Comments on: Richard Farmer’s political bite-sized meaty chunks http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/07/21/richard-farmers-political-bite-sized-meaty-chunks/ now with extra source Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:54:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: S http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/07/21/richard-farmers-political-bite-sized-meaty-chunks/#comment-256 S Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000 #comment-256 The debate about whether the planet is warming is more of a 1980's one and is simply not the issue. The issue is whether warming is being caused by mankind and whether anything we do will make any difference. Clearly what Australia does or doesn't do will have almost no affect on global warming. It may clean up our own back yard so rich Australians can feel good about having solar panels to run their LCDs while we expect poor Chinese and Indians to not aspire to having electric lights. The real debate is whether the amazingly expensive solutions posed by western economies are the most effective way of tackling global warming. Economists like Bjorn Lomberg author of Cool It queries current massive expenditures on solutions which may prove useless and poses cheaper alternatives which may be more quantifiably successful The debate about whether the planet is warming is more of a 1980’s one and is simply not the issue. The issue is whether warming is being caused by mankind and whether anything we do will make any difference. Clearly what Australia does or doesn’t do will have almost no affect on global warming. It may clean up our own back yard so rich Australians can feel good about having solar panels to run their LCDs while we expect poor Chinese and Indians to not aspire to having electric lights. The real debate is whether the amazingly expensive solutions posed by western economies are the most effective way of tackling global warming. Economists like Bjorn Lomberg author of Cool It queries current massive expenditures on solutions which may prove useless and poses cheaper alternatives which may be more quantifiably successful

]]> By: M http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/07/21/richard-farmers-political-bite-sized-meaty-chunks/#comment-257 M Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000 #comment-257 You're wrong about the Fischer posting. K07 made huge inroads into the Nats regional base last year and this can only help consolidate that vote. Tim has conducted himself impeccably since leaving politics, played an important role in the 2020 Summit and is well regarded by all but the most one-dimensional partisans in the ALP. Ideologically he is probably closer to the ALP Right than he would care to admit and he was far from comfortable with the post-Tampa extremes of the Howard era. No doubt he and Amanda Vanstone will have a bit to catch up on in Rome. You’re wrong about the Fischer posting. K07 made huge inroads into the Nats regional base last year and this can only help consolidate that vote. Tim has conducted himself impeccably since leaving politics, played an important role in the 2020 Summit and is well regarded by all but the most one-dimensional partisans in the ALP. Ideologically he is probably closer to the ALP Right than he would care to admit and he was far from comfortable with the post-Tampa extremes of the Howard era. No doubt he and Amanda Vanstone will have a bit to catch up on in Rome.

]]> By: Jim http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/07/21/richard-farmers-political-bite-sized-meaty-chunks/#comment-258 Jim Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000 #comment-258 Liked the happy interpretation of the global mean temperature graph. The depressing thing is that when Andrew Bolt did exactly the same thing with figures on temperature, ice cover and so on for the recent decade in the Herald-Sun last week, he actually believed he was on to something. Nor could any of the talking head journos on Barry Cassidy's Insiders program convince him that this was not the case; in fact, they seemed incapable even of demonstrating what a complete idiot he is on this subject. In the simplest possible language (in case Bolt is reading): 10 years of data, when applied to the huge and complicated subject of climate change, prove nothing. Not a little bit of something, Andrew; not a tiny chink in the majority scientific case on global warming. Nothing. Not enough observations, Andrew, to have any statistical significance at all. Why do you think scientists have invested such efforts in building very long series of climate change data? Find out what R-squared means Andrew; read a little of why statisticians know that snipping off a little piece of a very long data series, and then insisting that that short series has the same statsitical reliability as the long one, is just plain wrong. Good grief. Liked the happy interpretation of the global mean temperature graph. The depressing thing is that when Andrew Bolt did exactly the same thing with figures on temperature, ice cover and so on for the recent decade in the Herald-Sun last week, he actually believed he was on to something. Nor could any of the talking head journos on Barry Cassidy’s Insiders program convince him that this was not the case; in fact, they seemed incapable even of demonstrating what a complete idiot he is on this subject. In the simplest possible language (in case Bolt is reading): 10 years of data, when applied to the huge and complicated subject of climate change, prove nothing. Not a little bit of something, Andrew; not a tiny chink in the majority scientific case on global warming. Nothing. Not enough observations, Andrew, to have any statistical significance at all. Why do you think scientists have invested such efforts in building very long series of climate change data? Find out what R-squared means Andrew; read a little of why statisticians know that snipping off a little piece of a very long data series, and then insisting that that short series has the same statsitical reliability as the long one, is just plain wrong. Good grief.

]]> By: RJG http://www.crikey.com.au/2008/07/21/richard-farmers-political-bite-sized-meaty-chunks/#comment-255 RJG Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000 #comment-255 Global Warming and THATgraph: For God's sake Dick if you did a curve fit for the first five points of the graph you can prove that in the few years before 1994 the climate was also cooling. Trouble was the termperatures rose again and continued to rise. I don't know what you are qualified in, but I don't think it is climate analysis or modelling. If you want to be a real climate skeptic with some street cred. Go back to school take some units in physics, mathematics probability and statistics, numerical modelling, hydrology and the earth scientists. Practice these with equally or even better educated people in this field, for twenty or thirty years and do some original research. Have it peer reviewed and then publish. I read Crikey because I am sick of reading this sort of misrepresentation in the mainstream media. You are starting to remind me of a sort of Andrew Bolt think alike. <br /><br />Organisations doing the science on Climate Change include, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA), "they put a man on the moon", the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, (British Met), le Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique du CNRS and and the Colorado State Dept of Atmospheric Science. Are they all simpletons or simply misguided fools desperate to keep their government funding going? Perhaps, and I think this is more likely, they are some of the best minds in the world of the calibre of Eistein, Dirac, Hawking and Darwin. Global Warming and THATgraph: For God’s sake Dick if you did a curve fit for the first five points of the graph you can prove that in the few years before 1994 the climate was also cooling. Trouble was the termperatures rose again and continued to rise. I don’t know what you are qualified in, but I don’t think it is climate analysis or modelling. If you want to be a real climate skeptic with some street cred. Go back to school take some units in physics, mathematics probability and statistics, numerical modelling, hydrology and the earth scientists. Practice these with equally or even better educated people in this field, for twenty or thirty years and do some original research. Have it peer reviewed and then publish. I read Crikey because I am sick of reading this sort of misrepresentation in the mainstream media. You are starting to remind me of a sort of Andrew Bolt think alike.

Organisations doing the science on Climate Change include, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA), “they put a man on the moon”, the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, (British Met), le Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique du CNRS and and the Colorado State Dept of Atmospheric Science. Are they all simpletons or simply misguided fools desperate to keep their government funding going? Perhaps, and I think this is more likely, they are some of the best minds in the world of the calibre of Eistein, Dirac, Hawking and Darwin.

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