Brilliant link thebas

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

but of course max doesnt want to know alternative views we are all cnuts for being non believers, ie taking on opposite views ffs the world wouldnt operate if it wasnt for opposite views yet one side are cnuts and the other angels?

what bull second last year was the hottest year in record history (2010) according to the WCO

as always ... there will be an alternative opinion ... i choose not to believe one side of any story fed out to the
public ... and will seek further information / opinions at all times ...

Again, very well said thebas.

I do the same.  I've read an abundance of material from both sides.

Well before the scandals, lies and exaggerations were exposed.

It's a furfie, truly it is, imo.

But if we must "ACT" on climate change, may be with action that actually makes a legitimate and real difference to the environment, not a fundamentally flawed carbon tax.

Good summary Thebas:

Was a report about the Ice caps of satellite data floating round in the news cycle. It has decreased but may come back stronger...the more clear water mixes with the oceans due to this they are worried about the gulf stream shutting down....

I would put this into a environment problem as opposed to hitching it to climate change

Yes, your exactly right AP.

The inconvenient truth for the climate change brigade.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/41292.html
On the origin of the sceptics
Graham Readfearn

As a celebrated historian, Professor Naomi Oreskes is interested in the origin of things - where ideas start from, what drives them and ultimately who propagates them.

Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego, has just arrived in Australia on a whistle-stop speaking tour promoting her new book, co-authored with Erik Conway, titled Merchants of Doubt - How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming.

The book, five years in the writing, ultimately concludes that much of the world’s scepticism on climate change is fuelled by a paranoid ideological fear of socialism and an unbending faith and belief in free-markets.

Put simply, US-based free-market think-tanks such as the George C Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute, The Science and Public Policy Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Why-Can’t-You-Just-Leave-us-Alone-While-We-Make-Oodles-of-Cash Institute (not a real institute) don’t like industry to have to be held accountable. It’s all about freedom, you see.

Oreskes spoke to the ABC’s Lateline program on this brand of scepticism which also drove its perpetrators to cast doubt over the causes of acid rain, the linking of tobacco smoke to cancer and the use of CFCs in eating the ozone.

“It’s part of this whole ideological program of challenging any science that could lead to government regulation, because it’s part of an ideological conviction that all regulation is bad, that any time the government steps in to ‘protect’ us from harm, that we’re on the slippery slope to socialism, and this is the ideology that you see underlying a kind of almost paranoid anti-communism. So even after the Cold War is over, these people are seeing reds under the bed.”

But before we all shake our heads at the audacity and paranoia of these “only in America”, we should acknowledge that Australia has its own Merchants of Doubt, some of which have long-held associations with the US denialist machinery and share its habits.

In her tour-opening speech to the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute in Brisbane earlier this week, Oreskes even went as far as to list Australia’s The Institute of Public Affairs alongside those other free-market think tanks including the George C Marshall Institute (a focus of her book).

On its website, the IPA says it “supports the free market of ideas, the free flow of capital, a limited and efficient government, evidence-based public policy, the rule of law, and representative democracy.”

The IPA’s researchers and fellows are prolific in their writing and are virtual ever-presents in the op-ed pages of newspapers and on popular web opinion sites such as The Drum and The Punch.

But given their open support for free markets, small governments and minimal regulation, they’re “research” and “analysis” is always designed to allow the recipient to come to the same predictable conclusion.

Back in April this year, the IPA’s executive director John Roskam wrote a letter to the then prime minister Kevin Rudd giving chapter and verse on his organisation’s role in promoting climate scepticism in Australia. He wrote:
“The IPA has taken the lead in addressing the economic and social costs of assumed human-induced climate change and the various costs of measures that seek to prevent it. The IPA has demonstrated that in fact the costs of climate change are likely to be modest but that the costs of the measures to prevent climate change will be very considerable, particularly for Australia.

“The IPA has also been sceptical about the evidence and the extent of global warming that might be due to human activity. The claim that humans are the cause of harmful and potentially catastrophic global warming has been fashionable for a long time. No reputable authority claims the science on the matter is ‘settled’.”
Roskam went on to say how the IPA had published “literally hundreds” of articles, research papers and submissions on global warming and had “consistently warned” of the “prohibitive costs” of proposed measures to tackle it.

Also enclosed with the letter, was a book produced by the IPA titled Climate Change: The Facts described by Roskam as a “series of essays by some of the world’s best scientists and economists on why we need an honest debate about climate change”.

You can’t help but think that Roskam must have been chuckling to himself as he wrote that statement, given the paucity of actual peer-reviewed scientific research on climate change amongst the book’s contributors, which included Ian Plimer, Richard Lindzen, Nigel Lawson, William Kininmonth, Willie Soon, Christopher Monckton, Garth Paltridge plus the IPA’s own Alan Moran and Roskam himself.

At one point or another, pretty much every one of these climate sceptics (or sceptics of the need for action) have also been hosted by one or more of the US-based free-market think-tanks.

For many years journalists have been uncovering funding links between these think-tanks and major industries. After all, all those person-hours doing research, writing and flying around the world don’t come cheap. Oreskes raised this question to her Brisbane audience.

“But who funds these groups and what do they really represent? The tobacco industry, fossil fuel industries, the mining industry and the chemical industry. All of these have heavy environmental footprints which stand to lose from government regulation. But rather than trying to defend the obvious evidence, they hide behind the rubric of freedom and liberty.”

Before his job at the IPA, John Roskam was the executive director of the Menzies Research Centre, a Liberal Party think-tank. Before that, he was corporate affairs manager for mining company Rio Tinto.

Organisations like the IPA are not obliged to disclose legally where their funding comes from, but some reports have suggested about a quarter of its income is from organisations with a stake in the climate change debate.

But if you sign up to the Oreskes theory, the core driver of the scepticism of groups like the IPA isn’t money, but ideology.

Also in the Rudd letter, Roskam pointed out how the IPA had hosted speakers “at dozens of events and lectures” and provided another set list of sceptics including Bob Carter, Ian Plimer, Garth Paltridge, Pat Michaels, Bill Kininmonth, Sinclair Davidson, Alex Robson, Christopher Monckton, Richard Tol, Brian Fisher, Aynsley Kellow and Nigel Lawson.

Earlier this year, Lord Monckton was featured heavily in newspaper coverage when he conducted a speaking tour in towns and cities across the country, including a debate in Brisbane which was televised by the ABC (featuring yours truly). Monckton, like the majority of sceptics, has no science training and while he is undoubtedly one of the highest-profile sceptics, he has never had a peer-reviewed climate science paper published.

Ian Plimer, a geology professor at the University of Adelaide, also joined Monckton in the debate. He is a well-paid consultant who, since 2008, has earned more than $750,000 from his work with two mining companies.

Professor Bob Carter, an adjunct research fellow at James Cook University in Queensland, has closer links to the IPA as its solitary science advisor. Bob carter is a regular at conferences hosted by the US groups, including Heartland.

His latest book, launched in October, is called Climate: the Counter-consensus. The book is published by Stacey International, which has also released unambiguously titled books such as The Wind Farm Scam, Climate: The Great Delusion, Chasing Rainbows: How the Green Agenda Defeats its Aims and other anti-regulation books.

The IPA was reported to have paid for New Zealand politician Rodney Hide, leader of ACT New Zealand, to fly to Australia to attend the book launch. Hide was gushing in his praise of Bob Carter’s book and used the speech to suggest it proved why his ACT party had been right to oppose (unsuccessfully) the introduction of an ETS in New Zealand.

“I am here to encourage Australian politicians and policy makers to read this book and avoid New Zealand’s costly mistake,” he said.

In one of his regular pieces for this site (about 40 in the last 12 months), the IPA’s Chris Berg attacked “climate activists” for attacking sceptics.

“But there is serious debate to be had about climate change. Debate about the best response to the changing climate and the degree to which we are responsible for that change. Debate about how we can adapt to a warmer or colder environment. Debate about whether Australia should bother trying to “lead the world” if the world isn’t interested in following. Instead of tackling those questions, many climate activists would prefer to treat the existence of public uncertainty about the origin, costs and consequences of climate change as not just wrong, but corrupt, immoral, and, now, unhealthy. This attitude has the stale whiff of authoritarianism.”
As well as using the weapon of doubt and uncertainty to water-down public concern about climate change, the IPA has, unsurprisingly given its stated opposition to regulation, consistently opposed any kind of price on carbon.


These drone-like protests have increased in their frequency as the Gillard Government has re-iterated its pursuit of a carbon price through the Climate Change Committee.

In one opinion piece written for the Australian Financial Review last week, the IPA’s Tom Switzer managed to pour cold water not only on legislated measures to combat climate change, but also on direct measures. Do nothing, was the take home message.

Switzer wrote:
“To be sure, Barack Obama hopes to unveil other climate initiatives such as multimillion-dollar subsidies for renewable energy projects. But most green lobby groups concede that direct-action proposals are insufficient measures to combat global warming. Obama could use the US Environmental Protection Agency to override Congress and unilaterally impose regulations under the 1990 clean-air laws. But such action would be deeply unpopular in several bellwether, recession-plagued states in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election. In any case, administrative regulation would almost certainly be tied up in litigation for years.”
For The Drum, Switzer also wrote:
“In this environment, domestic plans to price carbon unilaterally would inflict collateral damage on the Australian economy: higher energy prices, lower growth and lost jobs to nations that won’t conform to any post-Kyoto deal.”
You may be spotting a pattern by now. Then there’s the IPA’s Alan Moran, long-time advocate for doing nothing much on climate change who has a particular disliking of renewable energy. Again, for The Drum:

“Setting ourselves up as a pacemaker would create an even worse outcome and would almost certainly plunge the economy into a deep depression and wreck the nation’s competitiveness.”
Consistently, the IPA pursues the myth that the world isn’t doing anything on climate change.

Dr Martin Parkinson, secretary of the Department of Climate Change, referred to the "peculiarly Australian conceit that no action is being taken elsewhere in the world".

There are of course many other characters who make-up Australia’s Merchants of Doubt. There’s the role of The Australian newspaper, for example.

Just for fun, I’m supplying this link to one of my former blogs which, due to the GreenBlog’s syndication across all News Ltd websites, also appeared on The Australian and documented how one of its editorials had misrepresented the work of a climate scientist.

There are literally scores and scores of examples of The Australian newspaper’s active and regular abandonment of journalism in favour of an ideologically-driven opposition to climate change and environmentalism generally. At one point, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology even stopped bothering to try and correct their mistakes. Australian blog Deltoid has been documenting the newspaper’s “war on science” for longer, and with more vigour, than anyone else.

Then of course, we can add News Ltd commentators such as Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Janet Albrechtsen, Miranda Devine, Piers Akerman and Terry McCrann who, given their numbers and readership, often complain of left-wing bias in the media. Then on radio you have sceptic talkback radio hosts such as Alan Jones and Michael Smith, both of which regularly trumpet sceptic guests.

Dishonourable mentions could also go to Australian Senators. On his own blog, South Australian Senator Corey Bernardi recently declared all climate scientists were “rent-seekers” running a “pseudoscientific racket”.

Last year soon-to-be-not-a Senator Steve Fielding even spent time at a US Heartland Institute conference before returning with some sceptic talking points in hand. Nationals Senators Ron Boswell and Barnaby Joyce agreed last year to launch mining consultant Ian Plimer’s much derided book Heaven and Earth.

What’s comforting about Oreskes’ findings, is that it allows us to consume the musings of free-market think tanks with a pinch of salt, because essentially they’re unable to step outside a very narrow frame of reference which hasn’t moved on since the Cold War.

Or in other words, we’ve heard it all before.

Graham Readfearn is a freelance journalist and writer covering the environment and sustainability

ExxonMobil breaks climate change pledge

From: AFP
July 19, 2010 1:44PM


ONE of the worlds largest oil companies broke its pledge to stop funding groups that promote scepticism about man-made climate change, it emerged late Sunday.

U.S. fuel giant ExxonMobil gave almost $US1.5 million last year to organisations that campaign against controls on greenhouse gas emissions.


Several made outspoken attacks on climate scientists at Britain's University of East Anglia and argued their leaked e-mails showed the dangers of global warming had been grossly exaggerated.
The scientists were exonerated this month by an independent inquiry but groups funded by Exxon continued to attack them. The U.S.-based Media Research Centre, which received $50,000 last year from Exxon, called the inquiry a whitewash and condemned climate alarmists.

Some of Exxon;s largest donations were to groups that lobbied against a global deal on emissions being reached at the climate summit last December in Copenhagen.

Exxon could see the value of its oil and gas investments fall sharply if governments adopt aggressive plans to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.



The energy giant had indicated it was pulling back from funding sceptics. In its 2007 Corporate Citizenship Report, it stated: In 2008 we will discontinue contributions to several public policy groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.

Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, who has been monitoring Exxon’s links to sceptic groups, said: Exxon has engaged in a public relations campaign to convince the world that it has stopped funding climate sceptic groups. But this has turned out to be pure green-wash. Exxon has continued to provide financial support for many groups that are engaged in activities to persuade the public and policymakers into wrongly believing that climate change is a hoax.


Four of the groups funded by Exxon -- the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Media Research Centre, the Pacific Research Institute and the Heritage Foundation -- co-sponsored the New York conference attended by prominent British sceptics, including Lord Monckton of Brenchley, the U.K. Independence Party deputy leader.












WHO'S SIDE ARE YOU ON?

if the price goes up, people will change what they do - of course the companies will pass the costs on, as they should, people will then have the choice of paying more of changing the way they behave - from there, the companies will change what they do because they'll lose market share if they don't - i.e. they will need to change to be competitive with greener, lower taxed, alternatives

the Greens will ensure people at the lower end are compensated

personally I don't have a problem with nuclear BUT the NIMBY's would be out in force and the questions still need to be answered about what to do with the waste.  Add to that we have SO many potential renewable alternatives that we can go to first

will any of this stop climate change?  probably not but it might so let's have a crack is my call - one thing for sure, a less polluted world would be a better world

And secondly from a UK newspaper reporting what the US head of climate analysis had to say ...

One of those leaked emails, dated October 2009, was from Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the US government's National Centre for Atmospheric Research and the IPCC's lead author on climate change science in its monumental 2002 and 2007 reports.

He wrote: 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.'

After the leak, Trenberth claimed he still believed the world was warming because of CO2, and that the 'travesty' was not the 'pause' but science's failure to explain it.

full article here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/Global-warming-halted-Thats-happened-warmest-year-record.html


******

Interesting comments from the HEAD OF CLIMATE ANALYSIS AT THE US GOVT'S NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH

he says 'science can't prove it' ... but he believes it ...

but isn't simple belief ...  in god or anything really ... FAITH ... and NOT SCIENCE

so since when did (climate) science become ...  a RELIGION of faith ... and NOT substantiated fact ???????

There are nuclear power stations now that are powered by nuclear waste. 'What to do with the waste?' is a question best left in the 1980s.

lol womble ... i do trust scientists ... i am not a man of faith per se

but scientists are called scientists for a reason ... they study their target ... and they find facts that allow them to state without question ... truths

if a scientist starts saying ... i can't find the facts (yet) ... but i still beleive ... then are not being true to SCIENCE ... they are just offering an opinion

but the true classic post was below ...

As a celebrated historian, Professor Naomi Oreskes is interested in the origin of things - where ideas start from, what drives them and ultimately who propagates them.

Oreskes, Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego, has just arrived in Australia on a whistle-stop speaking tour promoting her new book, co-authored with Erik Conway, titled Merchants of Doubt - How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming.

***

now tell me ... does that title sound like a science professor made it up

or is it the most beautifully cynical hollywood style BLURB to just sell a book that you could ever come up with

gerry h ... you need a new ad man lol 

at least some common sense statements thebas to balance the lies.....

After the leak, Trenberth claimed he still believed the world was warming because of CO2, and that the 'travesty' was not the 'pause' but science's failure to explain it.

need we say anymore

lol wombleoz

fair point thebas - I'm sure there are plenty of isolated events in history but you must agree the last 12 months have been pretty wild the world over

17 September 1936 Byron Bay- Brunswick district, North- East New South Wales

A ‘cyclone’ with quarter pound weight hailstones broke in the afternoon and carved a 2 mile by 15 mile wide
path of destruction, uprooting trees, levelling crops and unroofing houses. The Ewingsdale Church of England
was lifted 5ft off its blocks, and the roof lifted off the school while 50 students were inside. Six people
were treated for injuries, three admitted to hospital. Hillsides looked like snowfields, so deep was the hail.

***

can you just imagine the climate extremists comments if this happened today to BYRON BAY

extremists blame CO2

pollies want to introduce a NEW TAX lol

the cycle continues (and so will the cycle of cyclones unfortunately)

excellent post AP

price triggers are the easiest way though AP - i agree 100% we need to back renewables but price triggers will force fast results

there are plenty of factors in play AP, we can only control - well influence - some of them though

of course the cost will be passed onto householders, well in most cases - there might be a brave business out there that wears the impact on the bottom  line but i doubt it. Lower income households will be compensated - from there, people will change what they do and as a result reduce the incomes of the dirtier businesses who will then look at cheaper cleaner alternatives