are fast losing their luster in the minds of investors, both in the United States and abroad.  As governments around the world delay climate change legislation, offset project developers and traders on Wall Street and beyond say that they are rethinking their earlier enthusiasm for carbon markets.

 Where did the Green Guide -Where ethics & Innovation Meet get the idea that the Carbon (dioxide) Market was sizzling?

NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 261

NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 261
FEBRUARY 20TH 2011
THE UNCERTAINTIES OF AVERAGES

Those who  provide us with the supposed Mean Annual Global Temperature Anomaly (attached) treat the annual points in their graph as if they were constants. The points on the graph do not represent actual observations. They are processed versions of actual observations and they are subject to statistical uncertainties.

The latest CRU paper to calculate these uncertainties is

Brohan, P., J J  Kennedy, I. Harris, S. F, B, Tett, and P. D. Jones. 2006, Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: A new data set from 1850. J. Geophys. Res.  111, D12106.doi:1020/2005JD006546.

This paper  combines many sources of  uncertainties and the final figures vary from year to year, but are typically about ±0.2ºC  on a 95% confidence basis. Some versions of their graph include these figures as "error bars" attached to the data points.

Brohan et al even admit that they do not include "Unknown unknowns", even referring to the intrenationally recognised expert on this subject - Donald Rumsfeld.

It is surpising that they have left out of their discussions the most important source of uncertainty in their figures, one which is "known" to every person who has studied stratistics. It is the uncertainty which arises every time you take an average.

The actual experimental observations upon which the  final figures on the graph are based are the daily measurements of the maximum and the minimum temperature at weather stations all over the world. In order to obtain the annual mean maximum or minimum it is necessary to average 365 daily measurements (366 in a leap year)

According to every one of the several textbooks on statistics that I possess. the equation for obtaining the uncertainty of a single mean is as follows

Uncertainty is ± txSD/Sqrt of number of observations.

The value for t is obtained from the tables of the t distribution given in the textbooks . For 95% confience limits and numbers of observations above 50 it is close to 2. The square root of 365 is 19.1

Kerkin (personal communication) recently downloaded a large number of daily maximum and minimum measurements from the NIWA database and calculated the standard deviation, for two weather stations, Albert Park, Auckland and Te Aroha in the North Island of New Zealand

For Albert Park the SD for the maximum was 3.8ºC and for the mimimum 3.7ºC
For Te Aroha the SD for the maximum was 4.8ºC  and for the minimum 5.1ºC

I do not know how typical  of the whole world these might be, but I expect that for countries with a continental climate the SD figures would be much higher. But, anyway, let us take an SD of 4.3ºC for the maximum and 4.4ºC for the minimum and try it in the formula.

The 95% confidence limits for the average are  therefore ± 2x 4.3/19.1 = 0.45ºC for the maximum and 2x 4.4/19.1 = 0.46ºC

These figures are about double  the uncertainties calculated by Brohan et al from all the other possible sources of error.

It is assumed that the average temperature is the mean of the maximum and the minimum. So you have to add up the individual uncertainties to give those for the mean as ±0.91ºC

But that ain't all. There is an additional uncertainty from choosing such a bad method for calculation of the average. There are no published figures as far as I am aware of attempts to calculate the error of doing this, or its uncertainty. However, NIWA have published a set of hourly temperature figures from 24 New Zealand weather stations for a typical summer's day and a typical winter's day at

NIWA 2010 “Meteorologist for a Day” http://www.niwascience.co.nz/edu/resources/climate/meteorologist/


I have calculated, from the 48 figures supplied,  the average difference between the Maximum/Minimum mean and the 24 Hour Mean as 0.2ºC with a standard deviation of 0.8ºC

The 95% uncertainty can again be calculated as ± 2x0.8/sqrt of 48  which gives ±0.23ºC This is an amount about the same as all the uncertainties calculated by Brohan et all.

If the 95% confidence limits  are all added together  you get  0.2+0.45+0.46+0.23  They come to a total of ±1.34ºC on each data point.

This is well above the 0.9ºC claimed to be the global, or the New  Zealand  temperature rise over the last 100 years, which means that this figure has a very low probability of being correct.

 Cheers


Vincent Gray
75 Silverstream Road
Crofton Downs
Wellington 6035
Phone/Fax 064 4 9735939
"To kill an error is as good a service
as, and sometimes better than, the
establishing of a new truth or fact"
Charles Darwin"

Mark Hertsgaard ambushes Sen Jim Inhofe - proves he doesn't know what he is talking about.

 From the Daily Bayonet: (via Marc Morano)

Hertsgaard is a man who believes his daughter will be very thirsty in the future and happens to have a book to sell, so he turned into Michael Moore lite and hijacked Senator Inhofe with daft questions about global warming.  It’s not a fair fight, which is why the full 5 minutes is featured on Inhofe’s YouTube channel but only 2 minutes is on Hertsgaards.


Hertsgaard says that Senator Inhofe's party is the only one in the world that doesn't believe in the falsified hypothesis of man-made global warming. The Climate Sceptics party has examined the science and KNOWS the hypothesis is false.

Tim Flannery - GAIA Worshipper

Tim Flannery has long been a Worshipper of GAIA. He wrote about it in his 2006 book "The Weather Makers."

Tim (FlimFlam) Flannery. Photo 2UE

In 2008, on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope:

Well Gaia is our earth, this extraordinary living organism of ours that we’re all part of and just breathing now, talking we are plugged into Gaia aren’t we? We are, we taking the atmosphere into our bodies, we’re changing its chemical composition and we’re exhaling it. And it’s life that makes the atmosphere what it is, that’s a very important aspect of Gaia you know. Gaia is life working as a whole to maintain the atmosphere as it is, so that life can go on. So, Gaia I think is is saying to us “it’s time you took control.”

At Latrobe University in June 2009:

Robert Manne: I said earlier that I think I got your book – yesterday’s reading of it – and it seems to me your thought is very strongly connected with James Lovelock’s idea of Gaia. I wondered first for the audience if you could give a reasonable succinct view of what his conception of Gaia is and then I want to talk about your book a bit in regard to that.

Tim Flannery: Well James Lovelock is a genius, who’s 90 years old, who was a kind of a, well, a medical person for a while. He came up with the view that the earth functions as a single organism basically......

 

And again this year, From the ABC's Science show via The Australian:

In a recent ABC Radio National Science Show interview with presenter Robyn Williams, Tim Flannery, a paleontologist, talked about Gaia.

Tim Blair, in his column in the Daily Telegraph this week wrote:

A couple of months ago, author and dinosaur-bone specialist Tim Flannery told a Sydney audience that "within this century, the concept of the strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest.
"This planet, this Gaia, will have acquired a brain and a nervous system that will make it act as a living animal, as a living organism."

 Today, Tim Flannery has written a reply to Tim Blair. It can be found here. He does nothing to address Mr Blair's reference to Gaia worship. It has been reported that James Lovelock has said his Gaia theory was wrong.

Also, hear 2UE's Michael Smith interview Tim Flannery here. To get balance, Mike interviewed Richard Lindzen the following day. Listen here...

See also: The IPE's Des Moore on Tim Flannery here..

The Changing data at NASA-GISS and our BoM, CSIRO

Back in August 1999, NASA-GISS had a web page about where would the US climate go. (Link in title above.)

At that time James Hansen et al wrote

Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s "Dust Bowl" that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. Figure 1 compares the temperature history in the U.S. and the world for the past 120 years. The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed, in the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934.

 

Steve Goddard at Real Science, in a post called Data Corruption at GISS, exposes how the above graph was corrupted on NASA-GISS but is now restored. Steve has a blink comparator which shows that although, in the US graph above, 1934 was warmer than 1998, history has been rewritten and now 1998 is shown to be warmer than 1934.

So? You ask. Why are you reproducing Real Science. Well many claims have been made about 2010 being the warmest year. Perhaps not - see HERE and HERE. 

Makes NASA-GISS look suspect. 

How accurate and truthful are Australia's bodies, The Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO?

We should soon find out. Joanne Nova and a team of skeptical scientists, citizens, and an Australian Senator have lodged a formal request with the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) to have the BOM and CSIRO audited.  (LINK) 

The BOM claim their adjustments are “neutral” yet Ken Stewart showed that the trend in the raw figures for our whole continent has been adjusted up by 40%. The stakes are high. Australians could have to pay something in the order of $870 million dollars thanks to the Kyoto protocol, and the first four years of the Emissions Trading Scheme was expected to cost Australian industry (and hence Australian shareholders and consumers) nearly $50 billion dollars.

The submission was signed by:-

Senator Cory Bernardi;; Joanne Nova Andrew Barnham Anthony Cox

James Doogue  Chris Gillham  Ken Stewart…Dr David Stockwell

Who's fooling who? They're all fooling you!

In today's  (15/2) Australian, in an article by Lenore Taylor and Mark Davis headed 

Climate cash goes up in smoke 

MORE than $5.5 billion has been spent by federal governments during the past decade on climate change programs that are delivering only small reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
An analysis of government schemes designed to cut emissions by direct spending or regulatory intervention reveals they have cost an average $168 for each tonne of carbon dioxide abated.

Mark and Lenore seem to have calculated how much vital-to-life Carbon Dioxide has been reduced by the Government's plans. I would like to see their calculations. Meanwhile, the Gillard Government, in their election campaign said: "No Carbon (Dioxide) Tax." (August 2010)

Julia Gillard has said there will be no tax on carbon while she leads the federal government. The Deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan, said last week that if Labor won the election there would be no carbon tax during its three-year term.
Ms Gillard seemed to go a step further yesterday. ''There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,'' she told Network Ten.

As an aside, have your seen or heard any of the Main Stream Journalists questioning the Government on this broken promise?

Practically all the Labor promises in the last two election campaigns have been broken and "no tax on carbon" is no exception. Meanwhile the Government are pushing the "benefits" of taxing carbon (dioxide.)  (from Business Spectator)

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday reaffirmed a commitment to pricing carbon pollution, likening the move to key economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and saying the move would lead to a new technological revolution in Australia.

 People elsewhere are rapidly coming to the conclusion that the purported environmental benefits of carbon trading and carbon taxes are illusory is amply demonstrated by the rorting and collapse of carbon markets in both Europe and the US. [Click here and here]

Additionally, in March 2010, France ditched its proposed carbon tax. [Click here]. What reason did they give? The government said its energy tax was being postponed indefinitely in order not to "damage the competitiveness of French companies."

Do you think our government knows something the French don't? Personally, I'd like to know if they have any idea where most of our Aussie billions have actually gone, wouldn't you?

Below, a recent picture from NOAA showing how global warming is affecting the Northern Hemisphere. (The white bits are frozen.)

National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) Image

.

So are we being told the real reason why certain sections want to reduce carbon (dioxide) emissions? Are we being told why the Climategate CRU lied and tricked up figures to try to show Carbon Dioxide causes dangerous global warming? Are we being told why Bob Brown tries to blame any weather event (hot, cold, wet, dry) on emissions of carbon (dioxide.)

Not according to Ottmar Edenhofer, professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin, co-chair of Working group III of the IPCC and deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research  as well as Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in Hamburg, Germany. Dear old Ottmar let the cat out of the bag.

Just before the UN climate conference in Cancun (Mexico) in November 2010, Edenhofer acknowledged the IPCC's agenda was not environmental. To climate realists it was not surprising that the IPCC has had a hidden agenda. What is surprising is that one of their leading lights actually feels the whole man-made global warming juggernaut (dare I say "scam") now has enough momentum that he can openly boast about it.

“… we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy any more...”

Here is one of many references on the Net to Edenhofer's statement [Click here].  

Idea and significant contribution by KF 

Political Climate Insight

Letter to the editor by Leon Ashby - President The Climate Sceptics

 Political Climate Insight



Dear Sir / Madam,

                              Here is some irony with climate politics.

The "Green / alarmist" position assumes the debate is over but never has a face to face public debate with those sceptical.

They say they believe in free markets (to keep prices low) but corrupt the renewable power market (costing us more).

They say wind and solar renewables will replace  baseload  power but it has never been done.

They say Australia should get into renewable power as European countries begin to abandon the idea.

They want an Australian Carbon Tax & ETS despite the Chicago Carbon exchange collapsing.

They tout carbon dioxide storage underground as a solution without it being achieved commercially.

They claim the majority of people want a carbon tax while  the latest "AGE"  survey shows  89% are against it.

And now they will stage an "independent" climate commissions with a non independent  "Alarmist" chairman (Tim Flannery).

Does anyone see a similarity with climate policies and the emperors new clothes?

Leon Ashby
President The Climate Sceptics

True Unbelievers

An article in Saturday's Good Weekend Magazine by John van Tiggelen (See Update.). He examines both sides of the science of inter alia Evolution, Vaccination and Human Induced global Warming. In the latter he turns a blind eye to the evidence.

There is, in Science, a sharp line between scepticism and denial. Scepticism is useful; it's what makes science tick. A scientist never assumes anything, she sorts fact from theory by setting up hypotheses and testing them.

Denial is something else. Whereas a sceptic may doubt the theory, a denialist throws out the evidence.

He goes on to say, referring to man-made global warming, "....the evidence that humans are warming the planet is in."

Hello! Mr van Tiggelen. First you say "by setting up hypotheses and testing them.." and then go on "the evidence is in." 

IPCC has been shot to pieces

 Let's look at these in reverse order.

The evidence is in...Well, is the evidence in? The IPCC was set up more than 20 years ago with one sole purpose, to blame CO2 for runaway global warming. They have admitted, in a letter,  that they cannot. 20 years of international funds, billions of dollars spent on this InterGOVERNMENTAL - (ie political body not a scientific) - body, - and a not proven result.

So what about Mr van Tiggelen's other phrase: ""by setting up hypotheses and testing them.." 

Well, The hypothesis is that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming.  The hypothesis was falsified years ago by Professor RM Carter. (Here) Also falsified by ex-NASA physicist Ferenc Miskolczi.

Mr van Tiggelen then goes to introduce diversions, such as tobacco, rather than looking at the Climate Realists' science. And infers senility. Shame on you. Look at the science. Look at the denials of the IPCC Climate Cabal CRU.

UPDATE:

We must thank Mr John van Tiggelen who has generously contributed to our Lord Monckton tour fund. And, thank you John, a RECORD AMOUNT! As you said with your deposit, because we are worth it. Thanks you, Sir!

Why Wind Won't Work? - It's Weaker than Water.

A Submission from the Carbon Sense Coalition to the Australian Senate Enquiry into Wind Farms.
February 2011
(Link to pdf in title.)

Why are governments still mollycoddling wind power?

There is no proof that wind farms reduce carbon dioxide emissions and it is ludicrous to believe that a few windmills in Australia are going to improve global climate.

Such wondrous expressions of green faith put our politicians on par with those who believe in the tooth fairy.

The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity.

Tax payers funding this "Wind Welfare" and consumers paying the escalating power bills are entitled to demand proof.

Not only is there no climate justification for wind farms, but they are also incapable of supplying reliable or economical power.

It is also surprising those who claim to be defenders of the environment can support this monstrous desecration of the environment.

Wind power is so dilute that to collect a significant quantity of wind energy will always require thousands of gigantic towers each with a massive concrete base and a network of interconnecting heavy duty roads and transmission lines. It has a huge land footprint.

Then the operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of the wind's energy can be captured.

Finally, when they go into production, wind turbines slice up bats and eagles, disturb neighbours, reduce property values and start bushfires.

Wind power is intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. To cover the total loss of power when the wind drops or blows too hard, every wind farm needs a conventional back-up power station (commonly gas-fired) with capacity of twice the design capacity of the wind farm to even out the sudden fluctuations in the electricity grid. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network.

Why bother with the wind farm – just build the backup and achieve lower costs and better reliability?

There is no justification for continuing the complex network of state and federal subsidies, mandates and tax breaks that currently underpin construction of wind farms in Australia. If wind power is sustainable it will be developed without these financial crutches.

Wind power should compete on an equal basis with all other electricity generation options.

Carbon Sense” is a newsletter produced by the Carbon Sense Coalition, an Australian based organisation which opposes waste of resources, opposes pollution, and promotes the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food.

Please spread “Carbon Sense” around.

For more information visit our web site at www.carbon-sense.com

Literary, financial or other contributions to help our cause are welcomed.

Chairman: Viv Forbes MS 23, Rosewood   Qld   4340   Australia.   

 info@carbon-sense.com           07 5464 0533

SEE also: The Perils of Windfarms. 

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2011/02/perils-of-wind-farms.html

Richard Lindzen talking sense.

A YouTube interview with Meteorologist Richard S Lindzen before Cancun.

I love the bit where the interviewer asks Lindzen what he expects to come out of the Cancun conference:
 Same as the other conferences
Which is?
Nothing.

Lindzen was right.

Aussie Erin Brockovich downunder

Most people are aware of Erin Brockovich from the movie of the same name. Erin was a legal clerk who was instrumental in constructing a case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) of California in 1993. The nub of the case was whether PG&E was contaminating the drinking water.

Most people are not aware that although she won the case and damages were awarded against PG&E, it has since come to light that the case should have gone the other way.

As Wikipedia tells us:

A study released in 2010 by the California Cancer Registry showed that cancer rates in Hinkley "remained unremarkable from 1988 to 2008." An epidemiologist involved in the study said that "the 196 cases of cancer reported during the most recent survey of 1996 through 2008 were less than what he would expect based on demographics and the regional rate of cancer."

Now Australia is to be blessed with Brockovich's talents. She wants to have joint Citizenship of the US of A and The Great Southern Land. Erin has told reporters that she loves Australia.

From a report in today's Sydney Morning Herald (link in title):

Erin Brockovich has launched an initiative to serve the cause of environmental protection in Australia - the Environmental Justice Society (EJS).
"This country is at the beginning of a period of huge growth that will continue for decades to come and it's all driven by resources in the ground," Ms Brockovich said at a launch in Brisbane today.
"The EJS will act as a guardian of people's rights for a safe and healthy environment and is aimed at helping preserve Australia's pristine beaches, waterways, rainforests and wilderness for generations to come."

She has even started a competition to find an Australian "Erin Brockovich."

Be afraid......be very afraid!

Tim Flannery - Climate Commissioner - OH REALLY?

 Release from Des Moore - Founding Director of the Institute of Private Enterprise.

The Gillard government is proceeding with the discussions of the committee established to examine how to introduce a carbon price and it has now also established a Climate Commission, with the extraordinary appointment of  Tim Flannery as “climate commissioner”, to “sell” the supposed virtues. In short, Australia is proceeding on the basis that the “science is settled” and we are even told (according to The Age, 3 Feb) by Climate Change Minister Combet that a carbon price would boost Australia’s economic competitiveness! 

By contrast, it seems likely that the changed political situation in the United States will lead to further consideration of the science in Congress. Indeed in recent days the tired old science consensus claim has been revived by 18 scientists writing to Congress asking  that this occur. Their letter (see here) runs the consensus line that “everyone of the leading national scientific academies worldwide have concluded that human activity is changing the climate” and that “no research results have produced any evidence that challenges the overall scientific understanding of what is happening to our planet’s climate and why”. The G18 asserts therefore that climate deniers should “not be given scientific weight equal to the comprehensive, peer-reviewed research presented by the vast majority of climate scientists”. The signatories include 8 members of the National Academy of Sciences and Michael Mann and Kevin Trenberth (who are not members).

Unsurprisingly, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (whose President is Professor Fred Singer) has responded with a letter to Congress (details here) rejecting the “scares” promulgated in the G18 letter (which include “rising sea levels and storm surges”, some regions to be “increasingly vulnerable to drought” and others need to “prepare for massive flooding”) and pointing out that there are many scientific studies that reject the consensus claim. In this letter, which is signed by 36 scientists (including two members of the National Academy of Sciences, Richard Lindzen and Will Happer), reference is made to inter alia 678 scientific studies quoted in a report that “offers a point-by- point rebuttal of all the claims” by the G18, “citing in every case peer-reviewed scientific research on the actual effects of climate change during the past several decades”.    Claims of scientific consensus or overwhelming proof are described as “simply not true” but support is given to the GI8 request for Congress to take a fresh look at climate change.

With extraordinary claims being made by Garnaut and Combet (not to mention by the Greens), and little  opportunity for Australian sceptics to rebut those in the media, it is surprising that the Opposition does not seek some form of Parliamentary inquiry/examination. Gillard’s carbon price policy is high on the government’s agenda and yet it appears this will be allowed to happen with scarcely a squeak by the Opposition.

See also: Tim Flannery - Gaia Worshipper.