As we’ve been discussing, my invitation to debate Lord Monckton was withdrawn before I could make a decision on it. But, for those interested, my column in yesterday’s Fin presents my thoughts on Monckton’s key claim: that the scientific literature on climate change is a gigantic fraud, cooked up in the service of a conspiracy to inaugurate a communist world government at Copenhagen.
A tepid conspiracy
Australia is currently enjoying a visit from Lord Christopher Monckton, a former education adviser to Margaret Thatcher, who is here to warn us that the climate change negotiations are a plot to destroy the global economy and impose a communist world government. The plot, according to Monckton is led by President Obama and supported by Kevin Rudd, who are, it seems, communists who ‘piled into the environmental movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall’.
In an interview with Alex Jones, host of the conspiracy-theoretic radio/TV show Prison Planet, Monckton attributed the plot to a ‘“deliberate desire to control population by killing people in large numbers deliberately if necessary”. His co-speaker, Ian Plimer, assented to similar views on the same program.
It might be thought that such views should be enough to consign Monckton to the lunatic fringe. But his conspiracy theory has received enthusiastic endorsement from large sections of the media including such prominent commentators as Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen (though Albrechtsen later backed away a little).
And Monckton doesn’t lack political support. Opposition Senate Leader Nick Minchin echoed his views a couple of months ago, saying ‘”For the extreme Left [global warming] provides the opportunity to do what they’ve always wanted to do, to sort of deindustrialise the Western world … you know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the Left, and … they embraced environmentalism as their new religion. ’
The Lavoisier Group, founded by former Labor Finance Minister Peter Walsh asserted that the Kyoto Protocol represented the greatest threat to Australia’s sovereignty since that posed by Japan in 1942.
It is, then, necessary to make a serious assessment of the claim that Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama and the United Nations are engaged in a communist conspiracy to destroy the global economy and seize world power, as asserted by Monckton, Minchin, Walsh and others.
One problem with the theory is that the chosen instrument, a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme, seems grossly inadequate to the task of destroying the economy. Even without the massive exemptions loaded in to the Rudd government’s CPRS, an emissions trading scheme with full auctioning might be expected to raise about $10 billion a year, or 1 per cent of GDP over the next decade. By comparison, the GST raises over $40 billion. No credible economist suggest that the economic impact will be more than marginal.
Even if the world can manage a comprehensive agreement to reduce carbon emissions to near-zero levels by 2050, the best estimates suggest that the economic effect will be to reduce the level of GDP by a few per cent.
An even more puzzling aspect of conspiracy-theoretic claims is that part-time nature of the conspiracy. Most of the time conservatives like Bolt and Minchin treat Rudd as an ordinary political opponents, attacking him for being indecisive and more concerned with spin than substance.
But if Rudd is engaged in a conspiracy to destroy the global economy and institute a communist world government, surely this fact should drive any analysis of his economic policy, health care and so on. Full-time conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones are at least consistent. In the same program as his interview with Plimer, Jones explained how the Obama Administration’s apparently modest health care reforms are actually a genocidal plot.
It is tempting to dismiss all this as overblown hyperbole. But the continuous attacks on the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change only make sense if the whole scientific consensus on climate change is the product of a fraudulent conspiracy. This claim has been made repeatedly, most notably with the recent discovery of a couple of erroneous or poorly-source claims in the 1600 page IPCC report released in 2007.
Finally, there is a particular problem for Lord Monckton, given his past career. According to the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, the climate change conspiracy began with a British politician who said, as early as 1990,
I want to pay tribute to the important work which the United Nations has done to advance our understanding of climate change, and in particular the risks of global warming .. The (first) IPCC report is a remarkable achievement … the need for more research should not be an excuse for delaying much needed action now. There is already a clear case for precautionary action at an international level.
The name of this climate arch-conspirator? Margaret Thatcher.
John Quiggin 
Not nearly harsh enough. The character assassination of Monckton in crikey a week or two back was far more to my taste. things like claiming to have received the nobel prize, to be a member of the house of lords, to have won the falklands war, that the solution for AIDS was incarceration…
ABC once again puts their leftist bias on display
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/01/28/hamilton-fran-kelly-falls-for-moncktons-media-manipulation/
I note catallaxy has a response to your article.
The comments at Catallaxy have already made most of the points necessary. The biofuels boom was primarily a response to high oil prices and concerns about energy independence. The green movement was among the leaders in raising the alarm about its adverse effects. Since the whole piece depends on the assumption that biofuels are central to the response to global warming, there’s not much more to be said.
Davidson made no attempt to challenge the central claim that all mainstream studies show the cost of a response to global warming to be small – he jsut dragged a red herring across the track.
@jquiggin
While corn-to-ethanol is certainly a stupid idea, biofuels based on biomass waste (including corn waste), from sugar cane, and from feedstocks such as algae do have merit.
Not that there is any prospect in the foreseeable future of them supplantiong any serious part of liquid fuel demand …
Mind you, using corn to feed cattle or produce the 27% of supermarket product in the US it now does is every bit as stupid as biofuels and then some …
@gerard
Yes, agreed. The ‘improvements’ to our ABC, another John Howard success story. Not too unlike his ‘improvements’ to the public service.
So if Monckton is such a charlatan why not take him on in open debate and humiliate him once and for all. The Flaghship of denialism sunk with all hands? Have you yet decided if you are prepared to meet him in open debate or not? As an aside I do not think Wilful understand English humour but it would take me too long to explain.
What’s your opinion of the NEF’s ‘Growth Isn’t Possible’ report, which claims that
That implies a far greater cost than the 2% of GDP you mention, correct?
Off topic, I haven’t read the report, but it starts with this quote:
The above is from Lord Adair Turner, Chair of the UK Financial Services Authority who I would bet has an income several times the UK average. I would also bet that he enjoys every penny of it. Pretty rich (haha) for him to prescribe less wealth for others!
It is time that some rational debate is introduced into this issue. There is no point in pointing out some retired public figure who believes this or that. “Hitler prohibited private fiream ownership in 1936 (or whenever) and the world lived happily ever after nor of questioning who pays for research once again old Adolf ordered the first study which showed that smoking causes cancer but does that mean that smoking does not cause cancer. It is equally stupid to present argumentum ad populem “the majority of … believe this therefore it is true. This lead to absurd endeavours such as rounding up as many “economist” as possible to say that AGW/ACC or whatever can be cured without economic cost. Or rounding up as many meteorologists as possible to say it does not exist. In all probability only a small percentage of such populations have even looked at teh issue. Nor is there any advantage in using perjurative terms such as denials so I will use the relatively neutral terms alarmists and skeptics
To me the alarmist have five hurdles to cross and must cross all of them
Significand warming is occurring
That is harmfull
Human activity is a significant component
There is technology to overcome this
There is the political will to implement such technology
I do not believe that any of these hurdles has been crossed, Let us assume for the moment that the first four have been there is no way that India and China will curtail their growth and poverty removal by avoiding technology that the firs world has used to get there. It is not even fantays it is wishfull thinking.
The other issue is what evidence is there that the world was at its perfect optimum just before the industrial revolution, the increase in C02 emissions in the 1940’s or whenever or when mankind learned to make fire? The world has been much hotter in the past as is shown clearly by coal deposits in Antarctica and Spitzbergan, Coal comes from wood which only grows in quantity in warm climes. Carbon in wood comes primarily from the atmosphere so are we not simply putting it back where it came from?
@gerard
Leftist bias Gerard ??- what? So facts and the exposing of the charlatan that is Monkton is leftist bias? Thank goodness for leftist bias then. Substitute the words “common sense” or “accummulative scientific research”for leftist bias and there you have the answer. It is closer to the facts and the truth than right wing delusionism obviously.
So left wing bias is the new right wing conservatism and the old right wing conservatism is now up in a tree somewhere swinging in the branches throwing bananas and screeching “left wing bias” at ordinary sensible civilised normal people on the ground with sufficient intelligence to work it out for themselves.
So it seems to me.
J.C @ 9
“I do not believe that any of these hurdles has been crossed, ”
And there we have it.
Incapable of arguing the science, JC peddles his superstition.
In breaking news, it has been revealed that, unfortunately, physical phenomena do not respond to politics.
Apparently, JC’s (are those initials a coincidence ?) is also apparently unable to use any of the myriad search engines available on the web, given his “questions”.
Of course, such questions could be easily answered at
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/
but I doubt JC has the courage to try it on there. 😀
But he will find like minded souls at
http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/
His Lordship was on RN yesterday morning, he tossed in that deaths by malaria before the DDT ban were 50,000 pa.
The DDT ban was used as an example of the intimacy between governments and their scientific employees in constructing govt policy.
Ditto with eugenics and the holocaust in Germany with Lysenko in Russia tossed in for good measure.
@Alice
FFS Alice, between you and chris warren I guess I’m going to need this:
http://02d9656.netsoljsp.com/SarcMark/modules/user/commonfiles/loadhome.do
PS Alice, Radio National wasn’t “exposing” Monckton as a charlatan, just giving him a prominent national platform to air his fact-free flatulence
This is just crazy:
I couldn’t work out how this thread had come to such a nutty point. So I did some research and found that we are due for a full moon.
see:
http://home.mira.net/~reynella/skywatch/ssky.htm#Moon
So obviously the “looneys” are at full cry. It may get worse over the next few nights, but it will soon be over.
Corrigenda I goofed, missed out a step, that the costs of intervention do not outweigh the benefits and here I include the issue of why for example I should shoulder a twenty per cent loss of income so that manking can exist for one more generation. Eventually the world will end, when the sun goes out or whatever, if there is one less generation of man what does it matter?
Apparently Readfearn is on holidays from 21 Jan., I usually avoid News Ltd clicks, but went there to see what he said about the ‘debate’ today.
Nothing.
‘Brisbane Times’ had one of those “I wasn’t invited and didn’t go in but here is my journalism from outside the “sold out” event” reports that passes as Brisbane’s “other” corporate media presence.
We stopped in to the Irish Club for a few kilkennys and a stickybeak at about 3pm.
The club has been renovated since the last time we were there (a couple of years ago for another climate change talk featuring Rev. Tim Costello) so there’s no more keno, and no more eavesdropping on events because the bar is now downstairs and the Tara ballroom was protected by a very bored looking security guard. Didn’t see the guest of honour, but the CEC LaRouche people and young liberals were out in force.
It seemed that the $20 crowd was tiny whereas we are supposed to believe that the $130 crowd at the Hilton was a sellout.
The actions of our 2Party politicians support the deniers’ point of view, so I guess there’s no controversy, hence no interest – unless you’re seeking to confirm your bias.
If you were a clever Monckton fan you’d be much better off going to the Irish club and spending the remaining $110 on their beef and guiness pies and some Kilkenny.
Actually, you’d end up rat-arsed if you did that! Better still, see the show, have some nice smooth beers, have a pie, then catch a cab home and still end up with change!
As for the Irish Club, it’s a nice place. At least Brisbane still has a few left.
@Chris Warren
I think you are deliberately missing my point which is that the author of a statement or who paid for it is essentially irrelevant. The real issue is the veracity of that statement. Gun lobbyists, for lack of a better word, of which I am proudly a member, could point to someone unpopular, Adolf Hitler, who had done something that others might emulate, therefore such actions when emulated are incorrect. If I were inclined to question that smoking is linked to cancer (god forbid) I would be stupid to say that Hitler had proved it therefore it must be wrong! My point remains that choosing personaliteis to support your point is a hapless task
Geez, ya just gotta laugh …
Didn’t your priest tell ya,
God wins all the time?
@Pterosaur
I am perplexed, how do these links actually support your case?
Mr Coochey
Hitler? Guns? Putting back the carbon into the atmosphere?
It’s clear that you are desperately trying to hijack this thread with irrelevant but provocative tosh.
This is simply a microcosm of the tactics of any debate that might be held with Mr Monckton or those in his fringe.
@Fran Barlow
Fran on this we agree (if not on nuclear)
Coochey (hooch) says
“why for example I should shoulder a twenty per cent loss of income so that manking can exist for one more generation. Eventually the world will end, when the sun goes out or whatever, if there is one less generation of man what does it matter?”
Well… that says it all Fran. Selfish provocative tosh is right. God help Coochey if his pub runs out of dutch courage.
@John Coochey
Why don’t you go back and post on Catalepsy?
In the state of Catalepsy I am sure you would make a lot more sense.
I admit myself convinced by the power of Coochey’s arguments. If either Monckton or Plimer is willing to debate me on the specific topic “Obama and Rudd are planning a communist world government”, I’ll be happy to present the negative case outlined above. Over to you, Cooch.
Sky have been playing the Plimer/Monckton v Brook/Readfearn “debate” on a continuous loop this morning on sky active.
Hate to say it – but Brook and Readfearn have performed a disservice to the community by engaging in this debacle.
Plimer and Monckton controlled the terms of the Q&A and got their points across effectively – as well as getting a serious amount of national tv airtime.
My general observation is that this is consistent (either wittingly or unwittingly) with regards to Brook’s approach to climate change.
John Coochey ignores that rational discussion of the issues have been taking place, just not in the newspapers and television. Debates with the likes of Monckton et al are good public spectacle but don’t do anything to move the issue forwards.
John Coochey also neglects to inform that unless we choose to slow down human GHG emissions to the point where the natural carbon cycle can extract those emissions from the environment, we will be forever increasing the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere. That means that the global temperature continues to rise, even while we are carrying on about how it is more costly to “take action now” than to presumably do nothing. Doing nothing is in fact a commitment to ever increasing GHG concentrations and to subsequent increases in the global temperature.
For the globe as a whole there will be winners and losers on different time scales. For Australia, the South Australian regions will lose there ability to grow crops without large changes in water supply. Due to the statistically verifiable increase in heat extremes, plants may need additional protection from heat stress – spraying water into the air above the crops and using fine mesh fabric as a shade cloth may be two necessary summertime protective actions. Makes growing crops a much more expensive proposition. On the other hand, some areas in the Northern parts of Australia mightn’t be adversely affected, since the wet season already brings sufficient rain to in principle water crops during the dry season. The degree of impact in the Northern parts of Australia is regionally much more variable than the Southern parts, and is consequently harder to assess for specific regions.
But I don’t get the impression that any of this is of concern to an agitator such as John Coochey. If Monckton has a genuinely scientific argument to present concerning why AGW isn’t real etc etc, he would have done it well before now. But he hasn’t.
You’re giving Monckton way too much attention, JQ. Monckton fits into that box with Tom Cruise and John Travolta. What is the connection? They are all cultists. John Travolta loaded up his plane last week with medical supplies, food, and a bunch of Scientology Evangelists. What the???? Are they going to go around Haiti telling people that the pain from their crushed limbs is all in their mind? With a pure mind they will discover that it is all not real, the limbs are not really damaged??
Monckton is flogging the same type of snake oil. Thank him kindly for the “good” things that he has done in the past, then usher him back to the asylum.
“I admit myself convinced by the power of Coochey’s arguments.”
.
You might not be convinced by Coochey’s arguments, but at least the arguments about how much would should care about the next generation are much better expressed by Derek Parfit (see here) who was/is one of the leading philosophers that looks at how to value people, and I believe he comes to the conclusion with quite reasonable arguments that we shouldn’t care too much about the next generation. Mirko Magaric over at Deakin Uni was using similar arguments which were expressed in a way the average punter finds more easy to understand here.
Prof Q – ‘overblown hyperbole’, eh? As opposed to understated hyperbole perhaps? 😉
Seriously, though, I do find it remarkable that the delusionist movement, if that’s what it is, has been so successful in demonising scientists. This is something of an achievement, given the generally high esteem in which scientists have been held for generations. Science heroes have featured on the Austraian currency for half a century. Getting significant traction for the concept that scientists are corrupt and dishonest conspirators is akin to spreading the belief that volunteer firefighters or the armed forces are cowards. It seems no one is safe.
Then again, US voters have twice in the last forty years been convinced that highly decorated war heroes were cowards, while their opponents who had themselves managed to avoid serious military service were great war leaders. So maybe there isn’t anything original about a successful smear campaign.
@Hal9000
The scientists will prevail as they always do and the noisy antagonists will pale into a barely recalled murmur in the span of history…
@Freelander
LOL Freelander – catalepsy
@gerard
yes I missed it Gerard – I thought we had lost you.
@conrad
Your reference:
“Mirko Bagaric: Warming isn’t our biggest worry.” Nor is Mirko Bagaric.
He is the guy who advocated torture – I seem to remember – to save lifes. It was during the epoch when terrorism must be our biggest worry. The then Minister, Amenda Vanstone, took him off a committee.
The following observations by Peter Doherty, a Nobel prize winning scientist in an article in The Month recently are relevant to much of the blogosphere debate that remains uninformed by any real understanding of how science is done: http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-peter-doherty-copenhagen-and-beyond-sceptical-thinking-2112
The reality that multi-faceted science must necessarily be collaborative is the basis of my extreme scepticism regarding climate-change deniers in the media, who purport to command an enormously complex field from the Promethean perspective of the superior detached intellect. Like all other science, climatology is data-driven, and the data is constantly flooding in: measurements of change in bird-migration patterns; details of ocean temperatures and wind pro?les; measurements of the calcification of coral, the ripening of grapes, the retreat of glaciers, and so on. Those who try, like Plimer, to cover the field simply by reading the specialist literature will inevitably make major mistakes. It’s essential to talk to other scientists, especially as relevant findings inevitably occur in areas outside your expertise. Meteorologists, physicists, geologists and oceanographers each have contributions to make, but the issue of climate change doesn’t belong to any one of them individually.
@conrad
After reading those links I believe there are good reasons why we should care about future generations. First the present generation might feel guilty above having trashed resources like oceans, forests, rivers and the atmosphere. We did that, not the future generations and that guilt is a negative. Second even if we are only concerned about juveniles in our peer group, grandchildren for example, the wider fallout may affect them. For example an influx of climate refugees may overtax the welfare system here.
As an aside I think time discount models are too high falutin’. I suspect things will happen so fast in the next decade with water, fuel, food, demographic shifts and so on that we’ll fly by the seat of our pants.
@conrad
Arguments that are designed to conclude that we should ignore our impact on futures generations are simply rationalizations.
These arguments. like many libertarian arguments, have the sole purpose of helping a-holes feel like they are not a-holes.
Myself, the argument I prefer rationalizing why we should ignore the consequences for future generations is: “Why worry about future generations? What have they ever done for us anyway?”
Ernstine,
I’m not saying I agree with Mirko (generally I don’t) — I’m just saying there are reasonable arguments against caring too much about the next generation, even if at first glance it appears unreasonable. I personally, haven’t thought hard enough about Parfit style arguments about valuing the next generation to come to any reasonable conclusion about them (although I have read his earlier book).
Hermit: I’ll probably be dead by the time these things happen, and you can’t feel guilty when you’re dead. In addition, I don’t feel guilt about the environment getting trashed now (which is not say I wouldn’t rather have it the opposite way, but there’s a distinction between feeling guilty and correcting a problem) — why should I?
The basic problem is what science? Where is it? If we take the IPCC as the gold standard, after all it won the Nobel then even then there are very major problems. If we leave aside the amount of that report that has no basis whatsoever such as imminent glacial meltdown in the Himalayas. Of course the latest scandal about the section describing the disappearance of the Great Barrier Reef being written by Greenpeace. Again with no factual basis. To dismiss these as only a small part of a long report is nonsense as 95 per cent of the IPCC reports is padding. The central pillar of alarmism is the Mann (of the CRU) Hockey Stick, showing a marked temperature rise. This is purely a computer generated model not supported by actual temperature readings. Try if for yourself. I started with the NZ record which is readily available and then went on to a number of Australian records. There is no visible sudden upward trend. This is what gave rise to a Canadian mathematician to ask Mann for his data and computer program. To his surprise Mann said he would need time to find them. McIntyre and others thought they would have been at his finger tips. Eventually they were obtained and showed no Hockey Stick. Subsequently it appears that the hockey stick was caused by improper use of Primary Component analysis designed to smooth out a ragged time series. When correctly used. No hockey stick. Similar debacles occurred when tree ring studies were repeated on a larger scale the original data was not support. McIntyre’s Climate Audit also showed that a study of Finnish lake sediments showing a hockey stick had actually inverted the final table, the real data showed the opposite. The paper was withdrawn, didn’t show what people wanted to hear. This was of course before Climate Gate which showed how Mann and others had tinkered with falsified and threatened to destroy data rather than release it. As I said. What science? There is no hockey stick. In these circumstances it is little wonder that Monckton crushed the opposition in Brisbane and will probably do the same in Melbourne. Nor little wonder Quiggin will not meet him in open debate about climate change or the lack of it
“Arguments that are designed to conclude that we should ignore our impact on futures generations are simply rationalization”
No it isn’t . The extent that we care about the next generation is a serious philosophical argument — one which many people have to deal with on a smaller scale when they think about, for example, what they should do with their inheritance (which, incidentally, is a different argument to what you think about the next group in general, as kinship relationships get treated differently). It’s also one people don’t think about when they, say, ride a bicycle versus drive their car to work.
@conrad
Of course there are reasonable arguments why not to care – but they are arguments that, when held, define the holder as selfish and uncaring.
@nanks
I completely agree. These philosophies, like “Atlas shrugged”, the idea that it is the rich who are really being exploited and they are being exploited by the poor, are simply consumer products so the a-holes who buy into them can fill good and moral about themselves while they continue to be and behave like a-holes.
People tend to prefer to feel moral and upright while they are doing evil. Feeling moral and upright seems to provide them more gusto. History is full of examples and the history of religion in particular.
John Coochey,
You are being very selective in your “demolition” of climate change. The real proof of climate change is that which is plainly visible, rather than that which is projected. Retreating glaciers, thinning Arctic ice, shorter Winters, hotter average night time temperatures, advancing tropical zones, visible sea level rise, more energetic weather systems, extreme cold spells in temperate zones, thawing permafrost, escalating methane releases from artic tundra,,,,,,. There is plenty of it to see if only you choose to look.
But that is only one small part of a vortex to disaster that we have created. Depleting fossil fuel reserves, depleting mineral reserves, widespread devastation of eco systems, depletion of biodiversity, acidification of oceans, dwindling fresh water resources, food production to food demand ratio becoming more acute, and of course the primary driver for all of the above continued increase in the world’s population.
The IPCC is an attempt to quantify that which is plainly obvious, and build some sort of understanding in a manner that enables a quantifiable, definitive and effective action plan to reduce the perceived rate of change.
The outcome so far of all of this concern has been a dramatic acceleration in the development and implimentation of efficiency technologies for the better use of materials and resources, for better processes of living, for better uses of energy, for a greater determination to concerve the natural world. Non of this is detrimental in any way to peoples economies or business.
But then there are those revolutionary snipers who seem determined to demolish the perception of change, who seem determined to destroy rather than contribute. Nothing is added, other than doubt. There are no peer reviewed studies of the natural world to demonstrably prove that the world is in fact not changing, only highly selective, highly inflated, mostly personal demolition attempts of individuals in the scientific community. What is the purpose of this. To what end is this heading.
Monckton proudly declared that it took a lot of fuel to get him to Australia and he was keen to use plenty more of it, as though it was some sort of proof that climate change was not real. What is real is that there is that much less fossil fuel available for future generations to enjoy in the manner in which our short span of “civilised” life has been able to. This contains the only motive that I can see behind this “cult of denial”, and that is some sort of self centred selfish ignorance determined to preserve the lavish extravagances of the present.
Maybe you can show that there is some great purpose behind the Moncktons of the world? Some thing that the rest of us cannot see.
I agree that Alex Jones is wrong on a number of issues and dangerously wrong on the issue of global warming, but it should also acknowledged that he reports a lot of truth that the mainstream media won’t report, the latest example, being the gaping holes in the official story about the story of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab and Flight 253, “Authorities Quietly Reverse Underwear Bomber Official Story”.
For all the denialists.
Here is the data – comma separated values:
316, 317, 318, 316, 315, 313, 313, 315, 316, 316, 317, 318, 318, 318, 317, 315, 314
313, 315, 316, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 320, 318, 316, 314, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318
319, 319, 321, 320, 319, 317, 315, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 321, 321, 320
317, 316, 315, 317, 318, 319, 319, 320, 321, 322, 321, 320, 318, 316, 316, 317, 318
320, 322, 322, 320, 319, 317, 317, 318, 319, 319, 320, 321, 322, 322, 322, 321, 319
318, 317, 319, 319, 321, 322, 322, 324, 324, 324, 322, 320, 319, 318, 320, 321, 322
323, 323, 324, 325, 324, 323, 321, 319, 319, 321, 322, 323, 323, 324, 325, 326, 325
324, 322, 320, 320, 321, 323, 324, 324, 326, 327, 327, 327, 326, 324, 322, 322, 323
324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 328, 328, 326, 325, 323, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 327, 328
329, 329, 327, 325, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 328, 330, 330, 329, 328, 326, 325
325, 327, 328, 329, 330, 330, 332, 332, 332, 331, 329, 328, 327, 328, 329, 329, 331
331, 333, 333, 332, 331, 329, 327, 327, 328, 330, 331, 331, 332, 333, 334, 333, 332
330, 329, 328, 329, 332, 333, 333, 335, 335, 334, 333, 331, 329, 329, 330, 332, 333
333, 335, 336, 337, 336, 335, 333, 331, 331, 332, 333, 335, 335, 337, 338, 338, 338
336, 334, 332, 332, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 339, 339, 338, 336, 334, 334, 335
337, 338, 338, 340, 341, 341, 341, 339, 337, 336, 336, 337, 338, 339, 341, 342, 343
343, 343, 341, 339, 337, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 344, 343, 342, 340, 338
338, 339, 341, 341, 343, 343, 345, 346, 345, 344, 342, 340, 340, 341, 343, 344, 345
345, 347, 347, 345, 343, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 348, 346, 345
343, 343, 344, 346, 346, 347, 348, 350, 350, 350, 348, 346, 345, 344, 346, 347, 348
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353, 354, 355, 357, 357, 358, 359, 360, 359, 357, 355, 354, 354, 355, 357, 358, 359
360, 361, 361, 361, 359, 357, 355, 356, 357, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 363, 362
359, 358, 358, 359, 360, 362, 363, 364, 364, 365, 365, 363, 361, 359, 359, 361, 362
363, 364, 364, 366, 366, 365, 364, 362, 360, 360, 362, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369
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381, 379, 377, 377, 378, 380, 381, 382, 383, 385, 385, 384, 382, 380, 379, 379, 380
382, 383, 384, 384, 386, 387, 386, 384, 382, 381, 381, 382, 384, 385, 386, 386, 387
389, 388, 386, 384, 383, 383, 384, 386, 387, 387, 389, 389, 390, 389, 388, 386, 385
384, 386, 387, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Here is the source:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
How is this not proof of CO2 concentration increase. Where are wrong assumptions? Where is there scientific trickery?
A change from 320 to 380 is over 18%.
@daggett
Interesting. Not unusual. Covering one’s posterior is far more important than national or international security. Shows how effectively security agencies can kill or incapacity stories in the ‘free press’. These security agencies have been behaving like Keystone Cops, yet the public now has to undergo increasing, and largely pointless, rituals before getting on a plane.
@freelander, please see @daggett on Monday Messaage Board.
—
@Megan, in “Climate sceptic warmly received during debate” Murdoch‘s Courier-Mail reports:
It would be hard to know if this were because Monckton actually won or because of the choice of Graeme Redfearn and Professor Brook to argue against him.
To be fair to Graham Redfearn (even being the Murdoch employee that he is), and Barry Brook, it is a difficult kind of debate to win verbally.
Georged Monbiot, who actually performed brilliantly on Lateline in November, refused to debate Plimer unless he was first prepared to answer 11 written questions concerning the sources of his claims. Plimer never did.
When the Lateline debate occurred, George Monbiot stayed focussed on Plimer’s lack of credible sources and his outright falsification of his sources and, because of that concincingly routed Plimer.
However, it is easy, in such debates, for ‘skeptics’ to make spurious anti-scientific claims in a few seconds and for upholders of the AGW theory to then have to spend much longer debunking such claims. It is because of this that deniers can appear to have won such debates.
Regarding comments about sea level changes. This is an issue close to my heart when it comes to the use of tide guages which were really the only available data before satellites, which I understand only work 60 degrees N or S. Meaning a third of the world is not covered. I use to work for the RAN Hydrographer and was told that he did not have tidal datum more accuate than half a meter for most of Australia but now I see alarmists telling me of minute changes measured on tide guages! I do not think so. There is no reason why they should be that accurate/sensitive they are designed for navigation of large ships. You know the things that bring you plasma TV’s from China Japan and Korea. There is no way they could measure changes of such small magnitude. So if the hydrographer does not have the data how could the alarmists?
JQ
I think you should debate climate change with people who have sufficient belief in their convictions to have invested in Cubbie Station, because if Climate Change is “crap” then Cubbie Station would represent a great investment.
Thanks for that, Daggett. It seems to have gone up at midnight.
The second paragraph sums it up nicely:
“Forget facts and fictions, numbers and statistics, this British high priest of climate change sceptics is a polished performer, even against the most committed of scientists.”
As for the tactic you refer to, I think it’s called the “Gish Gallop”.
The comments on that story demonstrate how effective the BAU machine is. Everything ranging from ‘it’s been happening forever and humans have no effect’, ‘it isn’t happening’, ‘CO2 is natural and good’, ‘we can’t stop meteorites or volcanoes’, ‘Galileo’, ‘the sun is hot’, ‘the UN is a plot’ etc… I think I even read an ‘Al Gore is fat’, but that may have been on the Brisbane Times site.
Again, John C, it is about directly observable realities. With sea level changes, it is the increasing number of countries and islands around the world where the sea levels are now overunning land once liveable and productive that tell the story properly. It is about survival, so when salt water innundates garden plots destroying the vegetable crops required for living, then people have to move to higher ground. And that is what is happening now with some island populations moving to mainlands. Water surrounding ones house is far more meaningful than marks on a hydrographer’s.
@conrad
There was no intended suggestion that you are promoting Mirko B’s ‘stuff’. I just found it interesting that he showed up in this context. As for Derek Parfit, I don’t wish to comment on the basis of the wiki entries. However, I can say that the problem of intergenerational resource allocation is not a new one in mathematical economics (axiomatic theory). I recall a presentation by Prof. Birgid Grodal, then University of Copenhagen from around 1990. Furthermore, there is one assumption on preferences, non-satiation, which matches what scientists tell us about animals reasonably well, namely they act in a manner which is consistent with the assumption that they want to survive as a species. While the assumption of non-satiation has been popularised as ‘greed is good’, the formal definition does not correspond to this interpretation. In particular, even for one generation, the assumption of non-satiation says that people want to live as long as possible (and hence they want to consume ‘stuff’ not only today but as along as possible).
@John Coochey
Stupid denialist – there is plenty of data – plenty of accuracy.
http://www.pol.ac.uk/ntslf/sadata_tgi_ntslf_v2.php?code=Barmouth&span=1
and similar.
And our denialist cannot even find his supposed problem with the data above at @42.