"Kevin Rudd's decision yada yada gathering climate crisis?

It's a bad thing that a pissant like Australia is not "leading the way!"? Only if you see it as Tony does as a "crisis"

Our PM, finger on the pulse, has a huge media team, do not live in a vacuum, do not see a "crisis" in immediate need of "global action", or Australian action.

Tony, you want Global Action, go to India or China or the USA, instead you're berating a backwater nation going nowhere with something that obviously (see above on PM media team) is not a crisis.

If you're looking for the reason for this, you've put your finger right on it, since you don't like your fellow countrymen much and sum them up as having "a cognitive disorder not amenable to reasoned discourse."

That's us, we don't much care and each opinion poll see more and more people who don't care and who you dismiss as being what .. uncaring?

That's how it is, and you've decided to dislike us - we can live with that, (just don't touch our income or stuff, OK) you'll be that odd bloke muttering in the corner, lots of company for you, so no problem.

"Kevin Rudd's announcement last week actually offers a public policy turning point. Will we recognise this moment of decision for what it is?"

Yes we do recognise it for what it is, a politically astute decision to shelve something that was once a popular POV and is now past, a fad, a micro fashion moment, and now onto bigger more important things .. will you get the new ipad, or wait till Gen 2 ipad? Will the rest of the EU implode along with Greece?

These are things that really matter to us, things we cannot afford to let slip by, rather than things we can.

Reversing AGW by taxation and selling of carbon indulgences was a bubble, it is almost past .. soon we will all laugh at how none of us were really sucked in, but went along with it .. to be fashionable.

You will have to do much better that this on OLO Tony.

Your opening statement did have two questions but you also buried an assumption close in there, sneaky.

The assumption close first, << urgently-needed global action against the gathering climate crisis? >> . What climate crisis, did we miss something? Since there are no politicians legislating for carbon pricing (outside the EU) we have to let you know that no politician anywhere in the world agrees with you.

This leaves you with “is the prime minister serious about a CPRS?” I think that’s obvious. NO.

“How should concerned Australian’s now respond?” My answer would be, find one and ask them but there aren’t many left, so be quick.

This article is “dead cat bounce”.

Sorry, you just lost me. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant, legally and politically but not scientifically.
I wrote to the IPCC. Here is their reply.

On your question about whether CO2 is a pollutant, I can not answer that as I have not found the answer in one of our reports. I know that whether CO2 could be considered as a pollutant under the US Clean Air Act was a controversial issue for many years - and I think that now there was an EPA decision in favor of it and therefore it can now be considered a pollutant according to the Clean Air Act's definition of a pollutant. Perhaps that definition depends on each country's legal definition of a pollutant.

Best, Mary Jean Bürer

You have been told that the IPCC AR4 Report is based upon peer review research. Are you sure about that?
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/ and

http://www.noconsensus.org:80/ipcc-audit/findings-main-page.php

Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf
Dr Joseph D’Aleo & Anthony Watts expose the manipulation of raw temperature information that makes it appear that the globe has warmed.

USA’s Contiguous Temperature Trends using NCDC raw & adjusted data.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Rate_of_Temp_Change_Raw_and_Adjusted_NCDC_Data.pdf

Dr Edward R. Long writes ‘The raw data shows a systematic treatment that causes the rural adjusted sets of temperature rate of increase to be 5 fold more than that of the raw data’.

Now, what was the point of your argument?

Graham, these sort of articles should be banned, due to conflict of interest.

All these public funded people MUST be writing this stuff because they are worried for their public funded pensions. They are really worried that without Ruddies great big tax, the money will run out, leaving them like the rest of us.

If that's not a conflict of interest, what is?

Yes Tony, you will have to do much better than that on OLO full, as it is, of nasty denalists like myself.

The real surprise in recent week is that Rudd decided to announce the CPRS was being deferred for three years. It was a nice vote winner which, thankfully, he did not have to implement, and he can blame the opposition. But he could have strung the greens along for longer, until after the next election, in fact, so why didn't he? Some analysis along those lines would have been appreciated, instead of more green agit-prop. The CPRS would have been ineffectual anyway.
There is a far more important issue. Did dropping the CPRS cause the slide in Rudd's popularity - in which case there is no prob as the greens aren't going to vote lib - or is due to concerns over immigration, helped by Lib ads pointing to those concerns? If its immigration the Labor has a REAL problem, as the people concerned about immigration are usually in marginal seats. So come on Tony forget the green claptrap, no-one's paying attention anyway, let's have some comment on those issues.

I guess what this early reaction proves is that serious-minded people have stopped taking part in OLO correspondence - for the correspondence columns of this website are notoriously clogged up with denialist idiocy.

Never mind - a few people might have read my article in the wider audience OLO offers to essayists, and been stimulated into thought by it.

As for the rest, it is no more than the cackling of barnyard geese!

Tony
Stop your snivelling childish tantrum.

Assuming what is in issue is a logical fallacy. This means that your argument is irrational. You really need to catch up on intellectual developments over the last 2500 years before you start shrieking heretic.

As to the science, it is common ground that the globe is not warming, it has been cooling since 1998. Thus the government-funded 'consensus' that it's warming was wrong.

The question how far back we should go to identify the start of a warming trend is a matter of interpretation. Science does not supply the answer.

In any event, warming is good for life. Where is there more life - at the poles, or at the tropics?

How much would you personally be prepared to pay voluntarily to stop global warming?

Similarly its possible that neutrinos from a massive solar flare are causing the temperature of the Earth's core to increase rapidly. This will trigger a catastrophic chain of natural disasters. In, 2010 international leaders, begin a massive, secret project intended to ensure humanity survives. Approximately 400,000 people are chosen to board ships called "arks" that are constructed in the Himalayas. Additional funding for the project is raised by selling tickets to the private sector for one billion euros per person. By 2011 they start to move humanity's valuable treasures to the Himalayas, so that their history can survive when the end comes.

The question is, how come there’s no publicly funded lottery? Secondly, what part do cackling geese play in conspiracy theories?

Whoops, wrong post re neutrinos and the end of the world. Apols

Let me spell it out, without reference to individual letter-writers.

The anthropogenic global climate crisis, whose early effects we are now experiencing, is a fact, in the sense that the science supporting it has now been verified to at least a 90% probability level. Anyone who disputes the climate science at this point is, simply, a deluded fool, as is anyone who believes that cigarette smoking does not cause lung cancer, or that the earth is flat, or that the evidence for the US Apollo moon landing was faked.

That Kevin Rudd lost his nerve two weeks ago and abandoned any attempt to maintain any kind of counter-global warming national policy - of any kind - simply shows that Rudd was weak in the face of tough opposition - not that the case in Australia for anti-global warming public policy has been weakened.

Denialists may crow at their short-term 'victory' - but it will not get them far. Under a more resolute and clear-headed national government, climate change public policy will be pursued. Meanwhile, the Australian public is quietly educating itself about the climate crisis, and learning the difference between real climate policy and phoney climate policy tokenism and spin.

The 40% resources super-profits tax is another example, perhaps, of a government that enunciates great principles and then backs away from them in the face of determined opposition from the powerful mining lobby. We shall see.

Meanwhile, the opinion polls are showing Rudd has a real credibility problem now. I doubt if he can ever recover his reputation as a strong national leader. I am sure his abandonment of ETS when the going got tough has a bit to do with this. The only thing that might save him this year is the fear of a rabidly denialist Coalition leader taking power - the Australian people are too smart to let this happen. But that's another issue.

Tony how right you are about the impact of the cackling geese on this forum. They are doing nothing to move the discussion forward and seem to be out of touch with reality. Peter Hume is still pushing the discredited idea that the world is cooling. By the way Peter, don't bother sending url's through, I've seen them all before. Amicus on another thread has been reduced to petty name calling. However, they are providing some amusing examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Tony Kevin, you say “a few people might have read my article in the wider audience OLO offers to essayists, and been stimulated into thought by it.”
Stimulated –yes, into responding with thanks to you for publishing your thoughts. Those thoughts deserve to be aired. The biggest disagreement I have with them is your statement about Rudd, beginning with “He is too intelligent a man to deny the science”. If that is the case then he has a counterpart in Norway’s Edvard Quisling of half a century ago.

Tony, Loxton
Wow, assuming what is in issue, appeal to absent authority, and personal argument. How amazingly persuasive.

So what's the answer to the question: How much would you personally be prepared to pay voluntarily to stop global warming?

Tony - What the IPCC actually said was that they were 90 per cent certain that human activity was causing warming. If you looked closer at the 2007 statement the panel declares that about half of the warming after 1940 is human-induced. (They gave no reasons for that estimation, it just seemed right to them.) Now if you really want to put your trust in an organisation with no forecasting track record of any kind and make those sort of strange estimations that's your problem, but to complain that the people who point out the failings of your article are "cackling geese" or whatever it was shows a distinct lack of spirit.
The article is an outdated rehash but your CV indicates you are a talented guy, so why not show us what you are made of and come back with something more original?

Peter,

I will pay for my children's clímate security as much as my society democratically decides all its citizens and taxpayers should pay, after those who try to muddy the waters of public debate on this issue have been discredited.

You should know that in a democracy, public goods are paid for equitably by the national community, eg defence equipment, police protection. Climate protection for our children and grandchildren - yours as well as mine - is such a public good. You and I will pay whatever society decides that we should pay. It has nothing to do with 'voluntary' payments by you or me, this is just a red herring - it is about working democratically for better public policy choices. For example, spending around $40 billion on faster broadband and [not] spending $1.5 billion on solar energy is a bad public policy choice.

Well Tony, how about cutting the Australian population? Is it a good time to do that? I'll tell you what, public goods are paid for by the Australian tax payer.

Global warming a 90 percent cert? It's 90 percent conjecture. The pro-climate changers argument is tangled mess of punch drunk theories going back to the mid 90s. I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt if they can produce a coherent argument.

Indeed, these days I'm impressed if pro-climate people can produce an argument that leads logically from a proposition. Time and time again they either shoot themselves in the foot or another party, claiming to be on their side, does it for them.

Even so, I respect their right to amuse me.

That comment is the second insult, Tony, the first being the insult to our intelligence of your vacuous article, with its series of false assumptions.

There is no scientist in the world, Tony, who is able to produce proof that human emissions contribute to global warming, never mind this non existent majority you assert.

There is scientific proof that the warming is accounted for from natural sources, leaving no room for the assertion that any of the warming is caused by human activity.

The only crisis we have, is that people have been so misled by alarmists like you, that 58% of the electorate still believe that an ETS is necessary. It is perfectly clear that an ETS is a non solution to a non problem, as any realist can see.

That a poseur like you has the temerity to refer to realists as deniers, is disgraceful. By the way, you forgot the words "pompous clown" in front of Ross Garnaut's name.

You represent the deniers of the truth about global warming, the truth being, that it is a scam, with no scientific proof, simply a mantra, repeated by the likes of Phil Jones, the Climategate miscreant. His weasel words are along the lines of "Nothing detracts from my assertion of anthropogenic global warming".

But nothing supports anthropogenic global warming, so there is nothing from which to detract.

Take your false assumptions to a site which relates to abject nonsense, Tony, and where they do not mind being talked down to, from the non existent height to which you believe your hot air has lifted you.

James Hansen, to whom you suggest that we listen, is consultant to Al Gore, who has distinguished himself by telling more lies about AGW than any other person, alive or dead, and that is saying something.

Gore had to cancel his address at Copenhagen, because if he appears in public, now, there is always a group to chant the truth about him, "liar", and "fraud".

We have had enough of your type of prevarication on OLO, Tony. It is a boring, repetitious series.

[Deleted for abuse and irrelevance]

Gosh, Leo Lane, I am flattered that you have so honoured me, putting me in the company of some people I truly admire: Ross Garnaut, James Hsnsen, Al Gore, Phil Jones. Now let me add a few more names to your list: Bill McKibben, Christine Milne, Tim Flannery, Penny Sackett, David Karoly, Megan Clark, Will Steffen, Ian Lowe, Graeme Pearman, Ian Dunlop, Nicholas Stern, Barry Brook, to name a few most prominent names of people whose informed views and expertise on climate science I respect. They all acknowledge the truth of the climate science, though they may differ on some of its policy implications.

On your side - who? Christopher Monckton? Ian Plimer? Andrew Bolt? No contest, Leo. Denialism is empty of content, selfish, and tiresome. What gives it political power is the ideological strength and fanatical dedication to the present industrial status quo of the vested interests it represents. I despise climate denialism, because it is trying to steal our children's and grandchildren's chances for a safe climate future. It is all set out in my book 'Crunch Time'.

Thanks, Tony. All we need to know now, is whether you are unbalanced, fraudulent, or both.

Are you distancing yourself from Michael Mann and Phil Jones, now that they have been exposed? I do not expect you to mention all the fraud backers, with which you align yourself, there are too many of them, but we see where you stand.

I take it that you acknowledge that there is no scientific backing for your baseless assertions.

You are significantly silent, on that main issue, of the absence of any scientific basis for the assertion of AGW, and overflowing with words on matters of no weight or moment whatsoever.

You have the same credibility as the IPCC. No proof, but 90% certainty, of AGW, based on nothing but empty, unscientific, guesses.

Good luck, Tony, you will need it. You have no merit.

Hi Tony,

I would have more respect for AGW advocates like yourself if they even tried to address the issues raised by the hard-working and usually unpaid researchers you contemptuously dismiss as 'deniers'. What is your personal take on the Urban Heat Island effect, for instance? How much do you think it contributes to global surface temperature figures, and why? How is it that the GISS temperature series showed Canada as having a warm winter, when most of the residents were seeing more snow and ice than they ever had in their lives before? How is it that upper atmosphere temperatures have not risen as they are supposed to in the AGW models? How is it that the last fifteen years have seen a steady rise in CO2 but no significant rise in global temperature?

It's really not hard to find this 'inconvenient' information: but it's apparently impossible to counter it. At least, nobody has done so to my knowledge. Find a way to reconcile AGW with these facts and you will have earnt the right to call for change.

Jon J - they may be hard working, but they are probably unpaid for the very good reason that their opinions aren't worth anything.

[Deleted. Referred to earlier post deleted and was abusive.]

There is a definite pattern with all the deniers here. They respond to the presentation of evidence with initially scorn and spurious references, followed by supercilious posturing and then attacking the individuals who put up anything that opposes their pre-conceived notions.

Loxton/tonykevin 1, this is appalling stuff.

Your posts have driven the case for AGW to new lows. Many supporters of AGW on OLO at least put in enormous effort into research, articulate conclusions, check facts and more importantly, have moved forward with the developing debate. You two have single handedly pushed the debate into the dark ages.

Shame on you both

I think it is all appalling stuff and from many on both sides. I was reading the thread and some of the abuse of Tony and wondering whether to wade in when he responded in kind, so I've left most of it alone, but will be keeping an eye on the thread and won't be tolerant going forward on it.

This may have been noted before, but the Coal Industry is not in denial of AGW:

http://www.newgencoal.com.au/

>> Climate change is a real problem. Burning coal for electricity creates CO2, which contributes to global warming.

But we rely heavily on coal in Australia. It underpins many jobs, regional communities, our power supply and strong economy. Worldwide, demand for energy is growing rapidly and coal will remain a major source.

That's why our industry is investing in carbon capture and storage, with many active projects, to reduce our emissions.

It’s a practical solution, and alongside renewables energy efficiencies, and your actions and new ideas - it can make a real difference. <<

While I remain sceptical on the viability of "Clean Coal", at least the industry is making some responsible moves towards our environment and use of fossil fuels.

Severin

CC&S is highly unlikely to come online in the time frame that would be required, even if it was feasible - "clean coal" is a misnomer.

As to the (coal) "industry making some responsible moves towards our environment and use of fossil fuels" - that is highly debatable.

It could be argued that the only reason the coal industry is acting in a "responsible" way is because the government has virtually bank-rolled it by providing subsidies (at the expense of the alternatives).

We would be better off (in the medium to long term) if we weaned ourselves off fossils and began to invest in alternative energy supply. It would help if we (everyone) put a price on carbon - rather than subsidise it.

Unfortunately, that won't happen until the big emitters sort their differences out - another reason why Australia should not jump the gun, as Rudd & Co finally realised. And yes, I am bemused by the antics of Abbott & Co.

Graham:

Of course I respect your editorial authority, but I don't know how to read the OLO Forum Rules now after reading your letter. I thought I had taken care not to "respond in kind", i.e., not to be personally abusive of any named individuals (some of whom who were quite free in their personal abuse and mockery of me - but I am used to this). I hope you will publish this letter.

I think it is important for me to engage robustly on the merits of the climate change denialism issue. I regard rejection of the well-established scientific evidence that human-caused global warming is taking place, in ways that are now a clear and present danger to our children and grandchildren, as a socially irresponsible and harmful cognitive disorder.

There is no way I can tiptoe around my views on this. It is too important an issue to worry too much about hurt feelings.

In open website correspondence, I try to follow a philosophy of 'hate the sin, love the sinner'. Actually I am trying to help climate change deniers' children and grandchildren, too. They shouldn't be made to suffer for the blindness of any of their elders who are prepared to put the comforts of the present industrial status quo above concern for the climate security of coming generations of Australians.

If my frank speaking helps to trigger just one climate change denier to re-evaluate their position, it will have been worth the discomfort to those on whose opinions my writing has had no effect, other than to irritate them.

I will withdraw from this thread now, but not in indignation - I will be happy to engage with climate change deniers in future on your OLO website or in any other public forum. Denialism has had too easy a run these past two years, and has done much damage to public policy. I hope the tide is turning now.

Tony’s statement:” well-established scientific evidence that human-caused global warming is taking place” is baseless and misleading.

Even if it were true, which it is not, then if the atmosphere of the Earth were represented by a line one kilometre long, the contribution of CO2 by Australia would be represented by a line the width of a human hair.

It is of no significance, and people like Tony want our economy saddled with a huge burden which will have the effect of financing the parasitic UN, and feeding profits to crooks like Al Gore.

Al, in his latest book suggests that we place too much reliance on facts. He says that he intends to work more through religion in the future.

Tony refers to non existent scientific evidence, and when challenged, talks about something else. There is no scientific basis for the assertion that human emissions contribute to global warming. If there were, the IPCC would have trumpeted it, instead of its spurious unsupported guess of “90% certainty”

A peer reviewed study which makes the IPCC’s “90% very likely” a full 100% unlikely is here:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml

The Climategate miscreants from East Anglia were able to expedite publication of a purported refutation, and were able to delay the dismissal of their peer reviewed pretend science, for a period during which the alarmists referred to it, not as science supporting the AGW nonsense, but as science showing that the refutation of AGW was invalid.

The antics of the miscreants (at East Anglia, who peer review each other’s papers) is outlined here:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/McLeanetalSPPIpaper2Z-March24.pdf

Analyse what Tony has said, and notice what he has not said.

There is no scientific basis for AGW, and he knows it, so he talks about our grandchildren. He talks about anything except the topic, even what a nice fellow he thinks he is.

A lion's roar ... just a boar.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/LeoLanes-SuperHeroes-Rebutted

Do boars understand science? Very unlikely.

Tony
So in other words, you are not willing to pay anything voluntarily to stop global warming. You rest your hope entirely on forced payments.

Now please admit that science does not supply value judgments, and therefore that climate science does not, of itself, supply any justification for any policy on global warming

Tony, I have to pretty much agree. I never thought Rudd was ever serious, pretty much from the day he addressed the UN and made it clear that that biggest of all greenwash scams, Carbon Capture and Storage was the way to go and would be the excuse to continue to expand Australia's place as the biggest exporter of coal to monumentally bigger. New coal and gas mines are getting approved as fast as state and federal governments sign off. Anyone who imagines Australia's part in the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is insignificant clearly fails to include our exports of fossil fuels as part of our contribution.
It's not the politics of the fringe that are failing us, but the politics of the mainstream. LibNats as well as Labor have the same scientific advice at their disposal. Choosing to dismiss that advice and seek out 'other' opinions is pure political expediency, made especially despicable for choosing policy that will exacerbate the problem for the sake of the votes of the mislead and misinformed. If the chances the science were right were as low as 1 in 100 rather than being next to certain, the scale of the consequences ought to make all sides of politics determined to prevent them - instead we have a chorus of voices like we have here, cheering over choosing to have AGW go away by the power of mass disbelief.

What was that about a fish rotting from the head down.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/pachauri_and_the_ipcc_no_fossil_fool.pdf

Yet more evidence of Pachuaris astounding conflicts of interest and total unsuitability for the job and over which most of the AGW scientists have remained notably silent.

So much for the integrity of the science and the proceses... underscored even more by this from John Christy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGgLoPpbBw

Tony
Please admit that science does not supply value judgments, and therefore that
a) climate science does not, of itself, supply any justification for any policy on global warming, and
b) when climate scientists "advise" governments to adopt certain policies they do not do so in their capacity as scientists.

Hey Tony ... it's Ground Hog Day for Peter Hume.

He keeps asking the same questions

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10368#169655

I don't think he comprehends the answers though - surely he's not blind and deaf?

Anyways, suggest you just nod and mumble something about scientists being involved in some kind of Bolshevist plot.

Thanks, Qanda. I withdrew from this thread on 11 May but Peter Hume seems to have missed this. If I were still contributing to this spirited thread, I would have responded thus:

"Peter Hume - If you went to your doctor and he told you that in his medical opinion you were showing symptoms consistent with a professional diagnosis of high blood pressure, would you regard that as a value judgement or a scientific judgement by your doctor? If he then prescribed for you anti-high blood pressure pills for you to safely control your condition, would you regard this advice as being offered to you in his capacity as a doctor or as a value judgement? Would you take the pills? And if you don't think this is an appropriate analogue in reply to your questions to me, can you explain to OLO Forum readers in what ways you think it is inappropriate?"

I am sure Peter Hume would like to have the last word. Go for it, Peter. I won't reply

So in other words yes, a climate scientist can do a study measuring air temperatures and thereby attain moral authority to decide who should live or die?

That is not science: it is voodoo.

The relation between patient and doctor is voluntary; the relation between any government-funded climate scientist or the IPCC, and the human population whose lives and liberties policy proposes to forcibly "treat" is not.

Thus the climate science of the warmists is not capable of supplying the justification they rely on it for. It rests instead on an underlying belief system that the individual has no right to life but what government decides he has; and that the lives of human beings are or may be worth less than those of polar bears.

The science, the ethics, the epistemology, the economics and the politics of the global warming belief system are false and anti-human and they stink.