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The Forum > Article Comments > Free speech > Comments

Free speech : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 29/4/2014

Australians desire freedom of speech when they don't have it, but are reluctant to give it to others when they do.

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Well said.

I did however wonder whether singling out universities as "the final bastion of freedom of expression and the contest of ideas" went a bit far.

I can recall many occasions when elements within universities have attempted to shut down meetings involving speakers they were ideologically opposed to. Why is it that conservative politicians often need a hefty police escort to attend some university campuses?

These "bastions of the contest of ideas" often also have a dominant political ethos. Both the major universities in the ACT are well connected with the ALP. Equally, one can identify universities elsewhere that are bastions of more right-wing thinking.
Posted by Bren, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 9:38:46 AM
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Don says "People like me who write for newspapers, write books and write blogs have to ensure that what we write is understandable and interesting, but always within the law."

Not so - nothing compels you to be understandable or interesting. They're just things that matter to you as an author. It's notable and revealing that you don't include accuracy among your desiderata.
Posted by jeremy, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 10:18:37 AM
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Don – just yesterday evening I had the temerity(?) to stand in the centre of Brisbane with an enlarged photograph of an 8-week-old preborn baby and a sign stating, “This is not a potato”.

A few minutes after starting to hold up the signs, three 17 year-olds (two females and one male) came up to me and for the next hour aggressively harangued me for making the statement. They explicitly said that I should not be allowed to make any public comments that they interpreted to be opposed to abortion. For a while the male tried to take the signs from me, but to be fair, one of the girls did tell him that he shouldn’t.

I asked them why they didn’t respect freedom of speech. They assured me that they did - but, not for someone whom they regarded as being anti-abortion. In vain I tried to help them see that respecting free speech is precisely about letting people whom you disagree with having the freedom to speak anyway. But they wouldn’t have any of that.

You might like to think that they are the exceptions but from my experience they are not.

Earlier this year I was arrested in Hobart when I was holding a sign that read on the front, “Everyone has the right to life, Article 3, Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and on the back, “Every child has the right to life, Article 6, Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Australia is signatory to both of these documents.

It is true that I was also holding a photo of an 8-week-old preborn baby, and I was within 150m of a place where abortions are done, but if the “universal” in “Universal Declaration” means what it says, why shouldn’t the document be able to be promoted in all public places?
I think that there is no doubt that freedom of speech in Australia is not just under threat but is already being suppressed.
Posted by JP, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 10:33:44 AM
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Don, you are entitled to express your views. Things you are not entitled to are:

1. Being provided with an audience to hear your views

2. No criticism of your views

3. Not having people tell you your views are wrong, objectionable or otherwise inappropriate, especially when they are wrong.

It seems to me you are complaining more about people disagreeing with you than your right to express your views. After all you have shown time and time again on OLO that you don't understand climate science, but you still get a platform on the topic.

I can't see how your freedom of speech is being repressed.
Posted by Agronomist, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 11:15:18 AM
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free speech explained:

http://xkcd.com/1357/
Posted by JBSH, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 11:19:51 AM
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JP is absolutely right. His claims will be publicly vindicated as a raft of Court Cases trialing anyone who similarly speaks out against the atrocity of abortion unfold. One young woman who held up two pictures ..one of a developing baby... much the same as the one we see on TV advertisements for the vitamin supplement.. Elivet is it? outside an abortion facility...and was apprehended by police officers who confiscated them and charged her with displaying "obscene" pictures, has already appeared for "mention" in Court.One wonders if any judge would ever rule that pictures of the Jewish Holocaust were "obscene" and therefore never to be shown in public without risking a similar charge?

A few meters from where this young woman was "apprehended", the Falun Gong weekly display their "obscene" pictures of tortured fellow Falun
Gong practitioners...free of any risk of being charged with "displaying obscene images". Of course the images are obscene ..torture and abortion are obscene acts. Unbelievable as it may seem freedom of speech in our country has been well and truly eroded. Watch this space...!
Posted by Denny, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 11:52:50 AM
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Right on, JBSH, that's Don's point - but I hope that you weren't suggesting, from that clip, that people with different views should shut up or face being harassed and bullied until they acquiesce ?

After all, threatening someone with violence, even tacitly, would be a breach of that person's freedom of expression, wouldn't it ? Where do you draw the boundary between the two ? Where would, say, Abbott punching the wall next to someone's head come on that divide ? Or even just leaning against the wall very close to someone's head ? Or someone going off like a pork chop and yelling directly and persistently in someone's face ?

Would it be different if they were a climate change sceptic ? Am I still allowed to use that word ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 12:01:57 PM
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This man saw it all coming and here is his speech to a graduating class of lawyers at Harvard,

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/charltonhestonculturalwar.htm
Posted by onthebeach, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 12:43:25 PM
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" while the other is about climate change and the feeling by some that others should not voice their own opinions about it, let alone call for real and public debate."

Wait, what ? That makes no sense, the Science community is 97% on side with anthropogenic climate change, what's to debate ? Outside of being a scientist with the prerequisite skills, how in hell can you debate it. Do Mr Brandis etal have the required knowledge in the required scientific disciplines to engage in a debate ? He can't, it's like asking him to "debate" quantum physics, would you listen to him on that ?

or do you mean uninformed opinion is now debate ?

This sound suspiciously like a fake false balance argument, there are no two sides, much like there are no two sides of evolution, you totally misunderstand the entire scientific process if you think this is how scientific "debate" occurs. Sure the theory to explain the observations may be wrong, they recognise that and even assign it a percentage, 5% and as time goes on they're more sure, not less.

If you ever find a velociraptor with a rabbit in it's mouth it would turn evolution upside down and a different explanation for global warming may be out there (95% sure it isn't) but an explanation for it sure is hell is not coming from the likes of Brandis.

Can others have an opinion, for sure but lets not confuse that with a debate on the Science of ACC. Brandis is either a muppet or a lawyer, both of about equal use.

The debate is about whether we should bother to mitigate.
Posted by Valley Guy, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 6:25:54 PM
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Don Aitkin’s views on the AGW campaign are not directed against science but more against a political cult most of whose adherents, I would suggest, have no idea of the underlying science and would be incapable of debating it in scientific terms which distinguish between on the one hand closely argued examination of truth and on the other hand competitive bellowing. Professor Aitkin does, to my own satisfaction as a scientifically literate reader, debate the issues in terms that generally do not violate the norms of scientific debate. In this essay he does at one point, I believe, push the envelope somewhat. This is in the paragraph “Sixty years on [...]]and so on” in which he caricatures an opposing position, thus facilitating the appearance of refutation.

However, to contribute further to the culture of freedom of speech, Professor Aitkin might place in his blog a facility (as in OLO) for readers to comment on aspects and pursue issues of disagreement. Not bellowing of course, such uninformative labelling of people as “denialists” or Abbotesque dismissal of statements based (even if questionably) on science as “crap”.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 8:35:58 PM
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My thanks to the several commenters so far.

Bren: my reference to universities was a form of irony...

Jeremy: I'm not sure what you are getting at. If you think I've been inaccurate you might indicate where.

Agronomist: You make an excellent point, and indeed I think that force of my essay was about the failure to engage properly in debate, and the use of putdowns in shutting people up, or trying to shut them up, rather than in free speech exactly. But for someone to tell me that I m a denier, or that I don't understand climate science, and in neither case without showing me my error, looks like a form of shutting up. If you think I don't understand climate science you might indicate where or in what respect, since I think I have a fair knowledge of the basics.

Valley Guy: Asserting stuff that is easily shown to be wrong (like the remark about 97 per cent of climate scientists are onside...) is not engaging. It's a form of rejection by assertion, and looks like a form of shutting up. I've deal with the 97 % statistic in other posts. You can find them by searching on my website — just Google '97%'.

Emperor Julian: I'll think about your suggestion. If you have a post you would like me to run, let me see it and I'll tell you if I am prepared to run it.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 9:38:21 PM
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The reason why "there is little support for freedom of speech" in this country is because we have had it for so long that it has been taken for granted by the majority of the electorate. Most people have never even heard of the Andrew Bolt case, because most people are not concerned with political or social issues until it affects them directly.

Even those who do take an interest in social issues did not see the ramifications of the Bolt case coming. The principle of freedom of speech is so ingrained in western thinking, that when the first legislation was enacted to shut people up, most people thought that it was only to be used against holocaust deniers and other nutters.

But when the Reactionaries realised that they had actually gotten away with it, the fun began. They enthusiastically began to extend their new power to shut up all the critics of their state supported socialist ideology. You can't criticise, or even have comediennes make fun of, the self evident failures of Multiculturalism, without "offending, insulting, humiliating, or intimidating" somebody.

The Bolt case was really significant. Here was a mainstream journalist who wrote an article about what he perceived to be the rorting of government funds set up to aid aborigines, by people that most of the public would not even consider to be aborigines. That this legislation can be used by people who wish to continue their privileged positions, which most people would say they are not entitled to, by shutting up the journalists who's job it is to inform the public, is not acceptable in a free society.

That the "free" press must now not offend certain ethnicities about any issue by telling the truth, is the real issue. It must never be illegal in a free society for anyone, especially the free press, to tell the truth, or to comment upon the social issues which affect us all socially and financially. Unless we win this fight, we will have taken our very first big step backwards towards totalitarianism.
Posted by LEGO, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 4:40:30 AM
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There is freedom of speech in Australia but the proponents for freedom of speech keep objecting when others excercise their right.
Posted by individual, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 6:31:17 AM
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So Don, what you are really complaining about is people dismissing what you write as denier rubbish? Isn’t it their right to do that, particularly when a lot of what you post about climate is so obviously aligned with climate denier rubbish?

I have formed my opinion of your lack of understanding of climate science from your own posts here, Don. We can take this one http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15595 as an example. In it the only data you show is a fraudulent graph from Roy Spencer and then you base your argument on that. It took me less than 10 minutes of background research to recognise the graph was fraudulent, yet you failed to see that.

I am happy to rest my case there, but if you want me to point out more examples, I can.
Posted by Agronomist, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 8:49:08 AM
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Hi Agronomist,

The main thing currently that bugs me about climate change is whether or not there has been a pause in the rise in world temperatures since 1998 or so, while CO2 levels have kept rising.

Has there been a pause ? Do you believe that there has been a pause ? Or are you a pause denier ?

Just asking :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 9:46:08 AM
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Well Joe, since 1998 statistically global surface temperatures have increased by 0.06 C per decade (P<0.007). Data can be found here http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4-gl.dat and http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.txt. I did the statistical analysis myself.

But while we are at it, perhaps we should cherry pick a couple of other starting years?

Since 1997, statistically global surface temperatures have increased by 0.06 C per decade (P<0.006).

Since 1999, statistically global surface temperatures have increased by 0.08 C per decade (P<0.0004).

So it seems to me Joe, there is no “pause” to deny. In fact on the evidence of the numbers above, you might be forgiven for concluding that the speed of warming is increasing.

But if you want a pause to work with, there has been no statistically significant warming of global surface temperatures since 2010.
Posted by Agronomist, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 12:26:41 PM
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In all this GW debating why is there never any reference to the natural phenomenon of evolution ?
Yes industry contributes greatly to any such change but we've had changes before there was any industry or perhaps there was & we just don't know about it.
In any case, we can't reverse a trend that's been in motion for a couple of hundred years. We'll just have to go full circle like it or not. No tax, no scheme hare-brained or otherwise can change that. Never mind academia relies on this so heavily, we should find another, less annoying project, perhaps a useful one but that's very much wishful thinking.
Going back to the topic, free speech will always be condemned by the PC brigade because free speech is the greatest threat to them.
Posted by individual, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 1:01:32 PM
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Agronomist, the Climategate miscreant Trenberth wrote in that famous 2009 Climategate email to Michael Mann:
“The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.”
Global warming stopped in 1998

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100095506/there-has-been-no-global-warming-since-1998/

Your playing with numbers does not impress anyone

I believe that people back the AGW fraud through ignorance or dishonesty. I would have to reconsider this, if there is science showing a measureable effect of human emissions on climate. If you do not supply this, then your support for AGW obviously arises from dishonesty
Posted by Leo Lane, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 6:58:22 PM
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0.08 degrees in sixteen years. Gosh.
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 8:45:03 PM
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Freedom of speech is not freedom to harass people going about their private business. There is something very ugly about those who persist in demanding the right to do so. They are not motivated by tender concern for foetal human beings, but by hostility to adult female human beings. Otherwise they would have a track record of campaigning against waging war to promote the colonialist Project for a New American Century. How many foetuses get shredded with their mothers by bombs directed to war targets like Middle Eastern villages? Does JP or Denny do any demonstrating against this obscenity which proceeds with full approval of Australian governments as allies or does their bravado go only so far as bullying vulnerable young women in an extremely fragile stage of their lives?
Posted by EmperorJulian, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 8:51:15 PM
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Emperor Julian – what makes you think that just because I am opposed to abortion that I wouldn’t be opposed to war? I am indeed opposed to war and have engaged in public demonstrations against it.

You say that “Freedom of speech is not freedom to harass people going about their private business”, but that is precisely what the issue of free speech is about – what one person calls harassment another calls being allowed to express their opinions in public. If anyone can silence someone’s public comments merely by claiming harassment, then that will be the end of free speech. Besides, in what sense is publicly promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “harassment”?

You claim to know my motives for wanting to make the community think about what abortion involves – saying that I don’t care for the preborn child but am just hostile to adult females. Well, your presumption is completely wrong. We run a centre that provides free comprehensive assistance to pregnant women in difficulty. The one thing we won’t do is end the child’s life. This is in contrast to the abortion clinics which will do only thing for the pregnant woman in difficulty and that is to end the child’s life for a price.
Posted by JP, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 9:17:22 PM
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How does a PC worshipper deal with a person from another culture when they inadvertently or through sheer ignorance make an offensive remark ? What if someone is still learning the language which is the PC mutt's mother tongue & some words have unintended consequences ? Would a PC mutt have the mentality or the reasoning of not feeling offended ?
Free speech is not for people to say anything they feel like nor is it acceptable for some limp-wristed PC mutt to feign offence. Free speech means no offence being committed & no offence taken.
Posted by individual, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 10:00:11 PM
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Loudmouth, that is 0.08 C per decade, so 0.12 C in fifteen years. It might look small, but it debunks the notion that there is a “pause” in warming since 1998.

Leo Lane, I am unsurprised you would plump for some internet gossip from 5 years ago over what data states now. What you believe has no influence at all on the data
Posted by Agronomist, Thursday, 1 May 2014 9:44:14 AM
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JP’s response merits some elaboration in reply.

First, his final paragraph gives the location of the placarding to which the three youths took exception. This location would be selected by anyone choosing to harass the women and that is why it is proscribed by a law which JP seems to find irksome. It would be like confronting worshippers at Mass with “No Popery” placards outside a Roman church.

Second, if the youths really wished to suppress public expression of JP’s views, as distinct from reacting to harassment, then they would be expressing a brand of fascism that is all too prevalent and which Mr Brandeis is trying to combat.

Third, if the youths wished to take up JPs views as such they would discuss them rationally e.g. in the terms of Dr Hislop’s excellent draft legislation that the pollies in WA kerzonked back in the 1950s [1].

Fourth, unless abortion earned more money than non-abortion services by the same professionals elsewhere the throwaway line about doing it for money would suggest a writer aware of not having a case.

Fifth, there is a similarity between masking an attack on women as being directed at abortionists and masking an attack on refugees as being directed at people smugglers.

[1] The Hislop draft took account of the stages of progression from conception to a fully autonomous human being and related the evolving human rights of the foetus to the degree of self-awareness expected at given stages (zero at conception). Restrictions on abortion took account of the linked human rights of the woman.[2]

[2] The mafia from which the late Senator Harradine , poster-boy for the anti-female brigade, drew inspiration rejects the right of a woman to choose when and whether and in what circumstances to proceed with a pregnancy, and pressured the weak and superstitious Tony Abbott in 2006 into banning RU486. The Harradine/Abbott mafia supported the colonialist rape of Vietnam (napalm sticks to babies too).
Posted by EmperorJulian, Thursday, 1 May 2014 3:00:16 PM
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Yes, Agromonist,

Or about 0.8 of a degree in the next century, from all causes of global warming, provided that no technological innovations can be developed in that time to cut that 0.8 of a degree back. Like nuclear.

Yeah, pretty scary :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 1 May 2014 4:35:15 PM
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Agronomist, you were asked for the science upon which you relied to support the assertion of AGW, specifically, science which shows any measurable effect of human emissions on climate. You have not answered this, so you have nothing upon which to rely in your backing of the AGW fraud, but a baseless assertion, dishonestly made.

Not wise on the OLO Forum, where the dishonest and ignorant are well and truly outnumbered.

As Professor Bob Carter says of assertions based:” upon the supposition that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming.
Instead, the hard reality is that after twenty years of intensive research effort, and great expenditure, no convincing empirical evidence exists that the human effect on climate (which is undeniable locally) adds up to a measurable global signal.
Rather, it seems that the human global signal is small and lies submerged deeply within the noise and variability of the natural climate system.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/4/a-new-policy-direction-for-climate-change

About time you faced facts, Agronomist, and relinquished your baseless fraud-backing.
Posted by Leo Lane, Thursday, 1 May 2014 5:50:09 PM
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Agronomist....Don't worry about them...they've been chattering like monkeys at a banana festival.

Just look at the extinction rate around the planet....and humans have no responsibility to the impact we can see quite well...PS keep it down...we don't want to upset the lay people:)

Kat
Posted by ORIGINS OF MAN, Thursday, 1 May 2014 9:42:45 PM
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Leo Lane, I did once try to take you through the science that is available, but you failed to bother to read the research I linked to or engage with the evidence. This indicated to me that you are not in fact interested in the evidence, rather you are interested in your opinion. If the evidence does not fit your opinion, it has to be fraud.

As this is religion not science, I don’t see any point in continuing to humour your fanaticism.

Once again I note that you prefer to rely on the opinions that suit you rather than the evidence. This time those of Bob Carter who is not a climate scientist and was paid a nice little monthly retainer by the Heartland Institute, but you still try to use his Professorship as authority.

I would suggest that it is you who needs to face facts, Leo Lane, but I know you won’t. Because of course religion trumps facts.
Posted by Agronomist, Friday, 2 May 2014 10:23:00 AM
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Agronomist, you say “, I did once try to take you through the science that is available”.

When did you do that? My recollection isthat you disappeared from the thread after I asked the question about the science.
Posted by Leo Lane, Friday, 2 May 2014 10:46:26 AM
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http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16079#279453
Posted by Agronomist, Friday, 2 May 2014 11:42:12 AM
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Agronomist, thanks for the link. There was no attempt by you to deal with the science, as I pointed out at the time. You viewed it as such an attempt in your parallel universe, which is not perceptible to me from the real world which I inhabit.
A message from Nigel Lawson of the real world is:
“wholly contrary to the expectations of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, who confidently predicted that global warming would not merely continue but would accelerate, given the unprecedented growth of global carbon emissions, as China's coal-based economy has grown by leaps and bounds, there has been no further warming at all. To be precise, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a deeply flawed body whose non-scientist chairman is a committed climate alarmist, reckons that global warming has latterly been occurring at the rate of — wait for it — 0.05ºC per decade, plus or minus 0.1ºC. Their figures, not mine. In other words, the observed rate of warming is less than the margin of error.”

Lord Lawson has a polite name for fraud backing and finishes his article with an appropriate remark on it:
“Global warming orthodoxy is not merely irrational. It is wicked.”

http://www.thegwpf.org/nigel-lawson-the-bath-lecture/

Accept reality, Agronomist, and relinquish the AGW fraud. Your bodgy figures fooled no one.

Origins of Man, you should read the article, as it may still be possible to break through the sterility of your limited mind. If your fraud-backing is based on ignorance, this article might save you. Good luck.
Posted by Leo Lane, Friday, 2 May 2014 9:03:35 PM
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Leo Lane, that link is some of the scientific evidence.

I note rather than address any of the science you rely on the comments of a politician with no expertise in science, let alone climate science on the topic. Unless Lawson can back his opinions with evidence, they are completely worthless.

Once again religion trumps facts.
Posted by Agronomist, Saturday, 3 May 2014 9:16:58 AM
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Agronomist, the science you raised in the thread to which you provided the link was in relation to the effect of CO2 on climate.
The question I raised was what science is there to show that human emissions have an effect on climate.
Nature has a huge carbon cycle of which human emissions are a very small part. The effect of human emissions is trivial and does not have the significance necessary to be scientifically noticed. Your “misunderstanding” of the question is simply a ploy to avoid it by a pretence of stupidity.

Your clumsy attempt to fit the valid criticism of your position “religion trumps facts” to a criticism of the valid view is pathetic.

The debate of the AGW fraud is a political one. There is no science to support your position, as the IPCC has demonstrated, in the manner clearly pointed out by Lord Lawson.

Your fraud backing is obviously based on dishonesty. You cannot be as stupid as you pretend to be.
Posted by Leo Lane, Saturday, 3 May 2014 10:30:56 AM
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Hi Agronomist,

A cat can look at a king, they used to say. So Lawson can point out that Pachauri said " .... that global warming has latterly been occurring at the rate of — wait for it — 0.05ºC per decade, plus or minus 0.1ºC. Their figures, not mine. In other words, the observed rate of warming is less than the margin of error”

and the question then, whether or not he is a climate scientist, or a finance minister or cook or whatever, is:

is what Lawson cites a faithful quote or not ? Did Pachauri or some other IPCC dignitary declare that global warming had been occurring at such and such a rate, with such and such a margin of error ? Yes ? No ?

IF he, or somebody like him, did, then the point is that the estimate - for that is most certainly what it is, if we can give or take 0.1 degree from an estimated rise of 0.05 of a degree - is not worth a crumpet.

Sometimes I wish that I was, like you, a fervent and unquestioning believer, but I was raised atheist, so there's not much I can do about it :(

But I liked your bit about religion trying to trump facts - that takes a lot of cheek :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 3 May 2014 11:49:31 AM
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Leo Lane, it seems to me that you don’t understand how this science stuff works. Science is built from pieces of evidence as they are discovered. When new evidence becomes available, the old evidence is re-assessed. It is not like religion where the truth, so to speak, is revealed all at once and written down in a book never to change.

So this was just the first piece of evidence needed to address your demand. Until there is agreement that this evidence is sound, there is no point going further. So do you accept that CO2 absorbs infra-red radiation and this causes it to warm the atmosphere as outlined in Arrhenius’ paper of 1896?

Loudmouth, the quote from Lawson was both wrong and irrelevant.

The statement from Lawson is not a faithful quote. The IPCC concluded:

“The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C, over the period 1880 to 2012”.

They then note:

“Due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] °C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade).”

Lawson's statement is irrelevant for the current purpose, because the research I was pointing to was about CO2 absorbing infra-red radiation and what lawson misquotes the IPCC as writing has nothing to do with that.
Posted by Agronomist, Saturday, 3 May 2014 1:10:26 PM
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Hi Agrominist,

"the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] °C per decade ..... "

seems to translate, to my limited understanding, to 0.05 of a degree per decade, plus or minus 0.1 of a degree, like Lawson wrote. Would that plus or minus 0.1 degree be at one SD ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 3 May 2014 1:33:06 PM
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Science is the discovery of truth through observation of evidence

What science can NOT do:
1. Obtain evidence about temperature changes in the future (have to visit the future to do so)
2. Measure global temperature sensitivity to greenhouse gas concentration (have to be able to experiment with planned adjustments to greenhouse gas concentration)
3. Measure the number of angels that can dance on the point of a pin (no observational protocols available).

Predictions about how global temperature will change, or not change, at different times in the future and how it will respond, or not respond, to human activity, are not science. They are mere assertions, satisfying social engineering ambitions such as funding a network of climatologists, or linking the people to an array of Fukushimas and Chernobyls, or merely dictating how they should conduct their lives.

There are excellent reasons for concern about CO2 emission that do not depend on promoting a secular religion, with the ritualised mass bullying and demonising of deniers characteristic of religion, but do depend on what science does tell us: every mole of CO2 emitted signals a mole of natural combustible carbon consumed - carbon which will not be recycled or replaced at a rate even remotely approaching that of its consumption- and that every mole of CO2 reacts with water to give two moles of acid.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Saturday, 3 May 2014 4:34:49 PM
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