Science taking backseat to climate talk
BY EMMA MACDONALD
Australia’s chief scientist Ian Chubb says the ”science is in on climate change” and that too much public air time has been given to unproven and untested climate change scepticism. (Canberra Times)
Ahem! And uh, how much proving and testing has gone into CAGW alarmism? Unproven and untestable models eh? Just askin’. Your particular expertise? Neuroscience… Oh! Ability to read English? Right! Must be so then.
Posted in Activists, Climate change
Column – It’s the warmists who threaten science
ANNA-Maria Arabia has let her warmist cat out of its mangy bag.
You see, there’s one telltale thing with every Leftist threat to freedom and to reason.
It’s some fool saying, “Stop thinking for yourself!” Join instead the collective for the sake of the Revolution! The Fatherland. The Leader.
Arabia is the chief executive officer of the Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies (FASTS) and this week launched a campaign against what she claims is the damage done to science by climate change “denialists”. (Andrew Bolt)
Posted in Climate change
Peer review denial and the abuse of science
“Climate denial and the abuse of peer review“
Can someone get Stephan Lewandowsky his medication? His new marketing message is that “deniers” don’t do peer review papers. There’s a curious case of acute-peer-review-blindness (APRB) occurring. It doesn’t matter that there are literally thousands of pages of skeptical information on the web, quoting hundreds of peer reviewed papers, by people far more qualified than a cognitive-psychologist, yet he won’t even admit they exist.
Continue reading
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Research
Save the planet! Gas the sceptics
Global warming is the latest refuge of the closet totalitarian, as warming alarmist Jill Singer today confirms:
I’m prepared to keep an open mind and propose another stunt for climate sceptics – put your strong views to the test by exposing yourselves to high concentrations of either carbon dioxide or some other colourless, odourless gas – say, carbon monoxide.You wouldn’t see or smell anything. Nor would your anti-science nonsense be heard of again. How very refreshing.
There is a freaky coincidence of views among such warmists. Take ABC radio presenter Richard Glover a fortnight ago:
Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.
Sense a pattern here? A historical analogy? (Andrew Bolt)
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Rubber room
Gore says extreme weather shows need to take action on climate change
By Andrew Restuccia
Former Vice President Al Gore is sounding the alarm about climate change and extreme weather, pointing to the recent floods along the Mississippi River, drought in Texas and wildfires in Arizona.
In a keynote address at the Games for Change Festival Monday in New York City, Gore pointed to a slew of extreme weather events in the United States and around the world. He raised concerns about the wildfires in Arizona and drought in Texas, as well as the recent flooding along the Mississippi River. (E2 Wire)
Al Gore branches out into population control theory
Not content to make a fool of himself confusing weather and climate, Al has now decided to lecture empower women on how to reduce the population for the benefit of the planet. Watch the video below, now we know why he doesn’t allow recordings of his lectures. Darn those Flip Video Cameras. (WUWT)
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Rubber room
Science and Smear Merchants
By S. Fred Singer
Professor Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California in San Diego, claims to be a science historian. One can readily demonstrate that she is neither a credible scientist nor a credible historian; the best evidence is right there in her recent book, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” coauthored with Eric Conway. Her science is faulty; her historical procedures are thoroughly unprofessional. She is, however, an accomplished polemicist, who has found time for world lecture tours, promoting her book and her ideological views, while being paid by the citizens of California. Her book tries to smear four senior physicists — of whom I am the only surviving one. I view it as my obligation to defend the reputations of my late colleagues and good friends against her libelous charges. (American Thinker)
Posted in Activists, Climate change, Green scams, Propaganda
New Major Report
Estimates of Global Food Production in the Year 2050 — Will We Produce Enough to Adequately Feed the World?: Government leaders and policy makers should take notice of the findings of this important new analysis of the world food situation; for doing what climate alarmists claim is needed to fight global warming will surely consign earth’s human population to a world of woe, while doing next to nothing in terms of altering the current warm phase of the planet’s surface temperature.
Sixth International Conference on Climate Change
The 2011 Sixth International Conference on Climate change, organized by the Heartland Institute, will take place in Washington DC, June 30- July 1 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. We encourage you to attend this event that is co-sponsored by our Center. Details on registering can be obtained by clicking here.
Editorial
Global Warming Spurs “Spring Cleaning” of Honeybees: When the weather warms earlier with each successive spring, honeybees begin their seasonal work at an increasingly earlier date.
Journal Reviews
Greenland Ice Melt: Past and Present: What do we learn from a new two-and-a-quarter-century record?
Precipitation Extremes Along North America’s West Coast: Are they increasing in the ways suggested by climate models?
Cardiovascular Deaths and the Weather in Budapest: How are the two related?
Climate and Malaria in the Highlands of Bangladesh: Does the former influence the latter, as so many claim it does?
Ozone Damage to Vegetation in Europe’s Future: How much worse might it get?
The Future of North American Wheat Production: What lessons can we learn from the past?
Ocean Acidification Database
The latest addition of peer-reviewed data archived to our database of marine organism responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment is Winged Kelp [Alaria esculenta]. To access the entire database, click here.
Plant Growth Database
Our latest results of plant growth responses to atmospheric CO2 enrichment obtained from experiments described in the peer-reviewed scientific literature are: Korean Pine (Zhou et al., 2011) and Scots Pine (Zhouet al., 2011).
Medieval Warm Period Project
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 983 individual scientists from 566 research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record comes from Lake Skardtjorna, Western Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.
World Temperatures Database
Back by popular demand and upgraded to allow patrons more choices to plot and view the data, we reintroduce the World Temperatures section of our website. Here, users may plot temperatures for the entire globe or regions of the globe. A newly added feature allows patrons the ability to plot up to six independent datasets on the same graph. Try it today. World Temperatures Database. (co2science.org)
Posted in Climate
MILLOY: Supremes retreat from climate panic
Ruling returns environmental rules to politicians, not courts
By Steve Milloy
The Supreme Court dealt Al Gore, the Environmental Protection Agency and other believers in alarmist climate science a surprising and severe blow this week. In its June 20 decision on American Electric Power v. Connecticut et al., the court ruled that the mere existence of EPA regulatory authority over greenhouse-gas regulations pre-empted lawsuits against coal-burning utilities on the grounds that the emissions constitute a public nuisance.
That decision wasn’t all that surprising as the common law doctrine of nuisance is more typically applied to local cases of noxious odors and noise as opposed to emissions of colorless, odorless and tasteless greenhouse gasses, which are global in nature. Even alarmist science believer and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney knows that it’s called “global warming,” not “America warming.”
The startling part of the decision, however, is that the court quietly but clearly backed away from alarmist climate “science.” (The Washington Times)
Posted in Climate change, EPA, Regulation
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center today filed a lawsuit in federal district court in the District of Columbia to force the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to release ethics records for taxpayer-funded global warming activist Dr. James Hansen – specifically records that pertain to his outside employment, revenue generation, and advocacy activities.
ATI seeks to learn whether NASA approved Hansen’s outside employment, which public financial disclosures and other documents reveal to have brought him at least $1.2 million in the past four years. This money comes in addition to – and, more troubling from an ethics and legal perspective, is all related to – his taxpayer-funded employment. Dr. Hansen’s outside employment commenced when he increased his “global warming” activism from his perch at NASA.
On January 19, ATI filed a Freedom of Information Act request (PDF) with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which sought records detailing NASA’s and Hansen’s compliance with applicable federal ethics and financial disclosure laws and regulations, and with NASA Rules of Behavior. Thus far the agency has denied ATI’s request for Hansen’s Form 17-60s (“Application for permission for outside employment and other activity”), and ATI’s request for records of internal discussions about it. (Environmental Law Center)
Posted in Activists, Climate change
Last week we featured a video with Ethan Hawke and other pretty people pushing the anti-fracking narrative.
Greens are terrified that shale gas will prove so popular it will end their inefficient pipe-dream renewables programs. See what this gas industry analysis says, and you can see why Big Green is so desperate to find something, anything it can use to make shale gas a demon:
“You have one energy that represents today more than 20 percent of the energy mix, and solar today is close to zero and will represent maybe 1 or 1.5 percent in 20 years from now,” said Jean-Jacques Mosconi, Total head of strategy. The trouble is that a new “golden age of gas,” as the International Energy Agency dubbed it, has created massive over-capacity in a key rival fuel for power generation.
“The economic viability of a lot of the renewables are getting killed because we have too much gas in the world right now,” said Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs. “It’s made a lot of these other projects like solar and wind struggle in terms of their economic viability, and coal too.”
Gas power plants can be built at a fraction of the cost of nuclear, and the reserves found so far are eye-poppingly huge. The US alone is estimated to have 862 trillion cubic feet of the stuff. Turn up the thermostat and call me Lucy, that’s a lot of gas. (Daily Bayonet)
More on medical identity theft
My latest HND piece expands on the topic discussed here a few months ago.
Medical identity theft is the biggest area within the fastest growing crime of identity theft. It is far more lucrative to steal someone’s medical insurance information than their credit card data. Credit card info might get you five bucks on the black market, but good medical insurance data is worth hundreds.
Worse, the costs to clean up medical identity theft AVERAGE more than $20,000. Sadly, most people—even including those who have already been scammed in this manner—still don’t do much to protect themselves.
While this problem may never be completely solved, we can take some solace in the good news that browsers, including up-and-comer Maxthon, are getting more secure.
Read the complete article. (Shaw’s Eco-Logic)
Posted in Health care
‘Super’ wheat set to boost yields and reduce hunger
SciDevNet: Variety resistant to two strains of fungus increases yield by 15%
Naomi Antony
‘Super varieties’ of wheat resistant to the deadly stem rust fungus Ug99 could replace wheat in affected areas in as little as two years — if farmers can be persuaded to adopt them, a conference heard this week.
Posted in Agriculture
Appreciating the Master Resource (Part II: Energy Foes Agree!)
Robert Bradley Jr.
[Editor note: Part I in this two-part series examined quotations on the primacy of energy for human betterment from friends of conventional energy and from neutral analysts.]
“When energy is scarce or expensive, people can suffer material deprivation and economic hardship.”
- John Holdren, 1991 (full citation below)
“A reliable and affordable supply of energy is absolutely critical to maintaining and expanding economic prosperity where such prosperity already exists and to creating it where it does not.”
- John Holdren, 2000 (full citation below)
Posted in Development, Energy, Misanthropy
Russia End-Winner of Anti-Nuclear Wave
By Andres Cala
Italy last week pretty much killed any chance of nuclear power ever being developed there, only days after the German and Swiss parliaments moved to phase out their nuclear plants. And that’s on top of several other governments that had already announced delays to learn from the Fukushima disaster, including the U.K.
In Italy’s case, the 94 percent vote against nuclear power simply nailed the coffin. But as the only industrialized economy without nuclear power, very few expected a change of heart anyway faced with such popular opposition. “Italy will probably have to say goodbye to the issue of nuclear power stations,” Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said even ahead of official results of a referendum held Sunday and Monday.
In Germany’s case, about 20 GW of installed capacity, supplying 23 percent of electricity, will be phased out by 2022. Switzerland will lose its five nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of 3.2 GW generating about 40 percent of electricity between 2019 and 2034.
And in all three cases country leaders point to renewable power as the prime choice to replace or add power. And surely in the Swiss and German cases replacing such big shares of the power mix will inevitably create a mesh of opportunities for any alternative, including coal and ironically nuclear power from France or Czech Republic.
But the end winner of the antinuclear drive is Russia and its unparalleled gas reserves and infrastructure. (Energy Tribune)
Posted in Energy
Analysis: Germany goes back to black in snub to green power
Germany is set to turn back to coal, gas and imports to fill the energy chasm left by its fast-track exit of nuclear power, refusing to boost green power and threatening its efforts to lower emissions.
The government permanently shut eight nuclear power plants immediately after the Fukushima crisis in Japan, and is closing the remaining nine in stages up to 2022.
However, Europe’s largest economy is shying away from pushing for renewable energy to replace those plants, even though opinion polls show people are willing to accept higher bills to support green power. (Reuters)
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