You only have to look at the delight exhibited by Andrew Bolt ("Warming priests defocked [sic] on Sunday") in this story on Channel Nine's Sunday to know that they are promoting AGW denial. The reporter, Adam Shand, makes a pretence of objectivity by having three people from each side. But he blindly accepts everything that the three AGW deniers (William Kinninmonth, Jennifer Marohasy and Don Aitkin) say and even repeats some of their arguments himself ("We can't predict the weather, so how can we predict the climate?"). He undercuts the three on the other side. Randall Pearce is described as a travelling evangelist of high priest Al Gore. Robin Williams is charged with suppressing the opinions of the global warming skeptics, even though he turned over two full episodes of Ockham's razor to Aitkin. Tim Flannery is not to be taken seriously because he is "not a climate scientist", even though none of Shand's favoured three are climate scientists either. And while he accepts everything the favoured three say, no matter how unlikely, Shand aggressively disputes even the most uncontroversial statements from the three on the other side. He even disputes the fact that summer is warmer than winter. I'm not kidding. Here's the exchange:
Tim Flannery: No-one can predict the weather three months ahead, that's absolutlely true. But if I asked you if January next year was likely to be warmer than June this year, what would you say?
Adam Shand: I'd have no idea!
TF: You'd say yes because that's what we always see. Summers are warmer than winter. And in terms of predicting general global trends, that exactly the sort of science that we're doing. It's not like predicting the weather on a certain day three months out, it's like predicting whether January is likely to be warmer than June.
AS: But that's just an assumption, we sort of assume that summer is hotter than winter.
TS: It always is, it always has been. It's a good theory, well grounded in the reality we all experience.
Adam Shand then embarrasses himself with at attempted gotcha on Flannery:
AS: If the year in question had been 1815, Flannery's assumption would have been dead wrong. In that year, the Northern winter was warmer than the summer. And 200 years of scientific debate later, we still don't know why.
Three sentences and three things wrong. First, the famous "year without summer" was 1816, not 1815. Second, it's not true that we don't know why -- it was the eruption of Tambora in 1815. And it was not true that the summer was colder than the winter:
In America, New Englanders saw snow well into the summer -- the average temperature in July and August was 5 to 10 degrees below normal, according to Webb.
Winters in New England are much more than 5 to 10 degrees colder than summer.
And this isn't the first time I've caught Adam Shand in some shoddy reporting.
More like this
It's sad, really. Just sad.
No no, it's just "fair and balanced" debate. Both sides of the debate are equal, but some sides are more equal than others.
I am surprised that they did not say that global warming is a lie, because over the last few months it has been getting a lot cooler, not warmer (here in Southern Hem)
What a funny debate - maybe next time we could have the Wiggles debating Hi-5 on the issue, with Kermit the Frog as moderator.
Wow, today it's 90 degrees in my neighborhood. It cools me off just to remember it was hotter in January (even though the thermometer said it was 65 degrees cooler - hey what do thermometers know anyway?).
I guess if some TV talking head says it, it must be right. The chip in my head says to believe the TV. So I believe the TV.
Life is going to be sooo much simpler in the New World Order!
The funniest bit is the complete lack of comprehension on what predictive tools are actually for. Even if you pay the counter-example of 1815 (which of course I won't) ONE COUNTER-EXAMPLE IN ALL OF HISTORY is still an unbelievably reliable relationship. This just shows the attitude of the delusionists - find one GOTCHA and you've disproved the model, dismantled the consensus and may rush out and buy an SUV without a moment's thought.
Shand spends 17+ minutes reminding us that dumb and smug fills the spaces between the advertising. What about this gem: "...the believers say the time for debate and further learning is over." Good teeth are crucial.
And all these bodies http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm have got it wrong too.
> It's regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming
Last I know, Lindzen and Spencer are still alive and rich.
Maybe people like Shand and Marohasy who continually scream persecution actually wish secretly for someone to literally pummell them real hard.
Wow. A new one for global warming skeptic bingo - "No one can predict whether summers will likely be warmer than winter."
I had previously believed that summer v. winter could help anyone understand the difference between weather and climate prediction, but some people are incredible.
Can we say that night is darker than day, or is that just an assumption?
Wow. I don't think it's worth entering into debates like this. If we don't even start with an agreement on the difference between an observation and an assumption then we have very little common ground to base a discussion on.
On a positive note I've had my habit of not watching TV affirmed quite wonderfully.
Corollary: People who are unwilling to have an opinion on whether Summer is warmer than Winter should probably not be engaged on a debate on climate change.
The programme underscores the importance of getting the science right before leaping into a 'black hole' of serious economic consequences of greenhouse gas 'control' measures as proposed by our government. Temperatures have not been increasing for ten years despite rising CO2 levels and models predicting that they should be going up - then surely that is good enough reason to encourage more scientific research rather than accept that CO2 is the main driver of climate change. Many scientists suggest that water vapour, sun activity, volcanoes etc may also play important roles, or indeed be much more important than CO2 variation. What is so wrong with continuing basic scientific research and debate on the causes climate change? The science is certainly not settled and history may show many contibutors to this site with egg on thier face.
"Temperatures have not been increasing for ten years " - Lank
Are you Adam Shand?
I think, Michael, this underscores the importance of getting the science right before leaping into a 'black hole' of serious economic consequences of street 'lighting' measures as proposed by our government.
Sweet merciful baby jeebus. The first para in the linked Sunday story:
Gravity's just a theory. Tell your friends.
Indeed Anthony.
Street lighting may well be the most expensive public funding disaster in history that was based on the unfounded assumptions of a bunch of self-serving pointy-heads.
Tim Flannery: No-one can predict the weather three months ahead, that's absolutlely true. But if I asked you if January next year was likely to be warmer than June this year, what would you say?
Adam Shand: I'd have no idea!
Nuff sed.
Well they certainly ended up with egg on their faces.
Lank, the science is telling us we have a serious problem. The problem is not with the science, it is with the political, socio and econometric solutions - this is where there is real debate. Tell me, do you really think global warming means increasing temperatures every year? Of course there is natural variability and "noise". Indeed, this is where scientific research is being focussed (climate sensitivity and attribution studies for example). But the fact remains, if humanity keeps pumping carbon into the troposphere at the (increasing) rate we are, then this will have an impact. We are conducting an experiment that never before has been tested, it would be prudent to tread with caution - it has got nothing to do with egg on people's faces, contrary to your assertion.
Channel 9,or the ABC,take your pick,the GW deniers are everywhere.
@ No 10 :
//I had previously believed that summer v. winter could help anyone understand the difference between weather and climate prediction, but some people are incredible.//
Given the overall quality of journalism in Australia,something like this,showing a fundamental lack of comprehension for even the difference between weather and climate, does not surprise me the least.
Perhaps we should be grateful to them for giving us a glimpse of what it was like to live in the Dark Ages.
Oh. Your. God.
"Tim Flannery: No-one can predict the weather three months ahead, that's absolutlely true. But if I asked you if January next year was likely to be warmer than June this year, what would you say?
Adam Shand: I'd have no idea!"
Well, someone obviously didn't pay attention in third grade scince. Because, who would have thunk that increasing average insolation over a hemisphere (conversely decreasing insolation over the opposite hemisphere) due to the effect of the Earth's axis tilt would cause temperatures to (on average) increase!?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_sun_angle_on_climate
I guess all that atmospheric radiation and astronomy/orbital mechanics stuff they threw at me when I was doin postgraduate meteorology was all just "an assumption". Those silly scienticians, with all their silly assumptions.
I also really liked this one:
"Social researchers also highlight the dangers of conducting science as a form of religion, divided into believers and deniers."
As though decades of meticulously gathered data, combined with robust theory and testable predictions versus the "nu-ah" school of science constitutes "believers" and "deniers".
Lank writes:
Not true. See:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Ball.html
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Reber.html
ouch, horrible "documentary".
the funny claim about winter being hotter than summer is in part 1, about 11 minutes 30secs into the film. (just in case you want to spare you the rest of the nonsense)
the real problem though is a different one:
a majority of other denialist claims (like: 11 years no warming) are equally moronic, but just not as obvious. and if your listeners are not the brightest folks, and they want to believe you, they will even accept that summers tend to be colder than winters!
lol, "marohasy 8and her institute) has no policy on global warming".
plain funny. (part 2, 10 minutes)
"money can corrupt"
alas, all science is false. pretty simplicistic.
oh, and this one is totally new: (13.30)
"themes was frozen, wine was grown in england..."
Mohosy: "if you care about the environment, get a science degree and don t worry that much..." (15.30)
ouch, this one is really new: "witches were burnt"
(then followed by the old denialist - holocaust claim)
Mr Shands brilliance has struck a chord with me. The scales have fallen from my eyes and I sit here now pondering imponderables.
There is one in particular that is troubling me, as I think it goes to the core of whole AGW assumption - is warm really warmer than cool?
decades of meticulously gathered data
Exactly. That sort of commitment is clearly religious. Anything that isn't obvious in a morning's stroll, or an afternoon in an armchair, isn't real.
Because if it were, that would go against deeply held inactivist beliefs, and it would be wrong to disrespect that by disagreeing with it.
"We can't predict the weather, so how can we predict the climate?"
I can't predict much about a single coin flip, but if you tell me you're going to flip it 1000 times I can give you a pretty good breakdown of what the overall outcome will be. By their reasoning I shouldn't be able to say a thing about 1000 flips.
The Lank troll got the old talking points.
It's ELEVEN YEARS since the LARGEST EL NINO IN HISTORY, troll.
So you have to say "temperatures haven't been rising for 11 years!" and you have to eventually admit you mean, in some parts of the world, only.
Surprised they didn't have Steve McIntyre call in. Looks like he's back with another installment on Hansen's results:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3215
Perhaps we need to get second statistician opinion.
When you fuse ice, the temperature don't rise because of the latency heat of ice, as long as there is ice. Maybe what we are seeing now is that the repartition of energy has changed and that explains the accelerated fusion of polar ice.
DSW
Lank posts:
Not true. See here:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Ball.html
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Reber.html
Oops. Sorry for the double post. I was reading down the column and forgot I'd already answered Lank's no-warming line.
Surely monumental stupidity of such a high order deserves to be celebrated with a sobriquet or a victory title. I suggest that Andrew henceforth be known as "Mr. Summer", though improvements are encouraged.
Can we say that night is darker than day, or is that just an assumption?
All this 'darker' hysteria is such alarmist babble!
Why, recent trends show that, near dawn, night is not darker than day.
And amateurs have been taking pictures of it, and I trust these rather than trusting NASA charts and models, so that's good enough for me.
Best,
D
Three sentences and three things wrong.
His response to a mistake is 3 more mistakes? Will he make 3 more mistakes in response each of those mistakes? If so the amount of errors will grow exponentially ( # of mistakes = 1/2( 3^(n+1) -1 ) where n=number of mistake cycles). Soon we will need to use the entire internet just to catalogue his errors.
Are anybody with more than half a brain really watching Ch 9?
Like the other commercial channels, - for dimwits by dimwits.
Have detuned the crap off my box.
"All this 'darker' hysteria is such alarmist babble! "
and who's to say what level of illoumination is best? i reject the marxist crowd's attempts to force a government-mandated "correct" level of illumination on me.
...and anyway, z, darkness is the new industry standard (as in: Q. how many Microsoft engineers does it take to replace a light bulb? A. none. They just crowd the relevant ISO committee with strawmen.)