the Controversial Carbon Tax kicks in today

[George S.]

Carbon tax impact under scrutiny


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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 28/06/2012
Reporter: Margot O'Neill
Lateline looks at what impact the carbon tax will have on Australia's energy consumption and whether it can reduce the nation's emissions.

Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: This Sunday a price on carbon pollution in Australia finally comes into effect. It's painful implementation has taken a heavy toll on federal leaders on both sides of politics.

But just what impact will the carbon tax have on Australia's energy consumption and how effective will be in reducing Australia's carbon emissions? In a moment we'll be joined by the Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.

First this preview from Margot O'Neill.

KEVIN RUDD, THEN OPPOSITION LEADER (2007): The great moral challenge of our generation.

MALCOLM TURNBULL, COALITION MP: We certainly need to put a price on carbon.

TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER: It is a cost-of-living killing, jobs destroying new tax.

JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER: This is the right thing to do for a clean energy future for our country.

MARGOT O'NEILL, REPORTER: The Government says it will launch Australia's clean energy future. The Opposition warns it will savage the economy. But what if the carbon tax doesn't change much at all?

ANDREW MACINTOSH, ANU: Pretty much all of the analysis shows that the next 10 to 20 years our energy and electricity system in particular are going to remain much the same as they are now.

MARGOT O'NEILL: So after all the sound and fury, do we end up with pretty much the same dependence on fossil fuels?

HUGH SADDLER, PITT & SHERRY CONSULTANTS: There'll be really very modest changes in the energy system as a whole over the next 20 years or more.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Here's Australia's current energy mix. Fossil fuels at 95 per cent, comprising coal: 39 per cent, gas: 22 per cent, petroleum: 35 per cent and then renewables: 5 per cent. In 2035 Government projections show fossil fuels: 91 per cent, comprising less coal at 21 per cent, more gas at 35 per cent, petroleum: 36 per cent and renewables increasing to 9 per cent.

ANDREW MACINTOSH: This is sort of one of the great ironies. So much blood over such a modest scheme.

MARGOT O'NEILL: So will the carbon tax achieve key goals? For instance, how much does it contribute to cutting Australia's greenhouse gas emissions? Will domestic carbon emissions will continue to grow for another 15 years to 2027, not dropping back down to current levels until 2045. To cut emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 in line with Australia's international obligation will mean buying overseas carbon credits.

ANDREW MACINTOSH: Most of the cuts that we will get out of this scheme are gonna come via reductions in emissions that occur overseas, so we'll be importing permits. We're also likely to see some offsets in Australia through land-based carbon things, so like tree planting and not cutting down trees.

MARGOT O'NEILL: And how much does the carbon tax spur major investment in renewable energy?

ANDREW MACINTOSH: If you were looking for a clean energy future in Australia, it's not going to come through this scheme in the short term. This is a scheme for your kids and your grandkids primarily.

MARGOT O'NEILL: These independent experts doubt that $23 a tonne will drive radical reform; even less so if the price drops to the Government-ordained floor price of $15.

TRISTAN EDIS, CLIMATE SPECTATOR: I don't think anyone could pretend that $15 is going to drive a dramatic change in the economy. We need something more substantial than that. But it certainly prevents us from doing something stupid like building another coal-fired power station.

ANDREW MACINTOSH: The point is to signal to the economy in the long term, so that's over the 20-to-50-year period, that the current dependence on fossil fuels can't go on and that we need to start making - slowly making choices to shift over to alternative technologies.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Although once momentum starts to build, change could occur faster.

TRISTAN EDIS: Business will innovate and they'll come up with cheaper ways of being able to supply energy that might surprise us. And so we end up with greater change that perhaps what people are initially expecting.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Margot O'Neill, Lateline.

Retailers weary of carbon tax
June 28, 2012
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Retailers say they are nervous about becoming the ‘‘meat in the sandwich’’ when the carbon tax is introduced.

The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) say stores are in a vulnerable position as the middle man between customers and the supply chain.

‘‘It’s plain to see retailers are the meat in the sandwich, caught between consumers’ inability to justify discretionary spending and supply chain manufacturing unable to remain price competitive,’’ ARA executive director Russell Zimmerman said.

Advertisement: Story continues below
‘‘This is a dangerous position to be in and will cost jobs.’’

In a survey of the ARA’s members in 2011, 83 per cent said they expected consumers to spend less after the introduction of the carbon tax.

Fifty-six per cent said they would have to pass on their increased costs onto customers.

Retailers are also worried the government’s proposed household assistance packages will not be enough to cushion the effects on household budgets.

‘‘This will no doubt just be absorbed by the soaring cost of living,’’ said Mr Zimmerman.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/small-busin...#ixzz1zIyAxLd5

[George S.]

In defense of the Biggest Polluters
The Gillard Carbon Tax propaganda has completed its vilification, not of Tony Abbott again, but of CO2, by cementing into our vernacular that CO2 is a pollutant. Newspapers, politicians and various speakers on both sides of the argument now almost universally refer to emitters of CO2 as polluters, with statements like the “400 biggest polluters will be affected” and “big polluters will pay“.

The masterful word here is Polluter.

In fact CO2 is not even on the National Pollutant Inventory. I wonder why not? Is it because it requires by regulation to have some solid proof and not just mathematical models? More importantly, can the companies called big polluters sue the government for libel for having their reputation damaged?

But the damage is done, because ‘Polluter’ is the new ‘evil’. It does not matter what the pollution is, whether it harms, how much it harm. It’s simply evil and intolerable. Like child molesters, ‘polluters’ are absolute evil, there is no debate, no doubt about guilt, they instantly have no friends, they have no counter argument from what benefits their products give. They only deserve punishment, the harsher the better, and preferably be shut down for being polluters.

And so now it’s about punishment, not science or effect on global temperature. In fact, reporter Natalie O’Brien is more worried in case “Big polluters go unpunished” rather than if all this punishment benefits global temperatures. Yes, it’s essential for ‘Biggest Polluters’ to be punished. It doesn’t matter if they are in fact your Council tip disposing of your rubbish, they are the evil big polluters. It doesn’t matter if they produce the energy for your 30 minute shower, or your mother’s ventilator in hospital, they are the polluters.

So as you gradually accept that the carbon tax is about crime and punishment of other evil people, know that the evil enemy has been found and the enemy is us, in our normal independent western lifestyles.

And if you can you still remember the actual purpose of the carbon tax, it was supposed to be global CO2 abatement to avert what is now an increasingly unlikely mistaken climate crisis.

Marvel at the artistry:

Global warming
Climate Change
Climate Disruption
Pollution Reduction
Punishment of Polluters





June 30th, 2012 | One response
What Part of “NO CARBON TAX” Does Julia Not Understand?

With rallies being held in Melbourne and Sydney on Carbon Tax Sunday, 1st July to protest against the introduction of a tax no Australian voted for and one that will do nothing to change the climate, here’s a timely reminder for Julia Gillard:



Sydney: Hyde Park North, 12 noon, Sunday
Melbourne: Steps of Paliament House, Melbourne at 12:30pm

June 29th, 2012 | Leave a response
Tony Abbott forced to quell backbench climate rift
TENSIONS have erupted in the Coalition over a key climate change policy less than two weeks before the introduction of the carbon tax from July 1.

Tony Abbott was yesterday forced to stare down a backbench challenge to the party’s support for the 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target as senior backbenchers blamed it for adding to electricity prices amid a backlash over last week’s 18 per cent price increases in NSW and South Australia. Read more…



I believe the LNP has little to fear from going hard against climate alarm and wasting money on hair brained subsidised renewables schemes.

LNP will never get the green votes and the majority of Australian swinging voters are now fully sceptical and sick to the back teeth of climate alarm and price rises due to bogus renewable schemes. LNP should commit to review all climate and renewables related spending, taking into account the economy, cost-effectiveness and rest of the world actions. There is little harm in saying this. But then all this nonsense has to be cut out – put some money into real alternatives research and nuclear and get on with the real economy.

Drop a line of support to the only one scientist in the parliament: Dr Dennis Jensen MP in his quest to stop the money waste…and to Senator Ron Boswell.

June 20th, 2012 | 2 responses
AGW protester at Hartland (sceptic) Climate Conference


They are children, just children.

May 26th, 2012 | One response
A bit of climate fun madness from the EU

EU: “Science Demands” Co2 Emissions Reduction of 95%!
Yes, right after they fix Greece, paydown their debt and restore democracy.

German bourse scraps EU carbon emissions trading
Eh? in Germany? The grand central of Greens? Things are bad. Never mind, perhaps we can increase our carbon tax price to make up for the slack German Greens.

May 24th, 2012 | Leave a response
Eco-terrorism – coming to a town near you….
In the climate of manufactured death threats against poor climate scientists at ANU, the real terror is being waged by eco-terrorists in Europe:

Climate of Fear: Terror Campaign Against Scientists Very Real.
Posted on May 9, 2012 | 2 Comments
It’s a commonplace of the mainstream media that climate scientists and environmentalists are operating in a “climate of fear” under a barrage of death threats from hardline skeptics, determined to get their way using violence and intimidation. The fact that the threats mentioned turn out to be largely non-existent almost seems neither here nor there for the media. The story is never followed up. But the fact remains that there is a climate of fear. There is a campaign of terror being waged against scientists and technicians. The difference is that this campaign is being waged by environmental extremists and unlike the sceptic “campaign” it is very, very real. Read the rest…



As I’ve said before, for those who truly believe that the earth is going to fry from man’s CO2, these must be increasingly despairing times. If they truly believe we, the sceptics, are killing their children and our very planet by our inaction on CO2, are they going to simply lie down and prepare to die? Logically, we must fully expect increasing extremism and possibly violence against sceptics and society at large from these misguided people.

In this context, those who attack and dehumanise dissident scientists to the climate alarmist orthodoxy with half joking calls to blow up sceptics, bar-code everyone at birth, tattoo their foreheads and gas them should take care that they are not inciting to violence… like here.

May 23rd, 2012 | One response
Permalink


Everything about Craig Thompson and this Labor government’s protection of him, including the 3 year ‘investigation’ by FWA of a handful of credit card statements is a political cover up and corruption worthy of a Mugabi government, not an Australian one.

We trash the integrity of our political processes at our own risk.

May 15th, 2012 | One response
470 sceptic climate scientists are not lay people.


On the ABC’s Climate Change Q&A last week, the warmists as always, misframe the debate as being between climate scientists and the lay population, and thus between the enlightened and the ignorant. What is infuriating is that just as Nick Minchin and Clive Palmer on that night, the sceptics always fall for this straw man construct, hook line and sinker and try to defend it.
No, it is not scientist versus lay people, it is scientist versus scientist and the lay people, just like a jury, decide which expert witness is more trustworthy.
Let me use a scientific paper written by a warmist expressedly to prove warmists are right, to prove to you my point; the paper is by William Anderegg et al, “Expert credibility in climate change”, PNAS:2010.
In this paper, the authors identified the warring climate scientists:

We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers and classified each researcher into two categories: convinced by the evidence (CE) for anthropogenic climate change (ACC) or unconvinced by the evidence (UE) for ACC….We compiled these CE researchers comprehensively from the lists of IPCC AR4 Working Group I Contributors and four prominent scientific statements endorsing the IPCC (n =903)…. We defined UE researchers as those who have signed statements strongly dissenting from the views of the IPCC. We compiled UE names comprehensively from 12 of the most prominent statements criticizing the IPCC conclusions (n =472).

Now the authors go on to use almost laughable arguments to discover that believer CE scientists publish more articles with the word “climate” in the title and thus must be greater experts and to be trusted. But has anyone spotted the read data?

In this paper, warmist advocates themselves provide data and admit the argument to is between climate scientists, 903 alarmist and 472 sceptic, to be precise. What? Not 97% convinced vs 3% sceptic, but almost 500 sceptic vs 900 alarmist?

500 vs 900 ?

(And this even with the ‘convinced’ only needing to be safely “broadly agreeing” with IPCC while the unconvinced were “strongly disagreeing” despite the professional risks involved).

No, it’s not scientists vs. the lay public. It’s scientists versus scientist, and those scientists with reservations, especially after 12 years of no warming, have shown themselves to be far more credible. It’s time the governments started to hear the message from the vast number of sceptic scientists and not the politicised scientific organisations.

May 2nd, 2012 | 3 responses
In praise of the sceptics on the ABC
This is a thoughtful and broad analysis of the climate change debate well worth reading. It is presented here in full because it has been removed from the ABC website.

Oct 30, 2009

In praise of the sceptics
In a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900, the most famous scientist of the day, Lord Kelvin, declared, “Physics is essentially complete”.

“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now,” he said. “All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

He did note a couple of “dark clouds on the horizon” but expected they would be erased without much trouble.

One cloud was the puzzle about the constancy of the speed of light; the other how matter absorbed and emitted light. Just five years later Albert Einstein‘s theories about both would shatter Lord Kelvin’s world view.

Einstein wasn’t as arrogant as Lord Kelvin. He was to say of his theories, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”.

Karl Popper was enormously influenced by Einstein’s theory of relativity and three others: Karl Marx‘s theory of history, Sigmund Freud‘s psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler‘s “individual psychology”.

In the summer of 1919, Popper says he was “thrilled” by Arthur Eddington‘s eclipse observations which were the first confirmation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. But it made him wonder about his other pet theories.

“I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status,” he said. “My problem perhaps first took the simple form, ‘What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton’s theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?”

He noted, “my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power.

These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verificationsof the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still “un-analysed” and crying aloud for treatment.Popper became famous for his epistemological work demarking science from pseudo-science. It boiled down to testability. If a theory could be falsified by experimentation it was science, if it couldn’t it wasn’t.

So Popper would argue that to say any theory is “settled” means that you are not talking about science but pseudo-science.

By now it should be clear that I am building towards an act of heresy. In mainstream political and scientific debate today what held true for Einstein does not hold true for climate science. Climate science we are endlessly told is “settled”.

But to make the, perfectly reasonable, point that science is never settled risks being branded a “sceptic” or worse a “denier”.

“Denier” is one of those words, like “racist”, which is deliberately designed to gag debate. And what is wrong with being a sceptic? The Greek root of the word means “thoughtful” or “inquiring” and that used to be a virtue.

If to question a science which relies so heavily on computer generated modelling is to be a denier or a sceptic, then stack me up with the heretics and go find the matches. Because modelling is a black art and the models will be wrong. They might understate or overstate the outcome but they will change over time. Model failure is so common there is a name for it: model risk.

If you doubt how badly things can go with impressive models then consider for a moment the recent financial crisis. A lot of very big companies paid a fortune to a cadre of mathematics and physics PhDs, called “quants“, who developed models that were supposed to eliminate risk. Turns out they got it hideously wrong and some believe they made a bad situation a whole lot worse.

So, here is another piece of modern heresy, anyone who puts their faith in computer predictions of the future, is dealing with digital astrology.

But the climate change debate is worse still. You can be branded a denier if you accept the problem and question the solutions.

This really began to concern me last year when I included Professor Warwick McKibbin in a television news story about emissions trading. He was critical of the Garnaut Report and I got a complaint from a PhD student in economics. She said McKibbin was a well known climate change denier and the ABC should not be running anything from people who did not believe in climate change.

Leaving aside the all-too-typical, and deeply disturbing, demand that dissenters be silenced the other issue with the complaint was that McKibbin is internationally renowned for his work on climate change. He’s also a Reserve Bank board member and one of this country’s pre-eminent economists. He just doesn’t think much of the Government’s climate change solutions and believes he has a much better plan. He’s a smart guy; he might just be on to something.

So I come to praise sceptics not to bury them. Long may they prosper.

And here’s a final thought from Popper about the dangers of being too “credulous”.

“A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation – which revealed the class bias of the paper – and especially of course what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasised that their theories were constantly verified by their “clinical observations”. As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analysing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. “Because of my thousandfold experience,” he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: “And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.”

I was allegedly written by a well known ABC Journalist, who may or may not wish to have it attributed, so I shall leave it anonymous for the time being.

(Link included)

April 23rd, 2012 | 2 responses
Climate change denial not just for fools
Mark Latham, AFR

Mark Latham opinion piece in AFR this week deserves some kudos for intellectual honesty in admitting and being perplexed by the now overwhelming ‘denialism’ to climate change. He concedes this is not just by stupid people or due to brainwashing by the right wing. He philosophises the cause to be a new anti-enlightenment caused by the triumphalism of the materialistic in the masses and loss of respect for the notion of expertise by the educated middle class.

Mr Latham’s argument however is fatally flawed. He wrongly paints the conflict as between lay people and climate experts, which affords him the claim of disrespect for experts and science. In fact, the conflict is between two groups of scientists: between climate scientists using computer models predicting catastrophe and other climate scientists and scientists in related fields who dispute its severity and man-made origin. Hundreds of very high profile scientists and hundreds and many thousands of general scientists and PhD’s have dissented, presenting opposing peer reviewed studies, dissecting and criticising the climate models and stating rationally argued arguments and petitions against the catastrophic nature of any climate change, man induced or natural. Mr Latham, of course a layman himself, also fails to recognise that Climate speciality is a mixture of many sciences like geology, physics, statistics and computer science and that the ‘lay’ population has far more highly expert scientist in all these specialities who are more qualified to analyse their work and dispute methods and conclusions drawn in these areas. Still other experts in economy and industry are qualified to analyse and question the efficacy and efficiency of mitigations. Finally, even the complete layman can use common sense to detect futile gesture politics in self-damaging virtually unilateral action of a carbon dioxide tax, where the climate scientist has no greater authority.

The public then acts as a lay trial jury – deciding which opposing expert and argument is more trustworthy. Unfortunately, the alarmist climate scientists and their supporters in the government and green movements, have been repeatedly caught out exaggerating, possessing hidden agendas and even lying, and so they have been rationally found untrustworthy by an ever more sceptical population. Baa humbug anti-enlightenment , where is Mr Latham’s respect for the likes of John Christie, Ray Spencer, Nils-Axel Morner, Judith Curry and hundreds of other dissenting not denying climate scientists.

April 21st, 2012 | 2 responses
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[George S.]

In defense of the Biggest Polluters
The Gillard Carbon Tax propaganda has completed its vilification, not of Tony Abbott again, but of CO2, by cementing into our vernacular that CO2 is a pollutant. Newspapers, politicians and various speakers on both sides of the argument now almost universally refer to emitters of CO2 as polluters, with statements like the “400 biggest polluters will be affected” and “big polluters will pay“.

The masterful word here is Polluter.

In fact CO2 is not even on the National Pollutant Inventory. I wonder why not? Is it because it requires by regulation to have some solid proof and not just mathematical models? More importantly, can the companies called big polluters sue the government for libel for having their reputation damaged?

But the damage is done, because ‘Polluter’ is the new ‘evil’. It does not matter what the pollution is, whether it harms, how much it harm. It’s simply evil and intolerable. Like child molesters, ‘polluters’ are absolute evil, there is no debate, no doubt about guilt, they instantly have no friends, they have no counter argument from what benefits their products give. They only deserve punishment, the harsher the better, and preferably be shut down for being polluters.

And so now it’s about punishment, not science or effect on global temperature. In fact, reporter Natalie O’Brien is more worried in case “Big polluters go unpunished” rather than if all this punishment benefits global temperatures. Yes, it’s essential for ‘Biggest Polluters’ to be punished. It doesn’t matter if they are in fact your Council tip disposing of your rubbish, they are the evil big polluters. It doesn’t matter if they produce the energy for your 30 minute shower, or your mother’s ventilator in hospital, they are the polluters.

So as you gradually accept that the carbon tax is about crime and punishment of other evil people, know that the evil enemy has been found and the enemy is us, in our normal independent western lifestyles.

And if you can you still remember the actual purpose of the carbon tax, it was supposed to be global CO2 abatement to avert what is now an increasingly unlikely mistaken climate crisis.

Marvel at the artistry:

Global warming
Climate Change
Climate Disruption
Pollution Reduction
Punishment of Polluters





June 30th, 2012 | One response
What Part of “NO CARBON TAX” Does Julia Not Understand?

With rallies being held in Melbourne and Sydney on Carbon Tax Sunday, 1st July to protest against the introduction of a tax no Australian voted for and one that will do nothing to change the climate, here’s a timely reminder for Julia Gillard:



Sydney: Hyde Park North, 12 noon, Sunday
Melbourne: Steps of Paliament House, Melbourne at 12:30pm

June 29th, 2012 | Leave a response
Tony Abbott forced to quell backbench climate rift
TENSIONS have erupted in the Coalition over a key climate change policy less than two weeks before the introduction of the carbon tax from July 1.

Tony Abbott was yesterday forced to stare down a backbench challenge to the party’s support for the 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target as senior backbenchers blamed it for adding to electricity prices amid a backlash over last week’s 18 per cent price increases in NSW and South Australia. Read more…



I believe the LNP has little to fear from going hard against climate alarm and wasting money on hair brained subsidised renewables schemes.

LNP will never get the green votes and the majority of Australian swinging voters are now fully sceptical and sick to the back teeth of climate alarm and price rises due to bogus renewable schemes. LNP should commit to review all climate and renewables related spending, taking into account the economy, cost-effectiveness and rest of the world actions. There is little harm in saying this. But then all this nonsense has to be cut out – put some money into real alternatives research and nuclear and get on with the real economy.

Drop a line of support to the only one scientist in the parliament: Dr Dennis Jensen MP in his quest to stop the money waste…and to Senator Ron Boswell.

June 20th, 2012 | 2 responses
AGW protester at Hartland (sceptic) Climate Conference


They are children, just children.

May 26th, 2012 | One response
A bit of climate fun madness from the EU

EU: “Science Demands” Co2 Emissions Reduction of 95%!
Yes, right after they fix Greece, paydown their debt and restore democracy.

German bourse scraps EU carbon emissions trading
Eh? in Germany? The grand central of Greens? Things are bad. Never mind, perhaps we can increase our carbon tax price to make up for the slack German Greens.

May 24th, 2012 | Leave a response
Eco-terrorism – coming to a town near you….
In the climate of manufactured death threats against poor climate scientists at ANU, the real terror is being waged by eco-terrorists in Europe:

Climate of Fear: Terror Campaign Against Scientists Very Real.
Posted on May 9, 2012 | 2 Comments
It’s a commonplace of the mainstream media that climate scientists and environmentalists are operating in a “climate of fear” under a barrage of death threats from hardline skeptics, determined to get their way using violence and intimidation. The fact that the threats mentioned turn out to be largely non-existent almost seems neither here nor there for the media. The story is never followed up. But the fact remains that there is a climate of fear. There is a campaign of terror being waged against scientists and technicians. The difference is that this campaign is being waged by environmental extremists and unlike the sceptic “campaign” it is very, very real. Read the rest…



As I’ve said before, for those who truly believe that the earth is going to fry from man’s CO2, these must be increasingly despairing times. If they truly believe we, the sceptics, are killing their children and our very planet by our inaction on CO2, are they going to simply lie down and prepare to die? Logically, we must fully expect increasing extremism and possibly violence against sceptics and society at large from these misguided people.

In this context, those who attack and dehumanise dissident scientists to the climate alarmist orthodoxy with half joking calls to blow up sceptics, bar-code everyone at birth, tattoo their foreheads and gas them should take care that they are not inciting to violence… like here.

May 23rd, 2012 | One response
Permalink


Everything about Craig Thompson and this Labor government’s protection of him, including the 3 year ‘investigation’ by FWA of a handful of credit card statements is a political cover up and corruption worthy of a Mugabi government, not an Australian one.

We trash the integrity of our political processes at our own risk.

May 15th, 2012 | One response
470 sceptic climate scientists are not lay people.


On the ABC’s Climate Change Q&A last week, the warmists as always, misframe the debate as being between climate scientists and the lay population, and thus between the enlightened and the ignorant. What is infuriating is that just as Nick Minchin and Clive Palmer on that night, the sceptics always fall for this straw man construct, hook line and sinker and try to defend it.
No, it is not scientist versus lay people, it is scientist versus scientist and the lay people, just like a jury, decide which expert witness is more trustworthy.
Let me use a scientific paper written by a warmist expressedly to prove warmists are right, to prove to you my point; the paper is by William Anderegg et al, “Expert credibility in climate change”, PNAS:2010.
In this paper, the authors identified the warring climate scientists:

We compiled a database of 1,372 climate researchers and classified each researcher into two categories: convinced by the evidence (CE) for anthropogenic climate change (ACC) or unconvinced by the evidence (UE) for ACC….We compiled these CE researchers comprehensively from the lists of IPCC AR4 Working Group I Contributors and four prominent scientific statements endorsing the IPCC (n =903)…. We defined UE researchers as those who have signed statements strongly dissenting from the views of the IPCC. We compiled UE names comprehensively from 12 of the most prominent statements criticizing the IPCC conclusions (n =472).

Now the authors go on to use almost laughable arguments to discover that believer CE scientists publish more articles with the word “climate” in the title and thus must be greater experts and to be trusted. But has anyone spotted the read data?

In this paper, warmist advocates themselves provide data and admit the argument to is between climate scientists, 903 alarmist and 472 sceptic, to be precise. What? Not 97% convinced vs 3% sceptic, but almost 500 sceptic vs 900 alarmist?

500 vs 900 ?

(And this even with the ‘convinced’ only needing to be safely “broadly agreeing” with IPCC while the unconvinced were “strongly disagreeing” despite the professional risks involved).

No, it’s not scientists vs. the lay public. It’s scientists versus scientist, and those scientists with reservations, especially after 12 years of no warming, have shown themselves to be far more credible. It’s time the governments started to hear the message from the vast number of sceptic scientists and not the politicised scientific organisations.

May 2nd, 2012 | 3 responses
In praise of the sceptics on the ABC
This is a thoughtful and broad analysis of the climate change debate well worth reading. It is presented here in full because it has been removed from the ABC website.

Oct 30, 2009

In praise of the sceptics
In a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900, the most famous scientist of the day, Lord Kelvin, declared, “Physics is essentially complete”.

“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now,” he said. “All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”

He did note a couple of “dark clouds on the horizon” but expected they would be erased without much trouble.

One cloud was the puzzle about the constancy of the speed of light; the other how matter absorbed and emitted light. Just five years later Albert Einstein‘s theories about both would shatter Lord Kelvin’s world view.

Einstein wasn’t as arrogant as Lord Kelvin. He was to say of his theories, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”.

Karl Popper was enormously influenced by Einstein’s theory of relativity and three others: Karl Marx‘s theory of history, Sigmund Freud‘s psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler‘s “individual psychology”.

In the summer of 1919, Popper says he was “thrilled” by Arthur Eddington‘s eclipse observations which were the first confirmation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. But it made him wonder about his other pet theories.

“I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status,” he said. “My problem perhaps first took the simple form, ‘What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton’s theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?”

He noted, “my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power.

These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verificationsof the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still “un-analysed” and crying aloud for treatment.Popper became famous for his epistemological work demarking science from pseudo-science. It boiled down to testability. If a theory could be falsified by experimentation it was science, if it couldn’t it wasn’t.

So Popper would argue that to say any theory is “settled” means that you are not talking about science but pseudo-science.

By now it should be clear that I am building towards an act of heresy. In mainstream political and scientific debate today what held true for Einstein does not hold true for climate science. Climate science we are endlessly told is “settled”.

But to make the, perfectly reasonable, point that science is never settled risks being branded a “sceptic” or worse a “denier”.

“Denier” is one of those words, like “racist”, which is deliberately designed to gag debate. And what is wrong with being a sceptic? The Greek root of the word means “thoughtful” or “inquiring” and that used to be a virtue.

If to question a science which relies so heavily on computer generated modelling is to be a denier or a sceptic, then stack me up with the heretics and go find the matches. Because modelling is a black art and the models will be wrong. They might understate or overstate the outcome but they will change over time. Model failure is so common there is a name for it: model risk.

If you doubt how badly things can go with impressive models then consider for a moment the recent financial crisis. A lot of very big companies paid a fortune to a cadre of mathematics and physics PhDs, called “quants“, who developed models that were supposed to eliminate risk. Turns out they got it hideously wrong and some believe they made a bad situation a whole lot worse.

So, here is another piece of modern heresy, anyone who puts their faith in computer predictions of the future, is dealing with digital astrology.

But the climate change debate is worse still. You can be branded a denier if you accept the problem and question the solutions.

This really began to concern me last year when I included Professor Warwick McKibbin in a television news story about emissions trading. He was critical of the Garnaut Report and I got a complaint from a PhD student in economics. She said McKibbin was a well known climate change denier and the ABC should not be running anything from people who did not believe in climate change.

Leaving aside the all-too-typical, and deeply disturbing, demand that dissenters be silenced the other issue with the complaint was that McKibbin is internationally renowned for his work on climate change. He’s also a Reserve Bank board member and one of this country’s pre-eminent economists. He just doesn’t think much of the Government’s climate change solutions and believes he has a much better plan. He’s a smart guy; he might just be on to something.

So I come to praise sceptics not to bury them. Long may they prosper.

And here’s a final thought from Popper about the dangers of being too “credulous”.

“A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation – which revealed the class bias of the paper – and especially of course what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasised that their theories were constantly verified by their “clinical observations”. As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analysing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. “Because of my thousandfold experience,” he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: “And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.”

I was allegedly written by a well known ABC Journalist, who may or may not wish to have it attributed, so I shall leave it anonymous for the time being.

(Link included)

April 23rd, 2012 | 2 responses
Climate change denial not just for fools
Mark Latham, AFR

Mark Latham opinion piece in AFR this week deserves some kudos for intellectual honesty in admitting and being perplexed by the now overwhelming ‘denialism’ to climate change. He concedes this is not just by stupid people or due to brainwashing by the right wing. He philosophises the cause to be a new anti-enlightenment caused by the triumphalism of the materialistic in the masses and loss of respect for the notion of expertise by the educated middle class.

Mr Latham’s argument however is fatally flawed. He wrongly paints the conflict as between lay people and climate experts, which affords him the claim of disrespect for experts and science. In fact, the conflict is between two groups of scientists: between climate scientists using computer models predicting catastrophe and other climate scientists and scientists in related fields who dispute its severity and man-made origin. Hundreds of very high profile scientists and hundreds and many thousands of general scientists and PhD’s have dissented, presenting opposing peer reviewed studies, dissecting and criticising the climate models and stating rationally argued arguments and petitions against the catastrophic nature of any climate change, man induced or natural. Mr Latham, of course a layman himself, also fails to recognise that Climate speciality is a mixture of many sciences like geology, physics, statistics and computer science and that the ‘lay’ population has far more highly expert scientist in all these specialities who are more qualified to analyse their work and dispute methods and conclusions drawn in these areas. Still other experts in economy and industry are qualified to analyse and question the efficacy and efficiency of mitigations. Finally, even the complete layman can use common sense to detect futile gesture politics in self-damaging virtually unilateral action of a carbon dioxide tax, where the climate scientist has no greater authority.

The public then acts as a lay trial jury – deciding which opposing expert and argument is more trustworthy. Unfortunately, the alarmist climate scientists and their supporters in the government and green movements, have been repeatedly caught out exaggerating, possessing hidden agendas and even lying, and so they have been rationally found untrustworthy by an ever more sceptical population. Baa humbug anti-enlightenment , where is Mr Latham’s respect for the likes of John Christie, Ray Spencer, Nils-Axel Morner, Judith Curry and hundreds of other dissenting not denying climate scientists.

April 21st, 2012 | 2 responses
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