Articles Tagged "Bob Carter"

CLICK for MUST LISTEN interview with Bob Carter and Alan Jones

I was disappointed upon seeing a Global Warming “science” pitch recently published in Politico. Cold shoulder for climate change was written by sports writer turned outdoors, travel and entertainment reporter turned environmental journalist Darren Samuelsohn.

I won't pick apart details of the entire article. It's based on the old propaganda template: warmers are scientists, skeptics are right-wing ideologues. No mention of the much larger number of professional scientists and engineers who have gone from skeptical to calling the whole thing a fraud. In Samuelsohn's world, warmers and their climate theories have been “exonerated” and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is slated to rise in public status again.

Sameulsohn's background – about as far from scientifically educated as possible – is rather typical for environmental journalists. The rank and file tend to drive the ad nauseam element of Global Warming Propaganda - the endless repetition of an idea in the hope that it will begin to be taken as the truth. What else are they qualified to do? We can kind-of understand this serving up of a previous season's warmed over nonsense by someone without enough knowledge to be embarrassed by it. It's a living, right?

For many years now, our media outlets have been awash with commentary about dangerous human-caused global warming. The coverage tends to move in spasms relating to events such as meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or, as at present, to government efforts to introduce penal legislation against carbon dioxide emissions in the vain belief that this will “stop global warming”.

Given that carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas (albeit a mild and diminishingly effective one at currently increasing levels of atmospheric concentration), and that some human-caused emissions accrue in the atmosphere, the question of dangerous warming was a good one to raise back in the late 1980s.

Since then, with the formation of the IPCC, and a parallel huge expansion of research and consultancy money into climate studies, energy studies and climate policy, an intensive effort has been made to identify and measure the human signature in the global temperature record at a cost that probably exceeds $100 billion. And, as Kevin Rudd might put it, “You know what? No such signature has been able to be isolated and measured.”

That, of course, doesn’t mean that humans have no effect on global temperature, because we know that carbon dioxide is a mild greenhouse gas, and we can also measure the local temperature effects of human activity, which are both warming (from the urban heat island effect) and cooling (due to other land-use change, including irrigation). Sum these effects all over the world and obviously there must be a global signal; that we can’t identify and measure it indicates that the signal is so small that it is lost in the noise of natural climate variation.

Government misadvised on global warming

On November 10 last year, the government’s Multi-party Climate Change Committee (MCCC) received a summary of the state of global warming science from its sole scientist member, ANU’s Professor Will Steffen. (see Powerpoint presentation here…).

All policy discussion conducted within the committee since has been predicated upon the accuracy of Professor Steffen’s advice, which was that a high risk of human-related dangerous warming exists and that urgent steps need to be taken to curtail carbon dioxide emissions.

In a more recent speech last week, Climate Minister Combet indicated his continuing reliance upon the views of Professor Steffen, who had advised him that:

there is 100% certainty that the earth is warming, and that there is a very high level of certainty it will continue to warm unless efforts are made to reduce the levels of carbon pollution being sent into the atmosphere.

Sydney, April 19, 2011 (ABN Newswire) - Frontier thought from Professor Bob Carter; Australian scientists have an amazing capability for brilliant and authentic thought. And as the climate lemmings continue to rush for the cliff top, we present the softly spoken and well-reasoned thoughts of James Cook University's Professor Bob Carter. 'A cost effective way to deal with the undoubted hazards of climate change' is how he introduces his work from his cyclone-ravaged home base of James Cook University, Townsville. He cleverly squares up to the two major issues of insufficient data and the tattooing of climate 'deniers' and the way these influences are skewing the debate.

Addressing the facts on climate change and energy

An internal strategy paper has been provided to Labor MPs for use in the promotion of the Government’s proposed new carbon dioxide tax.

We offer critiques of the two most substantive parts of that paper, namely “Carbon Price” and “Climate Impact on Australia”. The full text of the paper is posted (pdf) here…

An analysis of the strategy paper

Statements in bold italics are allegations (numbered by us) from the strategy paper; our responses are in ordinary typeface:

The Climate Commission: science communication is what it’s all about.

Last Friday night, five of Australia’s six Climate Commissioners participated in the Commission’s first public consultation meeting in Geelong. They were Tim Flannery, Will Steffen, Lesley Hughes (all scientists), Roger Beale (environmental policy analyst) and Gerry Hueston (businessman); Commissioner Susannah Elliott (science communication) was not in attendance.

Australia already has an expensive federal Ministry of Climate Change, so why do we also need a new Climate Commission? Good question.

The terms of reference of the Climate Commission are to:

•Explain the science of climate change and the impacts on Australia.

•Report on the progress of international action dealing with climate change.

•Explain the purpose and operation of a carbon price and how it may interact with the Australian economy and communities.

Control the language, and you control the outcome of any debate

Ten dishonest slogans about global warming, and ten little facts.

Each of the following ten numbered statements reproduces verbatim, or almost verbatim, statements made recently by Australian government leaders, and repeated by their media and other supporters. The persons making these arguments might be termed (kindly) climate-concerned citizens or (less kindly, but accurately) as global warming alarmists.

Despairing of ever hearing sense from such people, some of whom have already attributed the cause of the devastating Japanese earthquake to global warming, a writer from the well regarded American Thinker has badged them as “idiot global warming fanatics”.

Be that as it may, most of the statements below, self-evidently, were crafted as slogans, and all conform with the obnoxious and dishonest practice of political spin - in which, of course, the citizens of Australia have been awash for many years. The statements also depend heavily upon corrupt wordsmithing with propaganda intent, a technique that international Green lobbyists are both brilliant at and relentless in practising.

The ten statements below comprise the main arguments that are made in public in justification for the government's intended new tax on carbon dioxide. Individually and severally these arguments are without merit. That they are intellectually pathetic too is apparent from my brief commentary on each.

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MEDIA STATEMENT

For Immediate release

COOL YEAR PREDICTED

It is likely that 2011 will be the coolest year since 1956, or even earlier, says the lead author of a peer-reviewed paper published in 2009:

Our ENSO - temperature paper of 2009 and the aftermath by John McLean

The paper, by John McLean, Professor Chris de Freitas and Professor Bob Carter, showed that the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), a measure of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions, is a very good indicator of average global atmospheric temperatures approximately seven months ahead, except when volcanic eruptions cause short-term cooling.

The lead author, McLean, points to a fall in temperatures that began in October last year, seven months after the abrupt shift to La Nina conditions, and according to last month's data is still continuing.

"The delayed response is important for two reasons." McLean says, "Firstly the high annual average temperature in 2010 was due to the El Nino that ended around March but whose delayed effect on temperature continued until late in the year. Secondly it means that the ENSO conditions can be used to predict with reasonable confidence the average global temperatures up to seven months ahead."

Last Wednesday, February 23, Prime Minister Gillard announced, on behalf of her Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change, an in-principle commitment to introduce a carbon dioxide tax in Australia on July 1, 2012.

This despite the irreconcilable breakdown of the Copenhagen and Cancun meetings that were aimed at achieving international agreement on similar action, and despite it now being clear also that cap-and-trade measures are dead for the foreseeable future in the USA.

This representing, first, a broken election promise of some magnitude, and, second, a stupid policy, it is not surprising that the announcement provoked an immediate blizzard of public criticism and resistance. Yet as I write, and after almost 4 days of saturation press coverage, not a single mainstream media commentator appears to have discussed the real issue at hand.

That issue is, of course, supposedly dangerous global warming caused by human carbon dioxide emissions. And note the two adjectives “supposedly” and “dangerous”, for both are critically important to the debate that we are failing to have.

Instead of analysing the global warming issue – about which, more below – press commentary continues to endlessly recycle tired, stale, sanctimonious and entirely misleading clichés about carbon pollution, climate change and energy efficiency. Everyone, it seems, has a strong opinion, yet almost none of these opinions are grounded in the empirical science facts that society used to view as the essential basis for good public policy decisions.