Aynsley Kellow on Popular Nonsense in Perth
Posted by jennifer, October 13th, 2008 - under Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
A couple of weeks ago Aynsley Kellow, Professor and Head of the Department of Government at the University of Tasmania, gave a lecture in Perth. He said:
“I am pleased to present this lecture today in Perth.I am particularly pleased to find that Perth is still here. I last visited here in 2005 – the year that Professor Tim Flannery suggested that Perth could become the first ‘ghost metropolis’ due to reductions in rainfall because of climate change. I must confess that I was somewhat bemused by this statement, because my visit to Perth was to present a paper on water policy under climate uncertainty. I knew from my research for that paper that Perth was in fact better adapted to uncertainty in its water supply than any other capital city.
Perth and the south-west of the state have suffered a decline in rainfall, which appears to have shifted to the north-east. The cause appears to be not the gradual accumulation of greenhouse gases, but a sudden shift in ocean currents. This decline in rainfall has translated into a marked decline in catchment yields thanks to changed catchment management, and an increased yield can be obtained by thinning catchments.
Regardless, Perth has adapted to its natural environment with a number of responses: demand management; use of aquifers; the construction of the Kwinana industrial recycling plant; and now a desalination plant. Professor Flannery was, of course, talking nonsense – but, as sales of his book The Weathermakers and his subsequent selection as ‘Australian of the Year’ showed, this is popular nonsense.”
Read more here: The 2008 Harold Clough Lecture: ‘The Politics and Science of Climate Change: The Wrong Stuff’
Luke,
Right one cue. Thanks, and hey the fishing is good. :-)
Actually you are as sharp as a sack of wet sheep brains.
Well pardon me, I have been discourteous
It’s Luke BSc. (Hons).
Boy!
“I am utterly amazed at you Cohenite. Why would you think that the impacts of AGW would be uniform. Any disruption to the energy balance is likely to start moving circulation systems around. Surely? And on top of/mixed with existing variability and oscillations like ENSO.”
Ah say, Ah say, Boy, it’s called GLOBAL warming Boy!, Y’all got a problem with that?
Youniform is global, Ah say.
Luke,
I mean I’m very relieved that you think that thinking like a GCM is a joke.
You have my respect….
Louis is exactly right luke; AGW is predicated on its global impact and all its indices are global; it’s one of the many contradictions of this mess; even if the AGW spruikers seem unaware of this glaring inconsistency;
http:www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_06/ (// excluded)
At a recent apocalyptic post by Glikson, he said that sudden and drastic climate change events were likely and would have a global effect; but even AIM and Dansgaard-Oeschger events are regionalised. I agree that there are likely to be regional losers when such changes occur, but there are also likely to be winners as well; the most salient point though, is that these changes have happened naturally before; AGW has not made a convincing case that there is an anthropogenic imput into the regional anomalies which may be occuring, as Koutsoyiannis has shown; but if you want to provide an analysis of the Vecchi and Cai papers, with Keenlyside thrown in, to argue otherwise, knock yourself out; I don’t mean literally, I’m speaking metaphorically.
Cohenite don’t be so utterly stupid. Do rant on.
Cohenite,
Glikson’s view is predicated by historical memories of past global catastrophes but disserved by the theory used to explain them – Lyellian Uniformism.
Until geology unshackles its chains from Lyellian dogma, little progress can be expected.
Of course the interactions of ozone hole recovery might be counter intuitive too.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424113454.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080612141015.htm
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL033317.shtml
So, even when we do fix our ‘mistakes’ we still get a kick in the backside; well, that’s it then, we’re buggered.
Cheer up cohey,
Just remember, these are SUPER GCMs and therefore SUPER biased.
Cohenite:
” agree that there are likely to be regional losers when such changes occur, but there are also likely to be winners as well; ”
This is not demonstrated historically. The expected change due to AGW is more in the scale of the PETM, so would involve a large extinction event. Remember Homo Sapiens has only ever existed in the current ice-age, we depend on ice-age sources of food (such as grasses), it would require a major adjustment not just by human’s but also by our food sources.
There could be winners from this, but what is the likelihood the winners will be human?
Louis, have you read your crustal contamination work yet? What about the Hawaiin Island chain? As to Uniformitarianism, what else can we assume? Is there any evidence that physical laws that govern processes was different in the past?
Luke,
I object to your abusive attacks on blog contributors and I’m entitled to say so without being obliged to single out other offenders. Please try and be civil to the rest of us. Many readers of this blog may not know about your recent performance at the “Niche Modeling” blog (‘Recent Article on Controversial Topic – Drought and AGW’ thread).
In your opening salvo on that thread you criticised the host, David Stockwell, for posting an article by Professor Stuart Franks, and charged that he (David) was having his leg pulled by ‘the organised sceptic disinformation unit.’ Following David’s efforts to make the peace by telling you that ‘You are a worthy adversary and contributor’, you pounced on him for citing with approval a paper by two CSIRO researchers: ‘Now Stockwell is quoting CSIRO as source yet attacking them on the main thread.’ Well I suppose that only gullible people who get sucked in by disinformation units would be so naïve as to think that CSIRO scientists would have reported their findings rather than repeat the party line.
Then you told a contributor that he was ‘a big head know it all’ and ‘a flogger of flash kit which you’ve bought [but] don’t know the limits of’ – and offered him the gratuitous advice to ‘wank on – I [Luke] have known all this stuff for years – funny how whirl-wind blowing through a junk yard builds a 747 – and even funnier how a smart arse like you is being dragged around in the wake …’
You also said on the ‘Niche Modeling’ blog that the public “need a fullsome explanation as plain and vanilla as possible”, and on this thread that I “should be more concerned about someone making an attack on Flannery without a fullsome disclosure of the recent relevant science on the matter.” You might want to check on the meaning of ‘fulsome’ before using the word again. And why do you say that Aynsley Kellow’s comments on what Tim Flannery said are an attack on HIM? What about YOUR attacks on individuals, as exemplified by the comments quoted above and (especially) your allegation that Professor Franks and others are operating a ‘disinformation unit’ – while you’re looking at the dictionary, check on ‘disinformation.’
The IPCC alleged that I was spreading disinformation in a media release in 2003, but I couldn’t sue them for defamation because international organisations have immunity from such actions. But you have no such immunity so I think that you’d better be careful.
Finally, could I suggest that you give your support to David Stockwell’s efforts to try and get more information about the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report (DECR) that the Australian Government received, accepted and frightened the nation’s farmers with on 6 July? Wouldn’t it be valuable if experts such as yourself could see the draft of the report that went to DAFF but that the Department thought was ‘too technical’. Now that David has learned that the authors ‘had to spend considerable time simplifying the language, diagrams and tables’ in that draft, it is clear that the DECR was ‘dumbed-down’ before publication. Some of us might wonder whether it was also ‘sexed-up’, but the issue could be quickly resolved if the draft were released. Do you support this?
NT;
Stop patronising me please.
And apart from uniformitarianism what else could we assume?
There is no evidence that physical laws were different in the past – who said they were? Probably as a result of your incomplete understanding of the topic.
Just remember that nuclear decay is not invariant so that fact alone renders geochronolgy problematical.
The alternative to unformitarianism includes the most powerful force in the universe adding the laws of Maxwell and Lorentz to the existing ones.
Ian Castles; IPCC is not immune from defamation proceedings; if you want a detailed advice feel free to contact me.
Ian well there you go you see – ramping up my concerns yet again. As I was saying on the theme here – it’s not what’s often said – it’s so often what’s not said. And you’ve been most inhospitable to me and quoted out of context of the more fullsome discussion. You know it makes my blood boil when people don’t give a full account. One could become most angry and animated and use harsh language.
So let’s table the full discussion (irrelevant to the thread that it is) – http://landshape.org/enm/recent-article-on-controversial-topic-drought-and-agw/#comments
And interesting too as I can see Steve is still having a go. I didn’t realise I owed him anything but gee I can’t please anyone.
And yes indeed I support the excellent work that CSIRO and BoM have done on DECR. But as Steve has said – I’m no expert and don’t measure up to his stringent specifications, so my opinion would be of little use to DAFF.
BTW do you have a reference for the frightened and disturbed landholders so traumatised by the DECR report – I hadn’t seen anything in the papers about it. Post-DECR disorder sounds most traumatic.
I also note that a Stewart Franks seems to be a signatory – the famous Bali Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Dec. 13, 2007 publicaly expressing of course some scepticism. Would that also be the same person whom the Lavoisier Society has promoted a recent drought article in the Australian newspaper at their web site, and who also appears in a Youtube video at a certain meeting. I must say I thought in the main, the presentation was quite good.
So Ian would you recommend the Lavoisier web site to be a quality source of “information” in the main? And do you think the Society is “organised” or perhaps is it simply a friendly society of debate?
And I did do some research of “disinformation” – apparently different to “misinformation”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation
“Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, which is merely false information spread by mistake.
Disinformation techniques may also be found in commerce and government, used by one group to try to undermine the position of a competitor. It in fact is the act of deception and blatant false statements to convince someone of an untruth. Cooking-the-books might be considered a disinformation strategy that led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Unlike traditional propaganda and Big Lie techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions.
Another technique of concealing facts, or censorship, is also used if the group can affect such control. When channels of information cannot be completely closed, they can be rendered useless by filling them with disinformation, effectively lowering their signal-to-noise ratio and discrediting the opposition by association with a lot of easily-disproved false claims.
A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies, or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole (a limited hangout).”
But it has been said on here that Wiki itself is a source of disinformation, so we need to be careful.
And so the need to pin the tail on CSIRO seems very strong – but as I’ve said to David Stockwell on other threads – where do these witch hunts lead? Indeed we would be better served by someone getting on with an alternative analysis.
Landholders out there may indeed by frightened – but not by the DECR – but what to do next? And so Ian – our answer to those folks is?
Luke,
“Landholders out there may indeed by frightened” and by whom?
Climate sceptics?
Ah say, I could have also wrote “but by whom”.
Assuming the boy is a bit taller than a dwarf running a giraffe riding competition.
Luke, you quote Wiki as identifying a ‘common disinformation tactic’ of revealing part of the truth ‘while presenting it as the whole (a limited hang-out)’. This is in fact exactly what Steve McIntyre suggested that CSIRO may have done in the case of the DECR. In a post of 24 July headed ‘CSIRO: A Limited hang-out??’, Steve wrote as follows:
“I’ve now done a quick look at [CSIRO’s] supposed data archive … and it is far from clear that this is … adequate … It may be more like the sort of limited hang-out that we often see when climate scientists grudgingly release a little bit of data to comply with pressure, but without a commitment to an ‘open and transparent’ process …
“In order to build a true ‘consensus’ to deal with important problems, it’s necessary for climate scientists to be thoroughly committed to an ‘open and transparent’ process. This means more than IPCC authors taking in one another’s laundry. It means more than a bunch of IPCC scientists telling everyone else what to think – even if they’re right and perhaps especially if they’re right. It means that data and methods to support articles used for climate policy must be routinely available concurrent with the publication of the article. Not after the fact.”
That was written three weeks after the DECR was published. Now it’s over three months and there’s been virtually no progress. How can you say it’s an excellent report when it has been heavily criticised and its authors won’t engage with their critics?
You remark flippantly that ‘Post-DECR disorder sounds most traumatic’ and ask me whether I have a reference ‘for the frightened and disturbed landholders so traumatised by the DECR report.’ Yes, there’s a link in my On Line Opinion article at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7865 . The NSW Farmers and Graziers Association President reported that the Association had received many calls from members who were “extremely agitated, confused and upset about the reports of drought every second year in future”.
My apologies if you believe I misrepresented you. I wasn’t trying to report the substance of your argument but to highlight your violent language. If you don’t like that, stop using such language. Your link to the ‘more fullsome discussion’ enables readers to judge for themselves (but why ‘fulsome’, which means ‘excessive or insincere, esp. in an offensive or distasteful way’?)
Yes the Stewart Franks who wrote the article in The Australian that was the subject of David Stockwell’s post is presumably the same person who signed the letter to the UN Secretary-General to which Don Aitkin, Bob Carter, Cliff Ollier, Garth Paltridge, Ian Plimer, Reid Bryson, Freeman Dyson, Chris Essex, Nigel Lawson, Richard Lindzen, Ross McKitrick, Alex Robson, Roy Spencer, Edward Wegman and nearly 100 others were also signatories – so it seems that Ian Lowe’s 2005 estimate that there were only five climate change sceptics in the world may have been a bit on the low side. And yes this Stewart Franks could well be the same person whose drought article in The Australian was published on the Lavoisier website. And yes he might even be the same person who appeared in a YouTube video at ‘a recent meeting.’ I’m really shocked about that.
It’s fine for The Australian to publish articles by experts such as Stewart Franks, and Roger Jones of CSIRO – though I must say I found Roger’s recent claim to speak for ‘the science community’ presumptuous and his reference to ‘the denial community’ offensive (Australian Higher Education, 30 July, p. 23). And I object most strenuously to the newspaper’s sub-editor’s outrageous byline to Jones’s article (“Silly Sceptics: The Case Against Climate Change Deniers”, ibid, p. 19) and the Australian Government spending our money buying space in The Australian for its tendentious advertisements promoting the so-called ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.’
I’d certainly recommend the Lavoisier site as a quality source of information in my own (admittedly limited) field of interest. In fact, Lavoisier published the Castles/Henderson articles that the AGO refused to publish. Lavoisier doesn’t pretend to present all sides of the argument, but their website is useful as far as it goes. If you want to know whether the Group is ‘organised’ or not, please ask them or one of their members. There’s no point in asking me. Australia’s first professor of public ethics, Clive Hamilton, appears to be very knowledgable on the subject – he tells readers of the October 2008 issue of ‘The Monthly’ that:
“They [sceptics] meet together at the Lavoisier Group, where they engage in mutual reinforcement, convinced that they possess a special knowledge that the rest of the world needs urgently to hear. The truth has been revealed to them because they are more rational than others, and are therefore able to resist the lies of the climate scientists” (p. 59)
Clive Hamilton must be writing about the Real Climate Group because his description of the activties of the Lavoisier Group cannot be based on personal experience.
Ian – you might have decided to isolate the debate to my turns of phrase – but why would you want to do that? Those comments at Niche Modelling are unrelated to the topic here.
As for violent – well humbug – what nonsense.
Have I threatened anyone with litigation, suggested they be reported or informed on, or taking a sample from this blog – “mass sackings, taking people’s houses off them, comments on Garnaut’s hair style, suggested arson, assaulting State govt staff, or engaging in a bit of fisticuffs with one’s fellow Australians”. Don’t think I’ve accused anyone of genocide either. I think it’s apparent which side has the monopoly on threatening behaviour.
You have failed to mention that my robust words quoted above were as a result of a protagonist personalising the debate as to what my scientific abilities may or may not be. Instead of leading or contributing to the debate he was simply ragging me. Why didn’t you add that Ian? Telling half the story – is the theme that I’m exploring here.
So you do seem happy and content to confine your chastisement of robust language for myself only. Unimpressed I’m afraid.
Again to the point – if sceptics are so concerned they would be making more serious attempts to engage to fairly and formally engage the institutional science. Not running societies dedicated to quasi-political ends.
However the entire separate nature of the discourse is to set up as an alternative political force. And to link the science debate to political persuasion and broader environmental politics. A distaste for mitigation policy seems to imply a knee-jerk response that one must also automatically bag the climate science as incorrect.
The attitude to institutional scientists is provocative and combative. Frankly I wonder why they persist in engaging sceptics given the vulgarity displayed on here and other blogs by protagonists. And you criticise my choice of words !! sheesh !
As for Jock Laurie’s assertion of alarm by his constituents, my own personal experience seems to be at odds with his. A friend who recently made a long trip through NSW found hardly any farmers who believed in AGW despite the drought – so not sure how they could be getting “stressed” if they don’t believe. Perhaps he gets out more than us. Or another explanation is to shore up the EC scheme against any possible evidence of a “changed climate” which might necessitate a review of EC terms and conditions.
But to return to essential point of my concern with Kellow’s and Frank’s articles is the lack of discussion of the recent science undertaken on the possible influence of AGW on southern Australia. Why have they not mentioned it ? Gets back to your quotation of ” revealing part of the truth ‘while presenting it as the whole (a limited hang-out)”.
As for CSIRO – Stockwell has played the provocatively and with partisan bias from day one – I imagine CSIRO might be unimpressed with the style. But their response is up to them.
Science progresses by someone undertaking an alternative analysis – which is why auditing is so tedious.
Surely the public interest here is served by science which informs decision making by farmers, agri-business, water resource managers, and Treasury. At what point do we move on constructively?