Nexus 6

Twitter

2009-04-20T19:17:00.006+09:30

Yes, yes, I know - no activity for some time. Been busy, but as I'm now the proud owner of an iPhone, I've taken to twitter. So, if you so desire, you can follow me at @N3xu5six.

See you there - and please be nice an provide me lots of links to other science tweeters.

Here's a little of what else I've been up to - starring my lovely lady friend in the background:

Andrew Bolt really is dumber than a juvanile sea-sponge

2009-02-12T18:13:00.003+10:30

Presumably his supportive audience are somewhat lacking in the intellectual department too.

Let us examine today's post:

The sight of so many people losing their jobs can still bring a smile to the face of a planet-saver like Ross Garnaut:
THE international economic downturn may result in a short-term benefit with a decrease in production leading to a slowing in the growth of greenhouse pollution, one of the Federal Government’s top advisers has forecast.
At least he makes the link explicit - the most effective global warming policies will make you poorer.

If Garnaut were to make the link explicit, he would have written 'the most effective global warming policies will make you poorer' or something remotely similar, which, of course, he doesn't.

And that's assuming by 'most effective global warming policies' Bolty actually means 'most effective global warming mitigation policies'. Who knows with our confused little fella. We've just lived under the most effective global warming policies for the past decade or so, which should be quite obvious.

But is the link even implicit?

Not unless you're logically-challenged.

It's fair to say that the destruction of our universe by trans-dimensional invaders from the planet Zorb would in fact slow the growth of greenhouse pollution. One of the few benefits, you might argue.

So, according to Bolty, the most effective 'global warming' policy must be the destruction of our universe by trans-dimensional invaders from the planet Zorb.

I, for one, salute our new galactic overlords.

First Dog's cartoon appeal on behalf of Red Cross and Wildlife Victoria

2009-02-09T21:50:00.002+10:30

Buy a signed cartoon from Australia's finest cartoonist. All proceeds will be split between the Red Cross and Wildlife Victoria bushfire appeals.

Fires

2009-02-09T07:23:00.002+10:30

Condolences to anyone who has lost someone close to them in the fires. It's almost unbelievable it has happened. The losses are so large. 108 confirmed dead so far. Many towns completely wiped out.

The conditions were the same here earlier on Saturday - 100km/h winds and above 40C. It could so easily have been us as well, as it was on Ash Wednesday in 1983. We were lucky. Many others weren't.

A parable

2009-02-04T21:18:00.002+10:30

Rod

2009-02-02T17:42:00.001+10:30

Renewable is lookin' good.

2009-01-29T21:24:00.002+10:30

Wind farms offend the delicate sensibilities of your average wingnut. I think they can be quite pretty.

Here's one on the Yorke peninsula that I took a piccy of on the weekend (click to enlarge):

Heat

2009-01-28T21:52:00.003+10:30

Fark it's HOT! part XXIV

2009-01-28T19:02:00.003+10:30

My Gods! It's 6:30pm and it's still 43.7C (111F). Major public transport failure. We've got another week of this (and being good citizens, our little household doesn't have aircon). The joy.

And Stoaty asks:

...if I could suddenly make the world, or at least this little bit of it, 2 degrees warmer all year round, would I be better or worse off?

I think I can emphatically answer in the negative. When these events are more common, that's problamatic.

UPDATE: Worrying developments. Phone lines down. EFTPOS not working in the bottle shop. Punters cannot purchase beer. Widespread unrest expected once people can be bothered to riot.

WOT?

2009-01-27T22:00:00.006+10:30

Denialists love to parse the language of others in the hope of a ‘gotcha’ moment. If only people could just read between the lines they’d see there really is a Grand Climate Change Conspiracy. Steve McIntyre, for instance, provides numerous examples of said parsing.

Super Awesome Award-Winning SCIENCE blogger Anthony Watts similarly loves the ‘gotcha’. Unfortunately, as Tamino demonstrates, he’s not the most cluey fella. Or in any way consistent, when it comes to it. For example; witness a letter on Watts’ site written by Ross Hays attempting to debunk the recent work of Steig et al. concerning warming in Antarctica.

Tamino shows why Ross is, at best, a little confused. At worst, completely full of cow dirt.

But what is Watts’ reply when Hay’s inaccuracies are bought to light?

Commenter D. Patterson asks:

Anthony, what is the basis for Ross Hay’s statement: “December 2006 was the coldest December ever for McMurdo Station”? When was it lower than -81C?

Anthony replies:

I don’t know, perhaps he’s got some inside information we don’t know about. It would seem odd to me, that a person familiar with the working of the press and science (having been a meteorologist for CNN and working in a science facility) would make such a statement, knowing that it could easily be refuted, if he didn’t have some basis for it.

Maybe he’s got some ‘inside information’!! WTF!! Were the thermometer’s children being held by Antarctic separatists, who threatened that the littleuns’ll swim with the penguins unless the temperature is reported as -60C rather than -257C, only to be overheard by Hays who’d snuck outside for a sly ciggie?

Or is there some other sort of ‘inside information’?

After all, he was a meteorologist for CNN and worked in a science facility. What is the possibility of a TV meterologist being a little less than honest?

Patterson persists:

Agreed. Tamino, however, challenged the claim using a graph indicating the McMurdo temperature for December was -60C and nowhere near the lowest December temperatures. Tamino appears to be using a monthly mean temperature. Daily minimum temperatures have been at least as low as -81C in 1977 according to HADCRU. Perhaps Ross can shed some light on Tamino’s challenge of Ross’s comment?

To which Anthony replies:

I’ll ask. Being a balloon met, he may have been referring to any level of the atmosphere and just didn’t qualify his comment well. Most of our discussion has been “grounded” so to speak, on surface data.

Hmmmm…..didn’t qualify his data well. Monthly temperature could actually mean daily. Could have been any level of the atmosphere.

Here’s my thinking McMurdo station existed on the…what is it….surface, and doesn’t exist on....um...other levels.

But I haven’t spent a summer in the Antarctic. No day-to-day experience.

Hay's reply, if it ever occurs, will be interesting. Not holding breath.

The Windschuttle Hoaxer revealed (II) - Katherine Wilson

2009-01-07T19:45:00.006+10:30

OK. OK. Bonnie Prince Charlie informs me he was out having his way with hounds and wild foxes or some such.

So who does that leave?

The focus is moving to weathergirl Katherine Wilson; Crikey contributor, anti-science activist and Quadrant loather.

Hmmmmmmm.

But, really, not a good look for Crikey as a 'new-media' news organisation if she is the hoaxer.

UPDATE: Some interesting, though uncouth, discussion in comments at Catallaxy.

UPDATE 2: It seems our Katherine was tried to hoax Quadrant before.

UPDATE 3: Suprise. Suprise. It's Katherine. Interesting piece of work. Doesn't like hoaxers, but consistancy doesn't seem to be her strong suit.

For a pointer on how she operates, here's a comment from Prof. Rick Roush at Crikey:

By an interesting coincidence, I was interviewed by the Age about Gould's Quadrant hoax a few days ago. I cannot remember even hearing of Karen Wilson before today, but have now learned that she has a protected website about me, which came as quite a surprise (http://katherinewilson.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/professor-rick-roush/). Why is it protected? No idea, but then, I don't know what Wilson has written there.

The Age reporter has brought to my attention that Wilson has a previous article in Crikey that mentions me and others. It has several errors, of fact and interpretation, including various accusations. Wilson never contact ed me for comment, and I doubt she contacted the others attacked in her piece. is there a mechanism for me to ask Crikey for a correction?

The Windschuttle Hoaxer revealed

2009-01-07T08:04:00.004+10:30

Strange whiny person - check
Writes Monckton-style with lots of pretend jargon - check
Hates biotech for confused, unscientific and discredited reasons - check

It's obvious. The hoaxer is revealed below the fold.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!

2008-12-24T08:09:00.004+10:30

Merry Christmas all! I'm off to visit family at the Sunshine Coast (which, for foreign types, is as nice as it sounds) and then spend NYE with friends in Sydney.

Warm weather would be nice.

I hope the new year brings the end of science denialism in general and climate denialism in particular.

Which is about at likely as world peace.

Have Fun. Drink plenty. Be nice to your rellies - even the ones you don't like.

Catch ya in 2009.

Kitten blogging

2008-12-21T20:46:00.003+10:30

No blog can exist without the obligatory kitten pics.

Here's a couple of mine from this arvo, starring Calcifer.

Well worth a read

2008-12-10T19:16:00.003+10:30

Local fella Mark Tester has been a busy boy knocking out a few articles of late. These two are really worth a squiz.

Firstly, in yesterday's IPA Inquirer, a look at algal biofuels:

THERE are many reasons for wanting to reduce our dependence on oil: the increasing cost, reliability of supply, finite resources, the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming.

Yet when people talk about alternative sources of fuel they mostly discuss the conversion of food, such as corn, into ethanol, which puts enormous pressure on food supplies. During the past year, demands for food and fuel have combined to drive up food prices sharply, which has particularly important ramifications in developing countries.

When one adds to the mix growing populations and global environmental change, with the pressures these impose on our ability to maintain high crop yields, the prospects for providing sufficient food for all are not good.

So, the idea of converting a significant proportion of our food into fuel for vehicles or diverting agricultural land to grow biomass seems misguided.

Although the growth of biomass on marginal lands has some prospect, the impact on nature conservation must be considered. Furthermore, the contribution that such areas can make to global liquid fuel needs will always be modest.

Marginal lands provide only low-density cropping potential and biomass from plants or crop residues generally has a low energy density, while a significant proportion of the energy gained from the biomass will be consumed in the process of moving the biomass to the processing centres.

Yet one group of plants could make a sustainable, significant contribution to world energy supply. They do not require agricultural land and need only minimal processing.

Single-celled algae can grow very rapidly in low quality water, producing biomass at 10 to 30 times the rate of terrestrial plants. They can do this mainly because the cells are immersed in a medium providing all their needs, including physical support, and so the cells have no need to build infrastructure to move materials and to support themselves.

Read the rest here.

The second is a provocative review, published in Science, of Tomorrow's Table by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak. The review mirrors many of my own thoughts on the subject.

The organic movement's opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops is causing it to miss an opportunity. Like agriculture across the planet, organic farming needs all the technological help it can get to be both sustainable and high-yielding. As with many recent innovations, GM technologies provide myriad possibilities for reducing the impacts of agriculture on the environment and the need for chemical inputs to maintain yield. But from the start, the organic movement rejected the use of GM crops. Genetic engineering is a technology, and like so many technologies, its benefits, costs, and risks depend on how it is used. A comparison with nuclear technology is not unfair: most of us benefit from medical applications of nuclear technologies, while many of us have major concerns with the large stockpiles of nuclear weapons that still threaten the planet. So, the risks of GM depend on the genes being put into the plants, not on the technology per se. Yet the numerous potential applications of GM to reduce chemical inputs to agriculture are flatly rejected by most organic farmers.

In Tomorrow's Table, we now have the positive aspects of both organic and GM approaches discussed logically and clearly. The delightfully constructive book was written by a talented wife-and-husband team: Pamela Ronald, a very successful plant geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer who teaches at the same university. The authors are eminently qualified to present authoritative descriptions of their respective disciplines, which they do in a readable and accurate manner. But the noteworthy aspect of the book is the way they then marry their separate fields to argue logically for the use of GM technologies to improve organic agriculture. As Gordon Conway (a former president of the Rockefeller Foundation) comments in his foreword, "The marriage is long overdue."

Read the rest on Pamela's blog.

Silenced

2008-12-08T20:27:00.012+10:30

That the Australian climate change denialosphere is being utterly and completely silenced by the Main Stream Media is beyond doubt. Andrew Bolt, Piers Akerman, Planet Janet, Alan Wood et al. of News Corp. - all gagged. Miranda Devine of Fairfax - suppressed. Michael Duffy of our ABC - mute.

Who could possibly know that a few emeritus wing-nuts and free marketeers who don't like the AWG-associated implications for their lifestyle have decided to deny its very existence?

Poor little dears, for they have no voice.

Sadly, the cone of silence has now further descended over those associated, directly and indirectly, with the Institute of Public Affairs. They've become terribly emasculated since the arrival of Tom Switzer, former opinion page editor of The Australian.

You'll note their absence via multiple letters printed in the Oz in recent days.

Jennifer Marohasy couldn't get a word in on Saturday:

PROFESSOR Marvin Geller says the sun could not be driving recent global warming as climate change sceptics claim because solar radiation has not changed very much since 1978 ("Professor sheds light for climate change sceptics”, 4/12).
But climate change sceptics do not claim there has been recent global warming. They claim there has been a levelling off, or fall in temperatures, over the past 10 years since the 1998 El Nino-driven temperature peak.

As regards the El Nino event of 1998, according to Professor Geller, El Ninos cause a temporary increase in global temperatures, not the steady and consistent upward trend typical of warming from greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. But there has been no consistent upward trend.

The same day, the journal Geographical Research published a paper suggesting a correlation between solar magnetic phases and the state of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation Index (SOI).

The paper, by Robert Baker, emphasises the influence of the sun’s magnetic field through the rate of ionisation—the rate of ionisation being affected by solar cosmic ray showers whose incidence follows the inverse of the sunspot cycle—not solar radiation as suggested by Professor Geller.

Dr Baker claims his discovery has important implications for drought predictions in Australia recognising the relationship between the SOI and rainfall in Australia and the periodicity of the strength of the sun’s magnetic field.

Jennifer Marohasy
Institute of Public Affairs,
Melbourne, Vic

Max Rheese, of Marohasy and the IPA’s astroturf group: the Australian Environment Foundation, has his very breath stolen today:

THE onerous implications of just one segment of the policy detail with regard to the introduction of an emissions trading scheme became apparent on the floor of the Senate last week, highlighted in the article “Communities sacrificed to carbon sinks” (6-7/12).

Contemplation by the parliament of taxpayer-funded concessions to schemes that will lock agricultural land into permanent carbon sinks and seriously undermine Australia’s food production beggars belief.
Bad legislation that betrayed constituents was reportedly on the mind of Fiona Nash when she crossed the Senate floor. Sadly, a greater number of her colleagues did not share her clarity of thought.

Permanent carbon sinks will not aid the forestry or agriculture sectors, will not enhance GDP and will cost the taxpayer a fortune, as will the introduction of this poorly conceived emissions trading scheme.

Adapting to ever-present climate change will mean changes to agriculture production to maximise yield and minimise impact on the environment. It does not mean shutting down viable food production and sacrificing rural Australia on the altar of citycentric climate change policy that has no proven outcome.

Max Rheese
Australian Environment Foundation
Benalla, Vic

Poor old Art Raiche, who contributes to Marohasy’s blog , couldn’t be heard either:

I AM surprised that a professor of astrophysics at UNSW, Michael Ashley (Letters, 6-7/12), is unaware of the work at the Danish National Space Centre which proved a link between cosmic rays and climate.

Its experiment, SKY (Danish for cloud), showed that electrons released from cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds.
As noted in Jennifer Marohasy’s letter of the same date, the reduction in solar wind associated with low sunspot activity results in a large increase in the cosmic ray barrage of the earth’s atmosphere.

The resulting increase in low cloud density will have a global cooling effect.

Art Raiche
Killara, NSW

Des Moore, also of the Institute of Public Affairs, like a mouse:

THE Coalition has apparently talked itself into a position of feeling unable to oppose government policies and legislation when it has either previously adopted a similar major change in policy to the Government, or because the latter claims electoral mandate.

Such is the pusillanimity that two important policies involving very major structural changes likely to have serious adverse economic effects, emissions trading and WorkChoices, are now in danger of being waved through with minimal questioning.

Is it too much to expect the principal Opposition political party to contemplate the possibility of either changing its mind or stating that the way the government proposes to implement the policies is totally unacceptable? What precisely does an electoral mandate mean?

At the very least, the Coalition surely has a duty to the Australian public to ensure that the likely consequences of the Government’s proposals are fully examined and explained in detail. No such consequential examination appears likely.

Des Moore
Institute for Private Enterprise
South Yarra, Vic

Imagine if they could speak. Imagine if they could sing!

What!?! There's no Barbarellas!?!

2008-12-04T21:00:00.003+10:30

Takin' one for the team and all that (or not). Poor lads.

Science Fiction

2008-12-03T20:30:00.003+10:30

Read about this little questionaire over at More Grumbine Science. I like me some sci-fi, so I thought I'd have a crack at it.

Here Goes.

What is your relationship to science fiction?

I occasionally pass an eye over the sites of Watts, McIntyre, Marohasy etc.

Do you read it?

If by read you mean that strange sensation of searing pain that passes from my ruptured eyeballs to my deadened synapses, then yes, I read it.

Watch it?

Like a particularly gruesome train wreck.

What/who do you like and why?

I loves 'em all. Their laughable attempts at denial, though initially effective at introducing doubt to lesser minds, have lost all worth now that the loony Right has fallen in Oz and the US.

What do you see as science fiction's role in promoting science, if any?

Showing what science fact isn’t.

Can it do more than make people excited about science?

Adding some links to cool Ninja v. Pirate sites would help.

Can it harm the cause of science?

Sure, if real scientists or the general public not twisted by inflexible ideology took any notice of it. Thankfully, they don’t.

Have you used science fiction as a starting point to talk about science?

Yeah, as the butt of many jokes and the cause of much hilarity. Once the crowd's warmed up, then I talk about real science.

Is it easier to talk about people doing it right or getting it wrong?

Getting it horrible wrong in a particularly embarrassing way is far more entertaining.

Are there any specific science or science fiction blogs you would recommend to interested readers or writers?

My favourite.

Prawn of the week II

2008-12-02T19:16:00.003+10:30

Jennifer Marohasy.

Jen started a recent post about denialist parliamentarian Dennis Jensen with a single breathless sentence.

DR Dennis Jensen BAppSc (RMIT), MSc (Melb), PhD (Monash) is the only member of the Australian Parliament with any training in science.

Now, exhorting the qualifications of an inactivist is standard denialist procedure. All those letters must mean 'smart'.

But the only member of parliament with any training in science?

Really?

No. Of course not.

A quick search showed that Jim Turnour, the Labor Member for Leichhardt, is also a scientist - an agricultural scientist, to be exact.

Jim is also, of course, Jen Marohasy's very own brother, and a pretty decent bloke, by the sound of it.

Prawn of the week

2008-11-25T21:48:00.004+10:30

Margaret Fulton.

FFS!

FOOD guru Margaret Fulton has joined a host of celebrity foodies to condemn genetically-modified (GM) food, likening the big chemical companies pushing its merits to Adolf Hitler.

Food writer Ms Fulton, along with celebrity chefs Alex Herbert and Jared Ingersoll, launched the Greenpeace True Food Guide Canola Edition 2009 in Sydney today.

The booklet coincides with the imminent entry onto the national market of Australia's first GM food crop, GM Canola, which is now being harvested in NSW and Victoria.

Critics say preliminary studies of GM Canola have shown it to be potentially toxic, partly due to higher levels of pesticides used in its farming.

Yeh, farmers like to pay more for their inputs just so they can have the luxury of paying more for their seed. Sheeit....makes Anthony Watts seem lucid.

The greatest failing of the modern Right is the assumption that AGW is a grand conspiracy directed by the Svengalis of the Left. It isn't; it's good science.

Similarly, many of the Left have an unfortunately misguided view of the benefits and risks associated with the genetic modification of food and fibre crops.

In my (reasonably educated) view, genetic modification of food and feed is an essential element of effective adaption to rapid climate change.

More on GMOs to follow in future posts. You enviros (especially the ones who keep sending me Green spam) ain't gonna like it.

Good on 'im

2008-11-24T21:53:00.002+10:30

I'm liking this Obama bloke more and more.

Andrew Bolt: Racist?

2008-11-23T20:32:00.004+10:30

The always excellent Possum indicates that's quite possibly the case.

One could only imagine the wave of angst that swept through his readership. With the toxic twins of Bolt and Planet Janet saying naughty things about the Liberals, and with Dennis of Shanahan getting sillier by the minute over the dismal polling – it was little wonder that large parts of the News Limited blogging section came to resemble the aftermath of the Jonestown Massacre.

Anyhoo, Bolt purchased a new calculator the other day – one that actually does real maths. His trusty old Casio AGW Denialist 3000 model he’s previously been using –the one that made statisticians and mathematicians across the country cringe in vicarious embarrassment, well apparently it’s seen better days and has been replaced by something that actually works. Rumour has it that Andrew handed Old Trusty down to Christopher Pearson so that he can do some more splendid psephological analysis for our enjoyment. Stay tuned for that dear readers!

To celebrate this great leap forward in numeracy, Andrew has been looking at immigrant crime and doing himself some subtraction, a bit of multiplication – and a hell of a lot of division.

Read the rest. It's very much worth it.

Is it just me or does the wingnut Right seem a little angrier since Obama's victory in the US?

I is back!

2008-11-23T20:31:00.001+10:30

Damn life getting in the way of blogging. Anyways, I'm back. Usual snark to follow.

Why Andrew Bolt is a fraud

2008-09-02T19:02:00.006+09:30

Bolt today, discussing this graph:

...the US National Snow and Ice Data Center finds the sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere steadily growing, not shrinking.

Steadily growing, not shrinking.

Just saviour that a little.

Steadily growing, not shrinking.

Ignoring the fact that the range given for the slope shows that it maybe isn’t increasing (it’s 0.7 + or – 0.7% remember), Bolt’s comment is a reasonable summation for July Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent anomalies since 1979.

However, since its peak in 2003, the July anomaly has been falling. For five years the 2003 extent remains unmatched.

Mean anything?

Nah…five years is too short a time period to sort out the signal from the noise.

Yet, here’s Bolty discussing sea level a short time ago.

The graph shows another surprise those models never predicted: the seas have stopped rising.

Yes, you read that correctly; the seas have stopped rising, based on just one year's data.

And then there's the false “global warming ended in 1998 or 2002 or 2003” meme.

What a fraud.

But wait, there's more....

2008-08-19T19:08:00.001+09:30

moar funny pictures

LOL

2008-08-18T21:39:00.002+09:30

moar funny pictures

Started by Jennifer Ouellette of Cocktail Party Physics.

H/T Deltoid.

Respect

2008-08-17T19:54:00.002+09:30

The creeks are flowin'

2008-08-17T19:48:00.003+09:30

So I went for a wonder and took some pics. As usual, click to enlarge:

It's been a particularly entertaining week....

2008-08-13T20:18:00.004+09:30

...with the contortions and inconsistencies of the denialosphere bringing a smile to my little ol' noggin.

But, sadly, my little ~~buddy~~ Toshiba laptop has shat itself. Blue screen of death, just like the Beijing Olympics.

Life won't be the same with some new wizbang supercomputer.

So to bring the mood down to an appropriate level, I've posted what I think is the greatest live performance of all time.

May I present, Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man covering Velvet Underground's "Candy Says"

Turn it up. Enjoy.

Michael Duffy and the $1000 Bet

2008-08-11T21:50:00.002+09:30

Our little tale begins with a post by Jennifer Marohasy entitled “Causal Linkage between Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming”:

I've been having some discussions with a colleague who has never thought too hard about anthropogenic global warming.

Anyway, he says there must be some work/some research results that have been published in reputable scientific journals that:

1. examine the causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and warming, and

2. quantify the extent of the warming from anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

What he really want (sp.) is links to research papers or citations to research papers.

Now, it’s up to you, dear reader, to decide for yourself whether this request was made in good faith or not.

It is a little strange that a person who has never thought too hard about AGW would want to overlook text books and the like, and go straight for original papers published in journals. Without the scientific context provided by a broad knowledge of a particular field, such papers are often impenetrable.

Having never dwelled upon the discipline in great length, I personally wouldn’t like to make the call as to whether this paper constitutes an unequivocal case for an unusual manifestation of acquired syphilis, for example. It’s just not where I’d start.

Maybe such reticence is a sign of my overwhelming conservatism. I dunno.

However unlikely the scenario outlined in the post may seem, let us assume it’s an honest request.

Jen decides the best place to put forth such a request, apart from her own blog, is in the comments section of a post on economist John Quiggin’s blog.

Then it gets serious.

Conservative radio host Michael Duffy puts up $1000:

I will pay $1,000.00 to the first person to provide a reference to the sort of paper Jennifer has described.

Commenter Luke immediately replies with:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7176/full/nature06588.html
Can I nominate the charity.

No reply from Duffy.

CoRev ups the ante:

C'mon Luke stop quibbling. There must be a seminal a paper or a set of "peer reviewed" papers that establishes these two core basics of the AGW theory. Otherwise, how did the theory get established?
CoRev, editor
http://globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com

Much commenting ensues on John’s and Jen’s blogs – some posts pointing toward some fascinating pieces of work published in the past, some inane in their content, and some typical denialist fluff.

I put forth the seminal work of Plass:

Plass, G.N. (1956). "Effect of Carbon Dioxide Variations on Climate." American J. Physics 24: 376-87

Though perhaps Revelle and Suess’ 1957 piece is equally deserving:

Revelle, Roger, and Hans E. Suess (1957). "Carbon Dioxide Exchange between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 During the Past Decades." Tellus 9: 18-27.

Unfortunately, one thing we can be reasonably sure of is that Michael Duffy will never pay out on that bet.

Why?

Because the questions are vague and open ended. What is a ‘causal link’ as defined by Marohasy and Duffy? Are we talking examining or proof?

Duffy is just doing a Kent Hovind.

Many papers examine such a link and many papers quantify the extent of AGW-induced warming.

So my question to reader is: What will be the CAUSE of Duffy to refuse to pay out on his bet**?

Will it be:
A. COS STONE COLD STEVE MCINTYRE SAID SO!!!!!!!
B. ‘Cause they’re all based on the outputs of models – and Jennifer Hawkins ain’t exactly MENSA material
C. ‘Cause climate science is based on chemistry, which is based on physics, which is based on mathematics...and there's no cause to believe the addition of a 1 to another 1 brings the total to a 2. None at all.

There’s gotta be plenty more. Bring ‘em forth.

**On the off chance I’m mistaken, and Huffy does pay out, I’ll apologise and donate $50 to the Heart Foundation (which, as a poor young scientist with a mortgage, is a fair bit of of my hard-earned).

Alarm!!

2008-08-10T20:56:00.002+09:30

A New Hero Is Born

2008-08-05T21:20:00.002+09:30

Cartoon of the week.

2008-08-04T23:04:00.001+09:30

From here.

Arthur Herman reminds me of a Grand Inquisitor crossed with a Nazi racist religious freak…..according to Arthur Herman

2008-08-04T21:55:00.003+09:30

Don’t ya just love it when the Nazi card is played? You’re pretty much assured of a rock-solid argument for which this analogy is put forward.

According to ~~denialist twit~~ historian and author Arthur Herman in today’s Australian (our only national newspaper):

The knaves today, of course, are the would-be high priests of the global warming orthodoxy, with former US vice-president Gore as their supreme pontiff.

All Hail, Big Al!!!

As Hume points out, the stronger mixture there is of superstition, with its ambience of ignorance and fear, the higher is the authority of the priesthood.
As with the Church in the Dark Ages or the Inquisition during the Reformation, they denounce all doubters, such as Evans or Britain's Gilbert Monckton as dangerous heretics, outliers in Gore's phrase: or as willing tools of the evil enemy of a healthy planet, Big Oil.

Gilbert Monckton. The 2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley who, according to wikipedia, was interested in archaeology, and pursued an active interest in heraldry, being President of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies for 35 years, from 1965 to 2000.

If there’s anything more evil than genealogy, I’d like to know what it is. That dark art might even allow an exceptionally knowledgeable historian to ascertain the difference between a father and a son.

This is not the first time, of course, that superstition has paraded itself as science, or created a priesthood masquerading as the exponents of reason. At the beginning of the previous century we had the fascination with eugenics, when the Gores of the age such as E.A. Ross and Ernst Haeckel warned that modern industrial society was headed for race suicide.

Yes, E.A. Ross, a communist racist, and Ernst Haeckel, another racist who believed racial characteristics were acquired through interactions with the environment.

Just like Gore.

And then as now, proponents of eugenics turned to the all-powerful state to avert catastrophe. A credulous and submissive public allowed politicians to pass laws permitting forced sterilisation of the feeble-minded, racial screening for immigration quotas, minimum wage laws (which Sidney and Beatrice Webb saw as a way to force the mentally unfit out of the labor market) and other legislation which, in retrospect, set the stage for the humanitarian catastrophe to come. In fact, when the Nazis took power in 1933, they found that the Weimar Republic had passed all the euthanasia legislation they needed to eliminate Germany's useless mouths.
The next target on their racial hygiene list would be the Jews.

So what’s got Arthur Herman all excited?

Opines Arty:

….believers in man-made global warming demand more and more money to combat climate change and still more drastic changes in our economic output and lifestyle.

The reason is that precisely that they are believers, not scientists. No amount of empirical evidence will overturn what has become not a scientific theory but a form of religion.

But what kind of religion? More than 200 years ago, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume put his finger on the process. His essay, Of Superstition and Enthusiasm, describes how even in civilised societies the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions when real worries are missing.

As these enemies are entirely invisible and unknown, like today's greenhouse gases, people try to propitiate them by ceremonies, observations, mortifications,sacrifices such as Earth Day and banning plastic bags and petrol-driven lawnmowers.

Fear and ignorance, Hume concludes, are the true source of superstition. They lead a blind and terrified public to embrace any practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly or knavery recommends.

So if one ignores the facts and instead believes in something else in the face of empirical evidence, who should they be compared to? If one is afraid and ignorant, who are they no better than?

Why, Nazi inquisitor religious racists, of course.

Let’s look at Arty’s score:

First, NASA had to correct its earlier claim that the hottest year on record in the contiguous US had been 1998, which seemed to prove that global warming was on the march. It was actually 1934.

Wrong, NASA never claimed 1934 what the hottest year in the contiguous USA. 1934’s temperature was never statistically significantly different from 1998, before or after a minor correction last year.

Meanwhile, the winter of 2007 was the coldest in the US in decades, after Al Gore warned us that we were about to see the end of winter as we know it.

Cherry pick. Short term events do not negate or confirm global warming. Globally, it was cooler in the winter of 1999 and 2000 (somewhat less than a decade ago). Al Gore did not warn that the 2007 US winter would not exist as we know it.

In a May issue of Nature, evidence about falling global temperatures forced German climatologists to conclude that the transformation of our planet into a permanent sauna is taking a decade-long hiatus, at least.

Wrong. They predicted that there will be no warming until 2015 (less than a decade again) and that it will rapidly pick up after that. Their predictions weren’t forced. Their modelling is not widely accepted.

Then this month came former greenhouse gas alarmist David Evans's article in The Australian, stating that since 1999 evidence has been accumulating that man-made carbon emissions can't be the cause of global warming. By now that evidence, Evans said, has become pretty conclusive.

Wrong. Tim Lambert exposes Evans’ fluff.

Back in the day both Vlad the Impaler and Genghis Khan displayed similar characteristics, let me tell you.

The Inaugural Archibal'd awar'd

2008-08-01T00:00:00.001+09:30

I'm lost for words.

Nexus demands answers...

2008-07-31T20:20:00.004+09:30

...but will probably get nowhere.

Tonight's Q&A features the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, Shadow Treasurer, Malcolm Turnbull, scientist and global warming activist, Tim Flannery, businesswoman, Catherine Harris and the Director of the IP and Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs, Tim Wilson.

Ah, Yes...the IPA., how they besmirch the good name of my favourite variety of beer.

Anyways, I fired off this question (though it's got stuff all chance of actually being asked, it'll sure give Tim Wilson the conniptions if it comes up).

As a scientist, it is clear that the scientific basis behind dangerous climate change is compelling, yet many media organisations give disproportionate weight to the so-called sceptics, though their arguments have generally been long debunked within the scientific community. Why?

OK, I could of phrased it a little better, but with only 40 words to work with, what can you do?

Live blogging on the iPod: most of the panel are impressive, ESP. Malcolm Turnball and Tim Flannery. Penny Wong is strong on policy, as expected. IPA guy not doing so well.

Is Steve McIntyre trying to have a NASA scientist silenced?

2008-07-30T19:56:00.002+09:30

Or is he just whining?

From Jennifer Marohasy via Benny Peiser:

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
--John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

On the same day, Climate Audit's Steve McIntyre concerning the propriety of a NASA scientist voicing a public opinion:

Although NASA employees are not permitted to do private work for their bosses off-hours (a currying favor prohibition, I suppose) - for example, secretaries are not supposed to do typing, over at realclimate, Gavin Schmidt, in his “private time”, which flexibly includes 9 to 5, has provided bulldog services on behalf of his boss, James Hansen, on a number of occasions.

It makes you wonder.

Andrew Bolt: Dumb-arse Pt. XVCIICXI

2008-07-28T21:52:00.007+09:30

Or should I rename this post: Why I should not cut and paste false data from other people’s sites, among other mindless errors.

OK, last post on Bolty for a little while.

Bolt posted some crapolla a while back that was supposed to, along with other equally senseless rants, make the (far) right wing of the Liberal party sit up and take notice. That, they did. The Libs are now split down the middle, with a slide into irrelevance seemingly inevitable as the denialists slowly gain ascendancy.

No surprises there.

Bolt’s schlock was torn to bits. It ain’t exactly rocket denialism.

Bolty fought back, posting yet more graphs.

And here’s where our lessons begin today, folks.

Lesson 1: Don’t cut and paste a graph based on what is well known to be false data. You tend to look like an idiot.

Bolty’s graph:

A graph based on the real data:

Not only were Hansen’s scenarios plotted incorrectly, the old incorrect version of RSS satellite temperature data was used. Eli has the details of this sorry episode. That graph’ll probably catch many a denialist yet, I’d wager.

Lesson 2: Don’t plot silly graphs that used two massaged Y axes to prove or disprove whatever it is you’re on about.

Like this:

Isn't it amazing how the slope of the [CO2] increase almost exactly lines up with the temperature!

Oh, hang on. That’s a graph I plotted with real data. It’s meaningless. It proves or disproves nothing.

Just like Bolt’s:

The relationship between [CO2] and temperature over time is a little too complex (and a little too easy to misrepresent) for our dim friend. I’m not even going to bother going on about natural variation masking rising temperatures over short periods. Or cherry picking start years. You all know what the go is.

Then there’s the posting of a 2001 IPCC graph as this year’s. Or Solar graphs and PDO graphs that show virtually no correlation with temperatures ever the past 60 years (if you actually bother to look). I could go on and on...but nah, I ain't going to bother with that either.

All I can say is, thank the FSM that the people Bolty has some influence over are no longer in power. Australia's certainly a better place for it.

Strange little man

2008-07-25T19:07:00.002+09:30

Australia's most well-informed skeptic fighting the good fight.

Utterly tragic, but in some ways a grim metaphor:

Homicide Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles said: “Sadly, about 5.30, a gentleman living on a rural property went out to put out his rubbish bins, went to a bus shelter and found a green shopping bag, looked in the bag and found the body of an infant or a baby, aged somewhere between one or two weeks and three months old.”
In the hysteria to “save” Earth from a warming that’s actually halted, we ignore a true and growing threat to children.

FDOTM's take:

Toon of the week

2008-07-21T21:03:00.003+09:30

New section - stuff I like. Today's from here.

The Joker Supremacy

2008-07-20T19:55:00.002+09:30

Click on the images to enlarge, as usual.

They call it life. Bah...old news!!

2008-07-17T18:43:00.004+09:30

I was disgusted to see these two advertisements on television last night. What about the silent majority I say!!! Won't somebody think of the children!!

The second of the two (with some discussion from the responsible ad man is here if you can't be bothered clicking on the link)

I voted for the second one BTW. Vote early and often.

Deliberately deceptive or just stupid?

2008-07-13T20:51:00.010+09:30

Little timee Blair loves posting this pic of current environment minister Peter Garrett having a yell some 10 years ago.

According to timee: Garrett's being nice to a policeman (that's sarcasm, that is)

In an earlier post, timee wonders whether Garett has apologised to said policeman.

Problem is, Garett clearly isn't yelling at the policeman in the foreground. Or maybe he is, and our copper's head is twice the size of Garett's and has a special super ability to avoid accurate camera focusing attempts.

Maybe, just maybe, Pete is having a go at whoever is behind the wall of coppers.

Just a thought. If only that photo was of an Iranian rocket launch - timee would have picked it straight away.

Is there anything more unedifying than…..

2008-07-13T18:50:00.003+09:30

....denialists who take advantage of the severe psychosis of a juvenile to smear the reputations of scientists and economists who accurately report the implications of their research.

According to correspondence in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry:

Clinicians caring for psychotic patients have long noted that delusional systems are determined by ideas and beliefs to which the individual has been exposed. We describe a patient with ‘climate change delusion’, a previously unreported phenomenon.

A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an 8 month history of depressed mood, social withdrawal, school avoidance, social anxiety, amotivation, poor concentration, anhedonia, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, insomnia, suicidal ideation and self-harm. He also described hearing his own voice making derogatory and command statements, and had visions of apocalyptic events.

Admission was precipitated by acute deterioration in his condition consisting of increased emotional distress and suicidal behaviour. Prior to admission he
was treated with fluoxetine (40 mg day 1) and olanzapine (5 mg day 1). The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of ‘millions of people’ through exhaustion of water supplies. He quoted ‘internet research’ to substantiate this. The patient described that ‘I feel guilty about it’, had attempted to stop drinking and had been checking for leaking taps in his home to prevent the catastrophe. He was unable to acknowledge that the belief was unreasonable when challenged. There was no history of substance abuse. Physical examination was normal except for psychomotor retardation and superficial forearm lacerations.

The final diagnosis was major depressive disorder with psychotic features. He was treated with oral fluoxetine (60 mg day 1), clonazepam (1.5 mg day 1) and olanzapine (10 mg day 1). After several days his mood improved considerably and he denied persisting delusional beliefs. The experience of hearing his own voice persisted, but he no longer found it as distressing.

There have been numerous reports of incorporation of contemporary phenomena, such as the internet, into delusional systems, but a search of Medline and Psychlit did not identify reports of delusions related to global warming. Climate change has rapidly become a dominant issue in Australian society. A 2007 poll found that 85% of Australians were ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ concerned about climate change, significantly more than the proportion concerned about terrorism. This case provides another fascinating illustration of the cultural and environmental specificity of manifestations of psychosis.

I hope the young chap concerned is still on the road to recovery or, even better, is already there.

No climate change here. Move along.

2008-07-10T19:46:00.004+09:30

Clearly the melting of the Arctic ended in 2007. The following graph indicates rapid cooling and a high probability of imminent ice age.

1934. 2008. Al Gore fat.

Woh....this heavy liftin' in the analysis stakes is gettin' a little much - better hand over to Jennifer Marohasy:

We have become familiar with this representation of global temperatures but it is contrived to emphasis difference and in particular the extent to which temperatures have increased from 1850 to the present. When the same data is plotted just showing the actual global mean temperature for the same time period, the trend is no longer evident, Figure 3.

Figure 3. Global Mean Temperature from 1850 - 2007

Climate changes constantly but in reality it changes not at all. So said Galileo. Never forget that.

The oztrayan hates teh science. part xixixviii

2008-07-05T21:53:00.003+09:30

What can I say?

Today's Oz....alert to all the facts.

Both now and for decades to come, what is needed is a rational, economically sound approach -- not emotive moral arguments or exaggerated claims. Nor should sceptics be silenced or sidelined. In proceeding with caution, governments need to be alert to all the facts, including arguments such as those noted by the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens reprinted in Inquirer today. NASA,he points out, confirms that the hottest year on record was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954.

Jebsus!!!!!...our national rag!

Could 1934 be worse than Godzilla? It's a question only the Oz could answer.

What I has been doing

2008-07-03T06:57:00.004+09:30

Time constraints due to thoroughly changed personal circumstances have prevented any updating of this blog for a while now.

But fear not – I’ll be back in action in the nearness.

Just a little note on what I’ve been up to for the past week or two. For the fist time I’ve had an up-close look at the pointy end of global warming: the disappearing equatorial glaciers.

Now let me be the first to say that to do so I flew on an aeroplane. Accordingly, as CO2 was released during said flight, AGW is disproved. One cannot fault right-wing bloggers for this piece of watertight logic.

Secondly, as the guides in the area explained to my good self, all the local glaciers were either receding or gone altogether. Excess glacier melt was causing damage to roads in the area, with many bridges no longer usable and some interesting 4wd-ing required to get to the mountains where the glaciers are having their drawn out last stands.

Again, I should note, the impoverished locals, whose families have existed in the area for untold generations, who were relaying these stories of the previous magnificence of the glaciers were clearly mistaken as free-market think tanks have already proven though meticulous research that all glaciers are actually increasing in size. If ever there were a case of well organised green radicals trying to thrust their communist ideology upon an unsuspecting world this was it. Of course I was disgusted and loudly explained, accepting no interruption, that these green mafia should stay out of affairs in which their opinion was clearly biased and learn to respect the opinion of expert denialist bloggers.

I imagine I achieved great success with my persuasive argument.

Anyways, here are a few snaps from my little high altitude climbing expedition (click to enlarge).

Anyone guess which mountain/glacier I climbed? Ultimate kudos to the winner.

Rocket Science

2008-04-23T22:01:00.009+09:30

The bloke who was clearly in charge of the Mars Beagle II debacle has finally been identified: Phil Chapman, the first Aussie astronaut.

Phil has since moved on to climate science:

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

0.7C in one year!!! F*#k me!! At that rate we'll be in an ice age before Kevin Rudd is out of power.

Well , yes, says Phil:

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

And just to prove that denialsts aren't dirty rotton alarmists, Phil intones:

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000 centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

Jebus, this stuff makes Monckton look semi-sane. And which national newpaper gave it star billing?

Why, the Oz, of course.

Data studied

2008-04-21T22:13:00.009+09:30

That The Australian hates science is a given. That a conservative Catholic Archbishop hates science has.....historical precedent. When the two combine, it’s non-stop laughs (though not nearly as funny as this effort. Bill Hicks should consider himself fortunate he’s no longer with us).

Australian Archbishop George Pell wrote a denialist puff-piece in the Sunday Telegraph and The Australian picked it up and ran with it today:

We can trust that Catholic cardinal George Pell has not had to resort to inside knowledge to play the devil's advocate on global warming. Like historian and political scientist Don Aitkin, Dr Pell has studied the data and rejected the claim that scientific consensus exists.

Just picture that: a bloke who believes in a particularly vindictive, invisible, human-shaped sky-dweller; who holds as a central tenant of his faith that some sheila didn’t get knocked up out of wedlock by her soon to be husband and wasn’t just a little bit untruthful to her dear son about the whole matter; a fella who would rather AIDS ravish the third world than people use contraception.

Now picture that same bloke lecturing the great unwashed on what the data say and what accordingly should or shouldn’t be rejected.

To be fair, there surely are some Catholic and other religious types who are able to quarantine their irrational beliefs from their rational analysis.

Pell isn’t one of them.

It’s about as likely as zombies walking the earth on a short term basis some time ago that Pell has looked at any raw data or indeed read any of the peer-reviewed scientific literature that underpins the theory of AGW.

And who’s this Don Aitkin? Oh, him.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, Dr Pell highlighted what he says are inconvenient facts for the climate change bandwagon. These included the declaration by more than 100 international scientists, some of them members of the UN Intergovernmental panel on climate change that attempting to control climate was "ultimately futile".

Oh...that data. Hang on...there’s more:

In addition, none of the natural changes observed with glaciers, sea levels and species migration is outside the bounds of known variability, including the warming of 0.1c to 0.2c per decades, in the late 20th century. But the 1930s decade was warmer than the 1990s.

The 1930s were warmer than the 1990s? Maybe I’m reading this here graph thingy wrong:

Or maybe Pell hasn’t looked at any data at all and latched on to second hand denialist bollocks confusing a so-called change from a statistical dead heat to a minimally-different statistical dead heat for 1930s and 1990s temperatures in the lower 48 sates of mainland USA, and confused that with global temperature?

Most importantly, the global temperature has not increased since 2001.

Even denialists who want to cherry pick temperatures from recent years to intentionally deceive don’t grasp at 2001, because pretty much all data series show that some intervening years such as 2005 were warmer. Get with it, Pell…..it’s 1998 you’re after with a spit on the floor at the mention of evil GISSTEMP!

We (the Oz) have always been concerned about the quasi-religious fervour that surrounds climate change…..

..so we’ll get some factually-confused religious bloke to show how it’s done properly.

Lordy me.

Kong

2008-04-09T21:43:00.005+09:30

Distinguished respected totally awesome academic is cool

2008-04-09T18:38:00.006+09:30

Deep in the bowels of a large Australian national newspaper lies the editorial bunker. The following conversation took place earlier in the month:

Editor 1: “Quick! We’ve got a whole lot of free space on page 1, page 2, the editorial page and our blog that needs to be filled ASAP!”

Editor 2: “I’ve got just the thing: there’s this bloke who gave some obscure speech a few days ago that denied anthropogenic global warming. We could, you know, use a little artistic licence, flush it out a bit, and we could fill all that up.”

Editor 1: “OK. OK. He’s a climate scientist, right? Plenty of experience in the field? Knows exactly what he’s on about?”

Editor 2: “Well……not quite. He’s a retired historian. Ex-political scientist too. But let me explain. It doesn’t matter that he has no formal expertise. We’ll use phrases like ‘respected academic’ and ‘distinguished researcher’ and ‘fellow of three learned societies’ to describe him. Fools ‘em every time. The last one’s a cracker, ain’t it?”

Editor 1: “So far, so good…but he’s gotta have said something pretty damn flash to justify all the coverage.

Editor 2: “Wellllllllllll….it fits with our right-wing editorial policy. And, as you well know, our news reporting is just an extension of that particular policy. I’m not even sure we actually do news any more, do we?”

Editor 1: “OK…what did he say?”

Editor 2: “Oh…I dunno. We’re too stupid. It’s all too big. A recent study of surface stations in the US showed they’re all situated wrong and we don’t actually know the temperature. That kind of stuff.”

Editor 1: “Hang on….a recent study? You don’t mean that silly surface stations mob who posted a few piccies in a blog with no actual analysis proving a spurious trend? The ones that think somehow all the ‘naughty stations’ are showing warming while the good ones aren’t, but can’t provide any evidence of that. I’m not sure that constitutes a study.”

Editor 2: “Oh come on….it’s not like anyone is actually going to check this stuff.”

Editor 1: “All right. Keep going.”

Editor 2: “Well…there’s a bit about…ummm….there’s no causal link between CO2 and rising temperature.”

Editor 1: “WTF!!! That’s basic physics from early last century. Are you sure this is OK?”

Editor 2: “Yeah, sure. He put a ‘but if’ in there first to make it seem reasonable. I’m thinking’ you might not like the rest though.”

Editor 1: “Do go on.”

Editor 2: “There’s a little about how we don’t know where the increasing CO2 is coming from. Only some of it is due to the stuff we’re doing. How it’s only a small portion of the atmosphere therefore it can’t have a large apparent effect. Oh yeah…there’s a bit about not being able to predict the weather so can’t predict climate. Models don’t work etcetera etcetera. All stuff that’s been said and thoroughly refuted a hundred times before but he’s…like…changed the order and stuff.”

Editor 1: “Aren’t readers just going to assume this guy’s an ignorant fraud?’

Editor 2: “Ah ha!! He’s got a brilliant strategy for that: the pre-emptive attack. He said he was quote ‘urged not express his contrary views to orthodox thinking because he would be demonised’. Put simply – ‘I’m going to be repressed!! I’m going to be repressed!!” He cunningly declares climate scientists are actually ‘climate activists from a quasi-religious movement’, which quite clearly isn’t demonising those who don’t agree with him at all, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Editor 1: “This is a bunch of crap. Even we can’t print this.”

Editor 2: “Yeah…I know. Hahhahahaha!!! April Fools joke! Had ya there, didn’t I?”

Editor 1: “Dammit!!! What do ya reckon pass it on the The Australian for a laugh?”

Thank you for choosing this planetary vehicle

2008-04-06T09:34:00.002+09:30

Now here's an different take on the old climate change consciousness raising thingo.

Here's a nice little song

2008-04-04T00:01:00.003+10:30

Listen to Antony and you'll feel a little better about it all.

OK, maybe not.... but I think I'll start posting a few tunes I like again.

'No Sun link' to climate change

2008-04-03T22:09:00.004+10:30

Most of you who pop by here would probably have seen this by now, but for those that haven't, read on:

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity.

The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.

The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.

But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.

Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.

This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.

Dr Svensmark's idea formed a centrepiece of the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

"We started on this game because of Svensmark's work," said Terry Sloan from Lancaster University.

"If he is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal."

Cosmic rays are deflected away from Earth by our planet's magnetic field, and by the solar wind - streams of electrically charged particles coming from the Sun.

The Svensmark hypothesis is that when the solar wind is weak, more cosmic rays penetrate to Earth.

That creates more charged particles in the atmosphere, which in turn induces more clouds to form, cooling the climate.

The planet warms up when the Sun's output is strong.

Professor Sloan's team investigated the link by looking for periods in time and for places on the Earth which had documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals, and seeing if that affected the cloudiness observed in those locations or at those times.

"For example; sometimes the Sun 'burps' - it throws out a huge burst of charged particles," he explained to BBC News.

"So we looked to see whether cloud cover increased after one of these bursts of rays from the Sun; we saw nothing."

Over the course of one of the Sun's natural 11-year cycles, there was a weak correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover - but cosmic ray variability could at the very most explain only a quarter of the changes in cloudiness.

And for the following cycle, no correlation was found.

Limited effect

"This work is important as it provides an upper limit on the cosmic ray-cloud effect in global satellite cloud data," commented Dr Giles Harrison from Reading University, a leading researcher in the physics of clouds.

His own research, looking at the UK only, has also suggested that cosmic rays make only a very weak contribution to cloud formation.

The Svensmark hypothesis has also been attacked in recent months by Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory. He showed that over the last 20 years, solar activity has been slowly declining, which should have led to a drop in global temperatures if the theory was correct.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its vast assessment of climate science last year, concluded that since temperatures began rising rapidly in the 1970s, the contribution of humankind's greenhouse gas emissions has outweighed that of solar variability by a factor of about 13 to one.

According to Terry Sloan, the message coming from his research is simple.

"We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right.

"So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions."

As I've said on this topic before: some one's gotta whack-a-mole, but it's a pity any good scientist has to commit their valuable time refuting guff instead of doing the blue sky stuff.

I've been out of the blue sky arena for a few years myself now too, but my own bit of recent work is off the publisher tomorrow. However, since I'm an anonymous blogger - no one'll ever know. Oh well!

Planet Fine

2008-04-02T22:28:00.001+10:30

Newsflash from expert journal The Daily Mash

I'LL BE JUST FINE, SAYS PLANET

THE planet Earth has dismissed claims it is in danger from global warming, stressing the worst that could happen is the extinction of the human race.

The Earth spoke out after a series of books, television programmes and environmental campaigns urged people to do everything in their power to 'Save the Planet'.

Earth, 4,000,000,000, said last night: "I'll be absolutely fine, seriously. I might get a bit warmer and a bit wetter, but to be honest, that actually sounds quite nice.

"Try living through an ice age. Pardon my French, but it's absolutely fucking freezing."

The planet, based 93 million miles from the Sun, said it was 'sick and tired' of being drawn into arguments about human behaviour.

"Look, I'm just a planet doing its thing, alright? If you want to live on me, that's your business, but I've got important planet stuff to do, okay?

"Try being in elliptical orbit for five minutes, or balancing your gravitational pull with a medium-sized moon. Let me assure you, it's no fucking picnic."

The planet said environmental campaigners should change their slogan from 'Save the Planet' to something more relevant such as 'Save Your Sorry Arse'.

Earth added: "Okay, so there may come a time when, for a variety of reasons, I am no longer able to support pandas, polar bears, and humans, but you know what? Life goes on.

"Who knows, I might end up being a haven for toads."

Wot Jimbo said to Kevni

2008-04-01T20:26:00.004+10:30

Shorter version: "Jimbo here. Sort it out, MoFo!!!!!"

Longer version:

27 March 2008

The Hon Kevin Rudd, MP
Prime Minister of Australia
Australian Parliament
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2600

Dear Prime Minister,

Your leadership is needed on a matter concerning coal-fired power plants and carbon dioxide emission rates in your country, a matter with ramifications for life on our planet, including all species. Prospects for today's children, and especially the world's poor, hinge upon our success in stabilizing climate.

For the sake of identification, I am a United States citizen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute. I am a member of our National Academy of Sciences, have testified before our Senate and House of Representatives on many occasions, have advised our Vice President and Cabinet members on climate change and its relation to energy requirements, and have received numerous awards including the World Wildlife Fund's Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal from Prince Philip.

I write, however, as a private citizen, a resident of Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, USA. I was assisted in composing this letter by colleagues, including Australians, Americans, and Europeans, who commented upon a draft letter. Because of the urgency of the matter, I have not collected signatures, but your advisors will verify the authenticity of the science discussion.

I recognize that for years you have been a strong supporter of aggressive forward-looking actions to mitigate dangerous climate change. Also, since your election as Prime Minister of Australia, your government has been active in pressing the international community to take appropriate actions. We are now at a point that bold leadership is needed, leadership that could change the course of human history.
I have read and commend the Interim Report of Professor Ross Garnaut submitted to your government. The conclusion that net carbon emissions must be cut to a fraction of current emissions must be stunning and sobering to policy-makers. Yet the science is unambiguous: if we burn most of the fossil fuels, releasing the CO2 to the air, we will assuredly destroy much of the fabric of life on the planet. Achievement of required near-zero net emissions by mid-century implies a track with substantial cuts of emissions by 2020. Aggressive near-term fostering of energy efficiency and climate friendly technologies is an imperative for mitigation of the looming climate crisis and optimization of the economic pathway to the eventual clean-energy world.

Global climate is near critical tipping points that could lead to loss of all summer sea ice in the Arctic with detrimental effects on wildlife, initiation of ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland with progressive, unstoppable global sea level rise, shifting of climatic zones with extermination of many animal and plant species, reduction of freshwater supplies for hundreds of millions of people, and a more intense hydrologic cycle with stronger droughts and forest fires, but also heavier rains and floods, and stronger storms driven by latent heat, including tropical storms, tornados and thunderstorms.

Feasible actions now could still point the world onto a course that minimizes climate change. Coal clearly emerges as central to the climate problem from the facts summarized in the attached Fossil Fuel Facts. Coal caused fully half of the fossil fuel increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air today, and on the long run coal has the potential to be an even greater source of CO2. Due to the dominant role of coal, solution to global warming must include phase-out of coal except for uses where the CO2 is captured and sequestered. Failing that, we cannot avoid large climate change, because a substantial fraction of the emitted CO2 will stay in the air more than 1000 years.

Yet there are plans for continuing mining of coal, export of coal, and construction of new coal-fired power plants around the world, including in Australia, plants that would have a lifetime of half a century or more. Your leadership in halting these plans could seed a transition that is needed to solve the global warming problem.
Choices among alternative energy sources - renewable energies, energy efficiency, nuclear power, fossil fuels with carbon capture - these are local matters. But decision to phase out coal use unless the CO2 is captured is a global imperative, if we are to preserve the wonders of nature, our coastlines, and our social and economic well being.

Although coal is the dominant issue, there are many important subsidiary ramifications, including the need for rapid transition from oil-fired energy utilities, industrial facilities and transport systems, to clean (solar, hydrogen, gas, wind, geothermal, hot rocks, tide) energy sources, as well as removal of barriers to increased energy efficiency.

If the West makes a firm commitment to this course, discussion with developing countries can be prompt. Given the potential of technology assistance, realization of adverse impacts of climate change, and leverage and increasing interdependence from global trade, success in cooperation of developed and developing worlds is feasible. The western world has contributed most to fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, on a per capita basis.

This is not an attempt to cast blame. It only recognizes the reality of the early industrial development in these countries, and points to a responsibility to lead in finding a solution to global warming.

A firm choice to halt building of coal-fired power plants that do not capture CO2 would be a major step toward solution of the global warming problem. Australia has strong interest in solving the climate problem. Citizens in the United States are stepping up to block one coal plant after another, and major changes can be anticipated after the upcoming national election.

If Australia halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2, it could be a tipping point for the world. There is still time to find that tipping point, but just barely. I hope that you will give these considerations your attention in setting your national policies. You have the potential to influence the future of the planet.

Prime Minister Rudd, we cannot avert our eyes from the basic fossil fuel facts, or the consequences for life on our planet of ignoring these fossil fuel facts. If we continue to build coal-fired power plants without carbon capture, we will lock in future climate disasters associated with passing climate tipping points. We must solve the coal problem now.

For your information, I plan to send a similar letter to the Australian States Premiers.

I commend to you the following Australian climate, paleoclimate and Earth scientists to provide further elaboration of the science reported in my attached paper (Hansen et al., 2008):

Professor Barry Brook, Professor of climate change, University of Adelaide
Dr Andrew Glikson, Australian National University
Professor Janette Lindesay, Australian National University
Dr Graeme Pearman, Monash University
Dr Barrie Pittock, CSIRO
Dr Michael Raupach, CSIRO
Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University

Sincerely,
James E. Hansen
Kintnersville, Pennsylvania
United States of America

Wot the f#@k is going on here?

2008-03-31T22:42:00.002+10:30

What is CO2?

2008-03-30T23:25:00.004+10:30

Stumbling around the internet tubes and I came across this site: Greening Australia. Well made site. Very pretty. Lots of good stuff about climate change.

Well, not quite.

See if you can work out what's wrong with this statement:

Plants and trees absorb CO2 for their biomass and then convert it to oxygen through photosynthesis. This process is known as the 'Carbon Cycle' and without it life on earth could not exist.

Plants don't convert CO2 to O2, they convert CO2 to sugars, the O2 comes from water (H2O) through a separate (though linked) process.

But wait, there's more.

This process is known as the 'Carbon Cycle' and without it life on earth could not exist.

What the ?!?! The carbon cycle is actually:

...... the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged between the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere of the Earth.

The cycle is usually thought of as four major reservoirs of carbon interconnected by pathways of exchange. The reservoirs are the atmosphere, the terrestrial biosphere (which usually includes freshwater systems and non-living organic material, such as soil carbon), the oceans (which includes dissolved inorganic carbon and living and non-living marine biota), and the sediments (which includes fossil fuels). The annual movements of carbon, the carbon exchanges between reservoirs, occur because of various chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes. The ocean contains the largest active pool of carbon near the surface of the Earth, but the deep ocean part of this pool does not rapidly exchange with the atmosphere.

I'm all for simplifying science and communicating it to the masses but when you can't even get basic high school biology correct - that's a problem. When you're trying to set an example - that's an even bigger problem.

Rant over.

Earth Hour

2008-03-30T22:12:00.003+10:30

Along with everyone else in our street we ‘celebrated’ Earth Hour last night. We turned all our lights off, lit a few candles, drank a little wine and did not much.

So did I really support it though? Well, yeah – kinda half heartedly at best.

I’m just not sure Earth Hour is worthwhile. I know – it’s about symbolism, and symbolism has its place and can be very important. Witness the recent apology by Prime Minister Rudd to the stolen generations.

As per usual, the wingnuts misrepresented and misjudged the situation. No honest person believed the entire point of Earth Hour was to reduce electricity generation and consumption for that one hour. We can expect ignorance and a large dose of stupid from that thankfully minor section of the population and they didn’t disappoint.

So what’s the problem?

I think Earth Hour is too easy.

It allows people to undertake a minimal and mostly painless activity that isn’t at all representative of an effective strategy to combat global warming. It reinforced the point that altruistic individual action is the solution, when it clearly isn’t.

Economists model individual human behaviour as that of the selfish maximiser. Sure, not everybody is, no one considers themselves that way, but a majority of people are a majority of the time.

If we rely on people being nice to stop global warming we’re well and truly screwed.

The only effective strategy is hitting the hip pocket. Carbon has to cost for everyone. Governments have to enact laws that ensure this is the case.

The recent petrol price hikes provide a fine example of how effective this strategy is. Oil prices skyrocketed. People bitched and moaned at the petrol companies and the government. Still do. Car companies built decent fuel efficient small cars instead of crap. People bought them instead of large and relatively inefficient cars. Car makers that couldn’t adjust (Mitsubishi in Australia for example) went broke. End result – many people are paying a similar amount (adjusted for inflation) to run their cars as they would've a couple of years ago, and their lives aren’t really the worse for it. Sure, their cars have a little less space and power, but they’ve the added benefit that they’re easier to drive and park, and there might even be a few less speed-related car accidents in the future.

The problem I have with Earth Hour is it’s akin to a few people going out and buying a big fast V6 instead of a big fast V8 and going “Look at me! I’m onto something here”. Everyone else still buys their V8s, some feeling a little guilty, some not. Up the fuel prices and all that changes.

Needless to say, a symbolic act by the people that made governments comprehend that real and effective action just might not be political suicide, well, that’d be something.

Teh Great Outdoors

2008-03-25T23:21:00.003+10:30

I grew up in what mostly outsiders refer to as the 'outback'. In my case, that was anything west of about Roma I guess. Nowadays I live in the city but pop out to the SA nether regions once or so a year. Here's a few more images of the Flinders Ranges I took over Easter. If you're visiting Oz - make sure you get there.

An Aussie Easter Image

2008-03-24T22:45:00.004+10:30

Here's the wonderful Wilpena Pound illuminated by the glow of a full moon (click on the image to enlarge). I've a few more shots I'll put up of this amazing area in the next day or two.

Lesson 3

2008-03-18T23:38:00.002+10:30

Bolt caught deceiving (yet again)

2008-03-17T08:33:00.008+10:30

This is quite funny. According to Andrew Bolt, evil cherry-picking scientists are saying heat-waves such as the current one we are undergoing in Adelaide could become more common in a warmer world. This a a tewwible crime!

And just to prove he's shooting for dux of the class in the Nexus 6 School of Denial, he's followed lesson 2: Make shit up.

Bolt displays this image to prove that it's actually really, really cold somewhere else in the world. According to Bolt: near New York right now.

Unfortunately for the screachy one, the image is from North Eastern Canada in 2004.

Poor Bolty.

UPDATE: In a stunning move, Bolt has recanted his entire post, apologised to the CSIRO for smearing their good name and humbly prostrated himself in front of his readers and begged for forgiveness for his deception of publishing a 4 year-old Canadian photo as a counterpoint to the record current Adelaide heat-wave:

Readers say the above image sent by Janek was from Japan, or Canada, or somewhere else not enjoying Adelaide’s bit of heat.

What a twat. Admit you screwed up ya tosser!! It's an old photo, probably taken in winter, from an area that snows a lot. Kind of like saying Milli Vanilli proves 21st century Rock is dead!

However, Bolt, true to form, just digs a little deeper in the snow:

But for those wanting a newer picture, here’s one of the Ottawa garages crushed by Canada’s huge snows:

How would the CSIRO spin this?

I dunno, Bolty. Perhaps they'd look at the temperatures for Ottawa this month. Perhaps they'd compare them to historical temperatures for the month of March. Maybe, just maybe, they'd opine that Ottawa's March temperatures haven't been extreme, either up or down, at all.

One thing I would be reasonably sure of though, they wouldn't be stupid enough to confuse high snowfall with low temperature.

Northern Lights

2008-03-16T23:07:00.004+10:30

Here's some pics I took of the Northern Lights projections in North Tce, Adelaide:

Plenty more below the fold.

Fark, it's hot (part III)

2008-03-16T22:37:00.002+10:30

Goddammit....it's still going. Definitely uncharted territory now - by far Adelaide's (or any Australian capital city's) longest ever heat-wave (Days > 35C/95F) . 15 friggin' days and counting - thankfully, tomorrow is expected to be the last scorcher. Good on the Fireies for sorting out the amazingly few fires that have occurred over the past few days. The arrest of one of the major Hills arsonists last year seems to have had a rather positive effect.

Looking forward to a cooler Easter - pubs must be near out of beer now. Could be riots ;)

Scholarly wingnut

2008-03-16T20:18:00.002+10:30

Andrew Bolt is perhaps the most scientifically challenged of all the Australian bloggers who commit a fair portion of their posts to climate change (and that sure is saying something, though to be fair, Tim Blair ain't exactly Arrhenius either).

But it's good to see he's being studying hard at the institution known as none other than the Nexus 6 School of Denial. Ever a committed, if slightly dim, student, Bolt took a whole five days to adapt the lessons learnt from this particular cartoon to the Adelaide heat-wave situation.

The CSIRO’s global warming alarmists talk up a hot burst in Adelaide:

CSIRO principal research scientist Kevin Hennessy said the current heat wave was consistent with predictions of future extreme temperatures.

If a week of hot weather in Adelaide is evidence of global warming to the CSIRO, what does the CSIRO think three months of colder weather around the whole globe prove?

“Cherry-picking” hardly describes this.

Nothing if not predictable is the angry little fella.

Solar bollocks

2008-03-13T23:19:00.005+10:30

Some one's gotta wack-a-mole. Good on Mike Lockwood for doing the deed (yet again). Unsurprisingly, solar variation, cosmic rays, unicorns etc. are not the major cause of recent warming.

To help nail down the effect of solar radiation, geophysicist Mike Lockwood of the University of Southampton, U.K., examined data available since 1955 on the monthly average output of the sun, including sunspots, magnetic activity, and cosmic-ray variations. Then he compared those data, month by month, with average global temperature records, as well as El Niño- and La Niña-induced weather cycles and the atmospheric effects of major volcanic eruptions. The result, Lockwood and colleagues report in two papers published online this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, is that for the past half-century, the sun has exerted only a small influence on climate--about 3% compared with the warming influence of greenhouse gases and natural climate cycles.

Lockwood says a key advantage of his approach is that he relied on hard data rather than computer models. "One problem that crops up [in the climate discussion] is that scientists use complex models that nonspecialists don't understand and therefore don't trust," he explains.

Lockwood's research represents "a solid look at whether global temperature increases are being driven by changes in the brightness of the sun," says geophysicist Dáithí Stone of the University of Oxford in the U.K. The work suggests that "there is basically no way that this can be the case," he says.

Colour me shocked!

Fark it's hot (Pt. II)

2008-03-13T22:56:00.002+10:30

Today we beat the record for the longest heat-wave of any Australian capital city (Marble Bar's 160 day record ain't under any threat though). Many are starting to freak out a little as 30 knot winds started today and are predicted to last for a couple of days yet. Fires are already happening. People are shitting themselves that a repeat of the horrific Ash Wednesday fires may be on the cards. We just bought our first house in the Adelaide Hills so we're a little apprehensive at the moment. Chances are all will be OK, but the likelihood that this will become a once every few years event, rather than a once in every 50 year event, is a little worrying.

Lesson 2

2008-03-12T23:04:00.002+10:30

Fark, it's hot here!

2008-03-12T19:07:00.004+10:30

rAdelaide, ma' base, hit the record for the longest heat wave (days above 35C) in 121 years of recorded temperatures yesterday, the ninth scorcher in a row. Not that amazing, you may think, as there have been eight other occasions of eight day heat waves (the most recent being in 2004). Here's the thing though, temperatures are not expected to dip until at least next Wednesday, meaning we are looking at a doubling of the previous record. Goddamn!! And it's not even summer any more here! So what have 'teh evil climate larmists' got to say:

Bureau of Meteorology South Australian regional director Andrew Watson said Adelaide was entering a new era of high temperatures.
"Twenty years ago the same meteorology would not have produced the same temperatures," he said. "We are very confident that this is correlated to a general warming of the atmosphere."

National Climate Centre climatologist Blair Trewin said a 14-day record would place Adelaide "off the scale" of Australian temperature records. "It will go down as one of the most significant prolonged heatwaves anywhere in Australia," Dr Trewin said.

Beer haulage trucks will need armed guards Mad Max style soon.

Anyways, I think we can be fairly confidant about what'll happen next: wingnuts will claim that the surface stations are broken and we're actually undergoing a frigidly cold snap, thus disproving global warming. I'd put money on it if I were a betting man.

Lesson 1

2008-03-11T20:56:00.004+10:30

The Times Online Top 50 Eco Blogs

2008-03-06T18:10:00.004+10:30

The chaps at Times Online have voted yours truly's little home as one of the top 50 eco blogs getting around at the moment. Good on 'em (though I suspect they'd might have wanted to take it back if they had of known I'm quite partial to things like GMOs and nuclear power stations - hahahahah!!!).

Anyways, pop over there to see who else makes the cut.

Rejected. Pt. II

2008-03-05T22:15:00.005+10:30

In part I we looked at the Margin of Error (MOE) of the Brown et al. survey of climate scientists. Assuming a random sample, the poll displayed a range of opinion among climate scientists concerning the position set forth by the IPCC. Even taking into account the fairly large MOE, the poll indicates a lack of complete consensus. There are, however, a number of other sources of error which in my view would and should prevent any half-decent journal publishing the poll in its present from (E&E would jump at it, I'm sure).

According to Harris Interactive, other common poll errors include:

- Non-response errors
- Errors due to question wording or order
- Errors due to interviewers
- Weighting errors

Let’s look at the first error as it would possibly apply to the Brown et al. poll.

Of the 1807 people who were contacted, 140 responded. From what I understand of political polls, this is an average response rate. Did the sampled persons differ, as a group, in any meaningful way in their preferences and attitudes to those who did reply?

Quite possibly.

The authors analyse this problem in their paper:

On the coverage and responses, there are large discrepancies between the numbers of responses from various countries. The lack of response from China, along with the number of ‘message failure’ automated response, suggest that few, if any, of the scientists in that country received the email. This is interpreted as a function of a server error or malfunction. The relatively large responses from the United States and the United Kingdom are, at least in part, a function of the language in which the poll was constructed (although almost all climate change research is in English); no translations were made; all enquiries were in English. It should also be noted, though, that the Global community of scientists involved in climate related disciplines is heavily skewed, with a large proportion of the work taking place in US and EU academic and state institutions. Therefore, though the language bias is likely to have suppressed the level of response from countries where English is not the common language, the international range and proportion of responses is interpretable as broadly representative of the community as a whole.

OK, so far, so good. But...

One consequence of the diverse and relatively low response rate from countries other than the USA and, to a lesser extent, the UK, however, is that no statistically meaningful international comparisons can be made at this time, though a comparison of scientific opinion from those who responded within the USA and in `other countries’ collectively is possible.

If no statistically meaningful international comparisons can be made, according to the authors’ own opinion, why is the following in the main body of the paper?

In addition, responses were broken down by country of response. By applying a numerical value to the responses it is possible to see interesting differences between opinions within the USA and outside, in particular in EU countries. The mean score was 5.0, (where 5.0 means agreement with the IPCC WG Report). In the USA, the mean response was 4.8, compared to 5.2 in all other countries, and 5.6 in EU countries. The scientists based in the USA who replied to the survey are slightly more in disagreement with the Report than scientists outside, and scientists based in the EU (with particularly strong signals [5.9] from a small sample coming from Germany), tend to be more ‘alarmed’ than in other countries. Another small response, from Mexico, showed anomalously large concern, scoring 6.3).

Gawd, at least put standard deviations in!!

Most importantly, the lack of replies from whole demographic groups not only serves to invalidate the comparison between these groups, it potentially invalidates the entire survey.

James Annan sort of gets it here:

Of course the main weakness is in the response rate of ~10%: that leaves open the possibility that the 90% non-responders were either all firmly supportive of the IPCC and saw the poll as a bit of irresponsible trouble-making that didn't justify a response, or all so thoroughly alienated and marginalised by the IPCC that they don't have the energy to grumble about it. Personally, I think the first of these is much closer to the truth, but it seems we will never know for sure.

But then completely misses the mark:

Of course, all surveys suffer from this problem to some extent. I bet all the current polls on Clinton vs Obama have enough refusals to completely dominate the result, were they all to end up on one side of the fence. Yet you don't see reports saying "Clinton 22%, Obama 24%, and the other 54% slammed the phone down".

Just having people refuse isn’t necessarily the problem. It's only a problem if those people refusing would have answered, as a group, differently to those who did reply. As I said in Pt. I, Australian polls, often with high refusal rates, are generally extremely accurate, with the final election results usually falling with the MOE of most of the big polls (It helps a lot that we all have to vote so the survey can be compared directly to the results – unlike the US).

The problem with this specific poll is that not only have entire countries been skipped, it's entirely likely that the S. Freds and the Pat Michaels would have been far more likely to respond. A statistically significant denial of the IPCC position (on the 'it’s all overblown' side, of course) would help them propagate the 'consensus is dead' meme they work so hard in spreading (As an aside, why is it that denialists never seek to kill the 'IPCC consensus' by showing that many scientists and their peer-reviewed papers clearly believe that the IPCC is being far too conservative? It’s almost as if consensus-breaking only works one way. Disingenuous or dishonest? You decide.)

On its own, the non-response error is possibly not fatal – but the errors are sure starting to add up.

More in Pt. III.

Rejected! Conspiracy? No! (Pt. 1)

2008-03-04T22:27:00.011+10:30

A recent paper submitted to EOS and Nature Precedings by Fergus Brown, James Annan and Roger Pielke Sr. was summarily rejected (Roger’s bold, not mine). The paper, published on RPJ Sr.’s site, concerned a poll, carried out by the authors via email, that demonstrated a range of opinion among main-stream climate scientists concerning the ‘IPCC consensus’. Unsurprisingly, most thought that the IPCC WG1 report was pretty much correct, some thought it was too conservative and some thought it went too far. No one denied global warming.

So, what’s the problem?

All of the authors are switched on people who know their climate science. But when it comes to polling their expertise leaves a little to be desired of, and it shows in their paper. It shouldn’t be published in its current form. Not because of a conspiracy. Not because its conclusions are necessarily wrong. It’s just that the mostly ignored potential statistical errors made the conclusions just as likely as not invalid. Simple as that.

Now, I’m not an expert in polling myself. Far from it. However, avidly reading the excellent Possum’s Pollytics during the run up to the recent Australian Federal election, I got a bit of a feel for the subject (If I ever did get around to doing the best blogs of ’07, Possum would have won it by a country mile). When you do a poll, there are some things you have to do to have it taken seriously, and some things you really shouldn't do. In my always humble opinion, the Brown et al. survey falls well short.

Unfortunately, the consequence of the rejection means that Roger is alluding to a cover up and the denialist blogosphere has latched on and started screaming. As always, it would have been far better if some reason from the reviewer/s had been given for the rejection, and a chance given to fix the errors.

So what’s the problem?

Part 1 of this post will look at the most obvious.

Don’t publish a poll without ‘teh MOE’. It’s the good ‘ol Margin Of Error and it needs to be there. Otherwise, the poll looks amateur. Using a certain confidence interval (the most common is 95%), you can easily calculate the percentage of the entire population, as represented by your sample, that will give the affirmative for a particular answer (though you’ll be wrong 5% of the time, hence the 95% interval!). The formula for a 95% confidence interval is 1.96 *sqrt((p(1-p)/n)) when p is the popn % that gave the affirmative to that particular answer and n is the sample size.

So let’s look at the Brown et al. sample. To simplify, I’ve taken the no. of people who supported a particular answer and half the no. of people who split between the two answers on either side (The total still = 100%).

57% of people ticked answer no.5. n = 140, therefore the MOE= 8.2%. So the percentage of the population of climate scientists GIVEN A PERFECTLY RANDOM SAMPLE who would answer yes to no.5 is likely to be between 48.8% and 65.2%, with a 5% chance that the true percentage lies outside of these values. I’ve plotted the MOES for all the answers below:

As you can see, if the sample taken was perfectly random and no other errors were introduced (A proposition that is highly unlikely, which I’ll cover in Part 2), it’s likely that there isn’t a ‘100%’ consensus of scientists that support the IPCC position. However, a poll with a simple MOE of around 8% is just not considered overly valid. Most political polls in Oz come in with a MOE of around 3%, and I suspect a reputable journal would want something similar before they’d publish it.

It’s important to note that this is separate, though related, issue to the ‘low’ response rate. Put simply, the sample size is too small. 1000 people can give a fairly accurate representation of 100 million voters, 140 people can't give an accurate representation of even a few tens of thousands of climate scientists (or less).

Yes, there probably isn't a perfect consensus. Can that be quantified by the survey? No.

SORRY

2008-02-13T08:39:00.000+10:30

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.”

'Cause Descartes Said So!

2008-02-05T23:05:00.000+10:30

Hypothetically speaking

2008-02-04T21:50:00.000+10:30

I must say, now that I’ve turned to the denialist side, I see things a little differently.

Oops, did I just say denialist? I meant skeptic……don’t want to be associated with the holocaust or anything. Did anyone actually catch us raping, pillaging, indiscriminately killing or denying that such things may or may not have occurred? No. So that’s settled. Skeptic it is.

I really like the form of William M. Briggs. Fancy asking: “Is climatology a pseudoscience?” Briggs, in a fit of mind-bending intuition, wrote the following hypothetical:

...suppose, if you are able, that significant man-made climate change is false; further, that it cannot happen, and that all changes to the climate system are due to external forcings, such as those caused by changes in solar output. Just suppose all this is true for the sake of argument.
Now put yourself in the place of a climatologist, one of the many hundreds, in fact, who was involved with the IPCC and so shared in that great validator, the Nobel Peace Prize*. You have spent a career devoted to showing that mankind, through various forms of naughtiness, has significantly influenced the climate, and has caused temperatures to grow out of control. Your team, at a major university, has built and contributed to various global climate models. Graduate students have worked on these models. Team members have traveled the world and lectured on their results. Many, many papers were written about their output, and so forth.
But something has gone wrong. The actual temperature, predicted to go up and up, has not cooperated and has instead stayed the same and even has gone down. What do to? Let’s take a “What would a scientist do” quiz and find out.
Your model has predicted that temperatures will go up because CO2 has, but unfortunately temperatures have gone down. Do you:
1. Abandon the model and seek a new career
2. Discover where the model went wrong; publish results admitting why and how you were wrong
3. Sit and wait: after all, the temperature is bound to increase sooner or later, hence validating your model
4. Believe that the model cannot be wrong, else so many people wouldn’t believe it, and so posit some new source that is “holding back” warming, and only if that new source weren’t there, your model would be perfect.

Some would say that the rhetorical device of posing a clearly false or, at best extremely unlikely, hypothesis and using it as a cover to attack the scruples of those with whom you disagree is disingenuous to say the least.

I, of course, wouldn’t say that.

Briggs, sadly, uses the age-old wing-nut cop out.

Like I wrote before, climatologists are generally nice people genuinely struggling with understanding the immense complexities of the oceanic-atmospheric (and space!) system.

Wait for it....wait for it...

Not all climatologists will fall prey to these temptations [options 3 and 4]; many or most will modify their models, will see that mankind is not in as much trouble as originally thought, and move on to do work on, for example, the Indian monsoon. But…..

But. BUT. BUT!!!!

There it is – good ‘ol ‘but’. Always there to save those who are afraid to commit to full ownership of their statements that follow. ‘I have plenty of aboriginal friends BUT’…….you know what I mean.

You’ll notice I do the same thing all the time.

But what, you may ask?

For William (and henceforth myself), BUT climate modellers are frauds and the logical equivalent of those who believe in the paranormal and…get this….attempt to stare goats to death.

Stare goats to death?

It’s hard work and I don’t recommend it.

Some readers will be old enough to remember when paranormal research was the rage in the early 1970s. Peer-reviewed papers appeared on the subject, even in prestigious journals like Science. Just around the corner, mankind would be able harness untold power by just using his mind. Goats, for example, could be killed just by staring at them (yes, really).

So, in the spirit of fair play that is the very basis of denialist thought….I’ve proposed my own hypothetical, coz, you know, we’re just as hard on our own side.

Just say, and why not, that there are those of a ~~right-wing~~ ~~paranoid~~ different persuasion who fanatically believe that main stream climate science, as exemplified by the IPCC reports, consists solely of a bunch of misrepresentations and lies. Hypothetically, and again, why not, let us say that these people are not only completely wrong, they’ve also been caught in a compromising position with a clydesdale.

Do they:

1. Admit they’re wrong on all counts and blame the horse.

2. Fight every last claim to the death and need to have each and every point explained over and over again before they’ll relent and admit they’re wrong. And blame the horse.

3. Extol the virtues of closer relations with our equine friends and ignore all else.

Now many a skeptic is a good honourable person, but...........

David Archibald: Orator. Genius.

2008-01-30T21:35:00.000+10:30

I've gone off all this global warming stuff.

What changed my mind, you may well ask.

To you I would say two words: Archibald. David.

The following searingly incisive lecture was presented to a hugely appreciative audience of...I dunno.....at least 10 million (with untold billions watching on the box).

It's uplifting stuff, bringing to mind a younger version of a Barak Obama / Tom Cruise hybrid.

For your pleasure, I present:

There's a few more of these vids, but the first one is so good, there's no point seeing the rest. However, there is one little excerpt I found interesting in part 4:

Prof. Bob Carter (1:45): "[David Archibald], I completely agree with you and support your analysis."

Way to go, Bob!!!! I knew you were an important and eminently sensible contributor to the so-called climate debate. Kind of reminds me how Edward Wegman supported you and your absolutely proven hypothesis that global warming ended in 1998. What a feelgood world we live in!!

Common attributes

2008-01-23T22:13:00.000+10:30

The denialist is an easy creature to spot. Well, for starters, he or she denies a theory that is a strong, well studied and consistently supported and reinforced by experimental data. There are, however, numerous other characteristics that can be used to accurately identify the shill.

Tim Lambert's Global Warming Sceptic Bingo nicely covers many of the individual pieces of guff they're commonly known to spout.

There are a few other traits, however, that I've noticed of late that have crept into the denialist genome. Evolution? Nah.....devolution caused my numerous uncorrected mutations, I reckon.

Al Gullon, a writer for transport magazine Thinking Highways, demonstrates:

1. Get those credentials out there. Doesn't matter what they are or whether they have anything to do with climatology. Somehow, the mere fact of a few letters after the name must add weight to the argument.

Says Al, BSc., PEng:

I hasten to add that it is not 'another opinion piece'. I put many hours (and my two undergraduate degrees) into an analysis of the IPCC and NASA data on trends in "global warming" and solar radiation.

Wow....not one, but two whole degrees!!!! And not just sitting back doing nothin'. They were put right there in that analysis.

2. When drawing a graph, make sure the axes are adjusted so that it if one doesn't actually look too closely, it appears to support a conclusion that the raw data it is based on clearly doesn't.

Al shows us how it's done (click for full size):

Check that delta [CO2] out!!!

3. Go with what you want to be right, rather than what is.

Al discusses how he came up with the previous figure:

However, while researching on the ‘net I was reminded that volcanoes can have a lengthy impact on global temperatures and so explored both them and El Ninos. As you can see at the bottom of Figure 2 it was an Eureka moment. Actually several moments, because each of these extreme events locked into one of the aforementioned irregularities, until finally all of them were covered. They are colour-coded so that blue indicates an event which pulls the temperature down in their year(s) of operation and red indicates one which tends to raise global temperatures. By mentally moving the temperature line back to where it would have been without each event one can clearly see that the global temperature line has a great visual correspondence with the solar irradiance line.

Mentally moving, hey? Kind of like what happened in the last X-Men movie (and we know how that panned put).

4. And finally, pretend to really, really care:

Now all this is most definitely NOT to say that we should do nothing about the energy consumption of the automobile or more generally the energy consumptive nature of today’s human society. What the environmentalists are forgetting is that engineers, including automotive engineers, are the original conservationists. As a personal example, I shudder every time I see a two tonne SUV with only the driver on board.

Select members of the 400 club

2008-01-14T22:16:00.000+10:30

The end is nigh?

2008-01-08T21:37:00.000+10:30

Denialists hate facts. Don’t like first-hand science. Too difficult. That’s why most of their huffery and puffery is directed at secondary sources rather than original scientific papers. Easier to muddy the waters.

Sites such as RealClimate do a commendable job in explaining the science behind our understanding of climate and climate change in a clear and concise fashion. Their arguments are rarely rebutted and they’ve exposed many a loopy scientific theory, thankfully before they’ve extended too far past the Right-wing blogsphere.

Denialists hate RealClimate and similar sites.

Accordingly, blogs such as the Institute of Public Affair’s www.jennifermarohasy.com have now banned RealClimate links in all posts relating to climate change.

Please don't quote non-objective sources like RC -they will now be deleted..........etc.

Even the fig-leaf that is the ‘discuss all points of view’ meme, the so-called debate, is gone. The retreat is on. We’ve hit the “Nah-nah-nah-nah” stick the fingers in the ears stage (which has been privately occurring from time immemorial, put rather publicly for the past year or so).

All rather unedifying. And unsurprising.

An Auditor's Resolutions

2008-01-06T20:06:00.000+10:30

Happy New Year, Ya all!

2007-12-30T21:24:00.000+10:30

I's been a traveling. Up in the windy, wet so-called Sunshine Coast at the moment. Been playing in the mud with the Woodford longhairs for the past few days. Oh, the joy!!!!

Looking forward to the new year when the forces of denialism will finally be vanquished. Yeah, right!!! On the positive side, they'll be there for plenty more ridicule and laughter. Even got a few more cartoons up the sleeve, of course inspired by events over the silly season.

Anyways, travel safely, and have a bit of a dance on NYE.

Catch ya in 2008.

Show me the credentials!!!!

2007-12-18T23:25:00.000+10:30

Eli Rabett has a little competition going for the science rant of the year (surely a huge awards night will be held to honor the lucky victor). The following tawdry tale is probably ineligible is it doesn’t involve science (even by its loosest definition). And it’s not really a “best” rant either; more a “most pitiful” or an “embarrassing to the extreme” rant. But a “rant”; it is most certainly that.

Our tale begins with the publishing of a silly piece of denialist piffle in the Canada Free Press. The sludge, entitled “The UN Climate Change Numbers Hoax”, is the usual oft-repeated deceptive nonsense, the content of which isn’t really important to this story, but read it if you must.

The authors? One, Tom Harris, is a well known shill and Astroturfer. You can read about him here. The other is Australia’s very own John McLean.

I hadn’t heard of him either.

According to the blurb following the CFP piece, McLean is a climate data analyst based in Melbourne, Australia.

Hmmmm……a climate data analyst. Sounds important. Sounds, dare I say it, like the man is a professional. Perhaps we should take note of what he says?

The action then moves to Jennifer Marohasy’s blog, where McLean’s story is the subject of a post.

Almost immediately upon filing of said post, a commenter Luke accurately notes that McLean’s piece is unsubstantiated garbage.

McLean turns up and fires straight back, so stetting himself on the path to self destruction:

Luke likes to attack individual with whom he doesn't agree.
Would he please state his own credentials in climatology, listing all his academic qualifications and all his papers published in peer-reviewed journals.

If he cannot provide adequate proof of his expertise then clearly he should be regarded as a "parasite poster" who merely lives off the research and claims of others.

And so the rant begins.

Then it gets interesting, as Luke notes that McLean is not who he advertises himself to be.

Something I am curious about though - the Canadian article (and I always believe what I read in newspapers) says "John McLean is climate data analyst based in Melbourne, Australia."

Well gee that sounds very impressive. I was looking for someone to help me with some multivariate analysis. Do you have a large clientele for your services?

But your OLO page says "John McLean has an amateur interest in global warming following 25 years in what he describes as the analysis and logic of IT."

And your home page says "Computer consultant and occasional travel photographer". I'm an occasional travel photographer too so look we've got heaps in common.

I then tried Google Scholar "Mclean John climate" and couldn't seem to find anything that looked right. And then I tried "Mclean John climate Australia" but didn't do any good either. But you know being unqualified and uneducated, I may be doing the wrong thing. I'm sure you can easily clear it up.

I was looking for your climate data analyst business section, but given I'm uneducated I couldn't seem to find it either. Web sites are so hard to follow.
Was wondering if you could get clear these difficulties up?

What’s this? McLean has only an amateur interest in climate science? He’s only a computer consultant and occasional travel photographer?. Not a climate data analyst?

McLean has quite a presence on teh intertubes (NZ climate change coalition, on line opinion and all), but what about the peer-reviewed publication list?

There’s one hit – a mere review in E&E. Energy & Environment – the journal that is so l33t, so exclusive, so exceptional, that it published David Archibald.

We can safely exclude it. E&E isn’t worthy of ICI’s citation index for good reason.

So when McLean has been caught red handed “enhancing” his credentials (or is that overstating? No…..exaggerating – is that it?), you’d think he might see the downside of demanding to see the “climate credentials” of others, particularly when even the most simple-minded can understand that such a demand is essentially meaningless and reflects more upon the demander than the demandee.

No; not our John. He’s on a mission. He just channels the anger....for the next 12 hours:

Just answer the question, parasite.
THIRD TIME - Please state your own credentials in climatology, listing all your academic qualifications and all your papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
Luke, I'm still waiting for you to answer the question.

....

You provide no evidence whatsoever of any qualifications or experience in a field in which you so sharply criticise others.
For the FOURTH TIME, Show us your credentials for your comments.
I don't think you can. I think you're just a parasite poster who probably gets his comments out of some book or off some web site. "The Parasite's guide to making personal abuse" sounds about right.

....

Come on boy wonder, show us what credentials you have.
Luke, you just keep on illustrating that you're all mouth and no credentials.
FIFTH TIME - Please state your credentials in climatology, listing all your academic qualifications and all your papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
Surely that's simple enough request for you.

....

SIXTH TIME ... Please state your credentials in climatology.
What is your problem? Surely the request is simple enough.
If you have any academic qualifications in climatology please tell us what they are?
If you have published any papers on climatology - in a peer-reviewed journal of course - please tell us the papers, the journal and the date of publication.
What could be easier?
Or are you simply the parasite that I referred to earlier ???
Personally I think you are a gutless little shrill with no credentials whatsoever in this subject, but that's only between the two of us.

....

Luke, will you just stop your pitiful attempt at diversions and provide the information that I request.
I think you have NO QUALIFICATIONS and have had NO PAPERS published. In other words you attempts to abuse people, papers and anything else in this forum are meaningless because you have no credentials.
Now what does your book of insults and diversions have to say about that ? (Now why do I suspect you will respond to this question at not the one that I have asked SEVEN times...)
Proteus, my request should not be one of life's mysteries.
Either Luke has academic qualifications related to climatology or he does not.
Either Luke has had papers on climatology published or he hasn't it.
My request is simple ... unlike the IPCC's subjective claims ;-)

....

Luke, your attempted diversions don't interest me at all.
Instead of worrying about my article please answer what I've been asking you since 10:26 this morning (that's NINE hours ago)
EIGHT TIME - If you have any academic qualifications in climatology please tell us what they are? If you have published any papers on climatology - in a peer-reviewed journal of course - please tell us the papers, the journal and the date of publication.
If you have none then why won't you be a big brave boy and admit it ?

....

Luke (a.k.a. Parasite), I'm still waiting ....
I don't give a **** about your attempted diversions. Where's your climatology credentials?
NINE times I've asked this very simple question... Why have you attempted to duck and weave for almost 10 hours ??

....

Parasite, I see you are still avoiding the question.
Too gutless to answer it or are the answers to both parts of my question a big fat ZERO - i.e. you don't have any credentials in climatology at all ??
Gee, if you have no credentials then your postings - including your purile attempts at diversions - are not worth much at all.

....

Hi Parasite ....
TENTH time - what are your academic and/or professional qualifications for making comments on climatology?
I will just keep ignoring your attempts to side-track the issue.
WHY CAN?T YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION, PARASITE ?

....

ELEVENTH TIME - in a bit over 12 hours... Parasite Luke, please state your own credentials in climatology, listing all your academic qualifications and all your papers published in peer-reviewed journals.
It looks like you're here on this blog under false pretences. You don't have the faintest bit of credibility on climate matters at all.
You're just a parasite living off websites like Real Climate and whatever slurs you can dredge up from elsewhere!

....

So there you go. Twelve hours of self-destruction. I almost felt sorry for the poor man, as even the most rabid of denialists will in all probability disown him now. He’ll most likely be reduced to stalking inner city parks late at night, whipping open his trench coat to display that treasured E&E screed and CFP piece to unsuspecting passers by, all the while howling rabidly at the moon.

Let that be a lesson to you all.

Colour me shocked!!!

2007-12-13T21:23:00.000+10:30

Remember Edward J. Wegman? Yeah, I didn’t either until his name popped up again recently. Not exactly an important contributor to the field of climate science. However, he lingers as a footnote through his attempt to bring down Mann et al.'s 'hockey stick' papers. Failed of course, but denialists loved him. Thought of him as a hero, a father figure if you will. Here's the amusing bit, the flat-earthers made out that he was independent, somehow above all that climate 'debate' guff. Angry little ant John A. from Climate Audit for instance:

We had the Wegman Report, done by a completely independent team of first rank statisticians blah....blah...blah...

But of course that wasn't true. Wegman was a denialist recruited by denialists. He wasn't independent then and isn't now. Why else would he put his signature to this little work of fiction with the likes of Louis Hissink, S. Fred and Lubos Motl, among others?

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages…

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. etc. etc.

Signed:
Edward J. Wegman, PhD, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University, Virginia

Who would have thunk it?

I is back!!!!!

2007-12-13T20:59:00.000+10:30

A nice little break has been had. The recent Australian election, won by the forces of good, has admittedly occupied my small mind for some time now.

Ahhhh......isn't life good. I've a fine bottle of plonk from Murray St. vineyards in the Barossa, won from the proceeds on betting on Australia's denialist-in-chief John W. Howard losing his seat to Maxine McKew. It'll go down so well on a nice'n'hot QLD NYE celebration with the F&F. Almost as importantly, our country is now lead by a statesman who not only has ratified Kyoto, he's taken the US to task. All in two weeks!!!! Long may Rudd reign.

Anyways, I'm splitting my blogging time a little nowadays - I've a new wine review blog. If you like Oz wine (particularly SA wine), check it out. Hopefully a nice little database of reviews'll build up over time. Also, the most anticipated event of the year, the annual Nexus 6 blog awards, will be up any day now. He..he..he..hee!!!

Head hurt

2007-09-24T22:19:00.000+09:30

Ha ha!!

2007-09-22T21:23:00.000+09:30

Back in my day......

2007-09-18T19:11:00.001+09:30

Aspirational targets

2007-09-09T21:15:00.000+09:30

Deafening silence

2007-09-06T21:49:00.001+09:30

The Secret

2007-09-04T21:15:00.000+09:30

Consensus smashed!!!

2007-09-02T19:36:00.000+09:30

Sceinteficelly Litarete

2007-08-29T21:20:00.000+09:30

Spin

2007-08-27T21:38:00.000+09:30

Exclusive access

2007-08-22T22:05:00.000+09:30

The PM'll meet anyone nowdays, even fundamentalist sect leaders. It is only so they can pray for him, of course.

Fair and Balanced

2007-08-21T18:42:00.000+09:30

Preaching to the converted

2007-08-20T21:43:00.000+09:30

Bottom of the barrel

2007-08-16T21:37:00.000+09:30

Conservatives. Leopards. Spots. etc.

2007-08-14T22:15:00.000+09:30

Some background for foreign types on the totally surprising news that many Australian conservatives, contrary to party propaganda, still deny AGW.