Climate Craziness is diametrically opposed to disinterested pursuit of knowledge. It is an industry and a religion that has nothing to with science. This article is breathtakingly hypocritical. Stick to philosophy and belief.

Be a bit more sensible to stick to facts perhaps.

Oh GOD!

Now we have philosophers talking about science, as if they were scientists.

I guess that would be the science of mumbo jumbo.

To be fair, its not really trump and co. who have destroyed the public's trust in scientists. now that most people know that the scientific community has used the same methodology on gender studies as they've use on climate studies, people are little bit confused.

Two essays, one of which relates to yesterdays essay by Don Aitkin
The other one is about Runners christian fundamentalist fellow travelers in the USA
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/24/extremely-nasty-climate-wake-up

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/trump_and_the_christian_fascists_20170723

Yes, agree. Reminds one of a film from Czechoslovakia, called of all things, Insane. And tells an improbable story where the lunatics have taken over and are running the asylum.

Even so if he and his moribund minions want to have a coal fired energy system/future? This is how it could be done!

Coal wouldn't be mined per se, but drilled to tap into the methane (CSG) gas reserves.

That gas could then be piped without the usual transmission line (11% av.) and distribution (64% av.) losses, then consumed where the customer was, in ceramic fuel cells.

The 80% energy coefficient of this method would enable quarter price energy distribution! Given the 80% energy coefficient of the combination beats coal fired, at 20%, 4 times over!

And instantly on demand! 24/7! And where the exhaust product is mostly( recoverable) pristine water vapor.

Moreover, given (lighter than air) methane is mostly hydrogen, with a few carbon atoms in the molecule. In steel pipes it acts as a reductant.

Meaning oxidisation is far less prevalent! As is consequential maintenance. And protected from storm and tempest, floods or fires, via underground installation!

Further, the usual flared methane that seems part of the panorama, with regard to gas wells? Can instead of being burnt, piped instead, through a relatively simple catalytic converter. Which knocks of a few hydrogen atoms to turn methane gas (a hydrocarbon) into storable/portable liquid petrol substitute, methanol. (also a hydrocarbon)

And just to ramp up the profit component/profit curve!

Cooperating landholders could have many of their issues addressed, with the desalination of any associated water via new deionisation dialysis of said water, which produces cost effective 90% potable water/cost effective broad scale, eternally reliable irrigation, via gravity feed systems! [Remnant salt could be converted via electrolysis, into saleable metallic sodium and saleable chlorine?]

Around thirty (perpetually green) acres per well? Cotton lucerne citrus, grapes, medical marijuana etc?

Plus power for quarter of current reticulated cost! And very affordable CNG to run pumps etc! Plus almost free (petrol substituting) methanol to run the petrol powered SUV/bikes/whatever?
Alan B.

how long can the Hilary supporters carry on their hissy fit. We know Trump won't fund the gw charlatans like Obama did. Get over it Ben, Hilary lost. Try writing on the Russian influence or Israel's influence over the election. At the end of the day Americans chose Trump above Hilary. Stop throwing childish tantrums. You are suppose to be an academic but have written like a spoilt kid who has lost a soccer game.

'But history may yet determine that his greatest disgrace was to willfully and gratuitously ignore the reality of anthropogenic climate change when the time to act was at its most critical.'

Yeah Ben and history more than likely will show how dumbed down academia has become. For many academics adopting this gw faith is simply a cover for lack of any morals.

Yes Pat, some of these folk you critique have turned traditional beliefs upside down and doing handstands!

Why they even turned a flat world into an ovoid one and made the joint a lot warmer when as every boy and his dog knows! that's absolutely impossible when we are as now deep in a solar normal cyclical waning phase!

But it doesn't end there, their daylight saving is bleaching the curtains! And the cows don't like a 25 hour day.

And don't get me started, their blame metric system has made it a lot dearer to fill the tank, put me further from town and as the final insult, made me flaming farm smaller!

Next thing you know they'll be saying that homosexuallity has a proven gentic cause, And seen an several responsible genes down near the bottom or the DNA spiral!?

Be very afraid and watch yourself around those blame microwaves, cause that can zap you with deadly microwaves even when switched off and unplugged!

It's true I tell you, unhand me you valets and take that straight jacket thingy off; or I'll zap you all with my powerful kryptonite powered xray vision!

Y'all have a nice day now y'hear.
Alan B.

The author says: "Epistemology (or the theory of knowledge) is concerned with, among other things, what right we have to the beliefs we hold"

I'd like the author to explain what right he has to believe and advocate that global warming would be dangerous. No innuendo, and no appeal to authority, please. Just the evidence and the relevant facts.

Yes Alan B
Temperature is quite obviously strongly correlated with solar and global physical cycles and we are heading into the next ice age and no one has been able to demonstrate any correlation of temperature with emissions. After you've sacrificed our economy on the altar of your lunatic climate religion, what new crisis will you invent to sustain it?

There's no evidence of global warming, nor retreating polar and glacial ice. But instead as one might expect in a normal cyclical solar waning phase, polar and glacial is is advancing!

The sea isn't warmer and there's no consequent coral bleaching! The permafrost (permanent frost) and tundra isn't melting! And there's no new melt water lake in Alaska or Siberia releasing millions of annual ton of methane!

Nor is there a new summertime northwest passage! Nor record breaking heat waves or longer more enduring droughts! Co2 levels aren't up in uncharted territory!

Cause if there were, they'd be the irrefutable evidence that educated guys, like a super intelligent, Peter Lang demands?

This stuff is clearly not happening and can't during a normal cyclical solar waning phase and one we've been in since the mid seventies! NASA. And (Professor Peter would know if there was! He's a retired nuclear scientist, doncha know! And only persuaded by irrefutable evidence!

Clearly all this is hyperventilation and imagined! Nothing to see here! Take a bex and a good lay down.

Oh Venus, Goddess of love, make all my dreams come true?

No, No, Not the hottest planet in the solar system? Impossible!
It's in the habitable goldilocks zone! AS ARE WE!
Alan B

Just a reminder, Alan, whether methane or methanol burn or are used in fuel cells, CO2 is produced along with water.

Only hydrogen and ammonia fuel-cells produce no CO2, with the latter producing nitrogen as a byproduct. Alternatively the ammonia is decomposed on a recently invented membrane by CSIRO, into nitrogen
and hydrogen, with the latter then used in fuel-cells. In this way easily liquified ammonia serves as a high density hydrogen carrier, almost as dense as gasoline.

Actually, ammonia can and has been used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. Just google "ammonia car"

Alan, anyone with even half a brain knows that the surface temperature of Venus is generated by the depth & weight of it's atmosphere generating high pressure at that surface.

Either you are not one of them, or are prepared to try to twist facts to fit a belief. These rants do you nocredit

"..during a normal cyclical solar waning phase and one we've been in since the mid seventies! NASA...."

As I pointed out to AlanB elsewhere, his claim is factually incorrect. But as we've seen often with Mr B, being factually incorrect is no barrier to being pompously arrogant.

Just a few disjointed points:

1. Does anyone else get the impression that this guy didn't vote for Trump? </sarc off>

2. He claims " all White House websites were scrubbed of information regarding climate change." That is not correct although it was reported as such for a short period after the inauguration. In fact all websites were taken down as is usual during a change of administration but were re-instated a few hours later, essentially unchanged. Clearly this chap prefers reading the headlines but not so much the detail. That doesn't auger well for the rest of his argument.

3. Trump pulling out of Paris will have essentially zero impact on the climate. But it will mean that the US won't be required to pay alms to poor (corrupt?) nations so they can virtue signal.

4. The US is one of the few nations on earth who have been reducing their CO2 emissions. This is being done primarily on the back of the fracking revolution and the transition from coal/oil to natural gas. Trump is boosting the US fracking business. This will do more for world-wide CO2 emissions than any Paris agreement(s).

5. But the alarmists won't acknowledge that or even mention it. They oppose fracking which only goes to enhance the view that they are less concerned about emissions than about reducing energy use overall. They (or at least a subset thereof) oppose the modern world and particularly the west's leadership of it. Attacking emissions is just a stalking horse for attacking growth and redistributing wealth.

Mhaze: I stand by a published report,(NASA) that our solar furnace in the sky is and has been in a waning (cooling ) phase since the mid seventies.

Hasbeen: Venus is an earth sized planet with earth normal gravity! So it can't have a heavier atmosphere!

What makes venus's atmosphere thicker is evaporate, as every drop of moisture on that planet is now part of a toxic sulfur laden atmosphere. And as the first consequence traps even more radiant heat! Anyone with basic science would know that!

Anyone reading you blokes would think that much, much cheaper energy was a crime?

Because after taking the piss! That is along with space age very low cost desal, is largely all I've ever proposed! And for all you fossil fueled devotees, the real problem?

I've tried basic common sense and irrefutable science. But it seems the attention span is too short to read me from go to whoa, with full comprehension?

So now I'm mixing in satire spiced with a little harmless irony. To be sure, to be sure, to be sure. See youse all tomorrow, as I've reached my post limits on this thread, so feel free to rubbish me like the invitees at the mad hatters tea party. Knock yourselves out.

Labels like pompous doesn't mean the sticks and stones description is accurate and just a dumb response, when no genuinely persuasive argument beckons!
Alan B.

Mhaze,
Alan B is certainly pompous and arrogant. Also stupid, relying on scientific consensus (oxymoronic),amongst the Climate Crazies. Unfortunately, he's right that we're in a cooling phase. Not cos NASA says so; they're an incestuous self serving bureaucracy like CSIRO and Aus BOM. Peer reviewed non-CC science e.g Abdussamatov 2013 J. of Geology and Geosciences confirms it. The point is that climate change can only be measured at geological time scales. No one has shown any modern warming. You can't even measure a global average temperature, let alone show that it increasing at a decadal or even centennial scale. But its clear that solar and global cycles drive real climate change, and climate crazies are robbing us of energy and prosperity, whilst talking crap and pissing into the wind.

The beautiful thing about life is that no one really gives a flying f''k save for those wanting to change something, for reasons of their own which have nothing to do with reality and all to do with imagination.
We live in Lala land where the most dangerous thing that can happen to you is you might have to make a decision,
It won't last forever but I'm guessing I'm one of the last lucky ones because only the Shadow knows what it's going to be like in twenty years

Coal will be like gold

Why should America foot the bill for other countries to clean up their carbon pollution.

Let countries be responsible for cleaning up their countries own lifestyles if they are serious about believing this suspect Global warming idea. Why should the American people pay out billions to these people, Who knows is 20years what they will have done with the money once you hand the cheque over.

Trump is right.

Little,

"Unfortunately, he's [Alan B] right that we're in a cooling phase."

Mr B makes two incorrect assertions:
1. That the sun's been in a waning phase since the 1970s. That's wrong because the cycles during the 70s, 80s and early 90s were among the highest recorded.
2. That NASA says that the weaker sun should already be affecting temperatures and since temperatures aren't affected, that proves man's impact. I'd ask Mr B for references to demonstrate his claims but he, alas, has a rather fraught relationship with evidence, facts (and reality).

As with so very much of what Mr B says, his claims are utter rubbish. I'm not sure whether he just makes this up or misunderstands something he reads or hears, but I'm damned sure NASA didn't say what he says they said. That he makes these inane claims is neither here nor there. What gets under my skin is that he, based on his utter misunderstanding of the data, then goes on to verbally assault others who aren't so removed from reality

What you say about Abdussamatov (and many others besides) is true. He does say we are entering a waning phase and that that will result in lower temperatures. But he doesn't say we've been there since the 1970s and he doesn't say the temperatures should have already been falling.

Abdussamatov has been pretty consistent with his predictions since at least the turn of the century. The late John Daly made similar predictions back in the early 1990s. One of the problems I see here is the notion that sunspot activity is like a thermostat with lower numbers quickly resulting in lower temperatures. There's a lot of inertia in the earth's climate and it may take more than one low cycle to cause a noticeable decline in temperatures. The Maunder and Dalton minimums required several weak cycles to reek their havoc. To be fair I think Abdussamatov is basically saying that as well.

1. CSIRO Says CO2 is greening the planet.
2. NASA says Sea Levels falling for 2016 and and 2017.
3. Article in Infowars May 10, 2012 'Group That Admitted Global Warming Threat Still Pushes Same Hoax'
4. Article in the Australian Oct 29, 2016 - This one is important -'Green Campaign Against Australian Coal: Trail leads to John Podesta.'

Read them, then weep.
Then stop spreading your rot.

Armchair Critic

The Australian is not reliable in relation to reporting climate change. Scientists around the world have stated that we must not create new coal mines. It is a matter of science not ideology. To suggest one person has an inordinate influence is far fetched.

Scientists indicate that the Poles are warming at twice the pace of other parts of Earth. Shrubs are beginning to grow in tundra areas, not a good thing as they can slow down cooling in such areas. Already permafrost is thawing at a rapid rate, we do not need greening to help that process. Buildings and roads are slumping in tundra areas where permafrost is thawing in Alaska and Siberia.
Explosive methane pingos creating craters are a new phenomenon, scientists indicate that they display climate warming. 7,000 potential explosive spots have been picked up by satellite photos.

The American Chemical Society has produced a series in relation to greenhouse gases:

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/greenhousegases.html

CO2 does pick up and retains warmth and can be shown through experimentation. The article from Infowars has cherry picked comments from ice cores ... it is clearly an article written from an ideological perspective. Chemistry does not provide alternative facts, nor does Physics.

Sea level rise falling in 2016 to March 2017, I believe we are not into 2018; or, more importantly 2046 yet.
But, as an indication of a warming planet; though not sea level rise, is the state of the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice extent levels and volume levels have been going down since 1979, there are daily and yearly variations. Declining ice in the Arctic will not increase sea level but displays continued warming.

If its an actual stated fact that CO2 is greening the planet , then the rest is technical bs.
If sea levels have dropped theres no melt going on worse then new ice being formed, and the whole argument that the sea will rise and was us all away is scaremongering bs.
If you have organisations who's stated aims are to push this line over the last 2 or 3 decades and you can have people exposed and directly implicated in profiting from this created situation, then you have intent, motive and proof of the lie.
You talk about the planet changing, yeah ok, but so what?
Do you think humans are to blame for solar output and the earth axis?
Do you think humans have not endured changes in the earths climate over history?
Can you explain the Peri Reis map shat shows the Antarctic coastline, under 1mile of ice?
You want to know about real people dying for real climate change?
Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring... Climate change.
And people die, from not being able to afford heating and cooling costs, because rich assholes like explained in the last article conspire to shut our energy production down.
You want to believe in fairies, when people are dying already, but you don't see them, too busy bought and sold on the scaremongering bs.

Heres another point.
Our country doesn't even produce goods anymore and we import everything, and you worried we're causing damage to the environment.
Have you discussed your concerns with China or India or do you just keep buying their stuff and whineging?
Like all the other little do-gooder progressives on their Chinese made tech, or women who blame men for everything, but live in a house built by a man, drive a car probably built mostly by a men and go shopping in building mostly built by men.
They'd have little to nothing if it werent for men building it such bs the whole world is.
We don't even produce the stuff we use, and still were evil?
How did they convince you of such utter garbage?
If you believe we're so harmful to the environment, then the best thing you can do for it to mitigate against the damage you believe us humans are doing is to kill yourself right now, and stop using up the damn oxygen!
The environment wont matter when everything is owned by rich foreign interests and they make the rules and dictate the game and we're all jobless and on welfare.
When your starving and can't feed your keeds the environment is the least of peoples concerns.
All were doing is destroying whats left of a dismal economy and putting ourselves all on welfare.

Armchair Critic

Sea ice levels are taken pretty well on a daily basis by satellite.
Craters created by exploding pingos is not something that is imagined.
The Greenland ice sheet is melting at an incredible rate creating a huge cold area South of Greenland.
A yacht sailed both passages of the fabled North West passage last year.
Two ice breakers sailed all the way to the North Pole last year.
If I was to suggest that the record temperature recorded in Iran was 50.2C earlier this year, and went on to state that was showing climate change I would be jumped upon. You clearly do not understand why I suggested 2046 as a time to acknowledge Ocean cooling.

I'm fully aware that people are dying from cold; I'm also very aware that people are hospitalised through high temperatures which in a number of cases has caused death through heat stroke.

Millions die from fossil fuel emissions mainly in Asian countries. Often you will see Asians when visiting Australia wear a filter over their nose even when air quality is quite good in Australia.

Oklahoma is about to build the second largest wind farm in the world. Battery technology is continually improving, coal is on the way out whether you like it or not. Check out Tony Seba who discusses how old technologies are superseded at a rapid rate. Check out the economics of renewables in comparison to coal.
There are hidden health costs in relation to coal in Australia and overseas ... respiratory problems and changes in disease vectors.

The Abbott government sent the auto mobile industry offshore with huge job losses. Australian defence building infra-structure has been sent off shore; so, yes I'm aware governments have not been helpful in preserving Australian jobs.

Armchair Critic

A photo of flooding in Miami, when there are king tides Miami is flooded regardless of whether there has been precipitation. There have been similar observations and comments for a few years. The same applies for some other parts of Florida. Insurance Companies are not willing to provide cover for flooding in some areas of Florida.

https://thinkprogress.org/buyers-in-miami-please-dont-926bfb4a2cf1