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Sunday 27 May 2012

Drowning in the facts

Thursday, 10th March 2011

Great piece by Clive James in Standpoint on the way the Queensland floods have exposed the lunacy of Australia’s intelligentsia in their unshakeable belief in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. James writes:

Before the floods, proponents of the CAGW view had argued that there would never be enough rain again, because of Climate Change. When it became clear that there might be more than enough rain, the view was adapted: the floods, too, were the result of Climate Change.

...Until the rains came, the voice of Professor Tim Flannery had been loud in the land. More moderate professors, who said that there might indeed be some man-made global warming, but not a lot, were heard only occasionally. Professor Flannery was heard all the time, and always predicting that the major cities would run out of water. The nice thing about him was that he was without guile and therefore ready to say that a certain city would run out of water in some verifiable time: say, two years. Two years later, abundant rain would be falling on that city. But he always had an explanation, and the media always liked his story best, because it was a story about Australia eventually and inevitably running out of water, even though what appeared to be water might currently be seen to be falling out of the sky. Then an awful lot of it fell on his head at once and he was finally seen to be short of credibility.

... It was Green pressure that stymied the construction of dams. Probably, from now on, dams will come back into favour, in recognition of the fact that the climate of the sunburnt country, in all her beauty and her terror, is still the way it always was... If, from now on, dams are built instead of desalination plants — which in recent years have been proved to yield a fraction of the water at a multiple of the cost — then we will be able to tell that sanity has returned to at least one section of the vast area covered by the pretensions of the climatologists. But it's quite likely that, in general, their view will continue to be dominant.

Yup. Even when they are literally inundated by reality.

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Raymond Douglas

March 10th, 2011 11:39am

We are ruled by people who have lost their capacity for sound thinking.Not just on this issue, but on so much else. Forget the facts, ideology is all.

ER

March 10th, 2011 3:41pm

I live in a part of the world with very cold winters. In recent years we have had exceptionally cold weather. The AGW fanatics keep telling us extreme cold too is caused by global warming but more and more they use the words "climate change". Since every minor aberration can be described as climate change, they will never be caught out in embarassing situations such as described in Melanie's article about Australia. Remember however, that unfalsifiable claims are not part of the realm of science. Adherents of global warming and climate change are members of a humbug, greeny cult.

Abandon Ship!

March 10th, 2011 4:19pm

Ah yes, Tim Flannery, the warmist given swooning and unquestioning admiration by Andrew Marr on Start the Week on Monday.

Suffolkbor

March 10th, 2011 8:42pm

ER:
AGW fanatics have also slipped in the term " Climate Chaos" which is also a classic example of word manipulation and goal post moving.
Every weather event which causes disruption in an increasingly populous and urbanised world can then be described as causing "Chaos",
a deliberate and wilful example
of the catch 22 syndrome.

david elder

March 10th, 2011 8:45pm

Mel, the opinion polls here in Oz show a catastrophic collapse in the Labor vote since PM Julia Gillard pandered to the Greens by announcing a carbon (sic) tax - after an election when she promised not to introduce one.

Paul from Texas

March 10th, 2011 9:46pm

Now all daily, local weather is cited as proof of man-made global warming. This despite the fact the they just said local weather is not climate (and cannot be used to discredit AGW).

This is becoming irrational and passe. I understand many have conceded this was and is a hoax, and are moving on from CO2 regulation to Nitrogen (N2 and NOx compounds) regulation and taxes. Get ready to measure your nitrogen footprint!

When you ask a global warmist about all their wrong predictions, they look you in the eye and claim they were right all along.

DougS

March 10th, 2011 10:15pm

Catch a bit of some Aussies putting the boot in on Andrew Bolt's blog.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dont_know_the_cost_dont_know_if_it_works/

Jill Duggan is from the European Commission’s Directorate General of Climate Action and she's been ripped apart by Andrew Bolt on The Steve Price Breakfast Show.

Enjoy!

Mustapha Bunn

March 10th, 2011 11:45pm

Mr.Flannery may well be an idiot who has got it completely wrong numerous times but various governments in Australia keep giving him jobs as a "climate expert" whatever.
Meanwhile it was raining again in Queensland yesterday,as it was here in Victoria as well.

Baron

March 10th, 2011 11:55pm

not much around to cheer me, this did, alot, thanks Melanie.

Stephen Rothbart

March 11th, 2011 12:36pm

Some 2 years ago I was informed that extreme solar activity with massive solar flares would occur in 2011 and culminate in 2012 with even the possible loss of satellites orbiting the earth and damage to all our communication connections.

It is possible that the pressure from this solar activity is also causing not just extreme weather conditions, but also gravitational pulls on the surface of the Earth, which may account for some of the violent earthquakes, such as the ones in Haiti and now Japan.

Our scientists however are in thrall to climate change, and will make no mention of this solar activity in case it hurts their pay cheques.

It would be interesting to know if this blind adiction to the one cause of man made climate change is blinding us all to the catastrophes afflicting the planet right now, such as the change in the flow of the Gulf Stream, el Nino, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.

Is anyone actually looking?

Lives are at stake here, much more important than Al Gore's pay packet and Obama's fanatasies.

Anyone know of any studies going on?

Paul from Texas

March 11th, 2011 3:35pm

Stephen, there are on-going studies debunking the claims of higher frequencies of extreme weather. Unfortunately, their reports don't make the general news like global warming predictions.

Here's one that includes the Australian flooding:

http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Hearings/Energy/030811/Christy.pdf

http://www.climatedepot.com/ is one of the best.

Arthur Lincoln

March 11th, 2011 8:23pm

About two years ago I watched a BBC 2 programme about climate change. The 'experts' on the programme were adamant that Britain would experience wetter summers and warmer winters, which would result in even more rain and flooding. Two months later a feature of the BBCs Radio 4 Morning programme was climate change. A female reporter was speaking from a field of Maize in deepest Lincolnshire. A climate change 'expert' was interviewed and stated that "such crops as Maize and potatoes would not be grown for much longer in Lincolnshire as the dryer climate would not sustain these water reliant crops".
It was at this point I knew it was all bunkum.

Maddy1

March 12th, 2011 2:54am

@Arthur Lincoln
March 11th, 2011 8:23pm

Look at the way even the RSPB manipulates the information. In the RSPB Hides at the nearby Blacktoft they are illustrations of ground nesting birds in danger of being flooded by AWG? The poorly paid scientific field workers have no say in how their science is manipulated by the unqualified, highly paid, RSPB Adminstrators! My point is that if AGW is a reality and the product has been rebanded at least three times since its inception, how will futile manipulation help when we do not know what will happen? The elephant in the room is that Attenborough who has the obvious moral authority, or at least, did have, will not touch this issue but concentrates on the comparatively sugar coated, side of Natural History such as flying monsters!
Even my comment that in the future, we will not be bombarded by immigrants, but we may have to re-colonize land to secure our future was deleted.

JJJ

March 12th, 2011 12:11pm

Tim Flannery has just been appointed Climate Change Commissioner. Mission: sell climate change/a carbon tax to the Australian people.
Payment: AUD180 000 a year.
Has received funding of 90 million AUD for his geothermal company, nad has advised Riochrd Branson on space travel.

Conclusion: Lying and fairy tales will help you get a lot of money.

Arthur Lincoln

March 12th, 2011 2:12pm

@Maddy:

Attenborough will not touch this subject probably because he has witnessed what happened to Dr David Bellamy.

Australians for Non-Bigoted Thinking

March 13th, 2011 8:52am

Professor Tim Flannery predicted that Adelaide would run out of water by 2009. Water storages are now at 77%. He predicted that Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains. Their dams are now at 100% capacity.

Victoria now has a partially built desalination plant. Building has halted; it is now underwater from rains ! The predicted cost of the desal plant is $23,900,000,000. A dam could have been built on the fastest flowing river in Victoria; the Mitchell. This was prevented by the Greens-run Labor government, who conveniently made it part of a national park. The cost of the dam was estimated at $1.35 billion. To spell this out even further, the price of water from the desal plant will be $13.50 a kilolitre. Our current reliance on dam water costs $1 a kilolitre. In short, water from a desalination plant will cost 1350 % more. And, even more goggling, due to contractural arrangements, running the plant will cost taxpayers at least $650 million annually, even if NO water is required !

Regarding Jill Duggan, who is the European Commission’s Directorate General of Climate Action, Doug S referred to an interview with Andrew Bolt, where she is taken to the cleaners. She seems to suffer the problem of many Warmists-she doesn't know the cost of an emissions trading scheme(ginormous in dollars and the lower standard of living that will inevitably follow), and is clueless on how much a carbon tax will lower the world's temperatures(essentially zero of course).

Doug's link unfortunatley does'nt seem to open. As an alternative, readers might try their luck with this link,

http://www.mtr1377.com.au/index2.php?option=com_newsmanager&task=view&id=8095

which is the radio interview, at about half way through the program.

this link, where there is a transcript of the interview (the 2nd post from the top)

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/P45/

Pete Fumberger

March 15th, 2011 7:45am

Flannery, like Gore and Suzuki and Garnaut (another Aussie) and their ilk, are simply deluded.
Flannery has been debunked countless times, but for some reason we are forking out countless thousands in taxpayers' money, to a fossil scientist, and I think Garnaut is in the finance business,
But these blokes are very smart. They don't have to prove their fables, they just state something that does not need tangible proof, like Flannery always using the word 'may', like Adelaide may run out of water.
It's his get out of gaol free card, and our idiot government continues to employ him.
I don't mind these blokes spruiking their lies, but for us to pay for their deceit is not on.

john miller

March 15th, 2011 4:12pm

Every time I hear the phrase "climate science" I gnash my teeth.

I would argue that it cannot be a science because you cannot perform control experiments on climate.

Even if you think that stance is heresy, please, please remember that 99.99% of what you hear is the result of computer modelling - not science.

A trivial example is that in Formula 1 racing, the Virgin Team alone used solely computer modelling to design their car. They came last. The other teams used windtunnels and empirical measurement.

So modelling is very inexact. So inexact, that I would like to ask the programmers who create the models "Have you ever had to rewrite the software because the results were idiotic?" Yeah, thought so...

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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.

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