World's first wind-powered mobile billboard and people-mover

Yarra Trams, in partnership with Pacific Hydro's southwestern Victorian Yambuk Wind Farm and Sustainability Victoria, has secured enough GreenPower 'to supply a 5-carriage tram until the end of 2008.'

This mob is switched on. Even their integrated marketing campaign is sustainable. Design it once, and run the campaign 24x7, for no extra cost.

The wind-powered tram will run along Route 96 (East Brunswick -St Kilda), which is not only Melbourne’s busiest line carrying 12 million people each year, but was recently ranked by National Geographic as one of the world’s top 10 tram rides.

The campaign incorporates a tram fully wrapped in an eye-catching wind farm design and interpretive materials on climate change and GreenPower on the interior.

I've squished down a shot of the tram, follow the above link to see it fully blown.

Very creative. Is this product marketing of the future? Here we have a consumer need for mass transit being met by a company that shows demonstrable emissions reductions as an integral part of it's product offering. After catching the tram, and reading the interpretive materials on climate change and GreenPower on the interior, you would learn something new, and travel in good conscience.

I wonder who their market is though? We're not talking organic yoghurt at the supermarket. I can't see eco-consumers conscientiously choosing the 7:21 GreenPowered over the 7:15 coal-powered one if they risk running late for work. Regular commuters would catch it anyway. But perhaps enough of the streams of tourists, among the 12 million people each year travelling Route 96 from St Kilda to East Brunswick, will seek it out as an experience to keep it well patronaged in between regular hours. Especially since making National Geographic’s top 10 tram rides ranking. Then there's your tramspotters....

It's interesting to see how the pressing problems of climate change force creative market solutions. That's a theme I'll pick up more often on Global Warming Watch.

I also wonder about the economics. The cost per MW for wind must be higher, than from coal-fired. The Yambuk project cost $50 million. But when the carbon price signal eventually kicks in these guys will be sitting pretty. Upon breaking even, every time the wind blows, pure profit trickles into the bank accounts of the investors.

The other thing to consider is the actual carbon saving. The zeitgeist is also ripe for green-wash marketeers. How does Yarra Trams' energy source really stack-up?

The wind farm contributes up to 30MW of clean electricity to the national grid, enough to supply the annual electricity needs of 18,000 Victorian homes.

Yambuk displaces up to 130,000 tonnes of global warming pollution produced by traditional power generation methods each year.

That’s like removing 30,000 cars from our roads.

Graham Young vs Robyn Williams and Others

Graham Young is the former vice-president and campaign chairman of the Queensland Liberal Party. As chief editor and the publisher of On Line Opinion, he is using his pulpit to rail against bullying.

If it happened in a school yard or in a cyber chat room, and the protagonists were two 15-year-old school girls, it might have hit the front pages of a tabloid.

Bullying.

In a world where we're all supposed to be nice to each other, it's the ultimate crime.

That's the charge. The main defendant is Robyn Williams.

For bullying is what ABC Science Broadcaster Robyn Williams does to respected academic and former Vice-Chancellor of Canberra University, Don Aitkin, in his introduction to Aitkin’s Ockham’s Razor broadcast on April 27. There ought to be widespread outrage, particularly as Williams is a journalist with ethical and professional obligations who works for a publicly-funded broadcaster with duties of impartiality.

Graham has problem a problem with the way Robyn Williams introduced Professor Don Aitkin on his show.

“I have, on the other hand, had her father Nigel Lawson on the 'Science Show', talking about innovation or some such, with his usual flair and penetrating intelligence. Not a science-trained man, but economics is near enough, isn't it, and he was Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer (or Treasurer).

“Now Lord Lawson has brought out a book on climate called 'An Appeal to Reason'. Here's the first paragraph of a review in this week's 'Spectator' magazine:

“'When there is so much data suggesting the world's climate is heating up', goes the review, 'some may find it presumptuous of Nigel Lawson, who is not a scientist and has undertaken no original research, to hope to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Would we take seriously an appraisal of his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer written by someone whose only expertise was in oceanography?'

“Well the same could apply to Professor Don Aitkin, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, a political scientist and like Lawson, a journalist. Professor Aitkin gave a lecture on climate to the Planning Institute of Australia, 'A Cool Look at Global Warming'. That was a couple of weeks ago, and I thought you might like to hear some of his thoughts, recast for 'Ockham's Razor'. Though nine out of 10 Australians are said to be alarmed at climate change, 10 per cent think differently, and Professor Aitkin is one of them.”

Bullying?

It's not a kind introduction, but hey, if Graham wants "a world where we're all supposed to be nice to each other", he's too idealistic to be campaign manager for the Queensland Liberals. This could shed light on why they are out of power — but that's unkind).

But would you call it bullying? Not in the context. There's no 'nice' in scientific reasoning. It's not an objective of scientific method. If I were to front up on a science show defending a controversial, non-expert opinion on global warming, I would expect vigorous questioning.

Not Graham Young, who only see "viscious" "intimidation". (Italics, mine)

This is fairly vicious stuff, not the least because it is delivered against someone who has earned the right to intellectual respect over a long and fruitful career. Of course, the point of the put-down isn’t to intimidate Aitkin - too late for that, he’s about to do a two-part broadcast on the issue - it is to intimidate anyone of lesser stature and guts who might want to hold a public opinion on the issue.

It's nice that he's risen to the defence of Aitkin, but as Aitkin says, in the follow-up interview two weeks later, that he had received more love mail than hate mail from the show.

I gave a public address on this subject a few weeks ago, which was picked up in the daily newspapers, the text of the address was put on one newspaper's website, and a vigorous correspondence developed. In all, I received, well, 150 or so communications. The majority of them were positive. The negative ones fell mostly into one or other of two groups: either I was trespassing on someone else's patch, that is, only scientists are allowed to talk about these issues, and I am not a scientist; or I was a 'denier', someone who, in spite of the authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, and the weight of scientific opinion, was persisting in error.

No complaints of of bullying reported, though. So what did William say that was so bullying to a former university chancellor?

...Williams himself fails the test he sets Aitkin.

He isn’t a climate scientist, he’s a science broadcaster with an honours degree in biology. The chances are that he has no formal training in physics, the key to understanding climate science. So, on his own bad reasoning, he is precluded from commenting on the area.

Robyn Williams didn't preclude Aitkin from commenting in the area, he gave him two shows! Williams put his subject in context in his introduction, and this is really what galls Young.

His statistic that 90 per cent of Australians are alarmed at climate change is also suspect. It derives from polling carried out by The Climate Institute of Australia, apparently the offspring of Clive Hamilton’s Australia Institute (what SourceWatch would call an “Astroturf/industry front group” if it was from the right).

The poll was apparently of 1,005 people conducted online between March 7-11 and the actual question is not available in the report (PDF 493KB). While according to the report the data was “weighted by age, sex and location to ensure representativeness” it is in fact impossible to do this using an online survey - you can weight, but you can’t ensure. All online surveying carries a bias towards the “left” of politics, and judged on other Australian online polling samples this is somewhere in the order of 10 per cent.

Actually, this figure consistently shows up in surveys, here's one commissioned by WorldPublicOpinion.Org:

Australia most global warming aware. No, really!

Disclaimer: Shameless self-promo.

No really, 92% of Australians are 'in favor of measures to combat global warming'. That's 9 out of 10 to me.

Since Graham is right to take a critical look at the methodology behind the Climate Institute survey. Let's do that, properly.

About this report

The Climate Institute has commissioned both qualitative and quantitative market research on the attitudes of the Australian community to climate change and climate change solutions since early 2007. This paper summarises research by Auspoll (formerly the Australian Research Group) and draws on broader market research on public opinion on climate change.

The data discussed in this report was primarily obtained using a sample of 1,005 interviews conducted online between Friday 7 March and Tuesday 11 March 2008.

Interviews were conducted online with Australian residents aged 18 and above. Sample selection took place in such a way as to produce a sample roughly proportional with the population distribution. Data was weighted by age, sex and location to ensure representativeness.

Further, qualitative research was gathered from various focus group in 2007 and most recently conducted by Auspoll on behalf of The Climate Institute in Sydney (Hurstville and Parramatta) and Brisbane on 11, 12 and 18 March respectively.

Further data was collected from the following sources:

• Surveys conducted by Auspoll on behalf of The Climate Institute online using a representative sample of 1,215 Australians from Tuesday 4 March to Thursday 6 March 2008. Similar polls in March, August and November 2007.
• Exit poll conducted by Auspoll on behalf of The Climate Institute during the 2007 Federal election in eight key marginal seats in New South Wales (Bennelong, Wentworth, Lindsay, Eden Monaro), Queensland (Petrie, Bowman) and South Australia (Makin, Sturt). The poll was conducted online using a representative
sample of 984 voters and was conducted from 6pm on Saturday 24 November until Tuesday 27 November.
• Published polls drawn from an array of sources, including the CSIRO, the Lowy Institute, Newspoll, AC Nielsen, Galaxy Polls, Google Trends and telephone polls conducted by Winston Sustainable Research Strategies
This report marks the second of the Climate Institute’s annual updates on public attitudes to climate change and climate change solutions.

Graham's 'poll', diminished to 'apparently of 1,005 people conducted online' turns out to be 1,005 interviews conducted online; plus, qualitative research was gathered from various focus group (sic); plus, surveys conducted online by Auspoll of 1,215 Australians; plus, election exit polls of a sample of 984 voters; and published polls drawn from an array of sources. That's over 3,204 interviews. Over 3 times the sample size that drives up Graham's blood pressure. Better that nobody tell him why Labor won the election, and ratified Kyoto as their first act of government.

Having identified bullying as the ultimate crime in Graham's nice world, he feels released to devote the rest of his article to wind-milling into Williams.

He regularly indulges in queen bee behaviour....Seems his quality control only works in one direction, and if your one of teacher's pets you'll get a pat on the head...Williams appears to have picked-up the campaigning bug early in life. His father was a public servant and Marxist who sold socialist newspapers on the street. ... excitement of going on anti-nuclear marches. Fascinated by prestige and fame, he also recalls with relish that Bertrand Russell used to phone friends of his....Obviously the fascination with prestige intrudes into and distorts his journalism. It also appears to distort his CV.

And then turns his sight on John Quiggin and Tim Lambert who apparently, 'are web activists who practice brown-shirt tactics on any who question what they define as the global warming orthodoxy.' Quiggy uses 'smear', and ensures 'that global warming sceptics are presented in the worst light' on Wikipedia, where he is an editor. Lambert's 'bullying' charge seems to consist of sticking to the science, and arguing for better 'n Graham can argue against:

Lambert, through his blog Deltoid promulgates whatever the current orthodoxy happens to be, but he does not restrict himself to his blog, frequently diving into comment threads on other online publications. And once you have Lambert on your thread, he sticks closer than a tick, hoping to suck the lifeblood out of the argument until you give up.

So after flailing away at Williams, Quiggin and Lambert, you'd think that Graham would have satisfied his desire for vengeance for the ruining of his nice world.

Nah.

I’ll be writing to the ABC. Time to get this ball rolling.

Well, bully for you.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Great tits adapt to global warming

And British tits cope much better than Dutch ones.

Consumerism — Nature's survival strategy

Howard Bloom has pinged consumerism as a trend or fashion that may appear to be an excessive waste of time, and folly as a survival strategy for all species — from bacteria (our ancestors, as the author explains) to bees to humans.

We see how the human 'generation-gap' is echoed by bacteria, where the young, anti-establishment generation eschews the ways of their boring parents in search of their own lifestyle. Non-conformity as a survival strategy:

In Praise Of Consumerism - Bees, Bacteria And The Value Of Wasted Time

Bacteria survive by swings in fashion - they survive by consumerism. One generation grows a stalk like the stem of a mushroom cap and roots itself to its food. That generation specializes in homesteading - in sucking all the nuutrition it can out of the territory it’s born in. The next generation rebels against the fashion of its parents, forgets about a stalk, seems to snicker at the very notion of riveting itself to the ground, and grows a biological propeller--a long, whip-like tail. Then it sets off for adventure. In groups of 10,000, it spreads from the colony’s heart, racing into the unknown to literally find its fortune, to find new territory with new food.

When these rebellious pioneers trip across a bonanza of delectables, their kids rebel against their parents’ ways. They shun travel and once again grow stalks, stubbornly rooting themselves to the new food source.

It’s all a part of a survival strategy or, more specifically, of a search-and-swallow strategy. The generation with a stalk specializes in staying at home. The generation with the propeller specializes in exploration. Explorers find new sources of food. Homesteaders mine the new food source for all it’s worth—and they do it very efficiently. By the time the old food source
runs out, the explorers have found a new one.

Does this mean the waste of a lot of material goods? You bet. Not every group of 10,000 explorers finds a treasure trove. Some die in the desert with nothing new to eat. Some die even more catastrophically, as victims of bacterial war or as victims of bacteria-eaters like the larvae of corals, rotifers, sea anemones, and jellyfish. But even the failures teach lessons to the colony. The dying bacteria send out molecular signals that say, “Beware. This is not a safe place to go. This is not a safe path to follow.”

And in looking at bees, it could pay to hug a hippy.

Things get even worse if the fashionable flower patch of the moment is running out of pollen and nectar. When a worker bee sets off to follow the crowd and comes back with her cargo-pouches
nearly empty, the unloaders pass her by as if she were dirt. Attention means everything in a world of fashion. The whole reason we go with the trend is to get others to look at us admiringly. That’s true of you and me. And it’s equally true of bees.

Bees who are shunned at the loading dock stagger around as if they are stunned - or more as if they have lost their sense of purpose, their sense of meaning. That’s when the self-indulgence of the hippie explorer bees shows its worth. Crowds of discouraged forager bees wander around inside the hive looking for some way to lift their spirits, some way to entertain themselves. And they find it. Four or five of the explorer bees have accidentally bumbled into new flower patches or new water puddles.

And they are not shy about advertising their discoveries. Like street buskers or soapbox preachers, they dance their news. Four or five of them compete on the inside wall of the hive like break dancers vying for your attention at Times Square. You’ve heard about these dances - the famous figure eights that spell out direction, distance, and wind speed on the way to the flower
patch and back. It’s a very complex language for a bee with only a tiny number of brain cells.

But the discouraged foragers gather round to watch the dancers flash and flaunt. Some explorers dance more enthusiastically than others. The most outrageous enthusiasts attract the biggest crowds. If the dance is sufficiently persuasive - which means if the bee dancing the message dances longer than her competitors, if she just won’t give up - a few of the conformists will catch a bit of the dancer’s enthusiasm and go out and check her report. If they’re impressed with what they find, they come back and join the dance. If they’re not impressed, they don’t.

Eventually one bee manages to gather the biggest audience and the largest number of background dancers. That’s when the hive makes up its mind. The conformists go off in a pack to mine the flower patch the winner of the dance contest advertised. When the foragers come back home with pouches full of stuff the hive needs, the unloaders rush to them, make a fuss over them, and unload them as quickly as they can. The foraging conformists get what they need most, attention. They sharpen up as if they have a sense of purpose, a sense of mission, and a sense of meaning again.

Meanwhile the explorer bees - the bee world’s Henry David Thoreaaus - go off on their self-indulgent flights and buzz off the beaten path, selfishly pursuing their trend-bucking rambles again.

The hive survives thanks to wastes of time and energy. It survives thanks to the explorer’s useless consumption of fuel. It survives thanks to self-indulgence. It survives thanks to a hippie luxury.

If I've started a trend (I have for me) here's another patch of Bloom: In Praise Of Consumerism — It Appeals To The Thoreau In You

Over my head, under my bridge

GWW loves serious questions from our resident troll, and will answer them the best we can.

BTW, please provide links to the Climate change computer models THAT WERE DEVELOPED IN THE 70's, 80'S AND 90'S THAT PREDICTED THE CURRENT GLOBAL COLLING TREND.

...or even ANY Climage change computer model built today that can be applied to historical temperature changes. You know, as a computer programmer, I verify that my program is working correctly by plugging in historical data that I know the results for and verifying that my program produces these results.... This is a concept called "Expected Results Analysis".

Where is the Expected Results Analysis for all the Computer AGW Models? Can't seem to find them anywhere!

Just not now. Just give me some time, dude. I'll ping some hackers I know and see if we can get the Expected Results Analysis you're looking for.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Dave Sag's new book, departing soon

“The Train is Leaving: Implications for Business of the new Carbon Constrained Economy”. Should be out in a couple of months. Dave's teasing us with a PowerPoint. I don't want to shoot the messenger, but Al Gore has a lot to answer for.

Dave Sag has been busy Down-Under, giving presentations to the customers of an enormous IT customer's integration partner (as well as delivering that PowerPoint at The Australian Carbon Trading Expo 2008). I know, because I heard the telemarketers going through their spiels, recruiting their bums off. Blown away when I heard one of the speakers was Dave Sag of Carbon Planet. Dave's doin' well. Said he'd buy me a drink next time he was in Sydney, once.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

If suddenly there were no more global warming II

Anatomy of a Denialist

Subject: Christopher Pearson
Accomplice: Phil Chapman
Habitat: Opinion section of The Australian

We start by observing the tepid headline.

A cool idea to warm to

Nice puns, but they leave you totally unprepared for the sub-headline.

ABOUT the beginning of 2007, maintaining a sceptical stance on human-induced global warming became a lonely, uphill battle in Australia.

Steel yourself for a gut-wrencher. I'll spare the reader the sloppy set-up and fast forward to the medical bits. The patient has an acute case of, If suddenly there was no more global warming, caught from a carrier, Phill Champan. Symptoms include:

Scalpel. First incision to reveal Imprudent Overreaching ...

But Chapman's argument about last year's 0.7C fall being "the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record" ups the stakes considerably.

It replaces an irrational panic in the public imagination with a countervailing and more plausible cause for concern. It also raises, more pointedly than before, a fascinating question: since there are painful truths with profound implications for public policy to be confronted, how will the political class manage the necessary climb-down?

Compulsive need to offer consultancy services to authority, free...

In Australia, Rudd Labor's political legitimacy is inextricably linked to its stance on climate change. If the Prime Minister wants a second term, he'll probably have to start "nuancing his position", as the spin doctors say, and soon.

A variation on J.M. Keynes's line - "when the facts change, I change my mind" - admitting that the science is far from settled and awaiting further advice, would buy him time without necessarily damaging his credibility.

Lavish offer to bestow (dubious) magnificence upon his adopters. Studied indifference to downside.

Taking an early stand in enlightening public opinion would be a more impressive act of leadership. While obviously not without risk and downside, it would make a virtue out of impending necessity and establish him, in Charles de Gaulle's phrase, as a serious man.

Threat to withdraw acknowledgement. Known in the sales game as The Take-Away Close.

I don't think he's got it in him. But we can at least expect that some of the more ruinously expensive policies related to global warming will be notionally deferred and quietly shelved. Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister Kim Carr will be allowed to invest in high-profile nonsense such as funding "the green car".

And, now, a word from his Sponsors. Don't go away, y'hear!

But the coal industry is unlikely to be closed down or put into a holding pattern. Nor are new local coal-fired power stations going to be prohibited until the technology is developed to capture and sequester carbon.

Since the greater part of the funds for the research underpinning that technology is expected to come from the private sector - and there's a limit to what government can exact by administrative fiat - as the debate becomes calmer and more evidence-based, business will be increasingly reluctant to outlay money on a phantom problem.

More of that free consulting advice. Chuck a go-slow, and lie to the voters. Nice. Prepares us for the request for the government to knock off his Sponsors' enemy.

Budgetary constraints and rampant inflation provide governments with plenty of excuses for doing as little as possible until a new and better informed consensus emerges on climate.

Ross Garnaut could doubtless be asked to extend his carbon trading inquiry for the life of the parliament and to make an interim report in 12 months on the state the science. In doing so, he could fulfil the educative functions of a royal commission and at the same time give himself and the Government a dignified way out of an impasse.

Patient's self-belief in predictive powers, and ability to predict scenarios that correspond to patients ideology, unerringly.

A likelier scenario would be full-page ads in our broadsheets and catchy local television campaigns paid for by the Indian and Chinese coal, steel and energy industries that buy our raw materials. Their theme would surely be that if many of the West's leading scientific authorities no longer subscribed to catastrophic global warming, why on earth should anyone else.

So those are the symptoms. What is the cause of this delirium? It was a denialist meme introduced into the head of the host (patient) by the carrier, Phill Champan.

Now Phill is not to be taken lightly. He's the first Aussie astronaut, so that clearly gives him the authority to talk fluently in climate science.

He makes the standard argument that the average temperature on earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, with a new twist.

As of last year, the global temperature is falling precipitously. All four of the agencies that track global temperatures (Hadley, NASA Goddard, the Christy group and Remote Sensing Systems) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007.

Chapman comments: "This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over. It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850."

And has no need to observe the fact that global warming is measured as a trend and an outlier year is meaningless, as explained by a sweet concern troll, who took the wrong moment to interrupt a high-spirited game of Moron Poker over at Rabett Run, and got nipped.

Perhaps something like: "averages matter, and the longer term the average, the more it matters. Temperatures vary from month to month and from year to year, just due to variance in weather over such short periods. Over longer periods, ten years and longer, averages matter more, because the short term variability is less noisy. When we look at those averages, we see a clear trend since 1980, that temperature is rising. It isn't much yet, but due to the persistence of CO2 and of the human activity which leads to warming, we expect this average to keep increasing for at least the rest of this century. That accumulated warming is a threat to sea levels and to precipitation patterns, among other things. That's what AGW is all about."

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Shhh, don't talk about the science

Pomfelo advises on the prudence of not taking a stance on global warming:


SuicideGirls > Boards > Current Events > Global warming strikes again

Tackle a climate change troll

The most effective thing you can do to fight climate change is not to buy efficient-energy appliances, convert to green energy, or walk to the shops, etc. Though don't let me dissuade you. Nor is glaring at that poor 17 year old checkout chick for offering you non biodegradable plastic bags, angry as they make you.

Nah, the best thing you can do to expedite the revolution, and bring on the carbon economy is to go and take on a AGW denial propagandist, on their own turf.

It's these people that have been at the forefront of the well-documented, fossil-fuel industry campaign to create doubt in the publics mind about the link between co2 emissions. And they have been successful, the extent to which they have can be shown by the late ratification of Kyoto by Australia,and the non-ratification by the US. And more recently, by the 0.5% increase in carbon dioxide levels between 2006 to 2007 over the 30 year trend of 1.65 ppm.

So how do you take on a Denier, and to what end?
If you are a normal person with a good work-life balance, the following is not for you. But the secret suburban subversive, or debating champion, or reformed hacker, might like to break out at an AGW denial blog, like (in Australia) Jennifer Marohasy, Andrew Bolt Blog, or Tim Blair, and expose their fossil-fuel propaganda for what it is. How?

Seize their myths. Squeeze hard
Check out their latest global warming posts, and you will quickly identify which recycled myth the author is peddling. Read a few post to get a sense of their style, before deconstructing their myth. You can do this with the aid of the diagnostics from specialised AGW denial myth-busting bloggers, some who are listed below:

Flex that Deltoid
Coby Beck had great success with his original blog, A Few Things Ill Considered, which had a great series on How to Talk to a Sceptic on a myth by myth basis. He was then was invited to blog at Science Blogs. His new home: A Few Things Ill Considered.

John Cook, an ex-physicist (majoring in solar physics at the University of Queensland) has a neat list of every skeptic argument encountered online as well as how often each argument is used in his excellent Skeptical Science blog.

These two bloggers can help you easily identify the basic argument, and simply explain how to busted the myth. Desmog blog, by Kevin Grandia, a PR industry insider, breaks the denialist spin down, simply. Or as they say, the are Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science.

Once you have busted a few myths and have a repertoire you can confidently (but politely) bust, you may be ready to read the more scientific blogs.

Andrew Lambert Of the University of Technology, Sydney, runs Deltoid, where he occasionally eviscerates the denialist meme du jour for a bit of fun. Eli Rabbit has more fun doing this more often with his Rabett Run. Real Climate is a blog providing commentary on climate science news by working climate scientists for the interested public. They recently debunked a favourite of the deniers: that the majority of scientist in the 70s predicted a coming ice age. Tamino is the alias of a working, formidable climate scientist who runs Open Mind.

Yea, but Why?
Because they did it first. And, they are still doing it. This denial is funded by big fossil-fuel, manufactured by thinktanks like the Heartland Institute, CEI, (see Exxon-Secrets.org) and the myths are disseminated by their shills, usually opinion journalists or professional deniers like our own Professor Robert (Bob) Carter.

If you can't stop them at the source, and the Royal Society couldn't stop them, you can bust the myth at its endpoint. Expose it where you see it, politely but firmly. Stop the misinformation in its track. Let me know if you do, and I'll post your efforts up. I'm want an army of well-informed bloggers prepared to spend 5 minutes every other day identifying genuine AGW denialist propaganda, and 10 minutes politely debunking any inaccuracies. The object is to neutralise the impressions created by the fossil-fuel indsutry's 20 year campaign that may help delay tackling the problem with all haste.

Hook-up for White Hat Trolling
Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide, Professor Barry W Brook, has pinged these climate change 'sceptics, denialists, contrarians, delayers or delusionists' as Internet trolls. It's not original, The Ergosphere argues that the collective noun is an irritation of trolls. These climate trolls slink into science sites with a public interface, and loudly pretend there still is a scientific debate about what causes global warming, intending to mislead.

White Hat Trolling is the reverse: It is fronting up at junk-science blogs and news groups, in this case those campaigning to confuse the public about climate change, to rebut and debunk their unsound arguments, in this way exposing their campaigns.

Expose the Deniers' Tactics
Remember: The purpose is to expose the tactics of the deniers by attacking their logic not their persons. A White Hat Troll never gets personal. The desired impression to leave, is that the 'debate', that deniers say still rages, is really an astroturfing campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry to give the impression the scientific jury is still out on the causes on global warming.

Where to next? Well, put you hand up and leave a comment or a question before you take on a denier, and I'll keep posting more on the subject, and hopefully some of your efforts.