Category: Plimer
This story from the Australian Associated Press contains the usual scare-mongering from Ian Plimer:
AAP November 19, 2009 01:36pm
Australia will go broke and become the laughing stock of the world if politicians ignore basic science on climate change, a leading global warming sceptic says.
But there is one intriguing detail:
Prof Plimer's comments came as he delivered the annual Essington Lewis Memorial Lecture in honour of a former chief executive and chairman of BHP.
And that lecture won't be delivered until 6pm today (Nov 19).
I think it is awesome that the AAP can report from the future, but I would find it more more interesting if they reported the Lotto results rather than something as predictable as a Plimer lecture.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:52 PM • 193 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Plimer
Ian Plimer responds to criticism with by calling his critics names and failing to address their arguments. In an interview on BBC Radio 4, Plimer spouts his usual outrageous falsehoods:
"We cannot stop carbon emissions because most of them come from volcanoes."
Not true -- even Martin Durkin's Swindle retracted this one.
And when the interviewer brought up Michael Ashley's devastating review of Heaven and Earth, we got this:
Plimer: "When you look at my critics -- they are people who are rent seekers. They have everything to gain by continuing the process of frightening people witless, by following the party line, ..."
Interviewer: "Do you say that they are deliberately fraudulent?"
Plimer: "Well I'm saying that they are taking advantage of the current situation. Now that's understandable. In previous times people have got wonderful research grants in a war against cancer and they achieved a lot of money for that. Now we have a war against climate change and there is huge number of people out there that have their careers staked on it and are beneficiaries from this process. And Michael Ashley is one of those."
Actually, Ashley is an astronomer and his career is not staked on climate change research at all. It is symptomatic of Plimer's approach that he didn't bother to check this and just made things up.
And notice how Plimer is now sounding like a cancer quack. Compare:
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 9:11 PM • 262 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Global Warming
Fred Singer and co petitioned the American Physical Society to replace its statement on Climate Change. Instead, it got reaffirmed
The Council of the American Physical Society has overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the Society's 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming. The Council's vote came after it received a report from a committee of eminent scientists who reviewed the existing statement in response to a petition submitted by a group of APS members.
Eli Rabett has more details, while John Mashey has investigated the petitioner's social network.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 5:03 AM • 183 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: The War on Science
Despite her training in law, Janet Albrechtsen was not able to figure out that the Copenhagen treaty wasn't going to impose a COMMUNIST WORLD GOVERNMENT, so you just know that she has no chance in hell of understanding a scientific question. Albrechtsen claims that it is a "fact" that "Sea levels have remained constant for the past 30 years". Study the graph below from the CSIRO to see that measurements from tide gauges and satellites contradict this claim.
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 1:23 PM • 133 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Global Warming
Back in 2006 it was revealed that scientists at the CSIRO had been forbidden from commenting on some impacts of climate change:
JANINE COHEN: Kevin Hennessy is the coordinator of the CSIRO's Climate Impact Group. One of his jobs is to talk about the potential impacts of climate change. But there are some likely impacts of climate change that are clearly a no-go zone. Some scientists believe that there'll be more environmental refugees. Is that a possibility?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: I can't really comment on that.
JANINE COHEN: Why can't you comment on that?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: That's, that's, er... No, I can't comment on that.
JANINE COHEN: Is that part of editorial policy? You can't comment on things that affect immigration?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: No, I can't comment on that.
JANINE COHEN: Can I just ask you why you can't comment?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: Not on camera.
JANINE COHEN: Oh, OK. But is it a policy thing?
KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: I can't comment on that.
When Labor won government in 2007 they promised to improve things and introduced a CSIRO charter
it is essential that those who have expertise in the areas under debate are able to communicate new ideas and to infuse public debate with the best research and new knowledge. ... The engagement of CSIRO and its researchers with the community is a key component of an informed innovation system. ... The Government agrees not to interfere improperly in the business of conducting research or in the scholarly process and to respect the independence and integrity of CSIRO in communicating the outputs of its research activities and in managing its legal obligations, including to third parties.
That's certainly an improvement on previous policy, but this part concerned some people:
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:45 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category:
Time for some more open thread.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 12:16 PM • 238 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Global Warming
I recently left a comment on Tom Fuller's blog objecting to Fuller's claim to be on the middle ground.
If Fuller is in the middle ground, then so is Inhofe -- they both think that climate scientists are a bunch of frauds.
Fuller objected in a completely unrelated comment thread and derailed the discussion. I'm starting a new thread here for discussion with Fuller.
Here, in his own words, are Fuller's beliefs about climate scientists:
I believe that a generation of climate scientists have tried to make global warming a political football, and have exaggerated or distorted the truth to push politicians into acting more robustly, and too instill a fear-driven sense of urgency in the general public.
Inhofe shares this belief with Fuller. And like Inhofe, Fuller claims that the hockey stick graph is fraudulent:
People apparently didn't learn from the horrible example set by Michael Mann et al in fabricating a Hockey Stick chart of global temperatures that was later debunked.
You can judge for yourself whether I have fairly represented Fuller's views.
Posted by Tim Lambert at 11:35 PM • 287 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Levitt
Thingsbreak has been documenting the way Levitt and Dubner keeping digging the hole deeper, and Dubner has kept on digging with this whopper:
we believe that anyone who reads our chapter without an agenda wouldn't even find it particularly controversial. They will see that we routinely address the concerns that critics accuse us of ignoring (the problem of ocean acidification, e.g., and the "excuse to pollute" that geoengineering solutions might afford), and that we neither "misrepresent" climate scientists nor flub the facts.
Here is everything they say in chapter 5 about ocean acidification.
[Caldeira] and a co-author coined the phrase 'ocean acidification.' the process by which the seas absorb so much carbon dioxide that corals and other shallow-water organisms are threatened.
Far from addressing it, they don't even mention that their proposed scheme will do nothing about it.
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 10:10 PM • 126 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Levitt
Levitt and Dubner still haven't engaged with their critics' arguments and continue to respond with nothing more than name calling. Their latest piece in USA Today likens climate scientists to flat earthers:
Devoted environmentalists, meanwhile, as well as some members of the tight-knit climate-science community, find this sort of idea repugnant. Using sulfur dioxide to solve an environmental problem? It just doesn't feel right to them. Of course, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun didn't initially feel right either. Nor did the assertion that the Earth might in fact be round and not flat.
The article is even illustrated with a picture of a flat Earth. Josh at EnviroKnow details many other problems with their article.
Read on »
Posted by Tim Lambert at 2:28 PM • 81 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
