Anthony Cox
I’ve been banned or censored from many sites for daring to
criticise and ridicule what I consider to be the lie of man-made global warming
[AGW].
I was banned from
Open
Mind for daring to talk about the Great Pacific Climate Change [GPCC] and
its effect on temperature, a subject I later co-authored a paper about with
David Stockwell. That paper although
not published in a Journal still receives regular views and citations. David
and I did
another paper in
response to Grant Foster’s [who runs
Open
Mind] critique of McLean’s famous paper about natural trends. It is now the
case that natural factors are being accepted as capable of producing
temperature trends as well as just variation.
I have been banned from Real
Climate for talking about the excitation rate of CO2 and the impact on that
by Beers Law; that was my first run in with Eli Rabett, the pseudonym of Josh
Halpen, a prominent AGW wise guy.
Andrew Bolt banned me for using Richard Dawkins meme theory
to compare Islam to a virus. I think he is now coming around to my point of
view.
The Conversation
has so heavily censored me that I gave up going there.
I have been banned from
The
Drum. When Jonathan Green was editor we had some tussles because he is a
dyed in the wool alarmist. He still published me, by myself and when I
co-authored articles with Jo Nova and David Stockwell. But when a patronising
astronomer called Michael Brown questioned my ‘credentials’ and therefore
eligibility to comment on AGW, Jonathan, or at least the ABC’s internal
committee, made my first degree disappear. The sorry saga is described
here.
Still Jonathan Green was better than his successor, Chip Rowley, who allows no
sceptics including me from being published at his Drum.
Now On Line Opinion (OLO)
has stepped up and banned me from writing any more articles on AGW. Graham
Young, the editor of OLO has said he wastes too much time checking what I write
to prevent his site looking foolish.
He only wants experts to write about
AGW.
I was first attracted to OLO when Clive Hamilton
got the sulks
because Graham was allowing too many ‘deniers’ to be published. Clive packed
his bald skull and whatever he calls a bat and left the building. Hamilton is a
serial offender and wanted ‘deniers’ to be banned from the ABC. David Stockwell
and I
responded to this
in the good old days when our ABC belonged to everyone and not just the left
elite. There is a certain irony that Hamilton’s views were finally successful
in having sceptics banned from The Drum and now after banning OLO from
his opinion Hamilton’s spirit lives on
in having a sceptic banned from writing about AGW science at OLO.
What Hamilton was advocating was just plain old censorship;
and it was censorship based on the same premise as every example of censorship
is based on: that is the censors are better, smarter and more moral than those
who need to be censored. For Hamilton the myth of the 97% consensus about AGW
was and is still real. The experts have spoken, the science is settled and the
hoi polloi should shut up and take their medicine. And under no circumstances
should ‘deniers’ be allowed equal time to foment discontent and disobedience
amongst the masses.
It is a vile position and it is this very attitude which
informed the attempts by the Gillard government at the behest of Bob Brown to
silence dissent about AGW in the form of the Finkelstein Report. Jonathan Green
allowed me to argue against this at
The Drum. And Graham
Young gave me
three
bites of
the
cherry
at OLO.
Increasingly though Graham has expressed reservations about
my articles about AGW. In one conversation he admitted to being sick of
defending my obvious errors in my articles. It turns out he was thinking of an
article by
Viv
Forbes which was based on a graph which could have been better:
The graph was from
here,
a sceptic site. The graph purported to show the declining effect of extra CO2
on temperature; this effect is described by Beers Law which has been neglected
by AGW. As usual the AGW supporters focused on the mistake in the graph. Bugsy,
a frequent alarmist commentator at OLO, who apparently has some scientific
credentials, summed up the ‘problem’:
Perhaps then Graham, you could explain to us
how emitted CO2 before 1922 can give an overall cooling effect per ton on
temperature, as Viv's first graph seems to imply?
The problems with the graph were discussed further as the
thread continued with Graham making several comments including saying:
I
have no intention of "withdrawing" the graph. It's not my essay, and
this is an opinion site, not some refereed journal. There are some issues with
the graph, principally the sixth order polynomial, but it has its good points
too.
I can only assume that he continues to confuse the problems
with this graph in Viv’s article with my articles which had no such problem. If
I’m wrong about these mistakes then I invite Graham to spell them out.
But the fact is it doesn’t matter who you are, if you are a
sceptic you will be attacked by alarmists. They will censor you, abuse you, nit
pick your arguments and avoid any concession or acknowledgment of a problem
with AGW. I have seen the best climate scientists in the world be abused and
criticised for merely being sceptical; people like Richard Lindzen, Roy
Spencer, John Christy, the Pielkes, junior and senior, Judith Curry, Bob
Carter, Ian Plimer, Stuart Franks and so on have all been subject to approbrium
for their scepticism.
So Finkelstein was
based on a lie. It is not the lack of qualifications which prompted the
alarmists to object to non-qualified people such as myself criticising AGW, it
was and still is the act of criticising itself. AGW from day one has relied on
suppression of opposing views; the email scandal told us that. AGW can only
work that way because the experts of AGW have been consistently wrong and AGW
science has been inadequate. What do you do when the experts and science are
wrong? If the experts are wrong then the opinion of a non-expert is just as
valid.
I am not a scientist. I have co-authored some papers with
David Stockwell and written many articles on the science and about AGW. I
always go to primary sources and read and research the papers and science.
Sometimes I get things wrong but so what? If AGW science was like other science
and processed in an open and transparent way the mistakes would be resolved in
consequent discussion which is what OLO offers in its comments. AGW science is
however not like other science; it is flawed. And because it is flawed its
supporters resort to tactics such as exaggeration, lying, bullying, insults and
censorship and a lack of transparency.
Andrew
Bolt recently suggested the conservative side of politics is losing the
argument in the battle with the left and the Greens because the left is
passionate, aggressive, furious and full of rage. The conservatives are polite
and try to engage the left. It is impossible and the reasonable approach is
swamped by the fury.
The ‘debate’ in AGW is the same. I began debating AGW back
in 2006 in a calm, reasonable manner and was insulted from pillar to post and
called an “idiot” for daring to question my betters. I am not calm any more. I
still do the research but I respond to insults with insults and calling a spade
a spade. Given that the ‘science’ of AGW is such a mess the views of the AGW experts are worth no more than informed
citizens such as myself who are willing to express their opinion about the lie
of AGW. If that sounds high-handed
too bad
It is a pity that Graham Young has stopped me from doing
that on his site. At the very least, as Graham noted, his site is an opinion site, and my opinion is as good
as the opinion of any expert.