Contd...

IanC

On the domestic front, Dennis Jenkins, Liberal backbencher, former research scientist and proponent for nuclear energy advised the Australian newspaper in July this year:

"But any detailed scrutiny of scientific data shows that the environment is quite stable. There are even suggestions the world's temperature has decreased in recent years."

Temperature aside, do you believe the environment is "quite stable?" Jenkins hails from WA where last night's Seven Thirty Report repeated previous warnings that juvenile lobster in WA's waters are zero and that this $300 million industry is under serious threat. Today the major Canning and Swan rivers are again on life support where they must be repeatedly oxygenated. Workers are endeavouring to reduce nutrients from the catchment source.

In July Jessica Meeuwig from the UWA MARINE FUTURES PROJECT advised:

"I think what was probably the biggest surprise was how few of some of these key species there are actually out there. For instance, we have 750 hours of footage from the Abrolhos to Cape Naturalist and we saw 43 dhufish in 750 hours."

"Researchers with the marine futures program at the University of Western Australia say there is a clear link between higher recreational fishing pressures on the west coast and vastly depleted fish stocks."

"Research from the Department of Fisheries conducted last year was damning, finding that fish stocks in the Indian Ocean from Augusta to Kalbarri have been severely depleted. The Department recommended immediately halving captures of what it called the vulnerable five species."

New Liberal Premier has now cancelled the proposed restrictions on recreational fishing - awaiting "more evidence."

There are many more dire ecological symptons emerging in WA.

Do you believe these dilemmas are a normal part of a "stable environment?" Should we continue conducting "business as usual?" If not what are your recommendations please?

Dickie,

On 16 November (8.01 pm) I told you that I was ‘not prepared to waste my time searching Lomborg’s 500-page book and its 3000 footnotes for a statement that I don’t believe he made. If you believe he did make the statement that you attributed to him, tell me where I can find it and and I’ll comment. If you can’t back up your claim, withdraw it. Until you do one or the other, I won’t be responding to any of your posts.’

Please understand that you said that Lomborg made the ‘1978’ statement about the Amazon forest IN THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST (TSE), and you scoffed at him for saying it. I’m not in the least interested in learning that someone else said that something that Lomborg said in the book was wrong, nor do I see it as my job to correct any or all of the false statements in the various anti-Lomborg documents to which you’ve provided links.

Dickie, I’d like you to point out where Bjorn Lomborg made the false statement that you said that he’d made IN THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST. If you can cite a page number, I’m happy to read the page with care and tell you whether or not you’ve backed up your original claim. It will be my opinion, and I’ll leave others to judge who’s right. If you can’t find the offending statement IN THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST, please bring this absurd charade to an end by acknowledging that you made an error and withdrawing your spurious and damaging claim. Until you do, I won't be responding to your posts

Dickie, my last for this thread.
I was conscripted unbeknownst to me to the Oregon petition, a practical joke by an American colleague to demonstrate how it could be faked. Other scientists of better known repute have been conscripted to the Heartland Institute’s list – likewise against their approval and certainly against their stance on climate change.

I believe Ian when he says he was not a member of the Lavoisier Group. The difference between his situation and the above (although he may correct me if I’m wrong) is that he concurs with their stated claims and objectives, whilst in ours we did not. There is a subtle difference.

Ian
Ah yes ... fond memories. Insofar as the SRES goes – you did not ask why or to what extent I thought the IPCC have erred in some of the scenarios. No matter, the reasons are better given in forums not constrained by word or post limits, as you have already experienced. Suffice to say, some projections are premised on government intervention which is unlikely to occur. We could argue the details, however it still is my contention that we (society) must start as soon as possible to curb our reliance on fossil fuels and adopt better land management practices. The current financial crisis may see to this (in the short term). A silly question may be, but did economists see this coming or econometricians factor such events into their models? I digress, ciao.

Almost forgot, fungochumley - this was for you.

http://kalimna.blogspot.com/2008/11/foolish-views-on-climate-change-being.html

Bye

Thanks Q & A, my last for this thread too.

I’m not a ‘joiner’, in principle. I wouldn’t accept or retain membership in any organisation that pronounces on behalf of its members without consulting them. I declined to sign the open letter that ‘climate rationalists’ sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations during the Bali Conference last December - not because I disagreed with the general thrust of the letter ( I didn’t), but because I didn’t want to put myself in the position of having to defend statements with which I disagreed or which I wasn’t equipped to have a view upon.

My views are as stated in the papers, submissions and blog posts that I’ve authored and to which I’ve referred. As these are quite voluminous, I continue to wonder why most of the criticism directed at me is for things I’ve never said and, in many cases, don’t believe.

For example, I’m not an econometrician, and have been critical of what I see as the IPCC milieu’s excessive reliance on elaborate models (including econometric models). In my opinion, many scientists and economists have been lulled by the apparent precision of their models into supposing that the future is amenable to prediction. In this respect I concur with this recent comment by Robert Skidelsky, one of the co-authors of the economics part of The Stern Review: A Dual Critique:

‘Keynes described economics as being “one of those pretty, polite techniques which tries to deal with the present by abstracting from the fact that we know very little about the future”. One must bear in mind that Keynes’s aphorisms, which seem so apposite today, were for years dismissed with a pitying smile as the product of a primitive state of economic thinking that had been rendered obsolete by powerful desktop computers and PhD maths unavailable to economists of Keynes’s generation’ (“Keynes a man for our time”, Canberra Times, 27 October 2008).

Of course Skidelsky is one of the 'usual suspects', so Dickie doesn't see any need to examine the validity of his arguments

Your parting shots as you disengage noted, Q & A, but I will decline to follow the link provided.

Thank you for the post above Ian. It seems to me that Q&A and many others confuse economic rationalism with free market fundamentalism, and use the terms interchangeably. This article - a distant memory now - is a call for ‘climate rationalism’, and this is a more appropriate term than ‘denialism’, which is simply a projected reflection of climate absolutism.

He also seems to me to have difficulty distinguishing between management and control - of what economists, climate scientists and all people are realistically capable of. He subscribes to Quadrant, so has no doubt read Bob Carter's current article on the futility of climate control, but Bob too is one of 'the usual suspects'. (I wonder if he foresaw in his early career the witchhunt to which he would one day be subjected). There also seems to be a corresponding expectation of consensus and predictive certainty among the economics profession. Psychoanalytically, the fantasy of union and control is the driving force of narcissism