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The Forum > Article Comments > Salvo three: Dr Judith Curry > Comments

Salvo three: Dr Judith Curry : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 27/9/2013

The only denial that makes any conceptual sense is 'consensus denial'.

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"Salvo three...."

Resting on what....?

Not much.....

http://m.livescience.com/39957-climate-change-deniers-must-stop-distorting-the-evidence.html

" It happens every six years or so: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its assessment of the current state of scientific understanding regarding human-caused climate change. That assessment is based on contributions from thousands of experts around the world through an exhaustive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature and a rigorous, several-years-long review process. Meanwhile, in the lead-up to publication, fossil-fuel industry front groups and their paid advocates gear up to attack and malign the report, and to mislead and confuse the public about its sobering message.

So in the weeks leading up to the release of the IPCC Fifth Assessment scientific report, professional climate-change deniers and their willing abettors and enablers have done their best to distort what the report actually says about the genuine scientific evidence and the reality of the climate-change threat."

"In reality, the IPCC has strengthened the degree of certainty that fossil-fuel burning and other human activities are responsible for the warming of the globe seen over the past half century, raising their confidence from "very likely" in the previous report to "extremely likely" in the current one. The IPCC expresses similar levels of certainty that the Earth is experiencing the impacts of that warming in the form of melting ice, rising global sea levels and various forms of extreme weather."

http://theconversation.com/ipcc-report-will-make-no-difference-in-culture-of-denial-18588

"The debate has not been about the science since the early to mid-2000s. Then, climate denial moved beyond the industry funded lobbying campaign it had been in the 1990s and became entrenched in the new right-wing populist movement. This was represented by the Tea Party in the United States, and has subsequently been taken up by elements of the Liberal Party in Australia."
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 27 September 2013 9:01:06 AM
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Don, what is the takeaway message from all of these salvos? Is it simply that we should all read widely on climate change and each somehow arrive at a personal ‘opinion’? If so, don’t worry, because that’s exactly what has been happening. But I’m not sure it’s useful.

I am a scientist and my buddies naturally tend to ask for my ‘opinion’. To one vigorous sceptic I responded:

“I don't think it is really legitimate to have an 'opinion' on 'global warming', any more than it is to have an opinion on, say, the first law of thermodynamics. To my mind, it is not rational for the lay person simply to say climate change is all nonsense. All we can do is watch the debate and the supporting evidence and see how it pans out. It will take a while. In the mean time there will be scaremongering, exaggerations and general mischief-making.

The one thing that I do venture my opinion on is that renewable energy cannot replace fossil fuels and it will not be a simple matter to stop generating all this carbon dioxide. In fact I think it's impossible even to slow down, until the population starts to decline and people all over the world are satisfied with a constant standard of living. That's a mighty big ask.”

I wrote that on 27 January 2007. I would write pretty much the same thing today.
Posted by Tombee, Friday, 27 September 2013 9:03:53 AM
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A little more on the pre-IPCC AR5 release blitz:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/misinformation-blitz-IPCC-2013.html
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 27 September 2013 10:04:43 AM
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Have to agree with Poirot!
I wouldn't be very surprised to discover the Author of the OPINION piece is an employee of, or a consultative to the fossil fuel industry, and therefore has a vested interest in damning any and all contrary reports?
I also agree with Tombee, that we simply cannot just stop using fossil fuels!
Where are the viable alternatives?
Hydrogen sourced from NG perhaps, and retailed for somewhere north of $6.00 a cubic metre!
Limited range and quite expensive, battery powered cars, recharged overnight with coal-fired power?
Or we could run everything on ethanol, always providing we could make up the energy deficit this would create, along with the widespread starvation we would impose on large parts of the world's poorer populations?
And, that would also effectively reduce those same populations? Jawol?
Conversely, we could transfer much our energy demands to NG powered ceramic fuel cells.
This would stop NG Co2 emission.
And the ceramic fuel cell's 72% energy coefficient, would produce the world's cheapest energy; and, electric vehicles with vertically unlimited range.
The companion creation of algae farms, with coal-fired power stations, will in a relatively short space of time, reduce their Co2 emission to zero; and, provide countries like ours with total fuel self sufficiency, all while effectively halving our transport emission.
None of these things will have a negative economic effect, just the opposite!
Except for the fossil fuel industry! Hence all the fuss and or palpable hysteria?
Let's simply listen to the science and set about with the remediation of human induced climate change.
It's not a problem, but rather a blessing!
Who needs to be welded to a price gouging fossil fuel industry, that is progressively destroying formerly robust economies, with their extraordinarily exorbitant profit demands!
Who needs to condemn our children or their children to an uninhabitable world?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 27 September 2013 10:29:00 AM
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Rhosty, Don Aitkin is a distinguished academic and former VC of Canberra Uni. He's retired. He's not retained by the fossil fuel industry, and I think you owe him an apology (not that he's asked for one).

All of you wiseacres might be prepared to write him off, but I don't think others with a consideration for facts and judgement would.
Posted by GrahamY, Friday, 27 September 2013 11:12:48 AM
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An oblique criticism of Don.
I see that Don is the author of What Was It All For - The Reshaping of Australia.
Henry Giroux has of course been asking the same question for many years re the condition of the USA body politic, and thus by extension the entire world including of course Australia, where the disease that he describes its about to be ramped up by the new "conservative" government in Canberra.
His latest essay is titled Beyond Savage Politics and Dystopian Nightmares.
Welcome to the future - 1984 combined with Brave New World.

Of course the same people/outfits the Republican Noise Machine) that have created the situation described by Giroux are effectively the same people/outfits that have created and funded the well organized climate-change "sceptics" blitz machine. The right-wing think tanks and/or the Republican Noise Machine as described by David Stockman. The Koch brothers for instance.
Of course the IPA is the Oz version/franchise of this Noise Machine. John Roskam recently confirmed this.
Posted by Daffy Duck, Friday, 27 September 2013 11:48:13 AM
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