Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.
In my previous post I noted in his story promoting AGW denial Adam Shand disputed even the most uncontroversial statements (eg "Summer is warmer than winter") from supporters of mainstream science he uncritically accepted everything from the AGW deniers. For example, he agrees with Jennifer Marohasy, who claims:
Global temperatures over the past ten years have stalled.
This is, of course, not true.
And he repeats this whopper:
The IPA has no policy on global warming
There are hundreds of items at the IPA website on global warming and they all argue directly or indirectly against taking action: either warming isn't happening, or it's natural, or it will be beneficial, or it will be harmless, or mitigation will be ruinously expensive.
And Shand doesn't challenge this fabrication:
In [Al Gore's] movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", he actually talks about how hurricane records show an increase in number and intensity and he talks about hurricanes since 1975 but there's actually good data that goes back 100 years and if he'd gone back to the 1940s he would have seen that there were more intense hurricanes then. Then there was a bit of a lull and then from the 1970s there had been an increase in hurricane intensity. So he was cherry picking the data. This was Al Gore.
This one is particularly easy to check -- you just have to watch the movie to see what Gore says about hurricanes. The closest he gets is (at 29 minutes in):
When the ocean gets warmer that causes stronger storms.
And graphs I've seen don't support Marohasy's claims h=about the numbers of hurricanes.
Over at her blog, Ender challenged Marohasy to support her claim. She said that her recollection was that
Al Gore pointed to a graph of the hurricane record since 1975 and claimed this represented an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes.
This is untrue and it's easy to see that it is untrue -- you just have to look at the movie. But when Ender asked her to support her claims about the movie and global temperatures, she replied:
Ender, You are now displaying a high level of apparently deliberate ignorance on both issues.
From past experience, I doubt that Marohasy will correct her false statements.
Environment
Comments
No wonder where are so many denialists and skeptics. With this magnitude of BS put out there so uncritically (because good reporters must be "fair-and-balanced") I'm not surprised.
Posted by: Chad | June 30, 2008 5:51 PM
From time to time I have felt compelled to comment on Marohasy's blog, if only to (gently) point out the frequent glaring errors or inconsistencies.
Responses are rare and I don't know why I bother, except perhaps in the hope that other commenters may take an interest and think critically about what has been posted.
Your points are soundly based Tim - I don't see much intellectual rigor over at Marohasy's place just lots of mutual back slapping whenever the thermometer falls below 20 degrees - proof that AGW is a myth no doubt.
Posted by: Grendel | June 30, 2008 8:48 PM
Even more curious to me is that when you trouble to read through some of the IPA-Marohasy rants on global warming they seem very concerned that all this global warming talk is distracting the world from really important stuff, like world hunger for instance.
So it's surprising that a search like Hunger @ IPA returns so little regarding this (also) very serious problem.Posted by: MarkG | June 30, 2008 9:41 PM
re: world hunger This is a classic misdirection argument, but IPA isn't as good as Lomborg at it.
Posted by: John Mashey | June 30, 2008 10:26 PM
Thanks for picking that up Tim. I also contacted Media Watch about it so perhaps she might be more forthcoming then.
Posted by: Ender | June 30, 2008 10:38 PM
hahahahahahahaaaahahahahahaha!!!!
Posted by: albi | June 30, 2008 10:43 PM
Denier? Believer? Are you really a scientist?
Posted by: Adam Shand | July 1, 2008 12:20 AM
Shorter Shand: GALILEO!!!!!!
I could've asked, "Adam Shand, are you a reporter?" Then I figured that I just answered my own question: Yes, he is a reporter. In the sense that he 'reports' one side of the 'debate' uncritically.
The other side of the 'debate', however, can't just be 'reported'; it must be 'debated'. After all, being able to select what to 'report' and what to 'debate' is the hallmark of a good 'journalist'.
Posted by: bi -- IJI | July 1, 2008 12:47 AM
bi--IJI, I would back Galileo over a pile of you and Al Gores stacked ten high. You are a polemicist who would prefer to play the man than the facts. It's this fragile, defensive anti-science stance that is making many environmentalists think twice about AGW. And yes science is a debate, much to your inconvenience. I am not a denier or a believer, just someone who believes in knowledge. And I think many of the "believers" are not prepared to concede they do not know what they do not know, such is the power of the AGW push. no matter how many velioer Cue another string of your paranoid, childish invective.
Posted by: Adam Shand | July 1, 2008 1:27 AM
Adam, if you believe in knowledge so much, could you please supply us with the names of scientists who have committed career suicide by questioning global warming?
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 1:31 AM
sorry that should read..."no matter how many scientists agree with a conclusion based on partial info"
Posted by: adam shand | July 1, 2008 1:32 AM
Hey Ken, Have read here and tell us if these guys are all dangerous kooks too!
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Volume 12, Number 3, 2007) - Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, Willie Soon
Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (Climate Research, Vol. 13, Pg. 149?164, October 26 1999) - Arthur B. Robinson, Zachary W. Robinson, Willie Soon, Sallie L. Baliunas
Can increasing carbon dioxide cause climate change? (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 94, pp. 8335-8342, August 1997) - Richard S. Lindzen
Can we believe in high climate sensitivity? (arXiv:physics/0612094v1, Dec 11 2006) - J. D. Annan, J. C. Hargreaves
Climate change: Conflict of observational science, theory, and politics (AAPG Bulletin, Vol. 88, no9, pp. 1211-1220, 2004) - Lee C. Gerhard
Climate change in the Arctic and its empirical diagnostics (Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 469-482, September 1999) - V.V. Adamenko, K.Y. Kondratyev, C.A. Varotsos
Climate Change Re-examined (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 723?749, 2007) - Joel M. Kauffman
CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic?s view of potential climate change (Climate Research, Vol. 10: 69?82, 199? - Sherwood B. Idso
Crystal balls, virtual realities and ?storylines? (Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 343-349, July 2001) - R.S. Courtney
Dangerous global warming remains unproven (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 1, pp. 167-169, January 2007) - R.M. Carter
Does CO2 really drive global warming? (Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 351-355, July 2001) - R.H. Essenhigh
Does human activity widen the tropics? (arXiv:0803.1959v1, Mar 13 200? - Katya Georgieva, Boian Kirov
Earth?s rising atmospheric CO2 concentration: Impacts on the biosphere (Energy & Environment, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 287-310, July 2001) - C.D. Idso
Evidence for ?publication Bias? Concerning Global Warming in Science and Nature (Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 287-301, March 200? - Patrick J. Michaels
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics (Physics, arXiv:0707.1161) - Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Global Warming (Progress in Physical Geography, 27, 448-455, 2003) - W. Soon, S. L. Baliunas
Global Warming: The Social Construction of A Quasi-Reality? (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 6, pp. 805-813, November 2007) - Dennis Ambler
Global warming and the mining of oceanic methane hydrate (Topics in Catalysis, Volume 32, Numbers 3-4, pp. 95-99, March 2005) - Chung-Chieng Lai, David Dietrich, Malcolm Bowman
Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 997-1021, December 2007) - Keston C. Green, J. Scott Armstrong
Global Warming: Myth or Reality? The Actual Evolution of the Weather Dynamics (Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, pp. 297-322, May 2003) - M. Leroux
Global Warming: the Sacrificial Temptation (arXiv:0803.1239v1, Mar 10 200? - Serge Galam
Global warming: What does the data tell us? (arXiv:physics/0210095v1, Oct 23 2002) - E. X. Alban, B. Hoeneisen
Human Contribution to Climate Change Remains Questionable (Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 80, Issue 16, p. 183-183, April 20, 1999) - S. Fred Singer
Industrial CO2 emissions as a proxy for anthropogenic influence on lower tropospheric temperature trends (Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 31, L05204, 2004) - A. T. J. de Laat, A. N. Maurellis
Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future (Physical Geography, Volume 28, Number 2, pp. 97-125(29), March 2007) - Soon, Willie
Is a Richer-but-warmer World Better than Poorer-but-cooler Worlds? (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1023-1048, December 2007) - Indur M. Goklany
Methodology and Results of Calculating Central California Surface Temperature Trends: Evidence of Human-Induced Climate Change? (Journal of Climate, Volume: 19 Issue: 4, February 2006) - Christy, J.R., W.B. Norris, K. Redmond, K. Gallo
Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties (Climate Research, Vol. 18: 259?275, 2001) - Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood B. Idso, Kirill Ya. Kondratyev, Eric S. Posmentier
Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties. Reply to Karoly et al. (Climate Research, Vol. 24: 93?94, 2003)
On global forces of nature driving the Earth?s climate. Are humans involved? (Environmental Geology, Volume 50, Number 6, August 2006) - L. F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar
On a possibility of estimating the feedback sign of the Earth climate system (Proceedings of the Estonian Academy of Sciences: Engineering. Vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 260-268. Sept. 2007) - Olavi Kamer
Phanerozoic Climatic Zones and Paleogeography with a Consideration of Atmospheric CO2 Levels (Paleontological Journal, 2: 3-11, 2003) - A. J. Boucot, Chen Xu, C. R. Scotese
Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data (Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 112, D24S09, 2007) - Ross R. McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels
Quantitative implications of the secondary role of carbon dioxide climate forcing in the past glacial-interglacial cycles for the likely future climatic impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings (arXiv:0707.1276, July 2007) - Soon, Willie
Scientific Consensus on Climate Change? (Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 2, pp. 281-286, March 200? - Klaus-Martin Schulte
Some Coolness Concerning Global Warming (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 71, Issue 3, pp. 288?299, March 1990) - Richard S. Lindzen
Some examples of negative feedback in the Earth climate system (Central European Journal of Physics, Volume 3, Number 2, June 2005) - Olavi K䲮er
Statistical analysis does not support a human influence on climate (Energy & Environment, Volume 13, Number 3, pp. 329-331, July 2002) - S. Fred Singer
Taking GreenHouse Warming Seriously (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 937-950, December 2007) - Richard S. Lindzen
Temperature trends in the lower atmosphere (Energy & Environment, Volume 17, Number 5, pp. 707-714, September 2006) - Vincent Gray
Temporal Variability in Local Air Temperature Series Shows Negative Feedback (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1059-1072, December 2007) - Olavi K䲮er
The Carbon dioxide thermometer and the cause of global warming (Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 1, pp. 1-18, January 1999) - N. Calder
The Cause of Global Warming (Energy & Environment, Volume 11, Number 6, pp. 613-629, November 1, 2000) - Vincent Gray
The Fraud Allegation Against Some Climatic Research of Wei-Chyung Wang (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 985-995, December 2007) - Douglas J. Keenan
The continuing search for an anthropogenic climate change signal: Limitations of correlation-based approaches (Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 24, No. 18, Pages 2319?2322, 1997) - David R. Legates, Robert E. Davis
The ?Greenhouse Effect? as a Function of Atmospheric Mass (Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Numbers 2-3, pp. 351-356, 1 May 2003) - H. Jelbring
The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle (Energy & Environment, Volume 16, Number 2, pp. 217-238, March 2005) - A. R?h, R. Courtney, D. Thoenes
The IPCC future projections: are they plausible? (Climate Research, Vol. 10: 155?162, August 199? - Vincent Gray
The IPCC: Structure, Processes and Politics Climate Change - the Failure of Science (Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1073-1078, December 2007) - William J.R. Alexander
The UN IPCC?s Artful Bias: Summary of Findings: Glaring Omissions, False Confidence and Misleading Statistics in the Summary for Policymakers (Energy & Environment, Volume 13, Number 3, pp. 311-328, July 2002) - Wojick D. E.
?The Wernerian syndrome?; aspects of global climate change; an analysis of assumptions, data, and conclusions (Environmental Geosciences, v. 3, no. 4, p. 204-210, December 1996)
Posted by: adam shand | July 1, 2008 1:40 AM
And yes science is a debate, much to your inconvenience.
Yes science is a debate - I'm waiting for the skeptics to publish their research in peer reviewed scientific journals. A good honest paper which provides hypothesises for observed data while explaining why the existing explanations are wrong would be great. Unfortunately for the skeptics (along with the creationists and flat earthers) this barrier seems to be far to high.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 1:41 AM
Can we believe in high climate sensitivity? (arXiv:physics/0612094v1, Dec 11 2006) - J. D. Annan, J. C. Hargreaves
Holy crap, did you just cite James Annan (who regular bashes global warming skeptics for their stupidity and dishonesty) as evidence supporting your claims? Here's an exercise for the reader - try reading the papers which you cite.
Also, nice dodge on the list of scientists who have committed career suicide.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 1:44 AM
However, since Adam, you've got a long list of citations (admittedly most of them are in the BS journal Energy and Environment), perhaps you can tell us which of these authors have committed career suicide.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 1:47 AM
Being skeptic does not mean you have to agree with all other skeptics. Unfortunately, the same does not appear to be true of the "believers" for whom belief is dictated by a small very narrow set of parameters.
Posted by: adam shand | July 1, 2008 1:50 AM
by the way, Ken when did i say anything about career suicide? don't put words in my mouth
Posted by: adam shand | July 1, 2008 1:57 AM
Adam, I don't think that you quite understand. James work deals with calculating the climate sensitivity (ie. how hot does it get if the CO2 concentration is doubled). He does this be combining a number of estimates with a high uncertainty to yield an estimate with a much lower uncertainty. His results indicate that very high and very low estimates of climate sensitivity are unlikely. The most likely estimates of climate sensitivity is approx. 3 degrees. This is just about smack bang in the middle of the IPCC's estimations.
James is also famous for challenging climate skeptics to bet on their claims. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority fold.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 2:00 AM
by the way, Ken when did i say anything about career suicide? don't put words in my mouth
From the Sunday website on your program:
It's regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming, let alone deny the orthodox consensus view as adopted by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 2:03 AM
So by "believers" here you mean all the scientists who don't publish in Energy & Environment?
The "narrow set of parameters" you refer to may be what we in science call "observations". Though I should point out that you're not really supposed to pick an alternate reality if the reality you have is one you don't like. Doing so is not called "skepticism".Posted by: MarkG | July 1, 2008 2:04 AM
"Global temperatures over the past ten years have stalled."
Tim - I'm not sure that this is not true. If you look at the most recent data from NASA (GISS), Hadley, RSSMSU and UAHMSU they all show a decline in temperatures over the last few years!! http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ALLSINCE2002.jpg
Your link does not clearly show any trend because it does not include recent data and is presented at an unfortunate scale.
Posted by: Lank | July 1, 2008 2:08 AM
by the way, Ken when did i say anything about career suicide? don't put words in my mouth
Incidentally, if don't believe in the career suicide line, perhaps you should get Sunday to remove that paragraph that has your name above it.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 2:10 AM
Lank - a good analysis on the temperature trends (including an investigation of the post-1998 trends) can be found here.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 2:19 AM
If this really is Adam Shand, I'd love to hear his explanation of how summer being warmer than winter is "just an assumption".
Posted by: Michael | July 1, 2008 2:28 AM
1 on Adam Shand's list is the ultra-kooky Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (AIDS "reappraisal" a speciality). Not much further down, the fringe pseudoscience Journal of Scientific Exploration (ufology and similar). And of course heaps from E&E.
Posted by: John Quiggin | July 1, 2008 2:32 AM
Adam seems to have cut and paste his list from here.
I doubt that he has read any of the papers he cited. For instance, here's a link to Annan and Hargreaves "Can we believe in high climate sensitivity?, which say the opposite of what Adam seems to think.
Adam, have you watched An Inconvenient Truth? Why didn't you challenge Marohasy's false claim about what Gore said? Does Sunday employ any fact checkers? Why do you have to rely on Bob Brown to do your fact checking for you:
Posted by: Tim Lambert | July 1, 2008 2:36 AM
Ken - Thanks for that. So we can put the last ten years dropping temperatures down to "noise". I was interested to see the future graph of rising temperatures to 2035 which is also shown on the "Wiggles" 16 December 2007 site.
Already it looks like Wiggles may have made some poor assumptions on this one as he shows the temperatures rising steeply in 2008 but infact they seem to have been steadily dropping over the last six months.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSENANDCONGRESS.jpg
Maybe we can just put that down to more noise too.
Posted by: Lank | July 1, 2008 2:39 AM
Lank, your link doesn't work. It just goes to 404 Not Found.
More importantly, your getting confused between the simulated data that Tamino (not wiggles - that's the name of the post not the author) uses to illustrate a point and the real data (it's easy to do, as the real data is very similar to a steady trend + random noise).
But the long and the short of Tamino's post, is that there is nothing surprising about the recent temperature data.
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 2:51 AM
This is an interesting study by the US Department of Energy which claims claim that the IPCC has grossly overestimated the amount of man-made CO2 in our atmosphere and has also grossly underestimated the amount of carbon dioxide that nature absorbs. http://www.tech-know.eu/uploads/IPCC_deception.pdf Immediate demands should be made of the UN IPCC to stop its advice to Policymakers for drastic carbon dioxide emission reductions and all carbon trading schemes should be abandoned.
Posted by: Lank | July 1, 2008 2:52 AM
Lank, by interesting I'll charitably assume that you mean interesting because of the incredibly quantities of pseudoscience. Do you seriously think that scientists don't know that natures puts in a large flow of CO2. What the author doesn't mention that it also takes out a large flow of CO2. Prior to the industrial revolution (and after the last glacial period) the amount in was approx. equal to the amount out. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to calculate what should (and did) happen when the amount of carbon dioxide being released is increased (even by a relatively small amount).
Posted by: Ken Miles | July 1, 2008 3:01 AM
Ken - The absorption by nature of 98.5% of all CO2 means that of the annual man-made carbon dioxide emissions, only 1.5% remains in the atmosphere (346 million tonnes in 2004), which is the equivalent of just 0.04% of the total annual carbon dioxide emissions by nature and mankind combined. I'll leave you the exercise to work out how that cannot significantly affect temperature.
Posted by: Lank | July 1, 2008 3:12 AM
Lank:
1) Do you know the difference between:
-- the DOE claiming that IPCC grossly overestimated CO2, AND
-- some denialist one-pager that cherry-picks DOE documents and then makes that claim?
If you think the DOE actually says "IPCC grossly overestimates..." show us where. Really, the DOE used IPCC numbers as sources. does it make sense they would do that and then say "We've used these numbers, but they are grossly wrong."
2) In any case, this one is so routine, and so often debunked, that John Cross has given it a number in Skeptical Science:
29 Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions [manco2]
3) By the way, at this stage of a normal ice-age cycle, CO2 should be slowly being absorbed, and the temperature should be slowly falling, if it weren't for humans.
Posted by: John Mashey | July 1, 2008 3:45 AM
Adam Shand:
Is this a fact? "It's regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming"?
No, Shand, you're a regurgitator. When conservative think-tanks say something, you mindlessly regurgitate it as fact.
You didn't say "Marohasy says it's regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming".
You didn't say "Lindzen says it's regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming".
You said "Lindzen says it's regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming".
Presenting the claims of one side -- Marohasy's side -- as solid fact. Is this what you call "balance", sir?
It's amazing isn't it, that proponents of the AGW theory have "beliefs", while proponents of AGW inactivism have "opinions". And of course, it's more just, more moral, more righteous to have "opinions" than to have "beliefs", even if there's no difference at all between the two types of thoughts.
It's the framing, guys.
Paranoid? Oh the irony...
Posted by: bi -- IJI | July 1, 2008 3:48 AM
I meant
Posted by: bi -- IJI | July 1, 2008 3:50 AM
Adam Shand.
I am a scientist (as are many others here) and a sceptical one at that, but I have - to date - been much more convinced by the weight of evidence on the 'warmist' side of the matter than by the dubiously constructed tissue of inappropriately selected and/or analysed data, the distortions, the misrepresentations, and the downright falsehoods that seems to be the mainstay of the denialists' stance.
I repeatedly state that I am happy to have my mind changed by solid evidence (because I have many other concerns to focus on as a scientist), but somehow those who deny, or attempt to deny, the case for AGW don't come up with the goods.
Yours was a sad effort indeed in presenting the contemporary state of the science. Sadder though is that there are many who don't know better, and quite a few who should, who will continue to drag their feet because they cannot critically deconstruct the denialist case.
I'd love to say more but I am only in town for an hour to restock for my fieldwork, and I have more pressing matters than to linger on a borrowed computer.
I'm sure though that others will continue to engage you in this. And perhaps if you haven't evaporated from thread thread yet they, or even you, could deconstruct the several examples of hypocrisy in your post at #9.
Posted by: Bernard J. | July 1, 2008 4:15 AM
Adam Shand:
Thanks for stopping by. Could you please explain to me, a professional scientist, how summer being warmer than winter is "just an assumption"? Please feel free to cite whatever journal articles, websites or any sources at all. Hell, I'm even willing to read anything written in Energy and the Environment if it will help you back up this point. Please, enlighten me.
Lank:
You are statistically illiterate. Please get a clue before posting. You may want to read up on some basic (first year uni...or even high school) stats. Here's a start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio
I think the clue train may have failed to stop at your station.
Posted by: ChrisC | July 1, 2008 7:29 AM
Lank, the large natural sources of carbon dioxide are matched by large natural SINKS for carbon dioxide. The small human increment has been building up since the industrial revolution began, with the result that 27% of the carbon dioxide around you and me is man-made. That's a substantial fraction.
It's like a tub with a hole in it, being filled from a faucet. The amount coming in from the faucet just matches the amount being lost through the hole, and the level of water in the tub is stable.
Now add a small additional flow from a second faucet. The amounts are no longer in basis and the tub will gradually fill up and then overflow.
Same thing with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | July 1, 2008 7:39 AM
Sorry, that should have been "in balance" above and not "in basis," of course.
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | July 1, 2008 7:41 AM
Assuming that the Adam Shand posting here is the actual journalist of that name, he is displaying a quite remarkable degree of bias - which it seems clear (admittedly I have not seen the program in question) he failed to make explicit.
I think Mediawatch might find these posts interesting.
But considering how Sunday rates these days (I thought Jamie Packer had cancelled it to be honest), Shand and the producers would probably be delighted to get the attention. A mention on Mediawatch would probably be the most publicity they've had in a decade.
Posted by: Ian Gould | July 1, 2008 8:33 AM
I look forward to a future episode of Sunday in which Adam Shand welcomes the brave open-minded iconoclasts of NAMBLA on to take on the rigid-minded bigoted "believers" of the psychiatric monolith on the possible psychological benefits for children of pederasty.
Posted by: Ian Gould | July 1, 2008 8:38 AM
Adam Shand's first comment
During his interview with Marohasy, she called those who accept the evidence that CO2 is causing global warming "warmaholics" likening them to alcoholics. Did Adam respond with
Hell no. He called them warmaholics as well.
Posted by: Tim Lambert | July 1, 2008 11:10 AM
Aren't you a climate change denier, Tim?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1998/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/plot/uah/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998
Posted by: Demesure | July 1, 2008 12:08 PM
Demesure:
Mu.
Posted by: bi -- IJI | July 1, 2008 1:22 PM
I am still waiting for someone from the denial industry to come up with what they consider to be a dangerous level of C02 in the atmosphere. Currently at about 385 ppm, most scientists believe that to go beyond 450 ppm would be to enter dangerous territory. We are currently on target to reach or exceed those levels by 2050. Returning to the Sunday programme, on November 16th 1997 the Sunday programme takes a look at the Greenhouse issue, here is a sample of the exchanges in letters between myself, and then Sunday producer Steven Rice. "What should have been an informative investigation into the greenhouse issue, instead became a forum for the sceptics and doubters among scientific circles. This was despite the acknowledgement that these people's opinions are a minority viewpint." Here is part of Steven Rice's response. " You assert that, 'as glaciers continue to retreat... as polar ice north and south continues to break up...as El Nino weather patterns seem to be with us constantly...as PNG faces a drought.' What you do not acknowledge is that there is not one skerrick of peer reviewed evidence to support the contention that any of those climatic changes have been caused by human enhanced global warming." Things change but how they remain the same. At least today forums such as this provide some redress.
Posted by: Richard McGuire | July 1, 2008 2:18 PM
Adam Shands himself:
I would back Galileo over a pile of you and Al Gores stacked ten high. You are a polemicist
ppppfffffff....ah....ah...no...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!
uh...whew.
Polemicist...snork...uh-oh...uh...ah....ah...ah...hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
heep...heep...
ohhhhhh...boy.
Whew!
Boy, these parody characters are funny as h*ll, aren't they?!? Surely there will be something on YouTube soon under 'Shand Job'.
Best,
D
Posted by: Dano | July 1, 2008 4:58 PM
I presume it's like the dangerous level of climate hysteria. Nobody knows but everybody has an opinion, and of course those who know the least make the boldest claims.
Posted by: Demesure | July 1, 2008 5:01 PM
Global warming is a hysterical scare tactic. Warming trends over the last ten years are negative. SEE DEMESURE'S LINK AT POST 42.
Predictions of future warming are based on speculative computer models for which accuracy cannot be evaluated or even tested. Sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is at the highest level since satellite monitoring began in 1979. Last summer there was record low snowmelt in Antarctica. During April this year 1,185 new all-time record low temperatures were recorded at U.S. weather stations. Given these facts, how we can be in the middle of a "climate crisis."
Posted by: Lank | July 1, 2008 6:50 PM
In order:
One Two Three
Posted by: Boris | July 1, 2008 7:23 PM
And Four
Posted by: Boris | July 1, 2008 7:25 PM
I look forward to a future episode of Sunday in which Adam Shand welcomes the brave open-minded iconoclasts of NAMBLA on to take on the rigid-minded bigoted "believers" of the psychiatric monolith on the possible psychological benefits for children of pederasty.
Posted by: Ian Gould | July 1, 2008 8:38 AM
Wow you have disappeared up your own sink hole! Is skepticism really the equivalent of child molesting?
Posted by: rocks | July 1, 2008 7:33 PM
It isn't the equivalent of child molesting; it's the equivalent of claiming that child molesting is healthy. or smoking cures lung cancer (proof: almost everyone who recovered from lung cancer is a smoker!)
Posted by: James Haughton | July 1, 2008 8:30 PM
I enjoy weather noise as much as Lank @ #47...April 2008 saw 389 all-time record highest minimum temperatures set. January 2008, 1713 for same metric, June 2008, 1522.
Posted by: Nick | July 1, 2008 8:55 PM
"no matter how many scientists agree with a conclusion based on partial info"
is there anything scientists believe because they have all the information?
Posted by: z | July 1, 2008 10:20 PM
"This is an interesting study by the US Department of Energy which claims claim that the IPCC has grossly overestimated the amount of man-made CO2 in our atmosphere and has also grossly underestimated the amount of carbon dioxide that nature absorbs:
'Reports by the US Dept of Energy (DOE) indicate that 97% of the annual carbon dioxide emissions come from Nature itself. The report also indicates that more than 98% of all the carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed again by Nature. What does this mean?
It means that since the start of the Industrial Revolution the increase in carbon dioxide levels of about 103ppmv are 97% due to Nature itself, that is to say that only about 3ppmv of that increase is due to man-made emissions.'"
so, does this count as Innumeracy, or Logical Impairment?
Posted by: z | July 1, 2008 10:25 PM
z says:
No. There is no "all the information."
Posted by: Rattus Norvegicus | July 1, 2008 10:42 PM
There appears to be a frequent misconception amongst sceptics that they are brave dissidents opposing an erroneous status quo.
This is only true if your position (like Galileo's) is based on sound evidence and unique insight. The act of opposing the consensus does not in itself make the arguments correct.
Posted by: Michael | July 1, 2008 10:50 PM
Given these ["]facts["], how we can be in the middle of a "climate crisis."
Given this recycled and long-ago, oft-refuted argumentation, the denialist fringe seems to be in the middle of a wisdom crisis. Or content crisis. Or a lather-rinse-repeat cycle crisis.
Or a Cheeto crisis. Wank, your mommy is calling you for your snacky - do you want your milk or juuuuuice?
Best,
D
Posted by: Dano | July 1, 2008 10:51 PM
Oops, forgot:
[killfile]
Best,
D
Posted by: Dano | July 1, 2008 10:53 PM
Demesure:
Nobody knows, but Demesure knows that everything's fine. Pure logic!
Lank:
It's negative... it's negative... use the Force... it's negative... try not... do or do not... there is no try... the Force... the Force... it's negative...
Dano:
It's hard to tell whether the Shand here is real or a parody. That worries me.
Posted by: bi -- IJI | July 1, 2008 11:29 PM
View this image to see the four major temperature analyses in the context of the full instrumental record. http://cce.890m.com/temp-records/images/giss-vs-all.jpg It is pretty obvious that any claim of global warming having "stopped" is bogus.
My question is, have skeptics ever admitted that the world is warming? When the UAH satellite analysis was shown to be wrong they immediately switched to "no warming since 1998." All warming apparently occurred in the past, and is never happening now, even when the past was "now."
When 2008 is over, and it is the lowest in several years (say, between 2000 and 2001), I predict the "skeptical media" will play it as the coldest year in a century (the 21st Century, in fact).
Posted by: cce | July 2, 2008 12:10 AM
Question for the deniers, sorry, the 'sceptics':
If in, say 25 years, it is quite clear that the vast majority of scientists were right and AGW is occurring, and it is causing very serious problems for humans (and the global ecosystem in general), and that the delay of appropriate action in the interim caused by you irrational, ideologically driven sceptics has cost us sane, reality based folk of the opportunity to take substantial preventative and remedial action...
If this all comes about, (and you cannot deny it is a serious possibility it might), then what price should YOU PERSONALLY pay for your role in creating this situation?
Should your carbon budget be less than those who supported earlier actions? Should you be at the bottom of the list of people who get various forms of help from the government and broader society to adapt to the harder conditions?
Or do you think that you should be able to just walk away from any responsibility for and consequences of your actions (or inactions)?
Think hard about your answer, this is not a trivial practical or ethical problem.
Posted by: WotWot | July 2, 2008 12:15 AM
Gotta ask... Is Adam Shand a blonde??
Posted by: TomG | July 2, 2008 1:03 AM
"Denier? Believer? Are you really a scientist?"
Asks the sham "journalist," the equivalent of America's Karen Ryan.
Even that astonishing question is not "news." We already knew you had no shame.
Posted by: Marion Delgado | July 2, 2008 1:25 AM
Market fundamentalists from von Mises to Ayn Rand to the modern gramaphone/gangster combos that bedevil the Internets DO have "all the information" simply because reality is essentialist. Read Rand in particular on how much she hated realism and pragmatism.
Like Scientology, market fundamentalism reduces everything to a few axioms and postulates, cognated through genius, and then reality is derived from that. Any discrepancies or failures of the model are bad data, henceforward and forever.
It's exactly why they project that onto real science. It's what they would do.
Posted by: Marion Delgado | July 2, 2008 1:30 AM
I can at least understand what drives the Creationists, but what the hell is driving the anti-science nonsense of the Denialists?
Posted by: Michael |