“There are some other good Antipodean blogs that regularly touch on climate change. The mainstream view is represented by the University of NSW’s Tim Lambert at scienceblogs.com/deltoid, while the sceptics get a run at my favourite environmental website, jennifermarohasy.com/blog. Marohasy is a biologist and a fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs.”
Michael Duffy, The Sydney Morning Herald: New climate figures would make a great debate them
“It is striking, in view of the colossal implications of the current response to “the greatest challenge confronting mankind” – as our politicians love to call it – how this hugely important debate is almost entirely overlooked by the media, and is instead conducted largely on the internet, through expert websites such as those run by Mr McIntyre and Mr Watts.”
Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph: Watch the web for climate change truths
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Thanks for posting this Paul. Also on the weekend, The Australian Financial Review had a piece on pages 28 and 29 entitled ‘A Heated Debate: Sceptics versus scientists over global warming’ with comment from me. I thought it was a pretty balanced piece by John Breusch, though my daughter commented that there was nothing balanced about the title.
Indeed the title is quite unbalanced – but it’s the Fairfax Press.
Duffy’s article makes a telling point – when obvious contradiction to some favoured theory or idea occurs, the political left become literately speechless. In the hope that if you don’t discuss it, it might go away?
No – it’s just they don’t talk to you. Funny that.
@Jennifer
Back for a short period – I’ve been practising actual palaeoenvironment analysis through drillhole data. Half the fun is in aquiring the data.
My objection to the Fin Review article (no, it’s not balanced) is not to the loaded, silly title, but to the unexamined comments from Lambeck that geologists seem to lack the time perspective that AGW deals in – ie. we are hung up on “slow” processes and fail to acknowledge the much shorter time scales that AGW is presenting. This is a common criticism of geological perspectives (“It’s all millions of years in the past” etc)
I’ve personally logged hundreds of kilometres of sedimentary drill core. Most of it (perhaps up to 80%) does indeed show show geologically slow processes, but the remaining 20% can be startling.
As an example, a 30m thick and regionally very widespread unsorted, unrounded conglomerate that ripped the heart out of the underlying still soft sediment. A unit of that dimension is not a local flash flood, it is a major, sudden and persistent shift in climatic conditions. The volume and velocity of water required to shift that amount of unsorted boulder material still staggers me.
I would also point out (no, I cannot find the actual link now, but the science historian at MQ Uni has a copy) that about 1830 the Royal Academy for Science reported to then UK Govt the results of an expedition it had undertaken in the Arctic – essentially almost all of the sea ice had melted, although the Society was unable to proffer an explanation.
The fact that there is utterly zero debate going on about the ‘Greatest challenge facing mankind” in the mass media, especially the publicly funded ABC, is probably the greatest journalistic bias scandal of our time. I don’t count 1 hour of Michael Duffy on Radio National as a proper balance to the rest of the week and across all mediims.
For instance, the latest glitch the “settled science” of climate change came last week when the British journal Nature carried a report forecasting a pause in our relentless march towards the looming AGW apocalypse while we have about a decade of global cooling.
Kind of skews the schedule with which we must rush in massive socioeconomic upheavals with unintended consequences unsorted, you think? Not Aunty.
The ABC coverage of the story instead of wondering how this jives with the theories of AGW and the lack of any GCM forecasts for anything but increasingly violent heatwaves, spends the whole article apologizing for global cooling as a natural and well understood part of global warming due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
Nothing to see here, mates. Go home. Debate over.
PDO was discovered, according to an article I read, by comparing salmon fisheries.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2871 . Excerpt :
“Researchers discovered the PDO only recently—in 1996—while searching for the reason salmon numbers had declined sharply in the Columbia River after 1977. The salmon catch record for the past 100 years gave the answer—shifting Pacific Ocean currents. The PDO favors the salmon from the Columbia for about 25 years at a time, and then the salmon from the Gulf of Alaska, but the two fisheries never thrive at the same time. Something in the PDO favors the early development of the salmon smolts from one region or the other. Other fish, such as halibut, sardines, and anchovies follow similar shifts in line with the PDO.”
This impacts my life sort of because the state has declared salmon an endangered species in California, based on the low returns at the annual salmon river runs. I haven’t heard or read in the local media anything about PDO, and it’s negative impact on salmon fisheries.
But today this story caught my eye.
http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/science/2008/05/05/Sea.Lions.Shot/ “Sea lions shot dead on Columbia River as salmon battle rages.”
Imagine if the public were informed that the decline of salmon in the Columbia River were due to a general global cooling, rather then ravenous sea lions. You think there would still be clandestine animosity against seals by fishermen?
Wrong place for that post I suppose.
‘A Heated Debate: Sceptics versus scientists over global warming’
Your daughter is not wrong there… That is an unbalanced headline….
I’d have rather seen it described as ‘A Heated Debate: Sceptics versus Committed’, considering both groups are Scientists.
More accurate would be “scientists versus speudoscientists”.
Or the honest versus the dishonest?
Presumably the sceptics are the dishonest ones Alarmist Creep?
So Louis do you think your comments about warmers have always been fair. “Hand grenades into the blogosphere” and all that …
“So Louis do you think your comments about warmers have always been fair.”
Pardon?
Does anyone really care about any of this name-calling any more?
In case anyone hasn’t been paying attention, ‘Global Warming’ is over — at least to the extent that the Alarmist fruitcakes will find it practically impossible to impose their ‘Back to the Stone Age’ solution on everyone else.
Gotta dash. I have an appointment to see a car dealer about a new Hummer.
Bye for now.
“The fact that there is utterly zero debate going on about the ‘Greatest challenge facing mankind” in the mass media,especially the publicly funded ABC, is probably the greatest journalistic bias scandal of our time. I don’t count 1 hour of Michael Duffy on Radio National as a proper balance to the rest of the week and across all mediims.”
There are endless hours of big brother, weight loss, “Current affairs”, reality, fantasy, , stars, crime, dodgy tradesmen, cars, big screen TVs, fashion, humour, scantily dressed women, on numerous TV channels and radio press. Why can’t ‘free enterprise’ do it’s own dirty work? Does it really expect the taxpayer to do that for it?
Ah, SJT, you have revealed so much of your soul with so few words. You are a poet. Perhaps a member of the Taliban, but a poet nonetheless. Scantily dressed women? Definite empirical evidence for AGW.
Where to begin? We hold the ABC to a higher standard than channel 7…? Maybe it’s just me?
Unlike the ABC, which is taxpayer funded and has a rather specific charter stipulating fairness and the paramount importance of providing citizens with balance coverage of current events, the commercial media live and die in the marketplace and must merely stay out of trouble to maintain their license.
The ABC’s sole purpose is to rationally and fairly inform Australians in order that as a knowledgeable citizenry we might function optimally as a democracy. No commercial media shares this contract with the people of Australian in an explicit, legally binding way. I suppose that explains the likes of Melbourne’s The Age.
The ABC has utter failed it it’s most basic of functions in regard to the climate debate. AGW is presented as settled business, with not an once of journalistic curiosity as to what the post-modern journalistic elites call “alternative narratives,” something they eagerly seek out whenever it suits their sociopolitical agenda.
Whatever debate has been presented is always contextualized as scientific consensus versus nutcase “deniers.” This is an indictable violation of their charter. Some one should retain a QC and go after management.
Of course, I don’t expect SJT to be able to see beyond the Big Brother media cocoon that has been spun around his/her mind in between the weight loss commercials, semi-nude women and dodgy tradesmen.
That’s the worry, isn’t it? Much of the public is so completely immersed in the daily, hourly, minute by minute, drip by drip media barrage of Orwellian conventional wisdom that it is impossible to extract truth, or even a simple fact, from the morass of an ideological gestalt.
The ABC is the most liable because they are not commercial and have no excuse to have dropped professional journalistic standards and they have a duty of care to the taxpaying public.
But, SJT’s tortured soul is a real piece of work. “Why can’t the free enterprise do it’s own dirty work. Does it really expect the taxpayer to do that for it?”
An image of SJT swilling a warm VB, bleary eyed, blue in the glow of the tube waiting for Thursday to collect his next dole check has flashed before my eyes. Maybe i’m psychic, maybe I’m not.
Whatever, it’s almost refreshing his stolidly bourgeois faith in the free enterprise system, if it weren’t so bloody creepy.
SJT – I wouldn’t bother with George. Just another denialist ranter stereotype. Tick the bolshiness index checklist so far.
Alarmist Creep,
Once again we see the global warmers, on losing the argument start attacking the man, in this case Wes George as “just another denialist ranter stereotype”.
We have had 10 years of temperature stasis or maybe a decline, and yet it is maintained that the underlying trend is still rising. Just what forces are in play that are negating the assumed human component is just another proof the AGW is a pseusoscience, or perhaps more accurately according to Irving Langmuire, “Pathological Science”.
I still maintain that the use of temperature anomalies rather than the mean temperature itself, is a technque of chartmanship when random noise, suitably filtered can be shown to have specious trends.
Given that most journalists are on the political left, it comes as no surprise that there is an absence of balance in the reporting. Bernard Goldberg pointed to this tendency in his two books about the worlds media.
It’s a fact the media are biassed but the tragedy is that they believe they aren’t. It’s a sincerely held one too, and as Goldberg shows, its because most of the media never come across dissonant views in their social life. They never socialise with the political bete-noires, and so never get to experience different views.
All rather simple really.
Good for a laugh, Wes. But your free enterprise system you are so keen to defend is not showing the slightest interest in defending itself from the secret army of commies waiting to take it over.
Secret army of commies?
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/747/38663
As news headlines report riots and food shortages in Third World nations, during March and April more than 5000 people on Australia’s eastern seaboard were able to hear the inspiring story of Cuba’s survival when faced with starvation and its transition to ecological sustainability.
http://devonsocialistarticles.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/marxism-and-climate-change/
SB is correct that, under capitalism, there can be no solution to the environmental problems that we face. The massive corporations that rule the world economy are concerned first and foremost with maximising their own profits. Any moves towards environmentally friendly practices, such as investing in renewable energy, are purely because they either see a profit in those ventures themselves, or profit in appearing to be a company that cares about the environment. Only a democratically planned economy which invests massively in renewable sources of energy and plans sustainable production (of food and other goods) close to where it is needed will lead to a society that is sustainable in use of resources and pollution.
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2198
Building a Red Green Alliance:
While it may be urgent that we create a red green alliance to strengthen radical social action to stop climate change, our collective problem is how are we going to do that?
The Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney Australia during April tried to tackle that challenge.This was a bold attempt to bring together left and green activists in order to locate a shared perspective around which we could begin more consciously….
Mud in your eye 3PO.
Suckers Inc:
Nothing original again.
“Why can’t ‘free enterprise’ do it’s own dirty work? Does it really expect the taxpayer to do that for it?”
sjt and creep, your bias should embarrass you!
Independent broadcasters have th eright to put on tv anything they want…if we don t watch it they go broke.
The ABC uses our money to push an agenda. They should be more balanced. If you can t see that then……….
Secret Army of Commies!
Whoa. Now that’s an idea, SJT. Better have another beer, before the delirium tremens sets in. Poor bloke. Intellectual incontinence aside, I think SJT is on to something.
Real communism might just be the cure for Global Warming!
Oh, and James don’t get confused, Collectivism is the polar opposite of democracy. We can’t have people running around thinking they have individual rights just to do as they please, demanding things like electricity, well stocked grocery stores and their own bloody private property, who do these jerks think they are.? SJT has already shown where that leads– half naked ladies on TV, bloody hell!
No the Great Leap Backwards will demand an end to democracy. There’s a bloody emergence on. We must save the planet, NOW! Whatever, the cost. Those who don’t get with the pogrom are part of the problem and must be re-educated or liquidated. Personally, I prefer liquidation as a way to help refloat the Murray-Darling River catchment area. Humans are something like 90% water, what a waste!
First we need strong leaders. Round up a couple of Maos, Stalins, Bushitlers, Pol Pots, Whitlams and Phillip Adams and let the Great Leap Backwards begin.
Then form the Alarmist Creep Pogrom Corps, they would look great in brown, don’t you think? We could get Earth’s population back under a billion in no time flat. The Martians could watch all the lights go out on the Blue Marble as the coal fire plants clicked off one by one. Oh, what a glorious sight it would be. A new dark age. One can only hope.
What do think, Creepy? And you said I was a bloke with no ideas. Alright, so I borrowed this idea from SJT (which is pronounced Shjt btw.) SJT said I could have it for a fag.
“Alright, so I borrowed this idea from SJT”
Actually, this scenario is right out of the ‘Alarmist Creep and Ender Colouring Book’.
SJT borrowed it from them. SJT never had an original idea in his life.
Well Wes baby you’ve just proved your point on ideas. Just another boring right wing goon’s rant. Scumsy being rhetorically eclipsed, has now become the cheer squad where he naturally belongs. Why don’t you guys rattle on over to Tim Blair for a banjo session with your mates. You know put the hoods on and left off a few rounds from the semi-autos you still have.
SJT I can see why democracy is a challenging proposition.
If anyone is interested in watching what Alarmist Creep might sound like in the flesh, but:
Without:
– all the insults, abuse, grandstanding, arrogance, swearing, ranting, cursing, etc; but –
With:
– all the faulty logic and baseless assumptions
then check out:
I know that on the surface this is a pretty nauseous propsect, but bear with me. The guy in this video can actually hold down a conversation for over 9 minutes without telling everyone they are worthless pieces of shit, which is quite an achievement for someone presenting the Alarmist Manifesto.
Meanwhile, There is no small irony in the fact that Paul, champion of free speech, thinks he has the right to censor any post on a whaling thread that he doesn’t like. The term “Pathetic prick” comes to mind.