Doomed Planet

The Tear-Stained Flogs of Climate Science

Climate scientists of the apocalyptic persuasion are melting faster than Greenland ice sheets.  They sob, they rage, they suffer from what shrinks now call “environmental melancholia” or “pre-traumatic stress disorder” — mental anguish about stuff that hasn’t happened. They just can’t understand why the public – i.e. the befuddled Australian electorate – laughs off  computer-generated scenarios of the end of civilisation and, maybe, the end of the human species.

The doyen of Australia’s rising catastrophists, Dr Joelle Gergis, disclosed to August’s edition of The Monthly how she sobs about the climate peril during her kerosene-fuelled air travel.[1] Then she switches to “volcanically-explosive rage” because the hoi polloi don’t want to pay for windmill electricity fantasies.

Environmental scientist Dr Katharine Wilkinson is quoted by Mother Jones (circ. 200,000):  “For some, it’s anger or rage. For me, it’s deep grief… There is no way for me not to have a broken heart most days.”  At a recent panel discussion, she  blurted, “I have no child and I have one dog, and thank God he’ll be dead in 10 years.”

Senior weepniks include Yvo de Boer, former Executive Secretary of the UN group controlling the IPCC. Running the Bali UN climate summit, he had to be led off the podium in tears after losing a procedural motion  “as he worked round the clock to get a deal to protect the Earth from warming.”

The scientists’ pals in the media have got infected too: “Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist turned journalist, has written about his own efforts to contend with climate-change–induced depression:  ‘It’s only getting worse. I confess: I need help.”

Mother Jones featured interviews last month with top climate scientists about their mental well-being in the face of public indifference. In a piece headed,  It’s the End of the World as They Know It: The distinct burden of being a climate scientist, Washington oceanographer Sarah Myhre talks of her “profound daily grief”.  She doesn’t have clinical depression, she explains, just “anxiety exacerbated by the constant background of doom and gloom of science”. She asked a senior climate scientist how he communicated to ordinary folk about the “frightening scenarios” of CO2 emissions. “I don’t talk to those people anymore,” she remembers him replying. “F*** those people.” After that, Myhre went to her hotel room and wept.  

Psychologists now swarm among climate scientists suggesting meditation, yoga and therapy. New York magazine wrote that climate scientists are living a “surreal existence”:

One psychologist who works with climate scientists said they suffer from ‘pre-traumatic stress,’ the overwhelming sense of anger, panic, and ‘obsessive-intrusive thoughts’ that result when your work every day is to chart a planetary future that looks increasingly apocalyptic. Some climatologists merely report depression and feelings of hopelessness. Others, resigned to our shared fate, have written what amount to survival guides for a sort of Mad Max dystopian future where civilization has broken down under the pressures of resource scarcity and habitat erosion.

Meanwhile, let’s take a quick reality check on how the planet’s actually doing after warming by  one degree since 1890.

# World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim: “Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.”  

# Global average life expectancy (72 years)  increased by 5.5 years between 2000 and 2016, the fastest increase since the 1960s. 

# World grains production in 2018-19 (2,685m tonnes) is  close to record highs; wheat is a record 770m tonnes; and so is rice at 517m tonnes.

# In real terms, the world food price index has been flat for the past 60 years, despite population soaring from 3 billion to 7.5 billion.

# CO2 emissions have not only contributed to crop yields but have greened the planet to an area equal to two-and-a-half times Australia’s, according to a massive study in 2016 with CSIRO involvement. A newer satellite-based study has found even more massive greening effects, with 25 to 50 per cent of the globe’s vegetated regions now greener than in the 1980s.

# Weather extremes are not worsening and are not generated by global warming,[2] regardless of claims by snake-oil salespeople wearing their “climate scientist” hats.[3] If in doubt, check the IPCC itself.

# The world’s 76 best-quality, long-term tide gauges, according to a new study this year,  show negligible sea rise acceleration in the past 120 years and no sign of the climate models’ predicted sharp warming of the oceans.

Now let’s get back to the psyches of Australia’s top warming spruikers. Geographers Professor Lesley Head (Melbourne University) and Dr Theresa Harada (Wollongong University) have published a breakthrough paper in the peer reviewed journal Emotion Space and Society.  It’s called  “Keeping the heart a long way from the brain: The emotional labour of climate scientists”.[4] This includes insights about climate-panic people’s “emotional labour” from “feminist perspectives” in which the scientists combat “a strong climate denialist influence”. The authors, straight-faced, found that our climate scientists use emotional denial to suppress the consequences of climate change. Guilt-free, they can then continue “extensive use of long-distance airplane trips throughout a scientific career”.

The authors accept, no questions asked, that 33-50 per cent of the world’s petroleum and over 80 per cent of coal should be left in the ground. Even so, they fret we’re set for maybe 6degC warming and transformation of society. From this bland starting point, they sample four female and nine male Australian climate scientists — half of a group of 26 rated “the nation’s leaders in this field”. Tragically, the names of this band of bedwetters are withheld. The 13 interviews are wrapped with references to  nearly 70 prior academic papers.

The study took at least three years.  The scientists were surveyed from mid-2014 . The paper was submitted in May 2015 and re-submitted after revisions in July 2017. It was funded from part of an ARC research grant of $2,467,256 [you read that right: nearly $2.5m] for “cultural dimensions of environmental sustainability and human-environment interactions, including climate change.”

The interviewees’ particular terror was the “strong climate denialist movement [that] was a source of pressure and a cause of anxiety”. Into the bargain the  denialist discourses were “seen to undermine the legitimacy of science authority”. The authors seem unaware that Australia’s leading “denialist”  is Joanne Nova, one-time professional science educator and now a housewife in outer  suburban Perth with a global reputation. Her only resource is her intellect and her only income is from her blog’s tip jar. No $2.5m taxpayer grants for Joanne…

The paper’s “Table 1” lists “Common themes from interview data”. It is not clear how much the 13 Australians contributed. Climateers were keen on self-preservation, the table said, since they “recognised their privileged positions (Western, well-educated, generally wealthy)”. Thus they scrabbled around “formulating strategies for escaping the consequences of climate change (dual passports, housing in alternative locations)”. The scientists hurry home to “engage in everyday banal activities (e.g. reading detective novels, gardening) to reduce stress.” To counter the denialists, these climate warriors can “(a) develop a thick skin  — ignoring media criticism”  and “(b) Avoid public advocacy for fear of retaliation”.[5]

Our troops, police, paramedics and casualty workers must be in awe of climate scientists’ stress levels in the cauldron of faculty clubrooms!

The paper also sheds light on climateers’ ungainly social life. When interviewee “Karen” knocks off from predicting the death of human-kind, she goes home “to read trashy novels and have cups of tea”. She says, “Oh God I never tell them [in a social situation] that I’m a climate scientist, it usually descends into them shouting at you, or yeah, like telling you either you’re not doing enough or you’re doing too much.” The authors add, shrewdly, “This quotation illustrates how Karen aligns herself with the scientific community as opposed to the ‘them’ of the broader community.”  Them = deplorables?

Another interviewee, Susan, argues,

Once you become convinced that the world, the way it’s going, is doomed, the human race is doomed, I don’t see how you can do anything other than keep trying and work in this area. I don’t understand why all scientists aren’t working on climate change. I honestly don’t, because if you don’t have a habitable planet, it doesn’t matter … nothing else matters … We really are screwed if we all give up.

Nice thought, Susan: the world’s only science should be climate change. Cancer research? Pfft!

In one respect Professor Head and Dr Harada hit the nail on the head. “Being a good parent”, an ethical climate scientist refrains from discussing the implications of climate change with their kids, to avoid passing on the “anxiety and fear”. Today in contrast. kids are dragooned as shock troops for anti-CO2 campaigns (Sweden’s damaged 16-year-old Greta Thunberg to the fore). These kids risk being inflicted with actual depression.

In 2014, Joe Duggan, an aspiring Masters student in Canberra, appealed to Australia’s warmist leaders to pen hand-written letters about their emotional traumas. “The result is 20 beautiful and heartbreaking letters that clearly display the frustration, guilt, anxiety and anger that plagues the researchers who have access to all the data, but can’t make people listen to their warnings.” The scrawls were put on display in Melbourne for National Science Week, rather like a cathedral’s relics of saints. Note the elitism of those keen to raise the fossil-fuel costs of working families:

# Alex Sen Gupta, Senior Lecturer (Oceanography), UNSW: Scientists who have spent years or decades dedicated to understanding how it all works are given the same credibility as poleticians, [sic] media commentators and industry spokes people with obvious vested interests and whose only credential is their ability to read discredited blogs.”

# Dr Ailie Gallant, Monash: “I often feel like shouting… but would that really help? I feel like they don’t listen anyway. After all, we’ve been shouting for years. How can anyone not feel an overwhelming sense of care and responsibility when those so dear to us are so desperately ill? Perhaps I’m the odd one out, the anomaly of the human race. The one who cares enough, who has the compassion, to want to help make her better. Time is ticking, and we need to act now.”

# Associate Professor Katrin Meissner (UNSW): “Knowing that I am one of the few people who understand the magnitude of the consequences and then realising that most of the people around me are oblivious … It makes me feel sick.”

# Prof Brendan G. Mackey, PhD (Griffith)[6]:  “Dear Earth, just a quick note to say thanks so much for the last 4 billion years or so. It’s been great!… I’m really sorry about the last couple of 100 years – we’ve really stuffed things up haven’t we! I though we climate scientist might be able to save the day but alas no one really took as seriously…”

It’s become fashionable for lightweight journalists to highlight the troubled souls of climate scientists. The Guardian UK’s environment reporter, Roger Harrabin, did a radio interview on  ballyhooed “ocean acidification” with an un-named woman professor of ocean geology.[7] The broadcast was titled,  Is it ok for scientists to weep over climate change?

Her passion for the oceans triggered tears…’Stop recording now,’ she said. ‘I can’t be crying on the radio. It’s demeaning to women scientists.’ I argued that the audience would be moved by her commitment, and the interview continued with tears flowing… A colleague was moved by her passion: ‘That was really powerful. She almost had me crying too. I persuaded [the professor] to let me broadcast the tearful radio interview but she truncated a subsequent TV interview when she became overwrought again.

Other weepniks include Michael E. Mann, author of the notorious “Hockey Stick” study of 1998 with source data that, for some reason, he insists must remain secret to this day.[8]

He was talking to students, so it got to him. They’re young, it’s their future more than his. He choked up and had to struggle to get ahold of himself. ‘You don’t want to choke up in front of your class,’ he says. About once a year, he says, he has nightmares of earth becoming a very alien planet. The worst time was when he was reading his daughter Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, the story of a society destroyed by greed… She burst into tears and refused to read the book again. ‘It was almost traumatic for her.’ His voice cracks. ’I’m having one of those moments now.’ Why? ‘I don’t want her to have to be sad,’ he says.

Mother Jones quotes Kim Cobb  44, a climate professor at highly-regarded Georgia Tech, on her tearful epiphany on Christmas Island in 2016 when she saw a lot of dead coral allegedly caused by warming seas and/or President Trump.

 I was diving with tears in my eyes,” she recalls. In a row house made of cinder blocks on the tiny island, she monitored the American election results. When she saw Donald Trump’s victory, she felt shock and soon descended into severe depression…  Back home in Atlanta, Cobb entered what she now calls “an acute mental health crisis.” Most mornings, she could not get out of bed, despite having four children to tend to. She would sob spontaneously.  “How could my country do this? I had to face the fact that there was a veritable tidal wave of people who don’t care about climate change and who put personal interest above the body of scientific information that I had contributed to.

Jacquelyn Gill, a paleontologist at Maine University, says, “Being constantly angry is exhausting.”  It takes a certain resilience to be a scientist in America, the interview continues: “There are so few jobs, so few grants. You’re always dealing with rejection. You have to have a built-in ability to say ‘f*** it.’”

I’m bemused about her “so few jobs and grants” bit. In the two decades to 2014, the US spent $US166b on climate change work (in 2012 dollars), almost as much as on the entire Apollo moon program. The IPCC last year called for $US2.4 trillion a year spending until 2035 against global warming. This is not a field short of money. Another climate scientist remarks:  “An accurate representation  would have more crying and wine.”

An  Esquire  writer finishes on a note  reminiscent of Euripedes’ Trojan Women[9]: “However dispassionately delivered, all of this amounts to a lament, the [climate] scientist’s version of the mothers who stand on hillsides and keen over the death of their sons.”

If we’re into classical allusions, I’d go for the flagellants of Perugia, 1259 whipping themselves over drought and famine. The distinction today is that the tenured climate scientists want to whip us, not themselves. #

 

 Tony Thomas’s new book, The West: An insider’s tale – A romping reporter in Perth’s innocent ’60s is available from Boffins Books, Perth, the Royal WA Historical Society (Nedlands) and on-line here

[1] The Terrible Truth of Climate Change, August 2019

[2] For example, from the 2015 report: Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin…There continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.”

[3] Here’s the real deal from warmist Professor Andy Pitman, UNSW: “…this may not be what you expect to hear. But as far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought. That may not be what you read in the newspapers and sometimes hear commented, but there is no reason a priori why climate change should made the landscape more arid.”

[4] For those seeking more ways to beat themselves up, Professor Head in 2016 also published a book Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene.

[5] “Australia is one of the Western countries where consistently high levels of climate change denial [sic] have been recorded.”

[6] Mackay broke the rule and typed his letter, so it lacks the others’ pizzaz

[7] Asked by the New York Times in 2015 for an example of a species hurt by ocean acidification, NOAA’s acidification expert Dr Shallin Busch privately responded, “Unfortunately I can’t provide this information to you because it doesn’t exist.” See Thomas, Tony, That’s Debatable, Connor Court, Brisbane 2016, p164: The fishy “science” of ocean acidification.”

[8] Mann last week lost his nine-year-long lawsuit against sceptic Dr Tim Ball who had called him a fraud.

[9] “When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job.Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can’t really talk about it.”

41 thoughts on “The Tear-Stained Flogs of Climate Science

  • ianl says:

    > ” Avoid public advocacy for fear of retaliation” [Activist method for dealing with dissent]

    Yep, that works.

  • Davidovich says:

    These people are in serious need of psychological help. On the other hand, if we could collect their tears and desalinate them, they could be put to good use in our drought affected areas

  • bstallbom2000@yahoo.com.au says:

    Nothing to do with the environment. This is a deliberate political construct empowering useful and gullible idiots to execute.
    https://stovouno.org/

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer seems to have identified the reason why “climate emergency” advocates are so hard to talk to. The stupidity of the blind acceptance of the CAGW/climate change/“Carbon Pollution” scam cannot be countered because…
    ‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
    ‘If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who lives in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
    ‘Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

  • gary@erko says:

    For the next interview, can they each please describe exactly how the imminent apocalypse will occur. Is it a global flood, gradual or like a tsunami? Do we shrivel like a dried prune from the extraordinary unprecedented heat, or is it universal starvation when all crops fail. Then run the stats on their scenarios to see whether they all agree.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    Thanks Tony
    Your post brought tears to my eyes too.
    While in this lachrymatory state, I found myself recalling a verse from the BIG CLIMATE Book of Revelations:
    “Blessed are the Weepnicks, for they shall inherit – not a Hothouse Earth – but a BIG GREEN Climate Fund.”

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    All of the above endorsements and position statements from the Ostrich School of Climatology: very well done, particularly the header here by Chief Ostrich Tony Thomas..
    Mainstream science emerges from this as by far the greatest international conspiracy ever launched, requiring absolute cooperation and total silence from every last party to the said conspiracy; because if just one of them blew the whistle on it, he or she would not only score prizes and gongs galore (a Nobel perhaps?) but would be able to dine out on it for the rest of their life.
    But wait! There’s more! The most important objection to mainstream science on the matter, as endorsed by the CSIRO, the Royal Society, the AAAS and 198 scientific organisations world-wide has been completely left out of the main text and is there only in the subtext.. That is that anthropogenic global warming could not possibly be happening, because if it was, it would be disastrous for the fossil-carbon industry, generous supporter of mainstream denialism. And particularly disastrous for the coal industry, and worst of all for Australia, as it relies so heavily on revenue from coal exports.
    NB: Completely dry-eyed, fresh in from the paddocks in the worst drought so far in Australia’s history: and continent-wide. But don’t get me wrong: CO2 could not possibly be involved.
    Too many denialist articles at this curate’s egg of a site have said so.

  • Lawrie Ayres says:

    Climate scientists appear to be very emotional beings whereas real scientists need to be pragmatic so they can properly deal with the data as it occurs. Do researchers trying to develop new cures for cancer break down and cry whenever the test solution goes the wrong colour? Do they get 2.5 million to produce BS? No and definitely no. The reason fewer and fewer people take notice of these 3rd rate scientists is because their ridiculous claims never come to fruition and because there are other more meticulous scientists who present an alternative that is benign rather than apocalyptic. Perhaps the upswing in sobbing correlates with the knowledge that the gravy train is slowing down, that the renewable scam is a failure, that one day soon they will become a laughing stock and unemployable. Maybe they have seen some of the latest data that refutes the dire predictions.

  • pgang says:

    The abbreviation for ‘million’ (mega) is M. It’s not ‘m’, which is milli, or one thousandth.

    Ah, resident lock-the-gate nimby MacDougall is back spouting his disdain for coal mining jobs and royalties and taxes, and the thousands of families the industry supports, just so that he can live forever peacefully on some barely productive scrap of land that has already been environmentally decimated by his agricultural activities. Agriculture – it’s so non-productive that it hits the wall at the lack of rain, but we’re to shut down productive industry to protect a tiny number of dissident nimbies and their woke pals.

    I’m all for agriculture and the small farmer – it is of course an essential part of our economy and lifestyle, even as unproductive as it is in comparison with that other big land-based primary industry, mining. But I’ve no time for selfish nimbies spouting nonsense to make their case.

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    The abbreviation for ‘million’ (mega) is M. It’s not ‘m’, which is milli, or one thousandth.

    Ah, a most informative contribution from a fellow farmer: a fish farmer, no less, specialising in red herrings. What Earthly relevance that has to all this, ‘pgang’ or whatever your real name is, I must confess completely eludes me.
    But turning to the main part of your rant:

    …. back spouting his disdain for coal mining jobs and royalties and taxes, and the thousands of families the industry supports, just so that he can live forever peacefully on some barely productive scrap of land that has already been environmentally decimated by his agricultural activities.

    I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, ‘pgang’ or whatever your real name is (and I do not have a clue where you get your information) but modern animal husbandry and no-till farming are both quite sustainable, whereas coal mining by its very nature is definitely not.
    The name of the game in coal mining in all its forms is quickest possible return on invested capital, bank the profits, and when it inevitably peters out, find something else and start again. This despite the fact that the Earth has a one-off, never-to-be- renewed store of coal, which has to last us to eternity. IMHO its most brainless use is for power station fuel, and the sooner it is completely phased out of that role the better. So in my view, renewable are therefore the way to go, and no objection I have yet seen to them can be sustained.
    By contrast, our property produces grain crops, cattle (used to be sheep) ajistment grazing where required and timber; all sustainably.
    Yes, I am proudly part of that mass-movement called ‘Lock The Gate’. You will see our signs everywhere in the district. Because coal seam gas interests want to drill through our sub-artesian aquifer to extract the gas from the coal seam/s that lie beneath. That aquifer produces water of great quality, admirably fit for stock and domestic use; I drink it straight from the bore: no filtering or bacterial decontamination required.
    There is no reason why that aquifer cannot continue indefinitely; unlike the CSG project, which like all mining, will be here today and gone tomorrow.
    (Ever heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? In the likely case that you have not, or once heard about it and can only dimly recall, I suggest you bone up on it.)

  • ianl says:

    The resident trollster is back … golly.

    Nothing new in those diatribes, just the same arm waving rhetoric. I think he just presses F12 to fill the space.

    The “global” temperature, as it may be measured, has stiil risen less than 1C in 150 years. Even the activist scientists say that drought and flood a priori are not the result of climate change. The Amazon fires are almost all deliberate farm burn-offs in the season for it. Cyclones etc are not more frequent or more severe than over the last century. Sea levels have not made the slightest dent on all the tide gauges that subsiding/rising sea beds have not compromised (global satellite measurements have no way of compensating for the deformation of abyssal sea beds). It goes on and on …

    My memory also recalls the trollster making up his own 4th Law of Thermodynamics. A very good job of total, befuddled ignorance he made of it too.

    Gas wells drilled through the strata overlying the target seams are thoroughly sealed downhole specifically to avoid compromising the overlying aquifers – trollster knows this but is too dishonest to admit it.

    As from previous episodes, this comment is the last feed the trollster will have from me. As one of the comments above points out, arguing with stupidity is pointless.

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    ianl:
    Point 1: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ ; please note the date.
    Point 1:”Gas wells drilled through the strata overlying the target seams are thoroughly sealed downhole specifically to avoid compromising the overlying aquifers – trollster knows this but is too dishonest to admit it.”
    You regard me, lets face it, as a ‘trollster’ (whatever that is) because I do not join the groupthink that heads this site in the direction of being a coal-industry echo chamber and cheer squad.
    “… thoroughly sealed downhole specifically to avoid compromising the overlying aquifers…” you neglected to add “for just as long as it takes for the CSG operators to finish up and skedaddle.”
    What are the holes sealed with? Lead? Gold?
    No. Steel-reinforced concrete. Groundwater (pH greater than 7) will rust the reo bars out quick smart: by which I mean probably in less than a century. Steel reinforced concrete only dates from 1853; Portland cement from 1820. Yet I venture to say there are no concrete structures extant older than about 100 years. And the bore ‘sealing’ has to last forever. Repeat: forever. Because that is the expected life of the aquifer.
    Concrete cracks. Steel rusts. End of story.
    Your decision to chuck in the sponge is noted. Good night and good luck.

    https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/00f77463-2481-4fe8-934b-9a496dbf3a06/files/background-review-bore-integrity.pdf

  • rod.stuart says:

    It is nothing less than a condemnation of “higher learning” that so many of these deranged and deluded folk are lodged in academia.
    While they behave as though with schizophrenia affective disorder, here are some facts:
    # World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim: “Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history. This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.”

  • rod.stuart says:

    Continuation:
    # Global average life expectancy (72 years) increased by 5.5 years between 2000 and 2016, the fastest increase since the 1960s.
    # World grains production in 2018-19 (2,685m tonnes) is close to record highs; wheat is a record 770m tonnes; and so is rice at 517m tonnes.
    # In real terms, the world food price index has been flat for the past 60 years, despite population soaring from 3 billion to 7.5 billion.
    # CO2 emissions have not only contributed to crop yields but have greened the planet to an area equal to two-and-a-half times Australia’s, according to a massive study in 2016 with CSIRO involvement. A newer satellite-based study has found even more massive greening effects, with 25 to 50 per cent of the globe’s vegetated regions now greener than in the 1980s.
    # Weather extremes are not worsening and are not generated by global warming,[2] regardless of claims by snake-oil salespeople wearing their “climate scientist” hats.[3] If in doubt, check the IPCC itself.
    # The world’s 76 best-quality, long-term tide gauges, according to a new study this year, show negligible sea rise acceleration in the past 120 years and no sign of the climate models’ predicted sharp warming of the oceans.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    “…..if just one of them blew the whistle on it, he or she would not only score prizes and gongs galore (a Nobel perhaps?) but would be able to dine out on it for the rest of their life.” Ian MacDougall – 28th August 2019

    Well, where to begin? Judith Curry, Richard Lindzen, Garth Paltridge (The Climate Caper), Ian Plimer (Not for Greens, Heaven + Earth, and other books), John Reid (The Fluid Catastrophe), etc.

    Reid: “My scepticism about AGW arises from the fact that as a physicist who has worked in closely related areas, I know how poor the underlying science is. In effect the scientific method has been abandoned in this field.
    Back in the early 1990s when I was still working for the CSIRO and the early versions of the AGW theory started to gain currency, I was rather bemused by the passions which were aroused in my colleagues and the gullibility with which predictions of future climate disaster were accepted. Surely the jury is still out, I thought. I remained agnostic about the theory. More recently, after reading the literature and looking in detail at the output of one well-known climate model (HadCM3) I have changed my stand. I now believe it is nonsense for the following reasons.”
    Go to: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2009/10/climate-modelling-nonsense/

    His latest here: Climate Science or Astrology? http://fluidcatastrophe.net/?page_id=803

    As for Nobel Prizes, as far as I know, the closest climate scientists have got is this Xmas verse they composed when Al Gore won the 2007 Peace Prize.

    “On December 14, 2007, a curious event took place in the climate space. Some folks at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research Christmas party wrote a song in adoration of themselves, Our First Nobel. The last line was a question: “Can an Oscar be far away?””

    https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2017/12/climate-elfs-cheer-santer-pause/

  • Les Kovari says:

    What? A whole article and not one mention of Tim bloody Flannery, our very own paleon., oops, climate scientist?

  • Doubting Thomas says:

    Alice, I hate to cast such a pearl before swine, but our resident troll might like to chance his ignorance against Judy Curry’s genuine expertise here: https://judithcurry.com/

  • lloveday says:

    DT, I no longer read his posts other than second hand via other posts, but your suggestion is reminiscent of Tim Blair’s suggestion a while back that Sarah Hanson-Young debate Mark Stein.

  • en passant says:

    Ignore the MacBot, it will drive him mad as he is lonely and we are the only friends he has.
    I was watching ‘Varney’ on a US Business Channel. A catastrophist was diatribing about the heat, the droughts, the floods, the storms, the extinctions, the end of civilisation, the coming famines (channelling Ehrlich from 1988), etc. Varney said, “but there is no evidence at any of this is real …” The USCatBot literally started shaking, folding and unfolding his hands and became unable to speak. Varney said “We will take a break …”. After the break his guest was gone.
    I will try to find the url, but I was watching some TED presentations before nodding off when I came across one in which an Associate Professor said she had devised a plan to completely remove 100% of CO2. She then presented how this could be done. When she finished, the audience enthusiastically applauded and cheered.

  • T B LYNCH says:

    Mining is natural. Trees are the original miners. Their roots go down 100 feet to bring minerals to the surface, for us all to use.
    Coal miners are simply digging up the dead trees of times long past. Electrical engineers are returning the carbon to the atmosphere, from whence it came. The ultimate in recycling.

  • MikeW says:

    All doomsday cults end at some point. For an overburdened taxpayer like myself, the sooner the better for the demise of the Global Warming of Doom cult and its “green” energy cronies.

  • lloveday says:

    From The Daily Telegraph’s web-site:
    .
    “Former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery, the country’s foremost climate scientist, received rapturous applause as he addressed a council meeting (Northern Beaches Council -ll) to warn against nuclear power as a ‘climate emergency’ was declared for the region”.
    .
    The flog is Australia’s “foremost climate scientist”!! OMG.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    The trajectory of a person’s life is a mystery. Who could have predicted that Flannery – the now 63-year-old mammalogist, palaeontologist, discoverer of the great monkey-faced bat (Pteralopex flanneryi) and environmental activist would appear—after many adventures in the jungles of Melanesia and at international climate conferences—as a guest at a Writers Festival, speaking on the themes of “truth and fiction” and “science is the new art”, and promoting his book, Here on Earth: An Argument for Hope?

    Yet Flannery sincerely believes he’s on the right track. https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2011/04/mammoth-fantasies/

    “But I am certain of one thing—if we do not strive to love one another, and to love our planet as much as we love ourselves, then no further human progress is possible here on Earth. ”
    Tim Flannery, Here on Earth

    He urges us to “increase Nature’s influence” by “re-wilding” the Earth, for “there is something magnificent about the idea of a wild and free planet, one whose function is maintained by that commonwealth of virtue formed from all biodiversity”.

    Species resurrection, then, is Tim’s mammoth task. One of the first objectives of his proposed super-council to “regulate” Gaia will be to bring back the mammoth. For him, “creatures such as mammoths are vital elements in important ecosystems, and it is only through restoring them that the Earth’s productivity and resilience can also be brought back to the level that would most benefit our living planet and ourselves”. Re-wilding without mammoths would be “bound to fail, because mammoths and other elephants are the ecological bankers of our world … Attempting to re-establish their role in ecosystems is akin to helping a crashed economy back onto its feet.”

    Here on Earth, there’s even a ecological niche for folk afflicted with such fantasies.

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    Alice:
    Please correct me if you think I am wrong, but the atmosphere-hydrosphere-lithosphere-cryosphere-biosphere combination is the most complex system we know about, in the entire Universe. Climatology as a discipline has to take account of all parts of it. Added to that, the human economy (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the biosphere) is choc-a-bloc with vested interests, which are all well-connected politically. But all the same, you might find something interesting or even challenging in the 1120 pages of https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=atmospheric+chemistry+and+physics,+Seinfeld+and+Pandis&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

    A few years back, there was concern about the effect of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer, the destruction of which could, according to experimental science, result in a sufficient increase in ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface of the Earth, to have inevitably deleterious and unknowable effects on pretty well all life on it. You no doubt recall that chlorofluorocarbons were widely in use as spray-can propellants.
    I never once saw any chlorofluorocarbon denialism, nor can I recall any. Spray-can manufacturers quickly found substitute inert propellants. Very rapidly, the Montreal Protocol was signed by all the governments of the world. The two ozone treaties have been ratified by 197 parties (196 states and the European Union), making them the first universally ratified treaties in United Nations history.
    By contrast, the science on anthropogenic global warming and climate change (AGW&CC) is widely under challenge, particularly by the ‘conservative’ political Right. (ie ‘conservative’ of existing economic arrangements, but not necessarily of biospheric life as we know it.) This despite its endorsement by 198 scientific organisations world-wide, including the CSIRO, the Royal Society and the AAAS. The AGW&CC ‘sceptics’ leave themselves no way out or forward save to maintain either that (1) all those organisations have been dudded and played for complete suckers by alarmists (mainly from the [choke! caaargh! splutter! hawk! spit!] Left, aided and abetted by the [choke! caaargh! splutter! hawk! spit again!] ABC) – in other words, they are a complete bunch of fools; or (2) that whether they believe in it or not, the scientists involved are just in it for the research grants money, and are thus no better than charlatans straight out of The Alchemist by Ben Jonson. That of course, still leaves the ‘conservatives’ the option of holding both (1) and (2) to be true.
    It would only take one genuine insider to blow the whistle on all of this. The AGW&CC ‘sceptics’ thought they had it and were on the money with ‘Climategate’, but a British Parliamentary inquiry turned that hope to dust.
    Of the AGW&CC denialists you cited in your penultimate post, and only as far as I can ascertain, Judith Curry is the one climatologist among them. If some of her climatologist colleagues have given her a hard time then I can only say they are wrong to do so, should decease forthwith, and on that issue and that alone, she has my unconditional and unequivocal support. That is because of the remote possibility, as happens occasionally in science, that the maverick is right and the mainstream is wrong. (Lavoisier being arguably the best example, and his name invoked by denialists for that reason.)
    As far as I have been able to ascertain, the last 2.58 million years have seen the Earth for the first time in its entire history with icecaps at both geographic poles: held in place by the fact that the Arctic Ocean is virtually landlocked and the South Pole is covered by the Antarctic Continent. Thus we are conducting a huge and uncontrolled (except maybe for Venus: not a good look for the AGW&CC denialists there) experiment on the only planet we have, and have been in completely uncharted territory ever since Svante Arrhenius (in 1895) drew the world’s attention to the fact that CO2 traps heat.
    The main danger as I see it and as has been pointed out by many: the methane trapped in the soils of the Arctic tundra is already coming out at above normal rates as the Arctic warms, and could amplify the warming effect of the CO2 from coal combustion enormously, with God knows what effects and results. But none of it looks good.
    The AGW&CC denialists that hang around this site must from their own positional needs, be 100.000% right. Because if there is the slightest chance they are wrong, they are betting their whole future and everyone else’s against it.
    But wait! There’s more! Not only is this site against the scientific mainstream, it has also come out solidly against renewable sources of energy, as in:
    1 The Renewable Energy Myth
    2 Get Them Young, Make Them Green
    3 The Great Renewable Energy Rort
    4 German Green Energy
    5 Finally, Warmists Find a Real Threat
    6 Going green costs jobs
    7 They Make It Easy Being Green
    8 Teach ’em Green, Raise ’em Stupid
    9 The Green Gulf Between Fact and Fancy
    10 The solar- and wind-power capacity to meet Labor’srenewable-energy target would cost between $80 billion and $100 billion dollars.
    11 Inherit the Wind (and not much else)
    12 Green dream jobs
    13 Coal, There’s Just No Alternative
    13 With Friends Like Oxfam…
    14 Blinded By The Sun
    15 Banking on the Climate Hustle
    16 Young Heads Filled With Green Mush
    17 Etc
    18 Etc, etc.
    19 Etc, etc, etc.
    Which leads me to the conclusion that this site is in the pocket of the fossil-carbon lobby, or compromised by it in some serious way. Even from the point of view of AGW&CC ‘sceptics’, it makes no sense to act otherwise than to use renewables wherever possible for power-generation in order to
    conserve the fossil-carbon deposits, (useful for steel-making, coal-tar and its derivatives and feedstock for the chemicals industry) rather than to convert them to $$$$ asap for the private enjoyment of an ever-diminishing coterie of proprietors, with the enormous wealth involved trickling down to an ever-expanding pyramid of relatives, beneficiaries, on-hangers, camp followers, carpetbaggers (not necessarily including in this instance Col. [ret’d] Eyn Pyssant) and relatives (not necessarily the same ones I mentioned before.) And of course, the lawyers for all of the above, excepting of course the aforesaid Pyssant.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    “Alice:Please correct me if you think I am wrong, but the atmosphere-hydrosphere-lithosphere-cryosphere-biosphere combination is the most complex system we know about, in the entire Universe.” Ian MacDougall – 31st August 2019

    That’s a big call. Was it astronomer Carl Sagan who once said: “the universe is not only stranger than we know; it’s stranger than we can know”?

    The human mind must run a close second to the universe, being a fetid stew of delusion, superstition, speculation, irrationality – often unable to distinguish fact from fiction, cause from effect and so on.

    No surprise, then, increasingly strident doomsday folk insist the global energy system must be turned on its head in 3,650 days or humankind faces a climate catastrophe. Yet in 2017 the world’s primary energy sources consisted of petroleum (34%), coal (28%), natural gas (23%). That’s an 85% share for fossil fuels in current global consumption. So good luck with that exercise.

    As for using “renewables wherever possible for power-generation in order to conserve the fossil-carbon deposits”, India and China may have a different view. Besides, at three minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock it’s surely too late for anything but fanatical hand-waving and virtue signalling.

  • Doubting Thomas says:

    Go you rollicking good thing, Alice. 🙂

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    That’s a big call. Was it astronomer Carl Sagan who once said: “the universe is not only stranger than we know; it’s stranger than we can know”?

    No. That was Haldane; perhaps quoted by Sagan.
    But could you tell me what you think of those 198 scientific organisations that endorse the mainstream science: are they fools, charlatans or both? As you obviously do not accept the science, you must have an opinion arrived at by personal thought. Perhaps that also applies to DT (above) as well.
    The Chinese have as far as I can tell ratified the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, and have good reason to do so, as along with India the bulk of their fresh water comes off the Himalayan Plateau, whose snow mass is declining.
    I should imagine that if China and India start experiencing serious droughts and floods, that could generate a flow of climate refugees that in turn might create a headache or two (hundred) and a bit of refugee bother for the Australian Federal Government.
    Possibly also for DT. Could even give him a charge of the DTs.

    https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_China
    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47122641

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    That’s a big call. Was it astronomer Carl Sagan who once said: “the universe is not only stranger than we know; it’s stranger than we can know”?

    No. That was Haldane; perhaps quoted by Sagan.
    But Alice, could you tell me what you think of those 198 scientific organisations that endorse the mainstream science: are they fools, charlatans or both? As you obviously do not accept the science, you must have an opinion arrived at by personal thought. Perhaps that also applies to DT (above) as well.
    The Chinese have as far as I can tell ratified the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, and have good reason to do so, as along with India the bulk of their fresh water comes off the Himalayan Plateau, whose snow mass is declining.
    I should imagine that if China and India start experiencing serious droughts and floods, that could generate a flow of climate refugees that in turn might create a headache or two (hundred) and a bit of refugee bother for the Australian Federal Government.
    Possibly also for DT. Could even give him a charge of the DTs.
    (Links to follow.)

  • Tony Thomas says:

    There’s a lot in comments here about national science bodies endorsing the CO2 control-knob theory. In the case of the Royal Society I recall there was a minority revolt over the endorsement some years back and it had to be modified.
    Re The Australian Academy of Science, it set out its rationale for endorsement in a QandA paper around 2010. The ‘proof” was that their climate models were run with and without CO2 impacts and the runs WITH CO2 did a better job of explaining recent temperature history. It also used some phrase (maybe in the update about 2016) to the effect that output from models was solid evidence for aspects of warming. Thus the AAS was assuming that complex computer models of the climate interface were reliable and trustworthy. Not much of a case, in my view.
    Note also that as far as I know, NO national science body has ever polled its members on whether to endorse the CO2 theory. The decisions were made by executives usually based on recommendations by a climatology committee.
    When organisations are polled, such as (as I recall) the American Geology Society and a US Meteorological Society, , a sizeable minority dissents.
    I ran a check a while back and about 95% of Fellows of the AAS are on the government payroll one way or another. I think it’s remiss of the AAS not to poll its members – preferably by secret ballot as the consequences of “denialism” can be dire in career terms. I don’t have time right now to do the links to all the points I’ve just made, apologies.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    “But could you tell me what you think of those 198 scientific organisations that endorse the mainstream science: are they fools, charlatans or both? As you obviously do not accept the science, you must have an opinion arrived at by personal thought.” Ian MacDougall – 2nd September 2019

    “Most unfortunately, in the climate sciences, no sample of Earth-like climate systems is accessible to natural observation and even less so to experimental testing….. With such strong limitations on the natural observation side and with in situ experimentation inaccessible, we are left with the only remaining alternative: so-called in silico experimentation. ((A Hannart, et al., American Meteorological Society, January, 2016, page 105)
    In silico, Latin for “in silicon”, refers to experimentation performed solely on a computer or using computer modelling.
    As for those black-box climate models, they have serious flaws and are not fit for purpose. Nota bene:

    “Another serious difficulty is that climate models, including the most detailed GCMs, are simplified representations of reality that are affected by both numerical and physical modeling errors. Thus, the real causal effects may differ from the model causal effects.” (A Hannart, et al., American Meteorological Society, January, 2016, page 106)

    Such admissions, of course, never appear in the orthodoxy’s media releases or indeed the public statements of its disciples. They just are some of the dark secrets in the alarmist attic.

    Here’s another one, the experts can’t even agree on fundamental issues, such as causation.
    “Among other lacking items perhaps the most important one regards the absence of definition for the word cause. Several recurrent controversial arguments in the realm of event attribution may possibly be related to this lacking definition of causality: for instance, an argument often made (Trenberth, 2012) is that any single event has multiple causes, so one can never assert that CO2 emissions, nor any other factors, have actually caused the event. ((A Hannart, et al., American Meteorological Society, January, 2016, page 100)

    Was it H L Mencken who said: “The urge to save humanity is always a false front/face for the urge to rule it?”
    But he certainly won’t be quoted at the UNGA74 in NYC this month, especially by Our Little Lady of Climate Change, Saint Greta.

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    “Among other lacking items perhaps the most important one regards the absence of definition for the word cause. Several recurrent controversial arguments in the realm of event attribution may possibly be related to this lacking definition of causality: for instance, an argument often made (Trenberth, 2012) is that any single event has multiple causes, so one can never assert that CO2 emissions, nor any other factors, have actually caused the event. ((A Hannart, et al., American Meteorological Society, January, 2016, page 100)
    Was it H L Mencken who said: “The urge to save humanity is always a false front/face for the urge to rule it?”
    But he certainly won’t be quoted at the UNGA74 in NYC this month, especially by Our Little Lady of Climate Change, Saint Greta.

    Well, Alice, that is good to know. If I am ever out on the vast open sea and the captain issues a call to abandon ship because it is sinking, then I will engage that captain in debate along those lines. There could be multiple causes for the water level rising below decks: someone could have left a tap or hose running, or dropped a full crate of beer. Have you thought of that? Obviously not. Define ‘sinking’. Define ‘cause’ . Define… [glug, glug, glug, glug……]

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    “Man overboard, sir!”

    Analogy, n., 1. An inference based on resemblances: things that are alike in most respects are probably alike in the respect in question. 2. Climate-craft: a false inference where essential differences are greater than essential similarities, e.g., The Earth’s climate is like a sinking ship “on the vast open sea”,
    Formally, if A is like B, and if A has property P, therefore B has property P; if and only if A really is like B. If, however, A is not really like B, the argument is invalid.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    en passant – 29th August 2019

    ” I was watching some TED presentations before nodding off when I came across one in which an Associate Professor said she had devised a plan to completely remove 100% of CO2. She then presented how this could be done. When she finished, the audience enthusiastically applauded and cheered.”

    There’s a minimum amount of CO2 needed for plant survival; between 50 and 170 ppm, and I think nearer to the latter figure. So removing 100% of CO2 would kill all life, including the speaker and her audience.

    “Plants, including trees and all our food crops, are capable of growing much faster at higher levels of CO2 than present in the atmosphere today. Even at today’s concentration of 400 ppm plants are relatively starved for nutrition. The optimum level of CO2 for plant growth is about 5 times higher. We should celebrate CO2 rather than demonise it, as is the fashion today.”

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    Alice, it has been known since at least the 1960s that CO2 concentration is the limiting factor on plant growth, provided ALL other factors can be held constant as can be done for example in advanced greenhouses like the CSIRO’s Phytotron in Canberra.
    If the Earth should enter a phase of runaway climate change and global warming, which the members of the Ostrich School of Climatology, on the evidence of the current value of their coal shares, say is impossible, then all such bets will be off.
    I should imagine that right now in the Bahamas, maintaining a phytotron or any sort of constancy for that matter would be pretty-well impossible.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    “If the Earth should enter a phase of runaway climate change and global warming,…” Ian MacDougall – 5th September 2019

    “If, if, if…”

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    Good God, Alice. Is “if, if, if” the best you can do?
    ‘If’ is the reason, the whole reason, and nothing but the reason we have insurance companies.
    The reason it is unwise to locate a nuclear reactor on top of a geological fault in an earthquake zone is precisely because it makes one helluva lot of sense to ask “what if….. ?”
    IF in that circumstance one chooses to ignore the geological/geophysical science, one has to have 101% certainty that it is OK to do so. Thus your position has to inescapably become a claim that for sure and certain, those 198 scientific organisations, and {as I recall 98% of) the world’s climatologists JUST HAVE TO BE wrong.
    I am not sure that such is philosophically sustainable. In fact, I am damned sure that it is not.
    London to a brick. 101%.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    Precautionary principle: 1. A trick or tactic evoked by a person or agency to justify a preferred course of action, esp. in the absence of evidence or a verifiable law. 2. Climate-craft: a deliberate strategy to exaggerate possible risks of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, dupe the public and advance a global decarbonisation agenda. 3. . Legal: speculative fear of future harm does not constitute an injury in fact sufficient to have a US court decide the merits of such a dispute or issue. See decarbonisation, pseudoscience.

  • Alice Thermopolis says:

    “……those 198 scientific organisations, and {as I recall 98% of) the world’s climatologists JUST HAVE TO BE wrong….” Ian MacDougall – 5th September 2019

    The consensus fallacy yet again.

    Real science is not advanced through polls or consensus.

    Observation and genuine experimental evidence – not in silico gymnastics by applied mathematicians et al. – is what matters; nor how many organisations believe in the CC bogeyman, be it 198 or 2,198.

    In 1931 this book was published in Germany by a group unhappy with Einstein’s theory of relativity: Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein)..

    When asked about it, he replied: “Why 100 authors? If I am wrong, then one would have been enough!”

    Everyone knows his famous equation, but who knows the alleged laws of “climate change”?

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    And the source of that priceless bit of cut-and-paste wisdom is………………..?

  • Ian MacDougall says:

    Observation and genuine experimental evidence – not in silico gymnastics by applied mathematicians et al. – is what matters; nor how many organisations believe in the CC bogeyman, be it 198 or 2,198.

    “Observation and genuine experimental evidence…”
    A bit of an ask when the experimental subject is a whole planet with as many variables as you like. What do we use for a control in this situation: Venus?
    Atmosphere ~97% CO2, and surface temperature higher than that of Mercury: closest planet to the Sun. So denialists have a job to explain it away (as distinct from explain it).
    I think Jo Nova takes the gong for the best explainaway. It all has to do with pressure dontcha know.

  • en passant says:

    The Macbot takes 25% of the comments and once more its commentaries are longer than the original article – and just cut and paste repetitions of previous comments. ‘Comments for all posts, reasons, articles and seasons’, no matter what the subject.
    The replies to the MacBot account for 30% of the remaining comments.

    Tony, what was your subject again …?

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