How climate denial really works #2: 50% of news is spin

We learned in the first post that by just turning up in a media report, skeptical views gain enough credibility to influence audiences' views. But, how do they turn up in the first place?

Crikey has published their six month long investigation into how much news is pr spin, like that of climate deniers and skeptics:

Hard questions, because this is what came out in the wash: after analysing a five-day working week in the media, across 10 hard-copy papers, ACIJ and Crikey found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories analysed triggered by public relations. The Sydney Morning Herald gets the wooden spoon with (only) 42% PR-driven stories for that week.

So, the question is, do climate skeptical writers like Ackerman, Bolt, Devine, et al, do original research? Or do they get their stuff from PR outfits like WUWT, CEI Institute, The Heartland Institute, etc?

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

How climate denial really works

Desmogblog carries the results of Stanford study which shows how including a "skeptic" view to balance a climate science news report affects the audience.

Providing climate skeptics a voice in “balanced” mainstream media coverage skews public perception of the scientific consensus regarding climate change, leaving viewers less likely to understand the threat of climate disruption and less likely to support government actions to address global warming, according to the results of a Stanford University research effort.

That is, just by being in the same report, the fringe can be seen as more respectable.

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It's the quick and the dead in the climate wars with this killer iPhone app

Ever reached an impasse in an argument about climate change, for want of accurate knowledge?

Science's answers to the common climate deniers' talking-points, painstakingly assembled by John Cook over many years, are now available at the tips of your fingers and right before your opponent's lying eyes, right when you need them next:

The app, published by Skeptical Science and Shine Technologies, has been praised and promoted around the climate change blogosphere.

Deltoid's readers are amused at the responses of the seemingly less tech-savvy deniers, and iTunes perceived 'lack of balance', that set off a round of complaints. Crikey's Pure Poison is the same.

Eli of Rabbett Run has promoted it above footage of rabbits. That's got to say something.

And the Guardiancovers the reportedly panicked responses from skeptics blogs.

If you come across a new deniers' talking-point, you can upload it to skepticalscience.com to keep feeding John Cook's labour of love, and help him continue to set the record straight.

"How cool would it be to track the spread of the memes in real-time? And what's the hint from Shine Technologies about 'heatmaps'?", are my only two questions.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Monboit vs Plimer: We've had the debate, finally

Watching Lateline on ABC tonight was a treat. Host Tony Jones has immersed himself in both the science and politics of climate change, and it is great to see a mainstream journo so well across the on-again, off-again, much threatened debate between Guardian science journalist, George Monboit and retired geologist turned avid AGW denial megaphone, Ian Plimer, that he managed to get them both on his show to bash it out in public.

I am always wary of reducing a complex area like climate-science to a televised debate format, so I settled into the debate with some apprehension.

So how did it go? More to the point, who won?

Jones opened asking Monboit to explain why he recently pessimistically claimed that AGW deniers are 'winning' ("There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease..."), which he did by elucidating the profound irony that poll after poll shows that, as the scientific evidence hardens (e.g., the IPCC says that they are 90% confident that man is causing dangerous global warming), the public is more and more gripped by climate change doubt. He believes this is because people simply don't want to face "the writing that's now on the wall".

Jones made the interesting point that the very conference Monboit was joining the debate from, COP15 Copenhagen, shows that world leaders are out touch with their faltering public. Monboit agreed, and made the equally interesting point that this is because governments are taking their lead from their scientific advisors, so they know they have to do something.

Plimer parried this, claiming that it is because governments can't resist the idea of a tax, and went on to accuse their scientific advisors of being "dodgy", citing the recent University of East Anglia so called 'climategate' hack. Monboit agrees that he as been let down by what he says the emails show in terms of keeping certain papers out of the IPCC process. But he pointed out that this did not make the science a "hoax or a con". Not taking Plimer's bait, he made the fair point that Phil Jones' indiscretions (in private emails I might add) do not debunk the consistent message coming from tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientists.

Plimer argued that the two or three CRU scientists involved in using "mafia-style tactics"were the main people the IPCC relied upon. Further cracks in Plimer's credibility appeared, when he claimed this is the "biggest scientific fraud in history". What about the work of your intellectual antecedents Ian, the pro-smoking, 'no link to cancer' lobby?

The rest of the debate was devoted to Monboit successfully taking Plimer to task over inaccuracies in his Plimer's book, Heaven + Earth, and his subsequent evasiveness over his real "scientific fraud". He mentioned two specifically — Plimer's claim that the world has cooled since 1998 (page 383 of Plimer's book referring to the Charles F.Keller paper), and that volcanoes emit more co2 than mankind.

Once presented with the the facts, that the WMO claims the last decade to be the hottest on record yet, and the US Geological Survey claim Pilmer to be wrong by an order of magnitude of 130 times, Plimer ducked and weaved. When asked to detract or stand by his claims, Plimer squirmed and distracted, obfuscated and attacked. But he just would not answer the question. Oh, look, a unicorn!

After it was clear that Monboit was not going to let him off his left-hook, Plimer jumped out of the ring to run away, and Tony Jones pulled him right back into it by his scruff. It was like watching an exorcism; his charm gave way to smarm, and viewers witnessed a denier being expertly dissected.

When Plimer accused Monboit of being rude for interjecting (when trying to get a straight answer out of Plimer), Monboit returned by pointing out it was rude to wittingly lie on television, and bad manners to not answer the question.

Monboit kicked Plimer's arse between Heaven + Earth, hell and high water. Deniers will pick on Monboit's aggression, but that's because they cannot fall back on Plimer's arguments. I was left with the impression that Plimer is aware and unconcerned about the irony of the full title of his book, "Heaven + Earth: The Missing Science of Global Warming" — it's clear that it's his book that is missing the science.

In short, Plimer got pwned.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Joyce hoist on his own petard

One of the most useful sayings that French, that fabulous language, has given us is 'hoist on his own petard' - to be blown up by your own bomb (pronounced 'bembh' for ze Pink Panther fans).

Petard also handily translates to 'fart' -- the same noise emanating from Malcolm Turnbull's opposition backbench whenever he tried to push the Coalition's promised bipartisan message on climate change action. One of the main culprits was the National's climate change denier-in-chief, Barnaby Joyce, and for his noisy efforts in the plot to install Tony Abbot as the new opposition leader in his recent climate denier coup, he has been promoted to the shadow cabinet.

You would think Barnaby would now conduct himself with polite restraint, but no. He wasted no time farting in the general direction of China, and America, only to be told by Abbot to now stop his public emissions.

Ironically, one of the best outcomes of promoting Barnaby to the front bench, is that he may finally prevented from airing his more off-tune, odorous odium.

UPDATE - it ain't gonna work out...

Phillip Coorey on the dillema facing the retail Liberal party:

Joyce rose with the full imprimatur of Minchin and Abbott but he drove a hard bargain. He wanted the key portfolio and demanded the shadow ministry be expanded by one so his entry did not result in a fellow National being punted. There are 14 Nationals in Parliament - nine MPs and five senators. Nationals make up 15 per cent of the Coalition caucus and 20 per cent of its shadow cabinet.

If the idea of promoting Joyce was to get him into the tent to curb his excesses, it failed miserably in week one.

....

There will be no reining in of Joyce. As he told the Herald on Tuesday: "It's not as though you have a personality transplant when you go into cabinet."

Being a practical peoples, I think Australians would just settle for a brain-transplant.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Andrew Bolt: liar, denier, and father

Andrew Bolt really is a piece of work, of the guilty, paranoid kind:

Today he is having a go at Clive Hamilton for trying to "trying to turn my children against me":

Leave my children alone, Hamilton

This is seriously creepy. Is Green extremist Clive Hamilton now trying to turn my children against me - and by warning them I’m a corrupt killer?

Hi there,

There’s something you need to know about your father.

Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.

Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore. The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people.

And your dad is helping them.

There is something sick about a man who, having failed to convince the adults, feels his best option is to terrify their children

When you read all of Clive's piece, you realise that there is no mention of Andrew Bolt. But, Bolt is so convinced that Clive is specifically writing to his children, he dedicates his headline to the notion.

Wondering why he protests too much?

Maybe this can explain it--here is Andrew Bolt over a year ago:

ANOTHER week, and another student tells me of a teacher who’s turned preacher instead.

This student, a very honest boy, tells me he was asked on Tuesday to give a summary on global warming.

Naturally, he included one plain fact: the planet hadn’t warmed since 1998, according to satellite measurements.

Check with Britain’s Hadley Centre. Or with Dr Roy Spencer, US head of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

No, no, no, said the teacher, brought in by the school to give a few lessons on learning techniques. You mustn’t believe such a thing. That was just put out by that Andrew Bolt, and, ha!, he was in a room of his own.

“Really?” replied my son.

Putting aside the obvious deception of using atmospheric measurements to make claims about the entire planet, to me this is clear evidence that Bolt not only sees himself as an AGW denial propagandist, but he also propagandises same to his son.

That he takes such umbrage at Hamilton's piece, yet takes his foul future-eating work home with him, just shows me how rank a hypocrite he is. That he doesn't dispute "he is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways" is his loudest admission yet.

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Hadley Center CRU hack confounds deniersphere

The part of the blogosphere where politics informs science is abuzz with the conspiracy-busting exploits of a hacker who allegedly broke into the UK Met Office Hadley Center Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia mail-server and downloaded 1079 emails and 92 documents in a file called FOI2009.zip. (Warning: I cannot vouch for the safety of that link - I stole it from Andrew Bolt's blog).

The hacker supposedly posted the files on an ftp server, and it was not long before it was downloaded and reposted on WattsUpWithThat, and other AGW denier sites.

But have deniers jumped on the information with the alacrity you would expect? No. From Andrew Bolt to The Blackboard and beyond, most deniers are appearing very cautious.

You have to be wonder why, though. This is allegedly the very climate-conspiracy they have been claiming for years. Maybe, they are surprised to find the alarmist conspiracy turn out to be 'true'.

Someone somewhere is having fun.

UPDATE: Bloody Anthony Watts had me initially believing Hadley was hacked. It was CRU. You just cannot believe a word this denying clown says.

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Thought Experiment: Getting hot feet over cool headedness

In response to this:

Sydney is warm in theory, though
Andrew Bolt
Monday, November 02, 2009 at 12:09am


Still waiting for that warming:

SYDNEYSIDERS are repacking their winter woollies after the coldest October in 17 years.

I left this:

Imagine getting into a bathtub half filled with water at body temperature. Turn on the hot water tap so there is a little pressure, but not enough to scald you and lay back, so your ears are in water.

After a minute or so, as your feet and calves start to warm up, ask yourself whether your average body temperature has gone up.

Of course, it has gone up. You know that more heat has entered the bath, and the law of thermodynamics tell us the heat is going to transfer to our now relatively cooler body.

It would be pretty silly to argue that because our head is relatively cooler than our feet that the warming (increase in average body temperature) isn't happening.

Wonder how it will go? Will the snippers come out, or will I be given the the big B? Or will my proposed thought experiment be greeted with the vigorous curiosity of the open minded?


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Last 10 years period warmest on modern record

The AGW denier canard that the earth has been cooling since 1998 is taken apart by Seth Borenstein in AJC.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It's been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

No more cherries now, deniers.

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it's not that simple.

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.

Whammo, some ammo for the noggin of the next denier dumb enough to pull the "but, it's-cooling" caper on me. Some other useful links to load up on:

• Skeptical Science: Did global warming stop in 1988? (#8 in the Hottest Skeptical Arguments list). A great primer that also covers the role of oceans, and what happens if you remove the ENSO signal from the temperature record. That is, if you take the variable weather signal out of the climate signal.
• Coby Beck's How to talk to a climate skeptic: Warming stopped in 1988. Coby has broken down the various deniers' arguments into a fascinating taxonomy.

H/t: Climatespin

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Glasses charged for Copenhagen

I don't like admitting it because I'm a glass-half-full guy, but, right now, the political climate change world is wobbling some.

In Australia, we have a Government that is finally negotiating Carbon Pollution Reductions Scheme bill amendments with an opposition determined to destroy itself for their claque of Carbon Pollution Freedom Scheme lobbyists, in an agonisingly slow-mo train crash over climate change.

Because of aforesaid recalcitrants and a Government determined to win the politics of climate change, but not take the real leadership science says is needed, and because we export 80% of the world's coal, the worst of it is that the best we can hope for.

The high side of Government's proposed 5 to 25% targets (depending on what the rest of the world signs up to at Copenhagen) are on the low side of what climate models tell us are necessary if we are going to control warming by 2C, where a 25% to 40... 60, some say 80% reduction in co2e emissions from 1990 levels is counselled.

On the bright side, politically we are many miles down the road from where we were eighteen month ago, although popular concern about climate change is dropping priority as the economy bites. This, and a concerted campaign by sceptics who, no doubt have had some wins, as well as a sense that, 'well since the Government is doing something we can worry less', all contribute to this drop in priority, I believe.

Will the Government hold the line on what is a weak commitment anyway, or will they give the polluters bigger exemptions to avoid a double dissolution election? The point of the CPRS is that there has to be pain for some.

In the US, Obama's election turned the US from climate change bad guy, to most important player in creating a post Kyoto world. An amazing transformation that even got China making some very positive noises about fighting climate change. And then,... nothing. Obamania ended, leaving the US hung-over, the GFC bit, and Obama's political capital started getting chewed up in health-care reform. What kind of country gets itself torn up over basic universal health-care? Unchecked climate change is going to be so much more expensive, people.

Here's how Jim Hoggan sees it on Desmog blog:

A new poll released by the Pew Research Center has found the number of Americans who believe that pollution is causing climate change declined 20 percent over the past two years. Only 57% of Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence that the global climate is warming.

Some pin this decline on the economy, arguing that Americans have other things to worry about and climate change has drifted off their radar screen.

He goes on to point the finger at the dark influence of Big Denial, all explained in his new book, Climate Cover Up — The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.

It remains to be seen whether the political climate change world is in a death wobble, or we recover our sense of purpose, and straighten up in time for Copenhagen.

You'll forgive me now, if I finish this half-full glass. Then drink another.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

What's the worse that could happen?

Greg Craven is the guy who injected himself into the AGW deniers propaganda war two years ago, with a simple risk analysis grid pointing out the obvious — that, if the scientists are wrong, the worst that could happen is that we move to a carbon free economy sooner in our history than otherwise, but if the AGW deniers are wrong (ie. the scientists are right), we are toast.

Then he did not sleep for the next two years, dealing with the objections to his YouTube piece, below:



Those two years of objections and Greg's defenses have been distilled into his book:

What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate

The perfect gift for that stubborn climate change action denier friend or family member.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Fielding staring at the sun for too long

My reaction to the news of Senator Stephen Fielding coming back from attending an AGW denier's conference hosted by the Heartland Institute, is that he seeks to betray the path of ETS legislation for thirty pieces of Big Fossil-Fuel silver. My evidence? Simply that Fielding is replaying their great canard, 'It's the sun, stupid'.

Professor Barry Brook's reaction is to patiently explain why the peer-review science says Fielding is wrong. He sets out thus:

‘Solar variability does not explain late-20th-century warming’, says the title of a short paper published earlier this year by Philip Duffy, Ben Santer and Tom Wigley in Physics Today. The reason I bring up the topic of the sun and climate now is that an Australian Senator, Stephen Fielding of the Family First party, has recently been concerned that the solar variability could be a cause of recent warming, as the vote for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme comes before the Upper House. Apparently, he got this information from the American Heartland Institute. Well, let me put the good Senator’s concerns to rest.

He puts mine to rest... read it... leaving only concerns about Fielding himself.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW denier says peer-review is a public enemy

James Dellingpole plumbs the depth of his intellect in The Spectator:

I don’t bait greens only for fun. I do it because they’re public enemy number one

How so?

Here is what’s so terrifying about the modern green movement: its complete refusal to accept that anyone who disagrees with it can be anything other than wilfully perverse, certifiably insane or secretly in the pay of Big Oil.

Or stupid and easily influenced. Even if, for arguments sake, this really is what the MGM thinks, why would that make them public enemy number one unless you were perverse, certifiably insane or secretly in the pay of Big Oil? Deep down Dellingpole declares the fear that drives him to bait greens.

Indeed, it doesn’t even think of its ideological position as an ideological position any more, but as a scientific truth so comprehensively proven that there is no longer need for any debate.

There isn't any need for a debate about whether mankind's emissions cause global warming an will cause climate change. It's over. Dellingpole just does not like the inescapable conclusions of the body of peer-reviewed science. He wants a second opinion... from sources used by those secretly in the pay of Big Oil.

But what if they’re wrong? What if climate change is normal? What if the new hair-shirt chic is holding back economic recovery? What about the Kenyan green-bean growers — don’t they deserve to make a living too? What if the billions and billions of pounds being stolen from our wallets by our governments to ‘combat climate change’ are being squandered to no useful purpose? What if instead of alleviating the problem, misguided eco-zealots are actually making things worse?

That’s what I believe, anyway, and if there were space I’d be more than happy to explain why in lavish detail using all sorts of highly convincing evidence provided by top-notch scientists. Unfortunately, there isn’t, so you’ll have to go somewhere like www.ClimateDepot.com, or the hilarious Planet Gore at National Review Online or the Watts Up With That blog for your ammo.

Climate science by fossil-fuel funded public relations, as opposed to peer-review publication, that's what Dellingpole roots for. And this is a guy who wants to believe he is rational. Truly:

...that the vast majority of so-called ‘deniers’ are motivated by a love of the planet every bit as intense as that of the ‘warmists’. It’s just that our love is maybe tempered with a touch more rationalism, that’s all.

As rational as deriving joy from baiting people because you don't like them facing realities that science informs about?

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Is Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth a sell-out?

Well yes, considering he challenges the fundamentals of the spectrum of multidisciplinary sciences making up the body of climate science. Problem is, he won't do this in the peer-reviewed literature.

But has it really sold out of its 25,000 print run, as claimed by Andrew Bolt? Not according to Tim Lambert of Deltoid, whose mate reckons it's more like probably around~3700.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW deniers deny World Vision children

By day Andrew Bolt pumps out AGW denial propaganda that has its genesis in a handful of Exxon-Mobil supported think-tank workshops. By any measure it's distasteful stuff, with Andrew regularly branding 9 out of 10 Australians as alarmist, pagan, lefty, earth-worshipping, green-fascists who have fallen for the great global warming hoax.

Then he takes his work home with him, teaching his ten year old child to teach his classmates the cheap tricks of the AGW denial trade.

ANOTHER week, and another student tells me of a teacher who’s turned preacher instead.

This student, a very honest boy, tells me he was asked on Tuesday to give a summary on global warming.

Naturally, he included one plain fact: the planet hadn’t warmed since 1998, according to satellite measurements.

Check with Britain’s Hadley Centre. Or with Dr Roy Spencer, US head of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

No, no, no, said the teacher, brought in by the school to give a few lessons on learning techniques. You mustn’t believe such a thing. That was just put out by that Andrew Bolt, and, ha!, he was in a room of his own.

“Really?” replied my son.

If that not enough of a cynical use of children, starting with his own son, to peddle fossil-fuelled climate-change denial, then today's effort sets his high water mark:

I’ve been a donor to World Vision for more than a decade. I’ve helped to publicise its work and urged you to support it, praising above all its commitment to giving the poor the direct help they need.

That’s now over. When my current sponsorships end, I will not renew. I will not donate a dollar more than I’ve already promised. An organisation I once admired for pragmatism has now fallen for the giddiest ideology of all. Under Tim Costello, so ignorant and alarmist that he blames global warming even for tsunamis, donors’ money is now being wasted on a great sham. A once-Christian organisation is now switching its focus from saving people to saving Nature, as it follows a neo-pagan gospel.

The latest evidence? From World Vision’s jobs page:

What are these offending job vacancies that would cause Bolt to preach that more poverty-struck children must not be helped now? Strategic Technical Advisor (Carbon and Poverty Reduction Facility - Asia Pacific), Campaigns Leader - Climate Change, and Project Manager.

Andrew Bolt: affirmed yet cognition challenged

Who still does not appear to understand that the definition of climate change can take in extreme cold?

Oops. I made a mistake in today’s column when I said that despite all this alleged global warming, Australia’s record temperatures had not been broken for decades. Reader Cameron says I’ve been proved wrong - and on the very day my column appeared:

A new Australian record was set early this morning, a temperature of minus 13 degrees, at Charlotte Pass on the Snowy Mountains. This is the lowest temperature recorded anywhere in Australia in April and is 13 below the average.

I stand both corrected and affirmed.

Affirmed as a dummy.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Climate Sceptics needs all the help it can get

Found this in my inbox, forwarded to me by a reader after reading this:

Climate Sceptics News - 10/04/09 www.climatesceptics.com.au

to unsubscribe - reply "please unsubribe" (sic)

Welcome to the first of what will be regular updates of what Climate Sceptics around the country are doing to change the perspective of the community on global warming scares etc. As President of "The Climate Sceptics", I can inform you I have a great team of people looking to build the "Climate Sceptic movement" in ways that allow people of differing political perspectives to get involved at some level. Of course most importantly we will give everyone an upper house voting option in the next Federal election to say they are opposed to an Emissions Trading Scheme. If you need to know more about our party and how we accomodate the different situations of people being members of other party`s and uniting us in the broader cause, please email me your questions.

Laymans climate change chronicle to begin soon.

In coming weeks The Climate Sceptics will be putting out a climate change chronicle that will be different to this newsletter and will explain the science and logic of climate change issues to ordinary people. The idea is to give climate sceptics across the country brief and moderately easy to understand materials they can pass onto their friends and relatives to gently and continually inform them of the science, the costs of an ETS, and what climate sceptics are doing. You will get a copy of the climate change chronicle emailed to you for passing on if you are happy to remain on this list. If you know of other climate sceptics who want to receive this newsletter please ask them to email "please subscribe" to newsletter@climatesceptics.com.au or sign up on our web site
Miklos Zagoni in Australia and available for meetings
Dr. Miklos Zagoni, Hungarian physicist, reviewer of the IPCC 2007 Assessment Report Four is now in Australia staying with his Uncle in Melbourne. On 4th May, he will appearing in front of a Committee set up by the NZ Government to revise their emissions trading scheme. Miklos is available to speak at any meetings we can find someone to organise between now and 2nd May. TCS Secretary Anthony Cox will have him speaking in Newcastle on 15th April. Miklos will be my guest in Mt Gambier speaking on 23rd April. If anyone would like to invite Miklos to explain the work of his colleague Ferenc Miskolczi let me know. I can assist with media releases and Miklos is very helpful in making things happen. Please email info@climatesceptics.com to chat about this if you are interested and would like more info - especially if you live in Victoria. What Dr Miklos Zagoni will speak about “I am not sceptic at all”, he said, “I am positively convinced that the anthropogenic global warming theory is wrong. New developments in the physics of greenhouse effect and radiative transfer show that the accepted theory leads to largely exaggerated global warming projections”. The new results were achieved and published in peer-reviewed periodicals by his fellow Hungarian physicist dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, who has been principal research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in the U.S. for years. And in 2 years no one has published a rebuttal Dr. Zagoni can give talks and lectures to layman and expert groups and university people. “The new results of Dr. Miskolczi prove that the accepted theory contradicts fundamental physical principles. The Earth maintains a controlled greenhouse effect by strict energetic constraints”, he said. “Runaway global warming seems physically impossible.” “We obviously do not deny that a certain change in the climate is taking place. This might be a mix of natural processes and consequence of the influence of human activity on the Earth’s surface (land use change and deforestation might altered the surface reflectivity, modifying the amount of the absorbed solar energy). We also accept that the climate has warmed during previous centuries. What we challenge is the cause: Our results show that it cannot be the increase of atmospheric GHG composition.” “If we are right, extra CO2 cannot enhance the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Powerful energetic feedbacks drive it back to its equilibrium state. Fluctuations are possible in the stochastic system of the climate, and time-scales are to be thoroughly examined, but the average surface temperature is clearly limited by the global energy balance. Incoming energy of the sun, planetary albedo, water vapor cycle and the partial cloud cover may be the main players on the scene.” “According Dr. Miskolczi’s calculation on the NOAA 60-years global average database, during these decades the Earth’s greenhouse effect remained constant. The atmosphere equated the increase of CO2 with minor modifications in the hydrological cycle.” "This may sound crazy to those accepting the common wisdom. But I will present data and the computations and I welcome anyone who can come and falsify Dr. Miskolczi and myself. Dr. Zagoni’s website, with all the relevant publications and other information: http://miskolczi.webs.com
Till next time
Leon Ashby President
"The Climate Sceptics"
PO box 721, Mt Gambier, SA 5290
(447 Chambers Rd Mt Gambier SA 5290)
Ph 0887259561 or 0887235550
www.climatesceptics.com.au

If Ferenc Everything-bar-the-CO2e Miskolczithe is anything to go by then the climate change chronicle promises to be fun pickings.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Who is fueling new Climate Sceptics political party?

Witness the birth of The Climate Sceptics, Australia's newest political party. Aren't we truly the lucky country? They bill themselves as 

"The World's first up front political party representing climate sceptics"

Well, after John Howard's Liberals here in Australia, and George W. Bush's Republicans in the US. And then there was that Vaclav Klaus' Civic Democratic Party in Checkloslavakia. That's why we are in the mess we are in.

Forth time lucky's president, Leon Ashby, used to run the The Australian Environment Foundation, a front group founded by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a conservative Melbourne-based think tank, according to Sourcewatch.

The newest party's website is carrying advertising for the US ExxonMobil funded AGW denier outfit, The HeartLand Institute.

Gee, I wonder who is financing The Climate Sceptics?

 Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Intelligent design falsified by cdesign proponentsists' intellligence decline

I have just finished watching a fascinating documentary on SBS, called Judgment Day, about how a bunch of weird Christian extremists tried to introduce stealth creationism into the science class of Dover High School as an alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. This was obviously Dover, Pa, in the US, and not Dover, England. 

They called this stealth creationism Intelligent Design (ID).  Actually they didn't originally, they called it creationism, but obviously realised this would not fly in a science class with sharp students, so they rebadged it as ID — and gave it scientific trappings. It was part of a 20 year plan to make science (the gift that gives everyday)  subordinate to bible 'teachings' (the gift that gives every day... after you are dead).  All this was uncovered in the gruelling court case that followed, Kitzmiller v. Dover, along with the creationists' original planning document detailing the deception, The Wedge Strategy.

To cut a long story short, Judge John E. Jones III finally ruled that ID was an assault on the the US constitution because it ignored the first amendment, which provides for separation of religion and state. To prove this the prosecution had to establish that ID was originally a creationist theory, and this did this by subpoenaing all the drafts of the ID Trojan text-book, Of Pandas and People. 

Ironically, these drafts established evidence that the intent always was religiously motivated deception, such as the evolution of the term creation to Intelligent Design via search and replace. At least these creationists don't typeset in lead anymore. It was found there were approximately 150 uses of the root word "creation", such as "creationism" and "creationist", were systematically changed to refer to intelligent design. Definitions remained essentially the same, with "intelligent design" substituted for "creation", and "intelligent creator" changed to "intelligent agency." But, unfortunately for the god botherers, the final draft still contains vestigal organs evidencing these deceptions: The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".

The judge ruled againt them, and the rest is history. The poor bugger received death threats to himself and his family soon after, and now lives under federal protection. Charming, those so called Christians.

Watching the program, I was repeatedly reminded of the contemporary anti-science offence of AGW denial. One of the main claims AGW deniers make about AGW is that it is the new green faith — a religion.

Given the precedence that Kitzmiller v. Dover sets, you would think that cashed-up think-tanks in the US pushing AGW denial would at least attempt to prevent anthropogenic global warming from being taught in the science-class, and at least relegated to religion class.

But they won't. And, this indicates that they don't have the conviction.

 Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW deniers desperate in their death throws.

Desmogblog asks why we have seen such a flurry of activity from the global warming denial lobby, lately:

Barack Obama has promised to lead the nation in a massive climate intervention and reengage with the international community on climate change. The past weeks have also seen progressive environmentalist Rep. Henry Waxman take over as chairman of the House Energy and Environment Committee and Senator Barbara Boxer announce plans to introduce two major climate bills early next year. The first hearing that she will hold in January will be titled, "How Fighting Global Warming is Good for the Economy and Will Create Jobs."

In other words, the deniers are gearing up for yet another fight against reality--this time, political reality as much as scientific reality. Unlike President George W. Bush, who at best played the role of apathetic substitute teacher to the United States, President-elect Obama is preparing to lay down the law.  He’s made it clear that our planetary fever will be taken seriously under his watch.

It's not worth underestimating these guys. Afterall -- with big fossil-fuel backing them, it's clear they aren't running out of cash anytime soon. 

Global Warning Climate Change Energy