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Not so long ago, Australia’s latest Chief Scientist, Dr. Alan Finkel, appeared before the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, during the course of which deliberations he was questioned by the One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts. I was fascinated, to put it at its kindest, to hear Finkel rehashing all the tired clichés of his global warming co-religionists, even invoking the old stalking horse of that fraternity, Svante Arrhenius, to whom I will return.
Finkel informed Roberts and the committee that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing because of fossil fuels; world temperature is increasing as a result of the increasing carbon dioxide content from those fuels’ combustion; the greenhouse effect (described by Arrhenius) proved this; plus, the models are telling us that this will be catastrophic for civilization etc, etc. Naturally, he also pointed out that this was, as usual, the hottest year ever! When Senator Roberts politely pointed out some of the doubtful material in Finkel’s assertions and asked for specific data, he was slapped with that universal conversation stopper of the global warming fraternity “97% of scientists say so.” Readers can re-visit the encounter via the clip below.
All of this reminded me of Finkel’s predecessor and fellow catastropharian, one Ian Chubb, a neurologist, whose first pronouncement ex cathedra insisted the greatest danger facing mankind was anthropogenic global warming! As Australian Chief Scientist, Finkel is ex officio a member of the Climate Change Authority, where he joins, among others, such luminaries as
Dr. Wendy Craik, a zoologist, who opined in 2008 that the drought then gripping Australia had to be regarded as the new normal;
Kate Carnell, a pharmacist, whose tenure as Chief Minister of the ACT seldom rose above the lacklustre;
Clive Hamilton BA (History), BEc, PhD (Development Studies), a so-called “public intellectual” and strident green who is none to sure about the place of democracy on a dying planet;
David Karoly, who has made a career in climatology, a very nice career, albeit with the embarrassment of a co-authored paper that no sooner appeared than had to be withdrawn;
To quote sceptic and sometime Quadrant contributor Professor Emeritus Garth Paltdridge (author’s emphasis)
…virtually all climate research in Australia is funded from one source – namely, the government department which has the specific task of selling to the public the idea that something drastic and expensive has to be done to mitigate climate change…. Over the last two years more than 100 million dollars was distributed … for exactly that purpose. So there can be no doubt that climate-research grant recipients know perfectly well that scepticism concerning the climate-change story does very little for their careers. One therefore wonders a bit about the much-vaunted consensus of the global warming establishment regarding climatic doom. The average climate scientist is extremely reluctant to go against the tide of official opinion set by the research activists of his field, whatever might be his private thoughts on the matter.
I don’t know what was taught at Monash University when the good Doctor Finkel took his first degree, but when I was an undergraduate in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney, I was taught three basic precepts:
1. Always work from first principles,
2. Carefully examine all aspects of the problem or question (including all the pros and cons),
3. When there is a conflict of evidence or information always go to the primary sources.
It was clear from his contribution to the discussion with Senator Roberts that Australia’s Chief Scientist, at least in this instance, failed to apply the first two principles, particularly the second. True, it might appear he adhered to the third principle, but has he? This is where I return to Arrhenius, so lovingly cited in the video clip above, for it was he who first introduced the erroneous notion of the “greenhouse effect.” He attributed the idea to Joseph Fourier who, on the contrary, did not even mention a greenhouse and actually went out of his way to contrast the mechanism of the greenhouse, as examined by Ferdinand de Saussure, with that of the atmosphere. (Fourier JBJ, 1827, Memoire sur les temperatures du globe terrestre et des espaces planetaires).
Arrhenius clearly misunderstood the greenhouse mechanism and failed to grasp the constraints that Kirchhoff’s law places on the application of the Stefan-Boltzmann Equation. He went on to propose a complex energy recycling mechanism to explain an atmospheric thermal gradient already explained by convective heat transfer and the gas laws. In short, and at a risk of oversimplification, while understanding the effect of reflectivity, he calculated temperature variations on the basis of radiative transfer of heat, not on the basis of conductive transfer. On top of this he assigned black body emissivity to the lithosphere of the earth.
It would seem Finkel, while quoting Arrhenius, did not go to the primary sources. Had he done so it would have become immediately apparent that Arrhenius, in his 1906 work “The possible cause of climate variability“, while asserting, correctly that the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contributed to the increase of temperature at the earth’s surface, failed to give any empirical evidence. More than that, he was quite wrong in his theorizing, in particular his invocation of the greenhouse!
It must also be borne in mind that, despite the work of James Clark Maxwell and the definitive experiment of Mitchelson and Morley in 1887, Arrhenius still believed that space was not, in effect, a vacuum (as we now know*); but contained a material medium -“aether“. This concept, with its roots in Cartesian thinking, was first put in the form of an hypothesis by Newton (e.g. in his De Aere et Aethere and Query 31 of the Opticks); but who also questioned it, or at least showed the difficulty of detecting it (the Principia Book 2, General Scholium).
Knut Ångström, in 1900 showed by experiment that CO2 is transparent to 90% of infrared radiation applicable to temperature variation; and that those infrared bands which CO2 readily obstructs are already almost totally blocked by atmospheric CO2. This finding, that the relationship between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and its effect on back radiation is logarithmic, has been replicated by many subsequent experimenters; all of whom show that doubling of the present carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere would only increase the back radiation by about 3.6 W/m ², which would, in the absence of other factors, give rise to an increase in temperature of between 0.6 and 0.8 C°. (Ångström, 1900 “Über die Bedeutung des Wasserdampfes“). It is worth pointing out that a multiplicity of other factors affect climate, all natural. This is not the place in which to rehearse them, but to whet your appetite here are a few for starters:
The Milankovitch effect, which is the slow, 41,000-year cycle of what might be called the central position of the axis of the earth in the Newton/Croll precession. Milankovitch showed this to vary from between about 22° and 24°. The Croll effect acts in opposite ways in the northern and southern hemispheres, whereas the Milankovitch effect is the same in both hemispheres. Sir Fred Hoyle calculated the combined effect of the two to be that, in the present epoch, the northern hemisphere would be 1% cooler than average and the southern hemisphere 3% warmer than average.
The theory of general relativity shows that the energy output (irradiance) of the sun has increased by the order of 30% since the Lower Archean (i.e. over the last 3.8 billion years), recent studies have shown that solar irradiance has increased by approximately 0.4% over the last 200-300 years, causing an increase in temperature of about 0.4C°; other studies have shown that the increase in solar irradiance over the last 30 years has been responsible for 40% of the observed global warming. (see Soon W. H., Posmentier E. S. & Baliunas S. L. Inference of solar irradiance variability from terrestrial temperature changes, 1880-1993: an astrophysical application of the sun-climate connection).
It has been established that there is a significant correlation between sunspot activity and earth’s average temperature. Late 20th-century work by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, Lassen and others has shown this in some detail. However records are available comparing central English temperatures with sunspot activity going as far back as 1750. Other data go back as far as 1550. (Svensmark H. and Friis-Christensen E. Variation of cosmic ray flux and global cloud coverage-a missing link in solar- climate relationships).
But, of course, neither the Chief Scientist nor his predecessor give much credence to this “heretical” belief that the sun is a major determinant of temperature. Presumably, too, neither has mulled what R. S. Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at MIT; M.R.Allen, Head of Climate Dynamics Group University of Oxford; F. Seitz, Past President National Academy Of Sciences USA; S. F. Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences University of Virginia; G. W. Paltridge, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Physics and Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies (ANU and the University of Tasmania); the late Professor Bob Carter and Professor Ian Plimer, plus the 100 or more equally distinguished scientists who signed a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations before the Bali conference, refuting the claims of the IPCC. On top of that roster, count many thousands, yes thousands, of distinguished scientists who have signed similar letters or petitions protesting the claims of the IPCC and its coterie of self-serving, self-reviewing and thoroughly disgraced “scientists”, whose only claim to fame is that they have first-class seats aboard the gravy train of government-funded research.
It would seem Finkel and Chubb much prefer the views of carpetbagging buffoon Al Gore, the charlatan and alleged dirty old man Rajendra Pachauri, our very own chronic wrongologist Tim Flannery (who infamously predicted the eastern seaboard’s dams would be empty by 2007 and never refill) and a few, otherwise obscure, academics from redbrick universities in East Anglia, minor US colleges and others in Australia. The noise arising from them all is the sound of science being debased while cheques roll in.
_________________________________________
Tim Flannery’s busted prophecies:
2004: “…there is a fair chance that Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis…”
2006: “…there will be no Arctic ice in the next five years…”
2007: “…even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams or river systems…”
2007: “…Adelaide Sydney and Brisbane water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently…”
_________________________________________
The desalination plant story is a very murky one indeed. Labour governments, perhaps in a knee-jerk reaction to the cries of Flannery and his cohorts, spent of the order of $10 billion on the construction of these utterly unnecessary monstrosities. Take a brief look at the New South Wales example: its announcement was the last act of the pretentious-not-prescient Bob Carr, who announced in July, 2005, the plant’s construction; it was approved by the government in October 2006 and work was commenced in August, 2007. Commissioned early in 2010, it was shut down in July, 2012. Cost of this profligacy with tax dollars: $1.82 billion!
But if you think that it is only Labour governments that have such business acumen, consider this. In 2012 the Coalition flogged off the plant for $2.3 billion to a pension fund for Canadian schoolteachers! This windfall, it said, was to be spent on the holy cows of education, health and roads (and, sotto voce, the arts and sport). The brilliance of this deal is somewhat spoiled by the fact that the government and its heirs and successors must pay the teachers $200 million a year for the next 50 years; that is $10 billion if you are as mathematically challenged as, say, a paleontologist who presents as a cklimate “expert”. In addition, it appears that if the plant has to be started for any reason, the teachers will get another cool $5.5 million a start. And at the end of the day; or rather at the end of 50 years; the teachers get the plant, lock stock and barrel. So the Canucks get about 8.7% on their investment (plus $5.5 million a start) and , eventually, the plant and, presumably, the real estate.
Flannery, of course, has other claims to fame. A mammalian palaeontologist with a Ph.D. to prove it, he was introduced to listeners by Robyn “One Hundred Metres” Williams ,who gushingly introduced him thus on The Science Show,”He’s a writer and did his first-degree in Arts in English, which might account for his abiding fluency.(sic)” (Those sufficiently masochistic to plough through the turgid prose of The Weather Makers might beg to differ) It was during this interview that Flannery came in from fairyland for a moment to give us his thoughts on Gaia (you know, the ancient Greeks’ earth goddess); here are some of his ipsissima verba:-
“I think that within this century the concept of the strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest” … We’ll never be able to control the earth (that’s a relief, coming from one who says we are controlling it to the extent of making it hotter!) But we can nudge [it] and we can foresee danger. Once that occurs, then the Gaia of the ancient Greeks really will exist. This planet, this Gaia, will have acquired a brain and nervous system. That will make it act as a living animal….. we’ll see it, I think, this century.”
All of this costly madness, beloved only by rent-seekers and alarmists infected with galloping gullibility, goes back to Svante Arrhenius, whose errors and oversights were at least blessed by illogical sincerity. Alas, the same cannot be said of those who have hobbled the Australian economy, distorted the power market to the brink of grid collapse and mined the pockets of those consumers now being saddled with power price rises that were consistently denied but always inevitable
(*Notwithstanding Fred Hoyle and others’ work on the composition of “space” indicates the total mass of the matter in interstellar space (mostly atomic and molecular helium and hydrogen) is greater than the mass of the observable universe.)
I’ve three simple questions.
If we are warming:
Why was there snow in Vic and NSW in Sept?
Why was snow down to sea level in Tas in Sept?
Why did it snow in WA in August?
The answer the warmists will give you Keith is “because of global warming.” They are a “cult” to Gaia – there is no science involved.
Further to Padraic’s suggestions is that the Climate Change dribblers have changed the goal posts. The three questions you have asked are now addressed by a new bit of terminology: they are ‘extreme weather events’. Anything that contradicts Tim Flannery’s predictions are now encompassed by the catch-all phrase ‘extreme weather event’. Check mated. Neutered. Stumped. Extreme rebuttalism etc etc.
I’m not sure how they can explain sea levels remaining stable; or regrowth of the Great Barrier Reef . . . but Hurricane Irma certainly fits the pattern (but Hurricane Irma was always going to come around anyway. Nature has a way of reminding us that we humans can be pretty frail vis a vis the awesome might of the elements).
A number of Quadrant readers may not like this, but Gaia, if she exists, is subject to a far greater power, but I’m not allowed to argue this because science has an explanation for everything, doesn’t it?
Meoww!
> ” … I’m not allowed to argue this …”
Of course you’re allowed to argue that – no censorship here. And it is well recognised that constantly beclowning yourself takes dedicated practice.
202 years ago, just 200km from where I am, nature unleashed her power with an explosion said to be 10 times that of the better known Krakatau, throwing an estimated 160 cubic km of matter into the air, was heard 2,000 km away and caused crop failures in far-off Europe.
How puny we humans are in comparison – it is also estimated that the explosion released as much energy as would deploying the entire USA/Russian stockpiles of nuclear bombs.
Stuart,
What have you done!!!??
This will poke the resident troll all-knowing, Omm! Omm! farmer into cutting and pasting his comment from the University of Colorado about the catastrophic rising seas at 4mm/year give or take 3mm + or -. Worrying about it is great therapy for people like IanMacBot when not talking to the Archangel Gabriel, listing 427 websites all supporting the ‘we is doomed …’ meme, or capturing the methane from his cattle.
Reality and the demise of another productive business is just Oz collateral damage when you have a planet to save for the future Chinese owners.
Early morning here in Paradise: sky azure blue, 30m away the sea is like glass, 26C, beautiful view of 4 container ships passing by, full of goods manufactured by a vibrant economy supplied by cheap coal-fired electricity (you know, like Oz used to have). Seafood breakfast cost $6.00, with freshly squeezed orange and pineapple juice and locally grown coffee. All delivered to my door for another $1. I thought: hang the expense as it is a very relaxing state of affairs. But am I happy knowing that I am killing the planet in just a few more decades (or centuries, or millennium, or whatever …)?
A friend of mine owns gas-fired, energy intensive factory. Without reliable and affordable power he is out of business.
He sent me a plaintive email as:
1. His records show this to have been the worst (longest, coldest) winter since 1978 (just goes to show that the CO2 reduction strategy has worked better than expected and Victoria has saved the planet). Longest, coldest winter in 42-years? It’s global warming in action. Trust me, I am a science farmer …
2. His gas costs alone now exceed his profit-margin!!!
3. He has just received a letter saying that ‘due to limited supplies of gas, xx business is one of the industries that will have restricted supplies for designated periods’.. Read rationing among plenty!
4. We have plenty of natural gas in Victoria, but drilling and fracking to produce it are prohibited.
5. The bureaucrat that wrote the email obviously has no idea of the consequences of their proposal.
Should I send my friend Julia’s number at Beyond Blue Suicide Watch?
6. His land, infrastructure and business have all devalued (at least temporarily, if you believe the demagogue, but I calculate the problem is permanent {at least until the Chinese takeover Australia})
7. He donated $10,000 to help his local Liberal Candidate at the last election. Once elected the ingrate changed their mind about some of their pre-election policies and now supports the Turnbull/Frydenburg asylum in their insanity. They are saving the planet for the new owners, you know.
A bit late, but he has sworn nevaaa to evaaaa help the il-Liberal Party financially or physically again.
Curiously, like many slaves, he cannot quite make the break and is still a paid up Liberal Member hoping for a miracle and that the Liberal Titanic will see sense and not sink.
I will fix that character weakness when I get back to Oz …
Don’t be too complacent, en passant: there’s a Labor government coming your way (or do they spell it correctly over there?).
Warty – I think the Oz spelling of the Labor Party was done in the days when most boys studied Latin at school and given that most political parties are full of lawyers someone at the time was displaying his knowledge of the legal language.
Warty,
No Labor or il-Liberal government here; the locals are too smart for that. Apparently they have been granted foreign aid money to draft (or is it ‘daft’?) a ‘sustainable energy policy’ … that’s a slight worry, but I hope all for show as they are actually building two new coal-fired power stations.
> ” … doubling of the present carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere would only increase the back radiation by about 3.6 W/m ², which would, in the absence of other factors, give rise to an increase in temperature of between 0.6 and 0.8 C° …”
Which is exactly what has happened over the last 150 years … the value of empiricism.
The paragraphs in the essay here dealing with actual science are both quite informative and accurate. Most of the comments following the essay ignore this critical aspect because, I suspect, the facts of empirical science are not understood or not much regarded. I became aware of that perhaps 30 years ago; the continual dumbing down of maths/science courses in high schools has deliberately aggravated this, leaving most people with no defence to continuous MSM half-truths, omissions, censorship, outright lies …
So the drip-drip of MSM propaganda has succeeded to the point where the populace is locked in to falling living standards but grudgingly accepting of the noisy, superficial, exaggerated climate porn advanced as the reason for this drop.
Warty
The data from NASA shows sea levels have been falling over the last three years.
But sssssshhh don’t tell Ian.
I’ve often wondered whether Ian is a reincarnation of Rob Ellison. Remember him? They seem to have very similar views on a range of issues, and, to their credit, would hang on regardless of the inevitable flak. But then months and months ago Rob disappeared and we now have Ian.
Stuart,
I posted my earlier comment after reading your brilliantly
irrefutable article.
I have just spent a productive and thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours reading (and in some cases rereading) the references, some of which I had read before.
Now watch the real zombie deniers arise from the swamp as Karl Popper science methodology was never their strong point. As I wrote in 2012:
“As I understand it the basic scientific process as prescribed by Karl Popper is as follows:
1. Ask a question;
2. Conduct background research on previous work;
3. Construct a hypothesis;
4. Conduct experiments to test your hypothesis;
Analyse your data and results and draw appropriate conclusions (even {or especially} if they do not fit your hypothesis); &
6. Communicate your results in a peer reviewed paper.
It would appear that Climate Deceivers have taken a new religiously based approach of:
1. Make an alarmist and catastrophic statement. (“We are reaching a tipping point after which we are doomed” – James Hansen, NOAA, 1989);
2. Construct an unprovable hypothesis 20 – 100 years into the future. (“The seas will rise 20m in a century” – Gore, Flannery, Robin Williams);
3. Obtain funding to conduct “targeted research” to support the pre-determined outcome of your hypothesis. (“I have used Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” – Phil Jones, CRU, East Anglia University & “We cannot account for the recent cooling and it is a travesty that we cannot. Our measurement systems are inadequate.” Kevin Trenberth {a ‘pseudo-scientist’ who refuses to believe the results because they do not fit the computer model’s predictions!}). Now that takes one’s breath away!;
4. Attempt to denigrate or remove all opposition or attempts to test your hypothesis. (“I cannot see these papers getting into the next report even if Kevin and I have to redefine the definition of the term Peer Review” – Phil Jones, to Kevin Trenberth, Ben Santer, Michael Mann, Ken Briffa, et al {The Climategate scandal as quoted in the ‘CRUtape Letters’});
5. Obtain consensus (a political process, not a scientific one) through fear and the withholding of data and information that could be used to validate or disprove the hypothesis. (This is the ultimate corruption of the scientific process: “Why should make the data available to you when your aim is to try to find something wrong with it …” Phil Jones to Warwick Hughes, a researcher in Perth who questioned the Oz figures they quoted. Because Phil, that’s how the real scientific method works. And, “Maybe I’ll cut a few points off the filtered curve. .. as that is trending down the results because of the recent coldish years…” Mick Kelly, CRU blatantly falsifying the results to fit the theory).
Yet people still worship at the altar of this false god. This is not confidence inspiring for someone claiming to be a scientist, is it? But then Eugenics was scientific was it not? After all, many people got their PhD’s by finding new meanings for the phrenology of bumps on the head, didn’t they? Try not to laugh as eugenics is making a comeback …
About the only certainty is that there is no consensus about Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Disruption, AGW, CAGW or whatever today’s name is. Every real scientist understands that consensus is anathema to true science. Remember the essays “100 Scientists against the Theory of Relativity”? Probably not as it was never a best-seller, but as Einstein pithily replied “It does not take 100 scientists, but just one fact to prove my theory wrong”. I like his answer as it was that of a true scientist.
So, are we heating or cooling today, this year or this century? My bet is on cooling due to the quietening of the Sun. A recent study by American solar experts identified a sharp fall in sunspot activity since 2007 – and that fits the hallmarks of the arrival of the next ice age.
Forget the pseudo-science of AGW (climate change, greenfoolery & saving the planet, or whatever) it was only ever about using climate as a means to gain Political Power – and it worked until now. The challenge is to dig ourselves out of the deep grave the totalitarians have started to dig for us before it is too late to save Australia.”
Given the energy situation in Oz, the grave is now ready and being filled in. Farewell, my (once) lovely Oz.
I hope you will print out the article and send it to:
Turnbull:- “Gravity? That’s for lesser mortals.”
Frydenberg:- “I will serve you for a taste of the green kool-aid, my master, no matter what”. Rated by Miranda Devine as the ‘smartest man in parliament’. Well, even Miranda cannot be right all the time.
Hunt:- “I hear what you say, but I have reached a different conclusion”. No he didn’t, but the gravy and the potential of a post-political UN career are too enticing (just ask Rudd).
Roberts:- Someone who does know what he is talking about!
Finkel:- Odds-on he will not read it!
Bolt:- Who I predict will love it!
Well done that man! (trigger warning, non-inclusive word used).
There is a misplaced apostrophe in the third last line
I just knew someone would find something to invalidate the article …
If the author is talking about multiple others (“..Fred Hoyle and others’ work”), then the apostrophe correctly comes after the s.
Dammed grammarians!
[To which we might add 4. There is an important difference between explaining some phenomenon in nature, and explaining it away.]
(My emphasis – IM.)
Trouble is, ‘other factors’ are always present. It is very difficult to run a controlled experiment on the Earth while living on its surface. Such ‘other factors’ arguably amplify the heating effect of atmospheric CO2, and include loss of the sea ice from the surface of the Arctic Ocean. This changes the albedo, or reflectivity, of the Arctic, leading to further losses of Arctic ice.
Still, we can arguably learn a bit from Earth’s twin planet, Venus. Its atmosphere is around 98% CO2, is much deeper than Earth’s, and the Venusian surface is hotter than the backside of Hell: hotter even than the surface of Mercury, closest planet to the Sun. It was Venus that got the NASA climatologist James Hansen thinking about the possible implications of CO2 emissions for the heat content of our Earth’s atmosphere.
However, I would at this stage draw the reader’s attention to the tendency of our author here (F.S. Hespe, consulting engineer) to bucket the qualifications of those inclined to disagree with him: Finkel, Chubb, Carnell, Clive Hamilton, Karoly… This practice reminds me of a memorable lecture by the eminent philosopher of Science Daniel C Dennett that I attended a few years ago, in which Dennett delivered the opinion that Charles Darwin was the greatest scientist who ever lived: “greater than Newton; greater than Einstein.” (I incline to agreement there.)
And in what field did Darwin get his sole degree? Theology!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin%27s_education
Kindly explain how Mars has 97% CO2 and is as cold as …, if the 98% on Venus is the cause of heating there.
That 1% seems to make quite a difference. Hmm, I wonder if the Sun could have any influence and that the CO2 claim is just a convenient con of the simple folk?
This degree, that degree, who cares. Today degrees are as cheep as chips and are absolutely no indication of intellect, intelligence or ability.
Think
Turnbull, Flannery, Shorten, Gonsky, Finkel. All useless and all wrong.
All degreesvsay is that the owner has learned what they’ve been taught in a particular field.
I have people applying for work for me to operate machinery or do menial work. Many have degrees and some masters.
The reason: I pay more than they can get with all their degrees.
Yep and still stupidly people think degrees are the answer.
My secretary was a microbiologist (a degree I respected) but she was absent any commonsense. She should have been a farmer.
F.S. Hespe, author of the lead article here, is the one who questioned people’s qualifications to speak or hold opinions on the effect of CO2 on atmospheric heat content.
But then again, I am surprised that Hespe declined to wheel out and fire the biggest denialist cannon of the lot: AGW cannot possibly be happening, because if it was it would be bad for established business, and particularly for the coal business.
End of story.
As for Eyn Pyssant, Venus and Mars. The surface of Venus is hotter than that of Mercury, closest planet to the Sun. The difference is CO2.
Macbot,
And your proof that CO2 heats Mars and cools Venus, or whatever today’s fashionable canard is …?
You did not refer to Popper’s science methodology
You raised a straw man about ‘big nuthinburgers’ financing climate realists – without proof.
You did not address the enormously ruinous subsidies paid to ‘Unreliables’ and the profits made by AGL from them and their closing coal-fired, reliable power generators to increase their ‘unreliables’ subsidised profits.
You did not address any of Hespe’s science by refuting any of his references as invalid.
You have no idea what the ideal average temperature of the Earth should be for life to be at its ‘best’.
You have no idea what the ideal average concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere of the Earth should be for life to be at its ‘best’. Yet you will rage that we must have less CO2 without the slightest idea of how much less and why that would be better.
You ignore the fact that CO2 concentration have risen, but the temperatures have not.
You either do not know (or choose to ignore – which is strange for a hayseed cattle farmer) that almost every grain has just produced a record harvest in Europe, USA, Brazil, South Africa, India, Vietnam and China – which I will attribute to the increase in life-giving CO2 plant food. Prove me wrong.
You cannot produce ANY empirical proof that CO2 is harming the planet, yet you will wreck Oz to produce less with zero effect on the health of the planet (Finkel in answer to a question from Senator Roberts).
You chant that Venus has 98% CO2 and is hot (which ignores its tectonics and volcanoes), yet you are TOTALLY unable to explain how Mars with 97% CO2 (and no tectonics or volcanoes) is cold. Somehow, (through a thought process and mathematics that is beyond my comprehension) you state (is that with 97% certainty{?}) that the 0.04% CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is a threat.
The greatest mystery of all: why won’t you seek professional help for your delusions, or is talking to the Archangel Gabriel in a paddock your solution?
Finally, we just set a new electricity bill record for the month. It has been very humid so the air conditioners have been on constantly. Thank goodness for that coal-fired power station (that is being extended and expanded!). It is a price I am willing to have the planet pay for my comfort.
MacBot, et al
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com/2017/09/australias-electricity-is-controlled-by.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheClimateScepticstcsBlog+%28The+Climate+Sceptics+%28TCS%29+Blog%29
So, who are the rent-seekers, ‘big unreliables’, big subsidised profit takers, greedy anti-Oz corporate thugs? Coal or Unreliables.
1. Hurricanes are in the US news at the moment, and CO2 could be playing a role (WARNING: non-Breitbart or Trump-endorsed information source: could well be contaminated with information contradicting the approved line at the Ostrich School of Climatology. All denialostriches are urged to use with caution!)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/11/threat-climate-change-hurricane-harvey-irma-droughts
2. There are subsidies for renewables, and then again there are those for fossil carbonistas.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/coal-oil-and-gas-companies-receive-4-billion-dollar-in-subsidie/5881814 (Warning! This is from the ideologically contaminated and possibly radioactive ABC!)
3. Antarctica’s Totten Glacier could let go slowly or suddenly, flooding low-lying coastal idyllic locations world-wide! (Fortunately, that does not include our place, but I pity the poor bastards who have invested good money in said low-lying idyllic paradises. Caveat emptor!)
http://www.nature.com/news/antarctica-s-sleeping-ice-giant-could-wake-soon-1.21808
1. Hurricanes are in the US news at the moment, and CO2 could be playing a role (WARNING: non-Breitbart or Trump-endorsed information source: could well be contaminated with information contradicting the approved line at the Ostrich School of Climatology. All denialostriches are urged to use with caution!)
2. There are subsidies for renewables, and then again there are those for fossil carbonistas.
3. Antarctica’s Totten Glacier could let go slowly or suddenly, flooding low-lying coastal idyllic locations world-wide!
(Fortunately, that does not include our place, but I pity the poor bastards who have invested good money in said low-lying idyllic paradises. Caveat emptor!)
LINKS FOLLOW IN NEXT POST.
Pathetic reply that answered none of the points raised either by Stuart Hespe in his brilliant expose, nor in a dozen posts asking you to tell the world the ideal temperature you seek and the ideal concentration of CO2. We know 98% is too hot and 97% results in a frozen planet, so where does 0.04% on Earth fit.
As you reminded me once, these long overdue hurricanes are WEATHER, not climate.
From Earth Science (not sponsored by Trump, Breitbart, RT or Antifa) comes “Dr. Thomas Allmendinger, a physicist (chemistry, quantum mechanics) who uses a real-world experiment to document a glaring lack of empirical support for the position that CO2 is a dominant agent of atmospheric warming.
One-sentence summary: Shortwave radiation heats both CO2 and air only up to a limited temperature threshold, and there is no observed difference between the heat absorption/emission of air vs. CO2.”
http://notrickszone.com/2017/09/04/ph-d-physicist-uses-empirical-data-to-assert-co2-greenhouse-theory-a-phantasm-to-be-neglected/#sthash.piSf514O.dpbs
Finally, I can see the scales lift from your brain and you repent. Only joking as you are beyond repentance.
Took a photo on the weekend (between my toes as I lay on a ) of the high tide at my front door. Beautiful sight that I wish I could post. I have no concerns about the Totten Glacier (https://judithcurry.com/2016/05/22/another-antarctic-sea-level-rise-false-alarm/) as I do do not expect the sea level to change significantly in the next century, so we are negotiating the purchase of an adjacent property for guests.
Are we bloggers still the only ‘friends’ you have?
1. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/11/threat-climate-change-hurricane-harvey-irma-droughts
2. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/coal-oil-and-gas-companies-receive-4-billion-dollar-in-subsidie/5881814
3. http://www.nature.com/news/antarctica-s-sleeping-ice-giant-could-wake-soon-1.21808
‘a deck chair.’
MacBot,
Tell if this is weather or global warming climate change:
“Australians are enjoying the best ski conditions for 20 years after record snowfalls buried resorts as spring began. More than 140cm fell on Thredbo in five days over the past week, a record for September, in what skiers have dubbed the Blizzard of Oz.”
My answer is that it is climate change as the Earth is cooling again. We desperately need more CO2 and reliable coal-fired electricity generation.