‘A breath of fresh air’: pollster Gary Morgan to host Monckton shindig
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Roy Morgan polling chief Gary Morgan has defended his firm over a decision to host a speech by fervent climate change skeptic Christopher Monckton next month, as controversy continues to swirl ahead over the ex-Margaret Thatcher adviser’s use of the Nazi swastika. As part of his travelling East Coast roadshow sponsored by the fringe Climate Sceptics Party, “Lord” Monckton will give a $60-a-head speech at Morgan’s 401 Collins Street premises on July 19, hosted by Des Moore from the conservative Institute for Private Enterprise. The title of the address is “the science is not settled”, despite a broad international scientific consensus suggesting exactly that. It could raise allegations that Morgan might be compromising his firm’s integrity by wading into an emotionally charged debate pockmarked by the spectre of Hitler. The colourful pollster, who has in the past launched multiple bids for Melbourne Lord Mayor, confirmed to Crikey this morning that he had rented out his conference room to the IPE for the extravaganza. He said the deal was done well before this week’s shenanigans in which Tony Abbott has been forced to defend his participation alongside Monckton at an Association of Mining and Exploration Companies get-together in Perth, following the emergence of video of Monkton branding Ross Garnaut a fascist and trumpeting “heil Hitler” in a German accent. While Morgan said he did not personally endorse Monckton’s comments, he wouldn’t be bowing to pressure to cancel the speech. “I’m aware of some of some of the things he’s said…I agree with some of the skeptics on the climate change, but that’s my personal opinion nothing to do with someone booking my conference centre,” said Morgan. “If someone in favour of climate change would like to book my conference centre they’d be very welcome to come here,” suggesting he would be equally open to hosting a speech by Greens leader Bob Brown that could be “webcast by Crikey”. Morgan confirmed to Crikey that he was sceptical of some of the climate change science and questioned whether carbon dioxide could be accurately measured, drawing a parallel with the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ estimates of federal unemployment. “I don’t know how can you accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in water billions of years ago. That’s the issue, how do you accurately measure, the government can’t measure unemployment accurately. They can’t measure employment properly… they tell us that [re carbon] in parts per million it’s changed by 100 parts per million. It’s a nonsense.” Morgan has an interest in the resources sector as chairman of gold miner Haoma, which owns tenements in the WA Pilbara and at Ravenswood in Queensland. A recent Roy Morgan survey of the public’s perception of public opinion pollsters showed that just 23% of the population rate the profession highly, down 6% on the previous survey.
Monckton has used the Hitler analogy in the past, invoking Godwin’s Law to brand other participants at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference as “Hitler Youth” after they apparently interrupted a private meeting. However, in politer circles it is generally thought that the first person to invoke the Nazis loses the debate. |
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173 Comments
““I don’t know how can you accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in water billions of years ago. That’s the issue, how do you accurately measure, the government can’t measure unemployment accurately. They can’t measure employment properly… they tell us that [re carbon] in parts per million it’s changed by 100 parts per million. It’s a nonsense.”
Few quotes I’ve read would compare to this one for sheer ignorance of scientific matters….and yet he wants to classed as a sceptic. He doesn’t understand himslef, let alone the climate science.
‘I don’t know how you can accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in water billions of years ago’. I take it Gary Morgan isn’t a scientist. CO2 levels can be quite accurately measured in the air bubbles trapped in falling snow which becomes compressed to form ice sheets at the Antarctic and on Greenland. Hence the Earth’s atmosphere from long ago can be sampled by taking ice cores, but this method only works for the past 800,000 years. Estimating the CO2 levels before then is very problematic and prone to enormous errors, but as far as humans are concerned, it’s of lesser importance, since it’s only been the past 3 million years that the continents have been in the current position. In particular, before then, North and South America hadn’t joined at Panama causing the ocean current to flow northwards as the Gulf Stream setting of the current ice age.
Gary Morgan’s opinion doesn’t count for much, since he obviously hasn’t made the effort to inform himself as to the science.
Morgans hope of ever being recognised as an independent, impartial pollster smashed with these words on its invitation to hear monckton.
‘In current circumstances, where the Gillard Government is trying to justify the need for a carbon tax on the argument that “the science is settled,” Monckton will be a breath of fresh air in exposing on his return visit just how badly flawed this claim is and what likelihood there is of agreed international action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.’
so Morgan annoys us at home with his surveys for Phillip Morris and now hosts the viscount. what a deuche bag
there seems to be two ways of thinking here …those with interests in the industries that pollute are skeptics and those with no interests in polluting industry and to quote ross garnaut “can read english” believe the science…. i’ll go with the scientists
@Trevor Williams You beat me to it.
Morgan might be good at what he does but leave science debate to the scientists. To describe it as nonsense just because some nutter said so (& he saw it on the internet) is just ignorant. Best just say “I don’t know” rather than indicate you are a bigger fool than you probably are.
I don’t know what to say, can’t we complain to the ACCC about this?
Absolutely incredible. And the gullible swallow the crap he peddles as gospel and the press writes reams about the bullshit he has created, and the papers print it again, and the TV stations quote it, and the ratbags on the radio spew it down their bird brained listeners gullible guts, and around and around it goes.
Credibility used to mean something. Like respect and responsibility. To win any arguement, even in he pub, you had to have the facts and some credibility.
This guy has none, and, arguably, never has and the fate of the country has been in his hands for years.
I have always believed the direct opposite of what his poll results show
Anything that is modelled is prone to error which in due course is discovered and updated. Earth scientists have no better models than anyone else purporting to be a scientist. Besides some models are better funded than others when they produce the desired buisness outcomes. The wonder of this century is that everybody is forced to choose between prostitute or soldier.
Everything we analyse rests on assumptions which are also usually found to be faulty or partially faulty. Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a book about this stuff.
Now let me share some of my questions about this whole climate thing with you:
1) To what extent is the increase in acidity of the oceans a product of increased chemical and gas discharges into same by chemical companies, farms, shipping (e.g. Exxon Valdiz); off shore oil & gas drilling (e.g. off coast of Western Australia, Gulf of Mexico); the Fukushimas, volcanic activity and illegal dumping and discharging of waste into the oceans (e.g. most tankers and possibly shippingin general)? Is this a product of increased traffic and use of the oceans and does this increase in pollution coincide with the increase in C02 activity.
2) To what extent has global deforestation (running at a clip since Reaganomics) influenced the level of absorption of C02 from the atmosphere while also placing a greater burden on the oceans to absorb same?
It is far easier to demonstrate association than causality. If we can partial out the effects of other mitigating factors and see if the link remains strong then I might be more readily convinced.
You see there is a lot of money to be made out of “association” not to mention as a means of character assassination of one’s enemies. Drug companies woke up to this magick a long time ago and now businesses in general are regularly pulling it out of the bag when things get to hard and the truth seems like a bad idea.
More importantly, politicians love this verbal sleight of hand playing fast and loose with deductive reasoning. It is the stuff of which spin is spun. It is extremely hard to prove cause but easy to label someone or some thing a fellow traveller (and by implication guilty) as you have all demonstrated with your constant caterwauling of nih! and fatang! in the direction of Messieurs Monckton and Morgan. Simply conjure an association and rely on public superstition and fear to take over and wishka (pronounced vishka), you have yourselves a nice little earner or political tipping point.
Take even that health nasty, cigarette smoking; behavioural psychologist Hans Eysenck was able to show that lung cancer was more likely to be predicted by poor self concept than by smoking. In other words, people who saw themselves as victims in the world, powerless to change their own circumstances or the circumstances around them, were more likely to get cancer than those who didn’t irrespective of their smoking patterns.
So convince me - start partialling out the elephants catawaulers!
When will Morgan do a poll on ” Is the earth round or flat “
Morgan has just destroyed his firms credibility. He is as subjective as the next person. He has a financial vested interest in the mining industry… and surprise surprise… he is a climate change sceptic. And then he supposedly runs “objective” polling of small samples of the population to tell the rest of us what we supposedly believe.
What a joke.
Great article. Thanks.
Just because Morgan isn’t a scientist, and doesn’t seem to know much science, it would be foolish to discount his polling. His unemployment figures make much more sense than the usually publicised official ones which politicians of all parties in government might prefer and always indicate much more unemployment, particularly by considering underemployment realistically. And he would hardly have built the business he has in Australia and North America over the years by publishing biased and delibertately inaccurate poll results. That is luny fantasy. Many years ago his polls were usually the most accurate just before elections. Now there are plenty of competitors who sometimes do better. But you can bet that they are all trying because the main business is often, as with Morgan, market research for corporate customers and a reputation for accuracy is obviously essential.
As for Monckton, it would be wise not to confuse bad taste with bad arguments or errors of fact. And his bad taste should, realistically, be assessed by reference to how it appealed to his immediate audience rather than how it looks on YouTube. I don’t know if he does his speaking tours for money (apart from expenses) but it is live audiences that he is obviously aiming at, not bloggers who link to YouTube. It would indeed be a bad mistake to write Monckton off as a fool. Think how many people wrote off Tony Abbott as electoral disaster for the Coalition!
I just sent this message to Roy Morgan Research. Those sharing similar concerns might want to do something similar.
Dear Sue,
I see that Christopher Monckton will speak at your firm in July.
I’m not sure this does much for the credibility of Roy Morgan Research, particularly in light of Christopher Monckton’s recent statement that Professor Ross Garnaut is a fascist. I agree with Malcolm Turnbull’s assessment that “Monckton is a vaudeville artist. He has no credibility, politically or scientifically, particularly in the United Kingdom and he is a professional sensationalist”.
But you are of course free to invite a non-scientist to talk about the most important scientific issue currently facing civilization if you wish.
What I think is of more concern is Mr Gary Morgan’s statement reported in Crikey! today that:
“I don’t know how can you accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in water billions of years ago. That’s the issue, how do you accurately measure, the government can’t measure unemployment accurately. They can’t measure employment properly… they tell us that [re carbon] in parts per million it’s changed by 100 parts per million. It’s a nonsense.”
In fact CO2 in the atmosphere can be measured exceptionally accurately. Atmospheric CO2 levels are measured at hundreds of monitoring stations across the globe (including the well known Mauna Loa site: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/). Independent measurements are also conducted by aeroplanes and satellites. For periods before 1958, CO2 levels are determined from air bubbles trapped in polar ice cores.
And the CSIRO has just released a terrific new database of CO2 measurements from Cape Grim in Tasmania. It is available in a very accessible form on their website: http://www.csiro.au/greenhouse-gases/
Unlike unemployment, current and historic levels of CO2 can be measured and very accurately so. Indeed it is even possible to identify the human fingerprint on CO2 levels by looking at CO2 isotopes. See Ghosh and Brand (2003): http://www.bgc.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf
Best wishes,
Tim
I used to get Morgan polls by email gratis. I had contacted Morgan polls with a query about why plane refugees weren,t in their polling questions. I got a reasonable reply and was offered the poll results although as I recall not the commercial ones that were less a public concern. In the end I terminated the emails because of the opinion pieces that accompanied the poll results. Morgan was doing a Des Moore type commentary which I thought was inappropriate alongside the polling.
@Rufus, Monckton is here in Australia because the UK knows he is irrelevant. Its quite evident who the real fool is.
Climate Change believers must supinate daily ‘neath the alter of Baal!
Monkton makes the perfect partner for Abbott. Australians will love being heckled by a senile Lord.
There’s only one “c” in “septic”?
Both Richard Wilson and Rufus Marsh manage to kick spectacular non-goals in their posts. Wilson confuses modelling accuracy with the accurate measurement of gas proportions in fossil ice-core samples. Any climate scientist would agree that models are, by definition, improvable. But sampling gases captured in ice hundreds or even thousands of years ago is not a technique even climate sceptics could claim is faulty.
Rufus, “As for Monckton, it would be wise not to confuse bad taste with bad arguments or errors of fact. “….perhaps you’d like to tell us how. Monckton’s errors of fact are legion; too many to list here, but you might like to try Tim Lambert’s Deltoid blog and search “Monckton”. his list of errors, frauds and ommissions is so egregious as to qualify as bad taste in my book. Either way, he is a tasteless charlatan.
‘“I don’t know how can you accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in water billions of years ago.’
And I don’t know how you can accurately measure the opinions of the national populace with questions that are skewed.
Nor do I know how the Oz media continually swallow these dodgy polls, granting them as accurate and often not reporting the exact question asked of those polled. We frequently read simplistic headlines about which way the public leans on this or that subject without knowing precisely what wording was used in the question, wording which can elicit a more negative or positive response depending on the way it is framed.
Adelaide readers, watch Leon Byner make a fool of himself again by fawning over Monckton’s every word. “Binky Byner” can’t help himself in the company of effete right wing “commentators” who love the sound of their own voice.
@ Michael Harvey
“Monkton makes the perfect partner for Abbott. Australians will love being heckled by a senile Lord.”
That is one of the most interesting things in today’s Crikey, criply encapsulating the reason to ask whether Crikey does really attract mostly inner-city type elitists (a Gerard Henderson type characterisation) who scorn their fellow Australians and those who nonetheless suffer some kind of colonial cringe which produces “senile Lord”. “Mad”, at least for rough debating purposes, but “senile”? Not a shred of evidence and much to the contrary.
In the interests of accuracy - you are guilty of perpetuating one of The Mad Moncktons own myths. He was never an scientific advisor to Margaret Thatcher.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/22/thatcher-climate-sceptic-monckton
I’m an outer-suburbs elitist, actually.
Monkton , it is reported , claims to have a cure of a few afflictions that modern medicine East or West have have yet to overcome. He doesn,t correct people when they address him as lord even though the house of lords states he has never been a member and wishes he would rectify that falsehood. He gets paid for his appearances. I saw a figure of $30,000 but I,m not sure if thats for the entire short visit or per sponsor. Free speech is good but I,m not so keen on sponsored propaganda . More so when its delivered by a person makes claims that would do the cancer shysters proud regarding medical cures. He is or was an architect.
Has Fran Kelly booked His Lawdship for an in depth,but searching. interview this time around?
@ GEOMAC
You may just be ignorant of something which it isn’t important for you to know and which only a highly reputable peer-reviewed blog would mind about but Andrew Crook really betrays the fact that he can’t help himself since he has been corrected before. Monckton, the Second or Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is as much entitled to call himsel “Lord Monckton” as any other of the thousand or so hereditary peers who have not been elected to the current House of Lords are entitled to call themselves and be politely addressed (as no doubt club secretaries and restaurant head waiters would) Lord, or Lady, Snooks. I doubt if many, or perhaps any, of the hereditary Dukes are elected members of the House of Lords but you may be sure that the heir to the Dukes of Beaufort, Westminster, Devonshire, Norfolk etc. will be in time legally calling themselves Dukes of Beaufort etc. It may be as irrelevant to anything but gossip mags as French, German, Italian and Polish titles but did you find good republicans taking pains not to call Jackie Kennedy/Onassis’s sister Princess?
BTW I wouldn’t mind a small bet that whatever Monckton actually said about cures for cancer or whatever he was doing some sort of sendup. Many of the world’s greatest egotists are pretty good at generating publicity for or by almost anything said about them. I remember one very small but very distinguished soldier/scholar who rejoiced in being able to quote what Private Eye said of him or called him. Monckton may be in the same category of clever egotists.
Zut
I am with you. It would be interesting for Crikey to survey its paying punters to see if they have ever been polled, by whom and to look at the “quality of the “statements that you are requested to agree with”………or not.
The relevance, of course, is neither here, nor going to get written up there in the MSP.
On a free speech basis the Looney Lord is welcome.
He will do more to discredit the denailists than anybody else which is a pity.
I would much rather have a proper debate and there is area for argument but alas the atmosphere is so poinsine dby these extremists it doesn’t seem likely
There irony - for all the liar liar, denier, deniers; their pants really will be on fire…… eventually
Rufus - you make some valid points. But which pollster recently asked the loaded question along these lines:
“Are you aware that Australia only produces 1% of the worlds CO2 emmission? And do you support the carbon tax to fight CO2 emmission?”
Was it Morgan?
I was joking with someone the other day about the Abbott poll request. I could get the majority of Australians to vote for it, or against it, by the way I framed the question.
1) Do you believe Australians should be burdened with another tax? One that is aimed at reducing CO2 emmissions even if we only produce 1% of the worlds CO2?
or
2) Do you believe Australia, as a responsible member of the international community, should do its share to fight pollution, (after all we are the worst polluters per head, in the world, in regards to our production of CO2), and so support the introduction of a carbon tax on the 1000 worst polluting companies in the country?
TREVOR WILLIAMS
Posted Friday, 24 June 2011 at 3:59 pm | Permalink
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Both Richard Wilson and Rufus Marsh manage to kick spectacular non-goals in their posts. Wilson confuses modelling accuracy with the accurate measurement of gas proportions in fossil ice-core samples. Any climate scientist would agree that models are, by definition, improvable. But sampling gases captured in ice hundreds or even thousands of years ago is not a technique even climate sceptics could claim is faulty.
Rufus, “As for Monckton, it would be wise not to confuse bad taste with bad arguments or errors of fact. “….perhaps you’d like to tell us how. Monckton’s errors of fact are legion; too many to list here, but you might like to try Tim Lambert’s Deltoid blog and search “Monckton”. his list of errors, frauds and ommissions is so egregious as to qualify as bad taste in my book. Either way, he is a tasteless charlatan.
@Trevor Williams
Don’t quite follow the logic here. Gas proportions in samples are not at issue. They are what they are.
But …
1) How confident are you that your samples represent a particular time period and that there has been no material change in the sample over its life time.
2) Are ice core samples region specific or do they have global in application?
3) Any ideas what the temperature might have been around the time the sample was alive? What assumptions are made to derive these estimates and what is the error of estimate do you think?
Isn’t the formula used to derive the age of the ice core sample a representation of past times based on assumptions, however confident one might be in those assumptions?
Models, assumptions, representations or whatever you care to call your sampled data are fine but will always run into trouble when high stakes testing is operating. After all, you have to tie your observations back to something that is not known as defined by” measured at the time”, but a representation of a point in time however strongly you may care to argue its accuracy.
Maybe this is OJ Simpson jury logic but I am not convinced in the same way carbon dating is a pointer but not a point in time.
Richard Wilson
The questions you posit betray the fact that you don’t publish in scientific journals that deal with these matters. This link is the very first hit in a Google Scholar search for the term “ice-core gases”. As you can see, it is a complicated field; the use of techniques well established by previous experiment, observation, and subsequent peer-review ( such as the correlation of deuterium content and temperature mentioned in the article) might point you in the direction of a stunning realisation: the science has been going on behind your back, to the point where you don’t understand it, and ask daft questions. I suggest you take a deep breath, bite back your prejudices, and accept that these guys are far, far better than you in their chosen field.
What is Morgan waffling on about? What fringe science web site has he been reading to get the idiotic idea that scientists were trying to measure the the amount of CO2 in water billions of years old?
Like many Australians, he seems completely dumbfounded by the science. So who does he run to for advice? A snake oil salesman like Lord Monckton?
Monckton has no ‘fresh’ ideas on global warming. He just keeps on recycling the same worn out and discredited nonsense over and over again. Monckton is not even interested in debating the issue - last year his response to a demolition job by John Abraham on his presentation ot Bethel University in the US was to demand that the presentation be removed from the University website and that the University pay $100,000 to a Monckton nominated charity. The legal menacing also included a demand that Abraham answer a bizarre list of around 460 questions, mostly about matters Abraham had not mentioned in his presentation.
Monckton is always quick to snuff out ad hominen attacks, but like the recent attack on Ross Garnaut, he frequently uses them himself. Here is his Lordship, full of piss and wind, denouncing Prof Abraham in 2010:
“So unusual is this attempt actually to meet us in argument, and so venomously ad hominem are Abraham’s artful puerilities, delivered in a nasal and irritatingly matey tone (at least we are spared his face — he looks like an overcooked prawn), that climate-extremist bloggers everywhere have circulated them and praised them to the warming skies.”
As previous bloggers have noted, his Lordship claims expertise in many fields outside Global Warming. Apparently, he has claimed to have found a cure for Aids, during the Thatcher era he claims to have been an adviser on warship hydrodynamics, he has done work on hydrogeology, epidemiology and embryology. A letter he sent to Senator McCain in 2008 was written to sound like he was a member of the House of Lords even though he failed in his attempt to get elected.
Monckton has never published anything in a reputable peer reviewed journal about climate science. In July 2008 issue of the APS (American Physical Society) Forum on Physics and Society Newsletter, Monckton managed to get his notorious letter “Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered” published. This article, which was not peer reviewed, claimed that the IPCC had made serious errors in estimates of temerature increases. This paper has been denounced by the APS and a disclaimer now appears at the start of the paper. Monckton’s criticiism of the IPCC was based on the use of data that is not accepted by the scientific community.
The most puzzling aspect of Monckton is why he continues to attract such an adoring following. Surely rational people like Tony Abbott and Gary Morgan would prefer to get advice from people who know what they are talking about?
That he hosts an Monckton deception show is bad enough, but by commenting on climate change Morgan really shows himself a fool. If he’d had a bit of sense he could have just said he’ll work for anybody who pays him.
After the nonsense Morgan has written re Monckton, I am more suspicious….as The Australian is News Poll…Morgan is ?????
@Richard Wilson,
There are two ways in which the layers can be dated in the Antarctic and Greenland ice core;
First of all, you can just count them backwards - it doesn’t snow all the time in the either region, it’s seasonal, so the snow from one season and year forms a distinct layer separate from the earlier and later years.
Secondly, as a check, it’s calibrated against known volcanic eruptions, which cause layers of volcanic dust.
Temperature is estimated according to the ratio of water containing oxygen-18 compared to the usual oxygen-16 in the ice. The ratio in the ocean is fixed, but as the ocean temperature varies up or down, the proportion of the heavier water that evaprates compared to normal water varies too (I think as the temperature goes up, more heavier water evaporates, so there’s more heavier water in the ice).
Whether it’s regional? Well, the atmosphere is the same. You’ve got two widely separate sites to look at. Also, the same thing can be done in glaciers in the Andes, near the Equator, so there’s 3 locations.
Richard Wilson
The questions you posit betray the fact that you don’t publish in scientific journals that deal with these matters. This link:http://www.daycreek.com/dc/images/1999.pdf is the very first hit in a Google Scholar search for the term “ice-core gases”. As you can see, it is a complicated field; the use of techniques well established by previous experiment, observation, and subsequent peer-review ( such as the correlation of deuterium content and temperature mentioned in the article) might point you in the direction of a stunning realisation: the science has been going on behind your back, to the point where you don’t understand it, and ask daft questions. I suggest you take a deep breath, bite back your prejudices, and accept that these guys are far, far better than you in their chosen field.
@ Jim Reiher
If Roy Morgan polling did ask the question you quoted, when you said
” which pollster recently asked the loaded question along these lines:
“Are you aware that Australia only produces 1% of the worlds CO2 emmission? And do you support the carbon tax to fight CO2 emmission?”
Was it Morgan?”
then it would in fact be of interest in more ways than I think you are suggesting. It might help to show how little Australians who take a view for or against immediate costly action on CO2 emissions know about the relevant facts and how easily there opinions can change if presented with different versions. But, looking for evidence that you might be right in suggesting that Morgan was using his polling for politically motivated purposes (or to promote his own views) I went in search of the answers. I have found difficulty in ascertaining what exact questions were asked but there is plenty of evidence that Morgan is his own man and isn’t following anyone else’s agenda on AGW if you look at
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2011/4672/ and/or
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/polls.cfm and/or
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/press-releases/2011/1354/
My own suggestion, because I think the science is barely relevant to good Australian policy is that Morgan ought to ask
1. “Are you aware that more than half the coal which is mined in Australia is exported and burned in other countries?”
2. “Are you aware that China is building enough new coal fired power stations every year [or give some other reasonable approximation] to emit all the CO2 emitted by all Australia’s power stations?”
3. “In view of China’s fast expanding use of Australia’s coal to generate electricity and make iron and steel do you think it would be better to use that coal in Australia for the same purpose where possible or to allow it to be exported for use overseas?” “Would it change your answer if all or much of the profits from Australian use of the coal which we now export were used to adapt to climate change and help other countries to do so?”
4. “In view of the fact that more than half of Australia’s coal is exported and used in ways that emit CO2 in foreign countries do you think it would be best to (a) stop exporting coal altogether (or very nearly so)?, (b) cut our coal exports in half?; (c) continue exporting whatever we can sell; (d) continue exporting but try to ensure that as much of the electricity generation and other use of coal occurs in Australia as possible?”
The answers would at least be helpful to the major political parties in determining their campaign pitches.
I strongly recommend that Monckton and Rufus Marsh trouble themselves to attend an international Science conference or two (as I have done at great expense) to witness the horrifying statistics and modelling that is leading our species over the cliff of extinction. We should be supporting our scientists to the hilt as a question of global emergency, not slowing their research down and clinging to suicidal ideas and industries. Irrespective of the wonderful research being done by venture capitalists supporting Ventner and others, these scientists cannot solve our climate problems while there is misinformation being pedalled buy the likes of Monckton and the big polluters. It’s not as if Science has a political motivation - it’s driven by sceptical enquiry - if the concensus of scientist say that our CO2 emissions will be catastrophic for our species we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
You little Crikey darlings will have to get ready for two very big problems. 1) labour will lose the next election. 2) Tony Abbott will get rid of the carbon tax.
How much of this phony “debate” (from one side) is less to do with “science” and more to do with pure politics - “conservatism vs. socialism/greens”?
If “climate change” was a conservative agenda the likes of Abbott, Jones, Joyce, Minchin and Monckton would be up it like rats up a drain pipe?
But because any positive action stands to impact the financial interests of their sponsors and constituency base, they’re manipulating their own “science” into some sort of “red herring aegis” to buy time while their vested interests make more money - in the interim holding back any progress on the subject that might benefit the greater community?
Much like “friends of tobacco” fought that war of theirs.
“In Opposition” Tony Abbott can turn water into whine!
It’s called “Policy Transmugrification”.
@ RAY
Do you really believe “Abbott will get rid of the carbon tax”? No, he will build on it and reshape it because it can be classed as not a new tax for him. But it will be one which can finance all sorts of other changes that cost money. Perfect for an incoming government.
Actually, I’m disappointed that Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling (aka Monckton) is addressing an audience so small that it will be accommodated in Gary Morgan’s conference room. Why not the at The ‘G or Homebush stadium?
Attract the hordes, pack ‘em in and let Sir Arthur off the leash - with his quaint slides and extraordinary accusations about our fellow Australians and the world’s eminent scientists. I have a suspicion that, with our encouragement, the more fanciful and colourful Streeb-Greebling’s venting will become. In full flight with the sw@stika backdrop of which he seems so fond, he could be a wondrous sight. You know the old saying, give ‘em enough rope…
Let’s egg on Sir Arthur to appear before thousands at - what shall I term it - a rally. He could rant unfettered, making spurious accusations against a select group (climate scientists) calling for them to be shamed and shunned as evil-doers and ultimately marginalised as enemies of mankind. Uh oh, wait a minute, that sounds just like…
@ KLEWSO
You might be better to play Devil’s Advocate for yourself before you fire off such equivocal arguments as
“If “climate change” was a conservative agenda the likes of Abbott, Jones, Joyce, Minchin and Monckton would be up it like rats up a drain pipe?
But because any positive action stands to impact the financial interests of their sponsors and constituency base, they’re manipulating their own “science” into some sort of “red herring aegis” to buy time while their vested interests make more money - in the interim holding back any progress on the subject that might benefit the greater community?”
The men you name seem to me very different in all sorts of ways and, on the face of it, have rather different sources of motivation (Minchin is retiring, Monckton is one off etc). Anyway, it seems reaasonably obvious that you are not saying this because of personal acquaintance with them or close study (given your evident distaste for them it would be masochistic of you to have done that I guess). That makes your argument double-edged.
Aren’t you giving support to all those who, on no better information about the individuals than you have, suspect the motives of some scientists? After all it is just as likely that homo sapiens the ambitious scientist is likely to be seduced by the prospect of large research funds and avenues for publication as it is for homo sapiens the person who puts himelf up for election to serve the public to be seduced by the need of his party to be able to finance its election campaigns. Or do you disagree? (If in doubt try thinking of Cardinals who might want to stay in the race for the Papacy, candidates for US political office who join the Unitarian Church in the hope that people won’t infer their atheism. All human).
Unfortunately there is another generalisation that leaps to mind. Many scientists, rightly estimating that there intellects are superior, nonetheless make fools of themselves (amongst their intellectually discriminating peers) by overly positive assertions in areas of science which are not theirs and on matters they hardly seem to recognise are in the province of economics. Sure, Gary Morgan, and several politicians, may sound foolish to those who do or think they do know a lot more about science but that leads argument in more than one possible direction. them is that
Both sides in this “debate” have cause to be embarrassed by some of their chest-thumping baboons, spivs and salesmen - the ones who get all the attention:
Monty Monckton’s Flying Circus, Bolt, Jones the mouth…it’s a long list…they’ve been pilloried in the respectable media endlessly, so no need to elaborate.
But the other list is equally dodgy: Flannery, the Great Predictor, Australian Alarmist of the Year (2007) (he’s cost us billions in redundant desal plants alone); Savonarola Hamilton, publicly funded “ethicist” who wants to roll back democracy; Simon Chapman (another propagandist on the public payroll); Prof. Kevin Anderson (who thinks that 95% of the population will be dead in 50 years); Rajendra Pachauri, chief carpetbagger of the politically-compromised IPCC.
No wonder conventional managerial politics is in a mess- how can any consensus be fashioned from this shambles?
Gillard drones on about “convincing” voters but we all know it won’t happen.
Forcing the issue will probably be the end of govt by putative progressives for a decade.
And how many of them do you know, in such detail that makes your analysis of their “motivation” any more valid than anyone else’s - when it comes to “the similarity of their very public stance on the subject”?
“Minchin is retiring”? He’s held these “views” since way before he decided that course.
Of course “self-interest” plays a part in our habits - “tobacco” was able to buy their own scientists and politicians (as well as the “health” lobby) to counter that incursion into their profits. Like happens now with “climate change”.
@ Klewso
I did say “on the face of it” which I submit is a proper indication of modesty about one’s claims to certain knowledge. And then I cited Minchin’s views as being those of someone who is retiring and therefore with - prima facie - apparently less motivation to support the views of those financially motivated to support the Coalition’s election because of its policies which might favour their profits. As you note, he has been saying the same thing about AGW for a long time. But he is still saying it, just as robustly, so why not believe these are his genuinely formed views produced by whatever combination of intellectual effort, emotion and factual knowledge moves him? He doesn’t have to please “sponsors” now.
If you were to say, plausibly enough, that Minchin committed himself to arguing for one set of ideas on “the science” some years ago and that is, in itself, a commonly acknowledged psychological reason for his continuing to support and justify the same views well, then, there is another kind of argument which is used to explain why a lot of scientists having committed themselves to a particular bandwagon many years ago would find it difficult to give proper weight to evidence that they were wrong or greatly overstating the strength of their case.
What I can testify to is that most Liberal politicians are remarkably innocent of what is requred for a party’s major fundraising for elections. Not that Nick Minchin would have been one of the innocents but Abbott probably was for most of his previous years in Parliament. From the way Joyce behaves it is hard to see him as someone who would toe a big business line with even a shred of discipline. As to the motivation of Alan Jones or Monckton I don’t have many clues. I daresay it is not as simple as opponents would like to paint it.
@Trevor Williams
Trifle patronising dear boy if not latent authoritarianism!
I will look at your document …big words don’t trouble me but people who hide behind them do.
@Wayne Robinson
Your first reference link isn’t working.
Richard Wilson,
My first reference link wasn’t working because it wasn’t a reference link!
I was just indicating to you how we know the CO2 levels, temperatures and dates from ice cores, about which you professed ignorance…
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
As a scientist and a medical practitioner for over 40 years (understand science at least a bit and understand our fellow man from the special dealings with him) I have to say that statements like ‘the science is not settled’ might sound intelligent to intelligent people but to science they are evidence that even the intelligent can be absurd when they decide that repeating some idiots phrase (even when they don’t understand what they are saying) is the way to go.
Absurd (totally) statements attributed to those animals that call themselves human:
1. In science: The science is settled/is not settled
2. In health: Anti-oxidants are somehow good for your health
(only when the anti-oxidant is vitamin C for C’s sake not the anti-oxidant sake which is only good for raw salads)
3. In medicine: Best practice – said at nauseam by bone-head Professors who hate change just when they have finally worked out how to make a profit
Gary Morgan is at least an intelligent and successful man, and as a human he, as are we all, is allowed to fall into natural absurdity when frightened of damage that could occur to a personal valuable asset.
And he has!
@DAVID — Posted Friday, 24 June 2011 at 2:01 pm
Your quote is a worthwhile reminder. He is allowed, as I said, but one has to pay, as you say, if you are wrong and wrongly motivated.
We have to vigilant.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@RUFUS MARSH — Posted Saturday, 25 June 2011 at 1:29 pm
I agree with you, a long way to say “don’t trust anyone unless you know very well you can”.
Scientists are really a football team which is easier to trust in spite of any single member’s performance on the day.
Politicians and business men are individuals and should never be trusted till at least you have personally assessed the individual. Of course you may be wanting to commit a crime with him when trust although just as important is a very different thing.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@RUFUS MARSH — Posted Saturday, 25 June 2011 at 11:07 am
You are right again, RAY believes his Politian RS Tony Abbott when we know he is wrong and the latter as exposed himself with that promise as the ‘expected’ liar, but for excellent reason, extra money is good for any Government.
Hi Frank Campbell,
I was wondering what had happened to you.
Still engaging in hyperbole I see.
You’re still incorrectly stating that Professor Anderson has predicted that 95% of the global population will be dead in 50 years (actually, you’ve improved slightly, previously you’d said by 2050).
I’ll summarize my reply I gave to you in the previous thread ‘Enough Faffing around, the climate isn’t getting cooler’ comment#243:
Professor Anderson said that if we get to a population of 9 billion by 2050 and if the global temperature increases by 4C or more, then it’s unlikely that the Earth will be able to support a population of more than 500 million. He made no prediction as to how long the great die off would take.
The Victorian desalination plant can’t be entirely, or even slightly, blamed on Tim Flannery. The decision was made by many people in response to a water shortage, and the decision was appropriate at the time. The cost blowout was a result of poor planning and implementation, for which Tim Flannery bears no responsibility.
At least this time, you aren’t complaining that there are two many comments.
It’s a sign that powerful economic interests are out of control in the world economy, when an entire field of science can come under such extraordinary attack from people who are not scientists and should have no legitimacy in the scientific debate.
I remember a few years back when business groups jetted over international denialist darling, Bjorn Lomborg, with much fanfare from the media.
He was promoted as the lone voice of sanity against the scientific establishment. The statistician whose (dodgy) maths had pierced the big lie of global warming.
And then last year he changed his mind.
“Global warming is real - it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world.” - Bjorn Lomborg, 2010.
It’s at this point that a denialist whose opinions are challenged by facts will succumb to something called .
Whoops, my link from the last post didn’t come through correctly - The backfire effect.
As usual you’re missing the point Wayne…cost blow-outs happen on every infrastructure project. That’s mostly to do with the unhealthy relationship between govt. and corporations: bureaucrats swimming with sharks.
I don’t think anyone in Victoria now thinks “the decision was appropriate at the time”. The decision was made at the height of Gore-Flannery climate hysteria (Tim being the local franchisee) . Touted as the second biggest desal plant in the world.
If you examine the claims made at the time, you’ll see that the Great Fear was “global warming”. It’s now “climate change”: every flood, cyclone and drought is now a harbinger of doom- not just drought. A classic example was Robyn Anderson in “The Monthly” a few years ago, excoriating Bush for referring to “climate change” instead of “global warming”. Then, “climate change” was regarded as a cop-out.
Then, most of Australia was in the grip of a brutal drought. Flannery’s predictions were ubiquitous: the south eastern cities would run out of water, dams would never fill again etc- global warming had struck already- and this region was in permanent drought. Govt departments even changed their language: “drought” was out, “dryness” was in.
Then the eminently predictable La Nina struck.
Flannery the mammologist was rewarded with his gong in 2007- for services to premature ejaculation.
As for the timing of human extinction, why don’t you email Prof. Anderson and ask him for clarification?
@WAYNE ROBINSON
I am a sucker for information from someone who might know something interesting. So…. wasn’t the desal plant (I refer to its existence without reference to the incompetent negotiating of contractual terms, financing and, not least labour relations and costs) necessitated by the ALP government’s Green wing’s refusal to contemplate more dams? And, what about all those suggestions from Ken Davidson (dismissed as a bit of a nut by most politicians I know) including use of aquifers under and about Melbourne and, above all, bringing water from 600 feet up in Tasmania? No one answered him as far as I know so what was wrong with his suggestions?
I may sound a bit like the late great Colin Clark in suggesting that the Anderson 500 million population maximum is ridiculous but it does strike me that human ingenuity will adapt well enough (if not to save the odd billion people we only pretend to care about) by using the abundant water available in a warmed up planet on land (and in hydroponic greenhouse nurseries) to turn areas which are now cold into abundant sources of food. Judging by the excellent job of ice cream manufacturers turning out 97 per cent fat reduced vanilla ice cream which is indistinguishable from their great old full cream versions, we mightn’t even have to survive on military style emergency food packs. That is contra Prof Anderson, not you, I appreciate.
Rufus,
I’m not certain whether your suggestions are feasible regarding Melbourne’s water supply. Aquifers aren’t infinite, once used it takes thousands of years to replace the water.
I was actually having a go at Frank Campbell’s hyperbole. Tim Flannery wasn’t solely responsible for the desalination plant. He certainly wasn’t responsible for the botched implementation.
He’d misquoted Professor Anderson in a previous thread, was corrected then, and has decided to repeat the same incorrect statement yet again.
I think that Professor Anderson’s prediction is plausible, if the population is 9 billion in 2050 and if the global temperature increases by 4C or more, but I don’t have the time to go into it at the moment. I gave my reasoning in the thread I mentioned above, but I’ll expand on it later if you want.
Just a quick note on good and bad political taste.
Reference to any genocide or mass-murder shouldn’t be treated lightly, just to get the reporters reporting or for any trivial reason. But you’ll find that Che’s face features on countless Lefty T-shirts and posters, representating an ideology which in fact holds the world record for mass-murder.
The Western Left shouldn’t pretend to delicate fainting fits.
@Gederts, clutching at straws there. Don’t buy any goods made in communist China, do you?
J: “…Gederts, clutching at straws there. Don’t buy any goods made in communist China, do you?”
Sure, almost everything. All of which could still, or again, be made by Australians, for decent human wages.
In what sense is the current Chinese prominence a sort of Triumph? For What in the world?
@ GEDERTS SKERSTENS
Your reference to “decent human wages” reminds me how the mental universe of politicians changed in the late 1970s before which your average Liberal Party member would have been as devoted as a DLP follower of BA Santamaria (whose intellect I by no means intend to depreciate) to the old Australian settlement and paying high wages in highly protected industries. Indeed I can remember coming back from Hong Kong very pleased with myself for buying, inter alia, a cashmere or angora or some such overcoat (entirely devoted to feeding moths for several decades) at a price less than a local pair of designer jeans only to be told off by the 60ish wife of a Liberal MP because I was taking advantage of sweat shop wages (which wasn’t true as it happened because the highly qualified refugee Shanghainese cutters were properly valued by the tailor that I dealt with, though their cost of living in Hong Kong certainly wouldn’t have reflected Australian wages). The evidence seems now to favour the change in mental universe since the successive Whitlam (yes, that politically ruinous big tariff cut), Hawke/Keating/Kelty/Walsh and Howard etc. reforms have certainly coincided with a huge rise in our standard of living (squandered on, inter alia, McMansions and excessive calorie intake) and, almost beyond dispute, largely caused by the reforms in so far as government matters.
Rufus: I’ve got no interest in the lifestyles or future of ” Shanghainese cutters”.
Our Australian standard of living depends on our own choices about what we do for a living.
Crudely put, bring back Tariffs. Until everyone else goes for the free market, we secure ours.
There was nothing sadder to see than Orange trees being ripped out of our Riverland orchards because local juice couldn’t compete with subsidised Brazilian concentrate shipped from across the globe. Ridiculous.
Who’re the clowns in this? We are.
Same goes for the Chinese Mountain Range of shitty garden-shears, so to speak.
We’ll make our own. And in retaliation, the Chinese can make their own Iron-Ore.
Let’s see how that goes.
Frank,
As usual you’re missing the point, not I.
I don’t dispute that the implementation of the Melbourne desalination plant was botched. Nor do I dispute that Professor Anderson predicted that the global population might drop to 500 million (if the population reaches 9 billion in 2050 and if global temperatures increase by 4C or more).
I was just disputing your claims that Tim Flannery bears any significant responsibility for the desalination plant or that Professor Anderson was predicting that the global population would drop by 95% either by 2050 or even 2061.
Do you understand?
The mendacious lord has been debunked all over the place, his dodgy science exposed, and
yet the denialist sheep still revere him as the voice of truth. It says a lot about the integrity of that flock. Clueless and brainwashed, short of common sense but full of arrogance, most of the anti-carbon tax/AGW denialist crowd don’t have the slightest understanding of the issue but that doesn’t stop them questioning the science. They also have not a shred of evidence on which to impugn the integrity of climate scientist, but that wont stop them repeating ad nauseam conspiracy theories and claims of bias research etc. When such a large proportion of the population has been exposed as so morally and intellectually deficient, you have to question if our current system of democracy is the best way to advance society.
Blah:
denialists”repeating ad nauseam conspiracy theories”
followed by
“When such a large proportion of the population has been exposed as so morally and intellectually deficient, you have to question if our current system of democracy is the best way to advance society.”
What a wonderful example of the political obtuseness of climate millenarianism: lambast the fruitcake conspiracy of the paranoid Right, then feed them another excuse to froth at the mouth…
Straight into my file of Collectible Classics.
Better hurry up and organise the coup, Blah, given the new Lowy poll which shows only 41% now regarding AGW as an urgent problem…falling since 2006.
Morgan should stick to what he does, getting *OPINIONS* from people he polls. In some fields, opinions count for nothing.
I saw this on Crikey’s homepage and thought to myself “I bet that gullible Rufus Marsh/Fritz/Julius/Naughty Naughty Nephew is in here being an apologist for Monckton’s abhorrent behaviour”.
Sure enough, he’s knee deep in it.
We call that “lying”, Rufus.
Like when you say you have “very little interest” in Monckton, yet attend his presentations and appear out of thin air every time he is mentioned in Crikey in order to defend him to the hilt.
Better cover up, your cognitive dissonance is showing.
One more thing - be honest, what is your connection to the Lavoisier Group?
As a bonus we also get the militant right-winger Frank Campbell spewing cherry-picked quotes promoted by News Limited personalities and assorted denier websites and pretending they are widely held views while, as usual, ignoring the basics of the science behind AGW.
Skel:
Verballing me as a “right-winger” shows what a hopeless mess progressives have got themselves into. All their own work. I’ve tried to warn you here for two years plus.
Look at the Lowy poll today- the downward trend in climate millenarianism continues. 41% still gripped by Skel’s kind of self-defeating panic.
And what does my party, the Greens, do to extricate itself from the bog? Brown announces the execution of the coal industry, backed up by Milne today.
The technical term for this is suicide.
Gillard must be in a state of high dungeon…
And I’ll keep right on saying it- climate millenarianism subverts any ratiuonal action on climate, not least because it empowers the Right.
Roll up, roll up, looking forward to the greatest show on Earth?, headline: “The Mad(Adolf Resurrector) Monckton meets the Malicious Mad Monk” or “The Looney Lord and the Abbott of Inanity come together in Climatic Confusion Collusion” mother earth will be mortified by their death defying acts of deception,Barnham and Bailey eat your heart out!
Oh, I forgot, the so very (ratiuonal) Frank Campbell will make a cameo appearance (see above) LOL.
41% of the public versus 97% of climate scientists. What’s wrong with this picture?
Is it because the public understand radiative physics, or because the right have downplayed the science and overplayed the extreme end of the personal opinions of non-climate scientists?
Frank, if you don’t want to be called right wing perhaps you should display a little independent thought beyond touting childishly-simple memes like “it used to be global warming, now it is climate change” and an unhealthy obsession with out-of-context quotes from Tim Flannery.
None of the noise you actively promote disproves the fact global warming is right on track according to the IPCC predictions. It doesn’t cease to exist based on a Lowy poll, or because of what some ethicist who holds an opinion you disagree with says.
I also wound you up (knowing how you would react) to prove a point - you don’t like being verballed, yet you have no problem doing it to people with whom you hold differing opinions.
Your denial of reality has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with a political outcome you find disagreeable.
@Frank Campbell…as you seem to rely on the medias interpretation of the 3 MONTH OLD survey…check the questions Frank with an open mind, if possible.
The questions were:
*1. Global warming is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin
taking steps now even if this involves significant costs
2010 Result: 46
2011 Result: 41
*2. The problem of global warming should be addressed, but its effects
will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem gradually by taking
steps that are low in cost
2010 Result: 40
2011 Result: 40
*3. Until we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should
not take any steps that would have economic costs
2010 Result: 13
2011 Result: 19
Seems to me from all this that the number of people who think global warming is either serious and needs urgent action, or should be addressed, but in a more contemplative, less urgent way is 81% (sum of 1. and 2., 40% + 41% = 81%)
Also seems to me that the questions don’t mention compensation, which we know will be extensive, although it could be implied under Question 1. (“low in cost”).
So those who want to drop everything and do something now, plus those who are prepared to do something “low in cost” is actually quite high.
I would say that this poll has been grossly misinterpreted.
The answer, on these numbers, lies somewhere between 40% and 81% in favour of the Carbon Tax + ETS combination.
According to Lowy, the outright “Do-Nothings” only amount to 1 in 5 respondents.
@Frank: whether AGW is right or wrong, the results of opinion polls on it are totally irrelevant.
In logic, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for “appeal to the people”) is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or most people believe it; it alleges: “If many believe so, it is so.”
This type of argument is known by several names,[1] including appeal to the masses, appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people, argument by consensus, authority of the many, and bandwagon fallacy, and in Latin by the names argumentum ad populum (“appeal to the people”), argumentum ad numerum (“appeal to the number”), and consensus gentium (“agreement of the clans”). It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including communal reinforcement, the bandwagon effect, and the spreading of various religious beliefs. The Chinese proverb “three men make a tiger” concerns the same idea.
Skel: one thing rarely seen in Crikey is independent thought. Least of all from the Knitting Circle.
Meski: of course opinion polls have no bearing on the veracity of AGW. But they do have a critical effect on politics. Therefore on what is done about AGW. Thanks to climate hysterics, this is likely to be nothing.
David: Yup. Problem is the “carbon tax” is not seen as “gradual”: it is widely perceived to be both ineffectual (no effect whatever on global climate), expensive (compo or not), unilateral, idiotic (numerous exemptions) and foisted on the voters after Gillard’s promised not to so so.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@DAVID — Posted Monday, 27 June 2011 at 2:20 pm
Spot on, very spot on and a timely reminder that ‘the people’ aren’t as stupid as the Pollies that use them as such.
Nicely put Meski. You won’t be unaware that you have also diminished the weight of David’s contribution suggesting that the Lowy poll showed a lot of support for action on global warming. As to whicH, did you hear the Lowy man on the radio today saying that the decline in support for action on global warming was real and large and that it was largely due to what didn’t happen and wasn”t said in the first 6 months of the Rudd government, plus the loss of bipartisan support and the feeling that if the proposed reduction is only 5% over about 10 years it can’t be very serious?
Rich Uncle Skeleton: imagination boggles. What interesting story or whim or whimsy is behind that pseudonym? Anyway, more seriously, can you please be precise about a few things. You may well have some points which are concealed by your assuming others have the same factual premises.
“global warming is right on track in accordance with the IPCC’s predictions”
Aren’t there lots of different models with very different predictions in the IPCC reports? At least six? And aren’t the IPCC predictions (perhaps because it is using so many models with different outputs) in the form of “somewhere between X-a and Y+b”. To combat all the deniers who say that the IPCC hasn’t been able to predict what has been happening, shouldn’t you specify what temperatures you are talking about, how they are measured and what the relevant IPCC prediction is?
As to Flannery being quoted out of context or misquoted, isn”t it now generally accepted that Flannery is a bit of a nutter and self-publicist who has no relevant qualifications and has contradicted himself lots of times so that Clive Hamilton has had to pull him up on his paranoia and Will Steffen and others on his nonsense about Gaia as a living being with brain.
Another clarification please. When you refer to climate scientists what and who do you mean? Apart from a few meteorological specialists are there any? What qualifications are the sine qua non? High level physics?
I am not sure whether there are any true analogies. Maybe asking which medical people are qualified to call someone healthy? No, probably, because all doctors have most of their basic medical science in common. And what qualifies those who peruse a range of papers outside their own spheres of expertise ( papers which, on the recent evidence of Ioannidis and others ab0ut medical research, would usually be wrong in major ways) and then prepares summaries of where, when put together, these papers seem to lead? That’s why I ask what you mean when you say for example that 97 per cent of climate scientists agree on global warming being very likely to cause catastrophe (if that is what you say they agree on).
No, in fact I stated “whether right or wrong”. General polls are counter-productive, because politicians take note of them, whereas they should ignore what most of us think.
Frank Campbell your nonsense is catching up to truthie’s rubbish, what a record to be proud of.
A weak retort, but expected from a man who claims to vote Greens and then complains when his party follows through with their election promises.
Michael “Gish Gallop” Peters,
No, but thanks for trying.
Speaking of relevant qualifications, how many of the leading sceptics do? Count them on one hand. Don’t set that up as the qualifier as you will only lose.
No, I shouldn’t.
TheyYou can read the AR4 forthemselvesyourself and get back to me.This may help you:
I hope the above helped your confusion.
Good for you, friend.
Nice try.
Dear Mr Skeleton
Maybe I am ignorant of some standing joke you embody but I confess to being confused by your curious mixture of supercilious, flippant, even frivolous style with apparent seriousness. I really did mean to get some benefit from anything you did take seriously by asking if you would specify what the predictions of the IPCC were that you say have been born out and what the facts are which bear out the predictions.
While you refer vaguely to a report, it actually brings home to me that, to contradict the deniers crowing about the last 12 years or so of unexplained relative stability of global temperatures you need to go back further in the IPCC reports and show that they have predicted with fair accuracy what has occurred in the last 12 years. Or set up your own standards of proof with reasons, but, on the face of it one of those who say that there are a series of climate shifts, and therefore different trends over different periods of a decade or two or more, none of which have been accurately modeled, is not going to be bested in debate by the rather detail short assertions you have offered us as armament.
And I did hope that you were taking important issues seriously enough to address the question of what qualifies a person to be regarded as a climate scientist of authority. Obviously the editorial function for IPCC reports is important but we know that errors have been incorporated that makes it doubtful that many people who cover the field of climate science are involved in that. Government scientific advisors like Sir David King in the UK would qualify as serious scientists but I think he is a chemist so how one brings together all the many strands of science that go into “climate science” at the point where government decisions are made is clearly of some importance. I put forward physicists as a suggestion in part because they should all have the mathematical equipment to deal with the modeling side of climatology and would usually have the highest standards of verifying by experiment and observation. Presumably academic and professional meteorologists are likely to be closer to qualifying as authoritative climate scientists than people who study coral biology or do tree ring analyses. Or maybe you have a different view for some good reason. Maybe you actually know something about the processes of compilation and editing that IPCC authors and editors engage in. That could be helpful in persuading people (if you think we should care that fewer and fewer people according to the Lowy poll are regarding AGW as serious) that the IPCC’s reports embody compellingly authoritative material.
I had never come across the expression “Gish Gallop” but have now looked it up. I hope you don’t think that I was, without knowing anything much about you, ascribing to your contribution this description in Wikipedia
“The gallop is often used as an indirect argument from authority, as it appears to paint the “galloper” as an expert in a broad range of subjects and the opponent as an incompetent bumbler who didn’t do their homework before the debate.”
It is true that I was asking for more written output from the homework but I was far from assuming that it wouldn’t be forthcoming and that you were an incompetent (and lazy) bumbler.
Naturally the thought that you were intending to be insulting rather than bothering to persuade me (or anyone) crossed my mind but this definitional statement seemed obviously inapplicable unless, which seemed unlikely,g you were claiming to have trouble dealing with three pretty straightforward questions:
” The Gish Gallop is an informal name for a debating technique that involves drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood that has been raised. Usually this results in many involuntary twitches in frustration as the opponent struggles just to decide where to start. It is named after creationism activist and professional debater Duane Gish.”
In the end I concluded that you were just engaged in a provocative frolic (is “trolling” the right jargon word for that?) and painted a picture in my mind of a retired schoolteacher who used to run a school debating society and perhaps did a bit of adult debating - Adult Ed, Greens, maybe Democrats? While you may have taught some General Science I am sure you are not a scientist or claim to have any such qualification but, it doesn’t stop me hoping that someone who takes an intelligent interest in a science related subject (even if economics is much more important for our country) might flesh out the important assertions you made.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@MICHAEL PETERS — Posted Tuesday, 28 June 2011 at 3:29 am
You deserve a commendation for effort.
I am left slightly wondering about answers you might give to some of the questions you raise. But I think you have done enough.
It’s tough when every ‘scientist’ delivering any work/paper/discovery on just about anything feels compelled by the media to add the ‘how will this affect future climate change’ commentary, commentary not science. In that sense it all becomes so much more complex than the ‘science’ itself where you successfully point to the complex complexity.
Dr Harvey Tarvydas
“I think you have done enough” may be a polite admonition to me but I do think I have offered more hints about the way I might approach answering my own questions than you acknowledge because I have indicated my prima facie respect for high level physicists if you want to find someone who could be authoritative as a climate scientist and I have given reasons of theory and practice why that might be my starting point.
I will come back to the “what is a climate scientist” question below but divert to deal with the matter of IPCC predictions and what the measured facts show. My own understanding is that the more honest and sophisticated analyses of the time series of global temperatures do show continuation of a long term warming trend over a couple of hundred years but that there are major changes in direction (or angle of the trend line - including down) at various points. Pacific Climate Shift, or some such, is often attributed to the late 1970s. At least some of the people at East Anglia were, we know from the notorious emails, concerned that the models then published didn’t predict the flattening out of global temperature change which set in about 1998 after an El Nino. However….
Something seriously important may be recorded in the latest Scientific American which has just arrived. It seems that there was a huge eruption of greenhouse gases about 56 million years ago as the Pangaea supercontinent was being ripped apart finally. And it seems that temperatures rose about 5 degrees Celsius with all sorts of flow on effects. Interesting detail was that Antarctica didn’t exist as an ice covered continent but did have vast permafrost areas from which methane could be released by warming. It is possible that too much is made of the release of methane, including methane which had been frozen on the ocean floor (as there is now I understand) because, as is acknowledged, methane degrades to CO2 (and something irrelevant) pretty quickly. Still, a picture is given of continuous long term release of methane setting off a process which has positive feedbacks for temperature rise over a long period, though not curiously, as I have read it, anything to do with water vapour. The most troubling thing is the suggestion that what is happening now could be a lot faster than the temperature rise process that occurred 56 million years ago. Acidification of the ocean then, also - though over a very long period - seems to have wiped out a large part of the oceanic bacteria and other fauna. That latter effect may have been a specialised deep ocean phenomenon because the article makes clear that there would have been plenty of fauna enjoying the warmth of Spitzbergen etc. So, bad news perhaps for our great- great-grandchildren but nothing like a wipe out of our species.
Back to starting point: Without giving the sort of precise answer that I think someone with Mr Skeleton’s strong views might be expected to be capable of I add that you have prompted me to consider, not only the physicists I know to be interested in the climate debates but some others. Dr John Zillman is a charming man whom I have met and sounds very reasonable about the work of himself and others on IPCC editorial panels. Here is his CV
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/fam/1313.html
Very impressive, up to a point, starting with the sort of experience that Watts of Wattsupwiththat (or some such website) might also claim. But not much evidence of the specialised analytical skills that might give critical approval or the reverse to submitted papers. (By contrast, an extremely worthy bureaucratic-cum-technical career is indicated. )
Compare that former Treasury and IPA warrior, mate of Des Moore, John Stone, who had first class honours in mathematical physics before scaling greater intellectual heights at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. (So how did he fall for Joh B-P’s political charms you might ask!). What you might want to bet on is that a Stone would be a very demanding sort of person to have on an IPCC committee in a way that the amiable Dr. Zillman might not.
I would have added what I could find on the sceptics’ favourites like the renowned MIT prof of meteorology Richard Lindzen and former Australian BOM boffin Dr William Kininmonth but time presses. Perhaps because time always presses I have missed any credible attacks on their scientific credibility. They seem to have qualifications that are solidly relevant (though someone may correct me) and they are on the sceptical side, at least in terms of magnitude of likely outcomes. It is a bit frustrating when people raise for laymen’s contemplation the relative weight of expertise with people like Moore emphasising the signing of a sceptical manifesto by 30,000 “scientists” - 9000 with PhDs or some such - and others saying that 97 per cent of “climate scientists” agree on something or other (and even the something or other runs into the big differences in the different IPCC models as a kind of index of something rather different from consensus if that means agreement).
Michael Peters, you are what’s known as a “concern troll”:
I suggest you actually read the primary literature as opposed to the bizzaro renderings taken from denialist blogs you are currently flinging at me, like a monkey hurling its own poop.
Then we will talk.
Until then I suggest you direct your questions at the expert within our midst, Rufus Marsh (although he goes by a variety of other names too - see if you can catch them!)
How would you distinguish a ‘concern troll’ from one who actually had those points of views and concerns?
(but I do think Crikey needs to restore posting size limits)
Because genuinely concerned people don’t usually suggest that the IPCC start employing people from right-wing thinktanks, or that the Chairman of the Australian Branch of the Royal Meteorological Society and PhD holder has equal experience with a broadcast meteorologist (not a real meteorologist) who runs a skeptical website.
Michael,
You have.
Indeed. I do seem to have drawn a couple of pieces of evidence. One is that Mr S doesn’t pay much attention to what others say and did indeed intend to be insulting. The immediate reason for saying that is that it is pretty well encapsulated by this:
“I suggest you actually read the primary literature as opposed to the bizzaro renderings taken from denialist blogs you are currently flinging at me, like a monkey hurling its own poop.”
“bizarro renderings taken from denialist blogs” says more about his imagination than anything I have said.
But, sadly, his definition of “concern troll” seems so clearly to imply that Crikey subscriber/bloggers are some kind of cult or sect - which would be distressing to its publishers I am sure. These are the naively (?) telling words
“The concern troll posts in Web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group’s actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, …”
Your, Meski’s, suggestion about length of posts is given a rather sinister ring in that context. It is OK to utter abuse or dismissive, supercilious put downs, with or without any attempt at accuracy of representation, in brief explosions of personal opinion or emotion. But taking care to cover the territory, or, perhaps, offering, as I notice Frank Campbell has been known to do, information or thoughts which might be of interest to the largely leisured lot who frequent blogs: that isn’t to be accepted. So, you seem to be in tune with Mr S. on this, it should be an insider cotery’s blog.
I am obviously an outsider and won’t be renewing my trial sub. If I did I would be vaguely wondering if Mr S. had got bored with getting his kicks out of a Colonel Blimp act and decided to be someone else with a more amiable and entertaining demeanour. He seems to think some people have multiple online personalities. Do you know anything about his?
Thanks for your input Rufus. Edifying as always.
PS I have read most of the last two IPCC reports FWIW and, since I didn’t remember anything which bore out Mr S’s assertions, that is one good reason for asking him to be specific about what he was talking about. I guess I have read about about half a dozen peer reviewed article which could be classed as “climate science” in full and another dozen less comprehensively, usually because I didn’t have time to master the mathematical notation.
My objectivee economist friends, none on either government or CO2 related industry payrolls, seem to be unanimous that the scientific arguments are pretty well irrelevant to the carbon tax or ETS debates in our country though they wheel in some scientific evidence that the subsidised renewables are crap. I do point out to them that we need to know a bit about what we are likely to have to adapt too so we had better pay attention to the scientific evidence about how quickly corals can adapt to higher temperatures (though I am told that pollution is much more serious right now) etc.
MR S - I had decided to ignore you after it became clear you were incorrigible in that guise but I do want to correct yet another example of your not paying attention to what people say (or affecting or exhibiting an intellectual deficiency). I think you are perhaps enjoying your little Gish Gallop sprints. You say
“Because genuinely concerned people don’t usually suggest that the IPCC start employing people from right-wing thinktanks, or that the Chairman of the Australian Branch of the Royal Meteorological Society and PhD holder has equal experience with a broadcast meteorologist (not a real meteorologist) who runs a skeptical website.”
But I didn’t “suggest that the IPCC start employing people from right-wing thinktanks”. I merely made a personal assessment of the likelihood that a well known sharp critical thinker like Stone (with whose published opinions and arguments I would often not agree) with a first class mathematical physics degree - not to mention his history in Treasury - might/would apply a more astringent level of critical analysis than someone like Dr Zillman if given the task of sorting through the papers that IPCC editors have to deal with. Nor did I make the comparison with Watts (who, I am reliably told, has now published in a peer-reviewed journal with a conventionally credentialled academic) in the form you portray. What I said- of the admirable John Zillman’s CV was
“Very impressive, up to a point, starting with the sort of experience that Watts of Wattsupwiththat (or some such website) might also claim. But not much evidence of the specialised analytical skills that might give critical approval or the reverse to submitted papers.” Please note “starting with” which, if you read the CV, was exactly right for the beginning of his career. He is not, as I understand, known for any mathematical prowess - in case you suggest that, in my attempt to provide answers which you haven’t to Dr T, I have neglected the later part of his education.
As for your terse linking of http://www.skepticalscience.com/Lindzen_Illusions.htm
which does take on Lindzen (though not Kininmonth) I chose the further link
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity.htm
which deals with the all important subject of feedback (positive or negative and of what magnitude?) that, I note, is dealt with in a way to make one worry in the Scientific American article I referred to, but it doesn’t actually do much or anything to support the point you were seeking to make. It also shows any number of different model projections which put it right back on you, unless you are trolling with your glib assertions, to say which predictions you were referring to and what data satisfies them.
The real news in this thread is Frank Campbell dreams he’s something other than a right wing climate denier!
the proof is in a very large pud of evidence.
And btw your reference to Stone as a person from a Right wing think tank is a bit odd in more ways than one. He is over 80 and, if on the board of a think tank (as many distinguished people are in more or less nominal capacities, as for charities) he is hardly now “from a think tank”. It would have been more relevant to refer to him as former Secretary of the Treasury where one would hope to find a critical, sceptical mind.
Rufus, according to my “research” (and I know you hate it when I look things up) you left you that he was also a National Party senator and has founded or is a member of a wide range of conservative political groups. He is also a flagrant global warming denier who believes it’s a green and UN conspiracy. His scepticism isn’t based on science, it’s based on politics.
I am appalled that you would think this political hack with no scientific experience (and indeed, who hasn’t studied science for 60 years, or ever worked in the field) would be a better nominee to the IPCC than a currently employed meteorologist who has over forty years of experience based on some kind of unfounded speculation that Dr. Zillman isn’t “demanding” enough, presumably because he comes to conclusions you disagree with.
I prefer my science done by scientists, not politicians wielding unscientific conspiracy theories who get their science from Michael Critchton.
Rufus, I know you have strong links with leading sceptics. I think it’s time, in the objective of an honest discussion, for you to disclose those links and to what groups you are a member.
Until you do you are concern trolling (under five names now, I note)
Yes.
You were told.
By me.
His paper proved his own urban heat effect hypothesis wrong. It was also rejected multiple times until he was forced to take on an actual statistician to do the maths properly.
Isn’t peer review a wonderful thing?
Having read a speech he made, no. He clearly lacks any critical or objective capacity and is driven by personal politics and conspiracy, the precise opposite who the IPCC should be hiring. Anybody - anybody! - who cites a single weather station in Chile as proof AGW isn’t occurring should not be allowed anywhere near the IPCC.
If you can offer me any proof that Zillman has been failing his position by not “applying a more astringent level of critical [analysis]” other than you disagreeing with the conclusions of the IPCC for political reasons, I would love to see it.
As for Watts and Zillman, you can’t even compare them. In order to be a broadcast meteorologist all you have to do is complete a basic course. They are not in the same league and it is a lie to suggest otherwise.
Look harder. You are very good at not finding things you don’t want to know.
MR S
I am not aware of Stone having made a speech about global warming but won’t disbelieve you if you suggest that he can be very ratty at times. Can you provide a link to the speech you are referring to. I wouldn’t propose him for IPCC editing or compilation but, at least when he was in his combative prime, I would have thought his critical mind would have beavered away at any weaknesses to useful effect. Admittedly it could be a matter of being well connected as it seems to have been when he brought the fatal flaw in the ID card legislation to light when he was a Senator.
I wouldn’t want to criticise Zillman but I know a mathematical physicist (not Stone) who didn’t think his mathematics was up to doing more than the many right-thinking scientists and scientific academics who have nothing personally to contribute from their research or analysis but join the responsible, precautionary-principle, bandwagon as much as anything else because of tribal solidarity, family feeling and friendship in relation to people they regard as able and reputable in their (different) areas. What Zillman told me about the IPCC methods sounded perfectly logical and respectable but not quite the same as a PhD supervisor’s close attention to his charge’s arguments or that of the head of department assessing the work, approved in advance by him or her, of a post-doc student. In short, there was no peer review added to whatever peer review may have gone into the articles which were submitted to the IPCC. And we do know that some at least of the editorial committees fell down on the job, not just on the Himalayan melt, but in citing a Friends of the Earth mag or some such. All of which simply means that I have, in answer to Dr T, and from a standing start, gone rather further than you in attempting to ascertain what criteria one might apply before describing someone as a climate scientist and according them authority. And that still leaves the original question, which was to you, unanswered, so your answer can’t be doubted…..
Do you btw, in the RUS guise, have a view about adaptation as against reducing CO2 emissions in Australia, about the currently proposed carbon tax as against a Carmody tax (which I think Rufus Marsh has supported), about keeping or cutting subsidies and incentives for renewables which have been branded by the Productivity Commission as extremely costly and economically inefficient? Actually, apart from abusing denialists and sceptics, real or apparent, do you have any positive views at all?
Rufus,
I did but the comment is in moderation.
Your first point is anecdotal evidence, hearsay. As you have commented under multiple names and expressed multiple, contradictory opinions do you understand how I might not hold you up as a beacon of honesty and impartiality?
Your second point is conspiratorial. As a eminent meteorologist Dr. Zillman is perfectly placed to review IPCC reports. Your attitude towards scientists who don’t share your fringe beliefs is demeaning, condescending and offensive. There is not some cabal of scientists all jumping aboard a bandwagon because they want to look good. There is a group of scientists who are scientifically literate enough to understand the evidence and accept that the consensus view of climate scientists is correct.
You mean there was a single mistake in a 1600 document? Heavens above!
The IPCC reports are summaries of the peer-reviewed literature. If there isn’t enough scepticism in it for your liking, it’s because sceptics can never pass peer review as their theories fail under even the smallest scrutiny.
Jeez, Rufus.
Really?
Sinister? No. Brevity is the soul of wit. You don’t have to tie yourself down to twitter-like utterances, but when your output exceeds the vertical screen size of a portrait oriented 24” monitor, you’ve hit the other extreme.
As you may have intended, Mr S, it is possible to become fascinated by your mental tics or whatever it is that makes one wonder whether you have an intellectual deficit or whether you are just an arch practitioner of what you have taught me to know as the Gish Gallop.
Gish like, you do a good job of leaving a reader wondering where to start on your cascading mispresentations and omissions. For example, you criticise me for not noting John Stone’s having been a National Party Senator. So I am left wondering which of two completely conclusive answers I should proffer first. One is that, even assuming that it was important to give the or my grounds for not accepting or agreeing with everything Stone said, I had clearly done that and the second is that it is simply not true that I had omitted reference to his participation in the Joh for PM push - surely much more significant to any thinking person than mere membership of the National Party as Senator or otherwise. I had expressly said ” (So how did he fall for Joh B-P’s political charms you might ask!).” You can’t really pretend plausibly to be so dumb and ignorant not to know what that was referring to.
And so, in the end, and in sum, Mr S, taking you seriously because the subject is serious, you * appear* to be someone who believes (i) the increases in CO2 in the atmosphere are threatening serious harm to Australians and human being generally within the 21st century, (ii) that Australia can do something which, even in the absence of agreed worldwide acton will contribute materially to lessening that danger and the possible impact on us and others from rising temperatures, (iii) that the government’s current policy as negotiated with the Greens is going to play a significant part in achieving the desired, necessary and worthwhile lessening of the danger and of adverse impacts, and (iv) that the cost of giving effect to that policy is going to be less than the costs of adaptation to whatever climate change occurs and whatever it inflicts on us. Right?
And from where, apart from what you loosely call hearsay and anecdotal evidence, do you derive your opinions? I presume, since you provide abuse rather than argument, that you have no basis for calling your understanding of what the IPCC reports say and the weight to be given to them, or to Professor Garnaut’s report or that of the Productivity Commission for example, anything weightier than hearsay, i.e. something on which, absent any personal scientific research or modelling, you rely just because you have some reasonable or unreasonable regard for the source.
Oh, and by the way, is “Venise Alstergren” another of your avatars? I must say that you are a versatile character actor if that is so.
Meski, I am afraid the Gish Gully performances of some like Mr S tend to get me in, conscientiously trying to do the opposite of what they do which involves dotting many Is and crossing many Is.
Rufus Marsh/Julis/Fritz/Naughty Naughty Nephew/Michael Peters:
Where did I say any of these things? Why are you fabricating lies?
Your sad efforts at a producing a “gotcha” with loaded assumptions are sad.
Are you still harping on about this? Using nothing but facts and logic I forced you to back down. Give up Rufus. Your lame attempt to insist that a politician would somehow do a better job than a scientist working in the field was an arsehat of an idea and you should be ashamed for ever having suggested it.
Typical right-wing victimisation tactics at work. If I could have a dollar for every time a denier has cried “abuse” when he has shown to be wrong.
I have the scientific literacy to understand it, and trust in the peer review process, a trust it has earned. I also have something you don’t have - scepticism. I am sceptical of sceptics and of those who have easy answers and tell me what I want to hear. I am able to assess information for myself. You switch off when you hear something you don’t want to (for instance, being shown the Monckton Rap Sheet which you refused to read).
I see my characterisations of your arguments are hurting you by the clumsy way you are trying to turn them back on me. The only person here with multiple sockpuppets, lies, misrepresentations and gish gallops is you.
BTW, any closer on explaining your connections to the Lavoisier Group?
It’s very hard for me to treat you with the seriousness you demand (typical concern troll) when you are intimately involved with, and most likely a member of, a group who deny science for political reasons.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@MICHAEL PETERS — Posted Tuesday, 28 June 2011 at 11:16 am
It was not meant as a polite admonition but respect for the effort you made to discuss with me this complex but supremely important huge subject which has a highly complex mix of science from multiple disciplines with aspects well evidenced and other aspects not so well and therefore is set in a rather sensational thickly textured matrix of human wisdom, scientific and practical emanating from such a sensational human intellectual mix.
Thus finding trustworthy messengers and philosophers to aide the human race along a life/planet saving necessary journey is seriously important.
Some aspects of the science of necessity must be open to discussion and this will (as one has to expect with humans) mean argument.
Fundamental, most significant components of the accumulated human wisdom on the subject demand action beyond argument or discussion as I have pointed out in previous posts.
I have been through the mill as a scientist and a medical doctor I have knowledge and experience as would most competents but I also was born with that total separate to intellect mental commodity called creativity (runs in the family) and have made hugely significant inventions in science and medicine.
The worlds leading scientist have recognised these but my so called medical peers have tried to totally destroy me publically due to their lack of scientific wisdom and personal inconvenience, and a group of them being blessed with a motivation that has justified sheer criminality in their misled attack on me. (poor twits – they don’t know what’s coming)
I believe simple wisdom emanating from the indisputable scientific facts commands humans to take action to curtail emissions in-spite of the sparing and jostling over some details.
Michael Peters (for today at least).
You’re a very, very odd man.
If nothing else, I’d love to understand what you think you’re doing with all the aliases.
Rohan - whoever you are, undoubtedly using an alias, and certainly not having explained it, which is - well, a bit odd in the context of your post:
You may choose to believe the extraordinary stuff that the person who uses the truly bizarre pseudonym of Rich Uncle Skeleton emits about aliases. But then you might also care to notice all the other stuff that shows either intellectual deficiency (if one compares his claims and misrepresentations with reality) or someone, perhaps as a kind psychological experiment-cum-joke for his own pleasure, keeps on saying things which constantly bring to mind the Gish Gallop which he himself (perhaps the retired teacher with an interest in debating which he has not denied) introduced.
As I said earlier I am not renewing my trial Crikey sub so won’t be able to follow the games being played by almost totally anonymous weirdos (or pretended weirdos) with time on their hands.
My observation is that there is somewhere between 1 and 5 per cent of Crikey, including the blogs, which is worth the time of a person who isn’t simply playing around on the verandah at Mission Beach. The chances of actually changing someone’s thought processes on an important subject by something like careful Socratic dialogue would appear to be so slight, though not nil, that it would be Quixotic to blog for that purpose.
Conducting informal psychological experiments or merely seeing how and how long people can be tormented by the curious performances of some like he (or she) who calls him or herself Rich Uncle Skeleton (who is possibly just chuckling at how he or she plays with people’s minds by a series of false assertions, non-sequiturs and almost no indication of his/her own genuine belief about anything or sources of knowledge - apart from a pretty elementary use of a search engine like Google): any and all of that seems possible.
So, ave atque vale Nemo.
Off you go Rufus/Julis/Fritz/Naughty Naughty Nephew/Michael Peters, my concern trolling friend. Back to the Lavoisier Group where nobody ever challenges your false assertions and where you can lie in peace.
Until we meet again the next time Crikey do a piece on Monckton and you run in here to defend your hero (with a new sockpuppet, no doubt).
And maybe next time Rufus/Julis/Fritz/Naughty Naughty Nephew/Michael Peters you will have the balls to challenge me on what I say instead of ignoring it by accusing me of “intellectual deficiency” or of not “paying attention” to your childish, one-dimensional and embarrassingly transparent arguments.
Barmy. Or just playing the same Colonel Blimp part with explosive abuse? Have you no other games? To say that I have not challenged you on what you have said is 180 degrees from the truth as anyone can check. (Try my response to your accusing me of a significant failure to mention Stone’s status as National Party senator just as one of many examples, inevitably verbal because of the fact next noted). What you actually believe and detail and are willing to state carefully on substantive matters is notably withheld. I am sure there are some denialists/sceptics who would be delighted to take you on over such beliefs if only you would state them, until at least they too decided that you were playing mildly malicious games.
I’ve done a bit of the sort of “research” which would appear to be the kind you do and find that the Julius/Rufus/Fitz group that you provide as the fruits of your searches already tells you that one of them has possibly attended a Lavoisier Group meeting or lecture without actually belonging to it and that at least one believes in a carbon tax in some form but evidently doesn’t believe in its actually being any use in combating CO2 emissions (at least in its planned form) or, in any form, as likely to make any difference to the climate that Australia experiences. At least one of them would probably have had no difficulty answering the question that I put to you about adaptation v. restricting Australia’s CO2 emissions because, unlike you, he or she has already made his/her answer plain enough.
In the end I thank you for giving me the expression “Gish gallop” and so well illustrating it. Humour of a kind perhaps.
PS: anticipating Mr S’s clodhopping debating points I note that the second par of my last post is not an acceptance that the identification of several personae is valid but merely noting where your own assumptions lead, namely to the fact that, unlike you, your hypothesised opponent has declared him or herself on all the matters of substance - unlike you.
Keep digging that hole Rufus/Julius/Fitz/Naughty Naughty Nephew/Michael Peters.
The only clodhopping was your sad attempt to trap me into a set of heavily booby-trapped “beliefs” that, if I accepted, you would spring a plethora of denier talking points upon me thus proving what you think is your intellectual superiority. How irritating for you then I saw your lumbering, transparent trap.
Grow up. What abuse? That you perceive criticism of your arguments as abuse says much about your insecurity.
“Malicious”? Don’t be so paranoid. You might be happier.
I am touched you feel you have to defend your other sockpuppets, Rufus.
If you want to know why I won’t debate the science with you, it’s because you’re not an honest person. You have close links to denial groups you refuse to disclose and I have no intention of debating science with somebody who is going to gish gallop through the usual Lindzen/Monckton/Watts et al. talking points which have all been disproven, if you’d care to look outside your comfortable little Lavoisier Group groupthink.
@ Michael Peters
Don’t worry. I think it’s me that he’s accusing of lacking honesty though it is hard to work out why. It can’t be that he needs to know one’s precise qualifications and affiliations. That might be an emotional contribution to the his reasoning but hardly logical or reasonable.
You were pretty shrewd in your suggestion of what he has retired from. But I think your suggestion (which he didn’t seem to notice was just one alternative) of intellectual deficiency was not quite right. Although he implicitly denies it, the alternative that he is games playing is a bit closer to the mark. I understand his disability retirement was on stress (i.e. emotional rather than cognitive) grounds.
BTW Monckton has said something (heard on the ABC) unquestionably sensible, which is that, whatever the truth of the science, the plans for Australia to (pretend to) reduce carbon dioxide emissions make no sense. Well, we already knew that Julia Gillard didn’t regard it as (sufficiently, if at all) beneficial to Australia to go for the ETS last year or the carbon tax. And we know that it is to be structured to do no good at all except to vote buying power. And we have the Productivity Commission spelling out how absurdly expensive are the renewable energy projects that Greens and greenish hued others have dragged all parties into. (Malcolm Turnbull can be forgiven his light bulbs gimmick which at least has got past the point analogous to when you couldn’t buy a ruler with feet and inches on it! And maybe it has even helped bring down the price of flourescents etc). Politicians who weren’t just madly competing for 51 per cent of the seats and were serious about subjects they at least pretend to regard seriously would long since have put us on course for nuclear power as at least a smalll part of our future power generation (and giving some help to BHP and others in marketing our vast uranium resources).
Of course some Crikey bloggers want us to go, demographically, the way of Japan but without Japan’s savings or competitive industry. I don’t think they are greedy rationalists who want a bigger share of the pie that the miners make for us all so I wonder how they feel about the likely consequences of America’s rapid decline and withdrawal into itself. Unless we make ourselves as rich as possible, with big savings instead of self-indulgent debt, are we going to be able to look after our interests in the unlikely, but historically far from impossible, event that a quick invasion is launched, or just threatened or hinted at, to take over the Kimberley, offshore gas, and other northern resources. Compare the British take over of the Boer republics which were behaving unsatisfactorily in the matter of mining. Compare also Sweden, quite resource rich in iron ore but with a small population, having armed forces which didn’t depend on NATO to preserve its independence during the Cold War. “Finnlandisation” is an expression which comes to mind for our situation without a powerful US or Europe and an aging Japan as our only large and modern friend. In that context reducing Australia’s emissions of CO2 might be regarded as not just useless but a displacement activity.
Ye gods Michael, are you OCD or something?
One flippant comment and you respond with a page of suitably tortuous waffle, replete with pointless qualifications and comment on irrelevant details. How do you get by in daily life?
Like all climate denialists you desperately need to believe you’re some kind of original and advanced thinker, with your continual pompous references to enlightened debate, yet you’re oblivious to how transparent your pretence to ‘objective truth-seeking’ is to anyone with half a brain. RUS isn’t the only one who sees through you like a fish-net stocking, yet he’s the only one who calls your bullshit regularly.
So lacking is your self-awareness, that in your response to me you expose yourself on at least 10 occasions with statements like “won’t be able to follow the games being played by almost totally anonymous weirdos (or pretended weirdos) with time on their hands” and “You may choose to believe the extraordinary stuff that the person who uses the truly bizarre pseudonym of Rich Uncle Skeleton emits about aliases.”
And because I know how much you love obsessing over trifling details, I will concede that I write under an alias - otherwise known as my first name. I omit my last name for truly sinister reasons of course.
Oops! You’re Rufus again. Dang!
Rohan, it must be the obsessive attention to detail part of OCD but I can’t help notice that you have a problem which, in a serious context, as for an advocate in court, would have you brought up sharply. “continual pompous references to enlightened debate” really won’t do. Where is there one reference to “enlightened debate”?
Likewise “objective truth-seeking” which - maybe by way of solecism - you put in quotes. If anyone could imagine you were a member of the Bar one (maybe an irritated judge) might ask the chairman of the ethics committee to have a quiet word with you which would point out, one would hope unnecessarily the problem with an advocate who makes up quotes, not least because cognitive impairment will not be presumed.
Then there is the separate problem of your self-centred view of relevance. It is true that some valedictory reflections were not especially rooted in what you had - I accept you description - flippantly said. But you can hardly complain about *any* response if you call someone “odd” and then say you would like to understand. A little more thought mightn’t give you the self-awareness which you fail to detect in others but you might reflect on why you suggest that I have any need to believe anything, let alone that I am an “original and advanced thinker” (sic). Care for accuracy, attention to detail which seems relevant and attempts to spell out and have others acknowledge plodding common sense might, on a fair minded reading (which I have just sort from one who said “yes, but boring: and why are you wasting your time with those w*nkers?”) have been justified by the evidence.
While waiting on the promised link to the Stone speech in which he is said to have made egregious statements (which, as some, if not Mr S may have noted) is not something that my own words would suggest I would be surprised by, let me add a suggestion for Rohan as to why, after my brief experience of Crikey blogs, someone might want to be anonymous. Games playing as I have suggested (kindly) for Mr S, but otherwise, considering some of the Rufus Marsh output, I expect it might be because he would be mortified at allowing intimations of contempt to spill out from his own everyday person. (Despite your verbal provocations noted above, I am not suggesting that you might be a subject of contempt, though New Agey stuff about someone lacking awareness goes too nicely with “denialism” to escape altogether. I am of the school which notes that a person being “in denial” is most likely choosing not to tell the naive observer all that he or she is thinking. Of course the usual use of “denialism” in the AGW debate is more sinister and offensive since it seems to refer to a conscious evil denial of reality, but you would hardly want to be associated with that witch-hunting standpoint would you?).
It couldn’t be because you’re pretending to be two different people in one thread.
It would be more believable if you weren’t constantly congratulating yourself.
The comment was published a long time ago, Rufus, but I’m sure you saw it live at your little group not long before you met Dr. Zillman there when he made a speech.
BTW - surprise, surprise. Minutes after I predict that Rufus should start running through Monckton talking points, what does he do?
Spot on Rohan. I haven’t seen anybody fail this hard at the internet in a while. I look forward to five comments and 1,000 words in response, all of which cry “victim” and none of which have anything to do with what I have written.
Rufus Marsh/Julius/Fitz/Naughty Naughty Nephew/Micheal Peters:
I’m beginning to think you aren’t the tactical genius I took you for.
Can’t you ghoulish lot shut up!
It’s not that there isn’t a kind of ghastly fascination in it but it’s also depressing to contemplate what old age might do to those of us who are still just hoping to get there.
This seems to have degenerated into discussions over who is whose sock puppet. Does it really matter? And how do you tell, without a log of the ip addresses behind the posts? (and that’s not a cast-iron method) If you *do* have the ip addresses, I’m curious how you obtained them. Possibly Crikey might be, as well.
In reply to Michael Peters, I’ve got to say, Uncle Skeleton’s input is much more substantive than his verbose drivel. What little he had to say could have been summed up in 100 words (as opposed to 2000). One can find in his contributions nothing more than the usual baseless denialist memes, but draped in the most tortured and superfluous language. Of Uncle Skeleton, he condescendingly surmises, “a picture in my mind of a retired schoolteacher who used to run a school debating society and perhaps did a bit of adult debating - Adult Ed, Greens, maybe Democrats?” Oh, how beneath me. And how relevant to the issue.The picture I have in my mind of Michael Peters, or whatever his real name is, is of a pedantic lawyer, brimming with hubris. And we know how they like to play with words, especially for the purpose of deceiving and confusing people.
“To combat all the deniers who say that the IPCC hasn’t been able to predict what has been happening, shouldn’t you specify what temperatures you are talking about, how they are measured and what the relevant IPCC prediction is?”
No. Meteorologists can predict a storm coming, and broadly speaking, how severe it will be, even though it is very doubtful that they can predict the exact amount of expected rainfall. The temperatures ARE rising, there’s no modelling involved, and a simple extrapolation can tell you how bad it’s going to get.
“Another clarification please. When you refer to climate scientists what and who do you mean? Apart from a few meteorological specialists are there any? What qualifications are the sine qua non? High level physics? “
It’s clear that the questioning of qualification of climate scientists is just one more denialist tactic which is designed to obfuscate and throw doubt rather than a genuine desire to know. The field of climate science is obviously one which combines different strands of earth-science, and accordingly, different scientists will have different specialities. A quick look at a well known climate blog, realclimate, and clicking on the contributors page (there are about half a dozen contributing scientists) will show what their qualifications are:
…received a BA (Hons) in Mathematics from Oxford University, a PhD in Applied Mathematics from University College London and was a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research.
…undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University
Ph.D. from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts.
D.Phil in physics from Atmospheric, Oceanic & Planetary Physics at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
PhD in Plant Science from UCD _ expertise in the analysis of tree rings as climatic proxies, and the role of forest vegetation in the carbon cycle and larger climate system
A physicist and oceanographer by training… has moved from early work in general relativity theory to working on climate issues.
…has written or edited ten books on climatic change, and authored more than 100 refereed articles on the subject. In 2004, he received a Doctor of Science (D.Sc) degree from Southampton University (U.K.) for his contributions to the field of paleoclimatology.
MA, and M.S. and PhDs in Geological Sciences at the University of Washington,
Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago,…degree in Physics from Harvard, was then a Knox Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, and completed his PhD on hydrodynamic stability theory at MIT
That’s only half a dozen scientists from one blog. It didn’t take very long to do, and the fool would have done so if he was genuine in his inquiries and not just a dishonest denier (as most deniers are), trying to muddy the issue.
“As to Flannery being quoted out of context or misquoted, isn”t it now generally accepted that Flannery is a bit of a nutter and self-publicist who has no relevant qualifications…”
A non-sequitur. How is labelling Flannery a nutter responding to the accusation that he’s been “quoted out of context or misquoted”?
“Very impressive, up to a point, starting with the sort of experience that Watts of Wattsupwiththat…”
What a laugh! Watts is so clueless that when attempting to analyse temperature data (temp. anomalies) from 4 different source (GISS, HadCRU, UAH, RSS) and then casting doubt on their reliability, he didn’t know that they had different baselines. See discussion here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080409021712/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/whats-up-with-that/
I could go on responding to denialist clap-trap, but this is already too long and I’ve got better things to do. What is most apparent when analysing ‘denialism’ is that it’s not genuine scepticism but a psychological condition driven by blind ideology and the refusal to believe that humans are capable of having an impact on something as large as the planet. This aligns well with the conservative/free-market ideals of guilt-free and limitless growth/consumption and exploitation of resources.
@Meski.
Doubtless no-one could tell if you posted under a bunch of different personas.
But that’s becuase you don’t have an uncannily convoluted style of communication or constantly make reference to the same cast of players.
Congratulations to the laconic Meski for a great left-right combination. First a good logical point but then you also flush out “Rohan” to reveal himself thus:
“But that’s becuase you don’t have an uncannily convoluted style of communication or constantly make reference to the same cast of players.”
So “Rohan” has been stalking Crikey like a Peeping Tom for weeks or months or years and yet we don’t hear from him till this thread has been running for a week? Oh, who is Rohan? Who is he?
The following study done by myself and assisted by a scientist is only to demonstrate that the warming can be mostly if not all explained by thermal emmissions or basically a large scale heat island study using energy use data. This is not intended to give any exact warming extent as average values are used and wind land cover etc are not taken into account (this is virtually impossible despite the claims of organisations such as NASA or CSIRO) Also the energy use is not constant and will have greater effects when weather is cold and heating is more widely used.
The energy use we shall use is the total annual use of fossil fuels and nuclear. These 2 energy sources are being released by humans.
Numbers used for calculations.
Area m2 is square metres
USA 9626091000000 m2
China 9596960000000 m2
France 547030000000 m2
Germany 357021000000 m2
United Kingdom 244820000000 m2
Planet Surface 510066000000000 m2
(Source : http://www.worldatlas.com)
Annual energy use based on energy use in 2009. Includes fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Does not include others such as wind solar biofuels geothermal or hydro.
Mtoe is Million tonnes or oil equivalent.
USA 2119.8 Mtoe
China 2037.7 Mtoe
France 228.8 Mtoe
Germany 285.6 Mtoe
United Kingdom 197.7 Mtoe
World 10424 Mtoe
(Source : Statistical review of world energy full report 2010 (Beyond Petroleum))
The following formula was used. It basically is working out the amount of energy in continuous watt output per hour per metre squared and then calculating out the expected change in temperature by using the average input of energy from the sun using Albedo and Suns energy per square according to NASA. This is not intended to give any accurate prediction but just a general prediction.
Mtoe* 11.63*1 000 000 000 000 (conversion of Mtoe to Watts)*0.7 (energy available as thermal energy)/365/24(conversion to Watt output per hour)/land area in square metres(to give energy output per square metre per hour)*Kelvin 287/342/.703(to give estimated temperature change where Kelvin 287 is earth average temperature 342 is available energy from sun and 0.703 is the amount available to the troposphere after the albedo)
After doing these calculations if the air never left the country and everything else such as albedo remained constant mentioned these would be the approximate temperature changes.
USA 0.24 degrees increase
China 0.23 ,,
France 0.46 ,,
Germany 0.88 ,,
United Kingdom 0.89 ,,
World 0.0224 ,,
Conclusions: If a climate model printout has not taken this into account the printouts highest value shall be the greater of the recycling price to the use as a biofuel (but watch out for the thermal emissions). Most fuel use is over land and in the northern hemisphere so this is where the expected highest results are likely. Anecdotely this could be the effect in the antarctic peninsular but it is very difficult to get any fuel use figures. If this is the case the increases are likely to be in summer as this is when the scientists travel there.
Note; The energy available is a very conservative estimation based on average power station efficiency and vehicle efficiency and uses eg. domestic use of energy is far higher with average households spending over 50% of energy dirrectly for heating (hot water cooking and space heating). The amount of energy from sun will not be accurate as the albedo and latitudes on the earth could have a big effect.
Kelly Liddle,
Your model just seems to be an elaborate heat island argument. Global temperature records taking note of the heat island effect still note increasing global temperature. And anyway, it’s the Arctic that’s recording the greatest warming.
Whether shipping in the Antarctic peninsula has a significant effect I’d have my doubts. I’ve been to the Antarctic in high Summer and it doesn’t feel any warmer on the deck of a stationary ship compared to standing still on the nearby shore.
According to the Wikipedia in 2008, global human energy consumption was 15 terawatts/year (tera means an exponent of 10 with a 12 after it). The Earth receives from the Sun 89 pentawatts/year (penta means an exponent of 10 with a 15 after it). So the Earth gets in a year 6,000 times more energy from the Sun from the energy humans are releasing.
From the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, the Sun raises the Earth’s temperature from 2.74K (the temperature of the cosmic background radiation) to -18C (an increase of around 252C). 1/6,000 of that would be 0.042 C, which is roughly compatible with your calculation of 0.024C. So we should perhaps subtract either from the temperature increase since the start of industrialization of around 0.7C, which would reduce the increase to just 0.66C?
It doesn’t sound a particularly significant reduction, and is based on enormous assumptions, including the idea that hotter areas don’t lose heat faster than colder areas. As an analogy, if you have a cup of coffee with a temperature of 70C, in an unheated room with a temperature of 20C, open to the outside with a temperature of 10C, the coffee is going to cool must faster than the room.
Heating around cities is going to be lost more readily to space than to heat the surrounding countryside.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@BLAHBLAHBLAH — Posted Friday, 1 July 2011 at 11:14 am
Thank you for the information.
Not only are uniformed normal people spruiking rubbish believing in the idiots promoting it with their hidden ulterior motives but some scientists who should know better become ordinary people at times and play the fool in the same way.
I have watched this very type of nonsense played out time and time again over nearly 50 years by idiots who hold the highest positions and reputations in medicine and the bodies pile up.
The ‘great’ professional can be/will be an ordinary normal citizen capable of the same foolishness at his special moment.
Science is not an individual but a ‘football’ team and so doesn’t suffer this human failing for any one member can be off on the day.
But ‘nature’ is absolute not science which is a human construct albeit by very smart humans.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@WAYNE ROBINSON — Posted Monday, 4 July 2011 at 9:30 am
Thank you for this post.
I was going to tackle this needed response but you’ve beaten me to it and done a better job I am sure.
The commenter you are responding to needs to remember your last comment and understand heat radiates to space extremely efficiently but is variably impeded by a potentially variable CO2 blanket (to put complicated stuff into simple visuals as you did so well) while the sun shines on and heats Earth 24/24. Without that loss to space we’d be fried and without Earths atmosphere we’d be frozen regardless of the sun.
Those who feel they are clever enough to sort this balance out as ‘boss balancer’ please put up your hands and deal with the important CO2 variable future.
Be like the Medical Professionals I have to deal with and take ‘frying’ and ‘freezing’ humans to death lightly.
To Blahblahbah
Thank you for your information about scientists. It was the sort of thing that was at least a reasonable response to a request to say who are climate scientists? In, my case not being any sort of denialist, certainly not one who has any psychological quirk which justifies it (mine being more to be a contrarian as I would describe myself sometimes or something ruder from those who know me but meaning the same) I really do like people who say, glibly as it seems to me, 97 per cent of “climate scientists” think this or that to give some thought to what qualifies a person to be called a “climate scientist”. Also I am not sure in my own mind that there is any such being in the sense that one could confidently speak of cardiologists or tax accountants (though even here one could quibble as between sub-specialties). Hence I am grateful for your approximation to an answer and continue to dislike the mixture of supeciliousness and inaccuracy that characterises Mr S. (I am equally likely to ask of the commonly cited 30,000 scientist signatories to a sceptical letter - of whom 9000 are said to have PhDs - what kind of science they do and, for that matter, whether you wouldn’t find on the letter quite a few “Joseph Stalins”and “Winston Churchills” - as I remember a petition concerning Iraq being signed by “Saddam Hussein”).
It should hardly need pointing out that such agnostic attitudes come easily to those who take an economist’s, more than a lawyer’s, approach to Australian emissions policy (and here, to confound the simple minded on this blog, let me point out that I would even defend Ross Garnaut, not on his statements about the scientific evidence, but on his seeing an opportunity to effectually raise the GST and use the proceeds to good effect). Those who don’t see any reason for Australia not to make itself as rich as possible by burning and selling coal so it can do good in the world (after more middle class welfare takes its slice inevitably and more taxeaters are paid for by taxpayers) while we wait on some world wide agreement which might give just some faint chance of influencing our cliimate naturally don’t feel that people should write their prescriptions and their put downs dogmatically as if the science had proved something which required absolutely immediate falling into line and immediate radical action by Australians. When Germany invaded Russia and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour even the communists fell into line with enthusiasm (though still allowing stealing from cargo on the wharves), but we are not confronted by anything like that conclusive evidence combined with an unavoidable response.
I do take issue with your
” “To combat all the deniers who say that the IPCC hasn’t been able to predict what has been happening, shouldn’t you specify what temperatures you are talking about, how they are measured and what the relevant IPCC prediction is?”
No. Meteorologists can predict a storm coming, and broadly speaking, how severe it will be, even though it is very doubtful that they can predict the exact amount of expected rainfall. The temperatures ARE rising, there’s no modelling involved, and a simple extrapolation can tell you how bad it’s going to get.”
Two points. What was being put to Mr.S was no “concern troll” stuff it was, a bit patronisingly you might say, suggesting quite truthfully that it wasn’t much good just asserting to people who, ex hypothesi, were probably more than doubtful of the very fact you were asserting, that IPCC predictions were in line with the facts. Part of the point, after all, was that there were many different IPCC models giving a very wide range of outputs and your “denialists” would surely have been aware that the East Anglia emails actually included a worried one that expressed concern about the last few years not being in accordance with modelling. One could of course have been rougher with him by saying to Mr S that his way of putting things was as about as convincing as threatening an atheist with hell fire if he blasphemed.
The other point is that “simple extrapolation can tell you how bad it’s going to get” is simply not correct. More to the present point it isn’t what Mr S said or was apparently relying on (and he didn’t take the opportunity to say that it was). It is not correct even if it does remind one how simple minded, inevitably, was the public enthusiasm in 2007 for doing something urgently and even expensively. (I remember a friend with an engineering background putting together nothing more than the rise in temperature over a long period and the simultaneous increase in fossil fuel burning as a basis for his belief. OK, mine too, at the outset except not so as to justify any particular action at any cost). If extrapolation was all one needed for prediction one would have gone on buying Japanese shares in 1989 etc. etc.
As to the Flannery point you may have a debating point but in reality my response was to the implied assertion or opinion that Flannery was indeed to be taken seriously in the context of current policy debates. I think I could find a good checkable, if hostile or derisive, source for Flannery’s more contradictory, nonsensical and apocalyptic statements.
But perhaps I should apologise humbly to Rich Uncle Skeleton for not being more forbearing over his crankiness, acerbities, apparent carelessness and dogmatism. I have been told that he is probably someone known indeed by nieces or nephews by the pseudonym he uses and known, affectionately, by that name because of a medical condition which gives him the somewhat skeletal appearance. If so, I think congratulations on his humour and fortitude rather than apology is appropriate.
Michael Peters,
If you describe yourself as a contrarian then that makes you a denialist, like Richard Lindzen. Is that short enough for you?
“Short” hardly rates unless accuracy is irrelevant. You remind me of the famous Lewis Carroll passage
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. “It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less.”
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the common uses of “contrarian” which are nearly all in the area of investment, or finance more generally, as in, for example,
“a person who takes a contrary position or attitude; specifically : an investor who buys shares of stock when most others are selling and sells when others …” [a big point here is that the contrarians usually do better than the herd which is not an implication you would wish to support]
The use of the term is relevant to context and the company wherever, in the opinion of the contrarian, the kind of group think that creates asset bubbles and stock market booms and busts prevails. And contrarianism usually, in non-curmudgeonly hands, means that imagination and perhaps lateral thinking has been applied. So it is, in its appropriate general use, an attitude which will be roused by unreasonableness, dogmatism or bad argument, wherever found. The smell of group think from whichever quarter arouses the contrarian. Thus the person who points out that proof of the oceanic origin of most of the increased CO2 misses the possibility that the fossil fuel emitted CO2 has first dissolved in the colder parts of the ocean then got mixed in thoroughly so as to lose its fossil fuel signature before being re-emitted in the warmer parts of the ocean is exercising the proper contrarian spirit even if he similarly points to possible gaps in proof of what members of team “denialist” call “warmist” views.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@BLAHBLAHBLAH — Posted Friday, 1 July 2011 at 11:14 am
Further to my previous comment to you I am impressed with your effort to deal with the ‘denialist anger’ or ‘piss off’.
“………I could go on responding to denialist clap-trap, but this is already too long and I’ve got better things to do. What is most apparent when analysing ‘denialism’ is that it’s not genuine scepticism but a psychological condition…………………..”
I have actually pointed this out at Crikey before.
There are two basic forms of ‘denial’ and neither of them have anything to do with scepticism which in itself is usually a psychological condition.
‘Genuine’ scepticism would be ‘well meant questioning for truth discovery of items claimed to be true laid out for your consumption/consideration’.
The forgivable ‘denial’ is a psychological state that your mind reverts to unconsciously, uncontrolled by you, to enable coping with the stress of some serious issue. Then ‘denial’ is a psychological ‘tool’ in our toolbox.
The other ‘denial’ is the deliberate lie you tell when you deny that it was you who punched RS Tony Abbott and knocked him out with your bare fist.
Dr T - aren’t you serving up a tautology when you say of scepticism that it is “in itself … usually a psychological condition”? As distinct from, say, having a good memory, enjoying a memory, recalling something said to you, preferring Mozart to Brahms, etc.?
So, to add meaning, are you saying that a person who is, over a range of matters, is inclined to question much of what he reads or hears, or at least seek to have the logical and causal connections spelled out to his satisfaction before giving assent, is subject to a “psychological condition” in the sense of suffering some disorder of the mind?
You give a clue perhaps in your curious statement that “genuine (sic)” scepticism would be “well meant (sic) questioning etc.” Since the negative of “well meant” must be something like “hostile” or “malicious” or “in bad faith” or all of those it is hard to see why you see a “psychological condition” because those attributes are prima facie perfectly sane straightforward results of opposition, if not enmity which is more likely to be cultural or tribal than anything so post-modern as “psychological”.
I note Google’s No. 1 pick as
“1. A person inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions.” after which it gives
“2. A person who doubts the truth of Christianity and other religions; an atheist or agnostic.” that I only mention to remind you that there is a perfectly respectable body of people in Australia known as the Australian Skeptics: ” A group that investigates the paranormal and pseudo-science from a responsible scientific viewpoint”.
As a general proposition would you not agree that, over recorded history, accepted opinions about almost everything important have later proved to be wrong or at least uncertain or unprovable? So, let’s forget “psychological condition” please. Though one shouldn’t forget the irritating child that always questions and needs explanation because I would also put it to you that being sceptical is normally not a feature of youth but an aspect of maturity produced by life’s experience. (Aspergerish scepticism as a product of the way the cold intellect words is described interestingly in the case of Dr Michael Burry in Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short” as a matter of interest).
As to “denial”, being “in denial” and now “denialism” I was long ago primed to respond to such cod-Freudian junk jargon by a couple some relations who had nothing better to do than look into their own and others’ (imagined) psyches and apply such words. My favoured riposte, freely handed out to any who were equally irritated, was to note that some people might be far from being “in denial” but they were bu**ered if they were going to tell these prying prurient nincompoops what they actually thought or how they worked something out.
Nonetheless you no doubt have a point that some people do block out some things from their minds to deal with stress, but, equally likely, to avoid the need to admit that they might have been wrong all along. The latter, however, I suspect is more likely to be conscious, though also a source of stress, and maybe the more usual response is to beef up the intellectual rationalisations as far as they can go without the original idea having to be admitted to be beyond rescuing. (Closely related to avoiding “cognitive dissonance” no doubt, which I do happen to think a useful description of reality even if not always possible to label accurately).
I think “denialism” and its cognates, quite apart from being just about as offensive as Monckton’s “fascist” nonsense, is much less explanatory than thinking in terms of people engaging in professional advocacy where, naturally, counsel will not be conceding - except tactically and for plausibility - that the jury might think that his client the defendant really is an angry young man who hates women. Alternatively, since the advocate when out of court will prefer his advocacy to be for something he believes in, he may regard it as his duty (and his pleasure) to ensure that in a contestable matter, the arguments which he believes not totally without merit should continue to be put until conclusively nailed down. He may be spurred by every bad or inadequate or careless argument to the contrary to continue while there is something to be said for the case to which he leant himself as advocate. The psychological there could be that of a simple liking for the adrenalin rush of combat but the people I know who actually appear to believe that “the science” is uncertain enough to, well, let’s say justify the position of the US, and indeed of China and India, are certainly not “denialist” in what I have rather rudely called the “cod Freudian” view (which I have picked up happily on one of these blogs). It is one thing to be old and difficult to persuade that the younger generations have some better ideas but it is more usual in my observation that people over with all their marbles and good enough health to enjoy their lives are in fine psychological condition, as happy and relaxed as ever they have been after lives which would, in the ordinary course, have been afflicted with enough real disasters to give them perspective and balance in later life.
Answer me this “warmers”.
In the 420000 years that Vostok ice core data supposedly allows us to examine with “great precision” the level of C02 in the atmosphere as well as the temperature over that extended period, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide never exceeded 290 ppmv yet the temperature during that period fluctuated by what, 10 degrees if not more, through ice ages and warming periods and so on.
Goddard Institute of Space Studies and other sources indicate that C02 really only began to rise after The Industrial Revolution began. From 1880 when it was around 290ppmv, it rose to 380ppmv in 2006 and I guess there is therefore some evidence of anthropogenic influence in the level of concentration of C02 in the atmosphere.
However, according to the same data sources, for the first 50 years after 1880, the rise in C02 was accompanied by colder than normal temperatures (-0.35 to -0.1 degrees). The next 40 years of rising C02 concentrations which represent GISS’s baseline period shows temperatures at baseline. Then follows the period from 1980 – 2006 with C02 atmospheric concentrations still continuing to rise and this time temperatures were observed to increase by 0.6 degrees or so during that 36 year block?
So my query is this. How come in most of the last 420000 years when C02 levels did not exceed 290 ppmv, did temperatures fluctuate by many and several degrees yet since the Industrial Revolution, when C02 has continuously increased from 290 ppmv in 1880 to 380 in 2006, has there been an initial fall in temperature followed by a baseline period and then a rise in temperature of approx 0.6 degrees?
Now let’s forget the science because we’ll never agree and look at the economics of this madness. Economically speaking, if you have ever played monopoly you will know that any country the size of Australia that wants to take on the rest of the world by being the first into the cave with a bear without any weapons is on a suicide mission. Whether we go first or last will have no impact on the climate but will have full and complete impact on our economy and our way of life. If we want to destroy Australia, this is the best way I can see to do it. We are not leading the world here. They couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss whether we burn kerosene or wood unless we are merely trying to ingratiate ourselves to the totalitarian and corrupt UN by volunteering to be the standard bearers.
We would be better off waiting for the rest of the major economies to respond, then wait a little longer to get an economic advantage and if needs must think about then by which time the 40 year block of cooling will have set in and that will be the end of that!
In the mean time we could always spend the money on our Olympic swim team where we do have a chance of leading the world. Or even on employing more teachers, we also have a pretty good reputation in that area as well.
This whole exercise to me is self aggrandisement on the part of some politicians, idiocy on the part of others, self interest on the part of the scientists and economists and delusional behaviour on the part of the liberal media.
I don’t like any political party because they are all players in the same subterfuge – they just have differing roles to make you think you have a choice. But you don’t have any choice – you have owners. Wake up! This is a ruse to destroy our sovereignty and bring in global governance. Ask the Greeks what that feels like – they have had their country stolen from underneath their feet by what I believe are no more than traitors and snake oil salesmen.
Richard Wilson,
Milankovich cycles.
You’re falling to the fallacy that greenhouse gasses are the only factor driving climate.
The Earth’s orbit isn’t fixed, it goes three cycles, a 100,000 year cycle in which the eccentricity of the orbit varies, a 42,000 year cycle in which the tilt of the Earth’s orbit wobbles and a 22,000 year cycle in which the direction in which the axis is pointing varies. Look at Wikipedia for an explanation.
Milankovich cycles have been happening for all of Earth’s history, but have been obvious to humans only for the last 3 million years since North and South America joined at Panama, changing the ocean’s currents and setting off the current ice age (we’re in a current ice age actually, because there’s ice at both poles, it’s divided into about 50 glaciations and 50 interglacial periods, of which we’re in the most recent interglacial period).
It’s the cycles that have got the Earth out of the glaciations. The critical factor has been to make the Arctic warmer in Summer, and this generally happens when the Northern Summer occurs when the Earth is closer to the Sun and the tilt is maximal so the North pole is facing more the Sun and its rays are striking more vertically causing more warming. Once you get ice and snow melting decreasing albedo then you get progressively increasing warming.
With warming, oceans release more of the dissolved CO2, so in previous interglacial periods, the warming has preceded the rise in CO2 levels. This isn’t a contradiction of AGW, it’s well known to all climatologists, it’s only sceptics and denialists who make a big fuss about it.
The current interglacial period is different to all the others. It’s lasted much longer, about 12,000 years compared to the several thousand years of the previous ones. Bill Ruddiman in ‘Plows, Plagues and Petroleum’ has a theory that it was humans development of agriculture that changed the present interglacial, that humans have been affecting climate far longer than the 250 years since industrialization. He explains the so called ‘Little Ice Age’ as being due to the plaues and epidemics of the middle ages, such as the Black Death.
The science is important, but getting back to your madness. Australia isn’t leading the pack. It’s about in the middle, neither leading nor lagging. The carbon tax isn’t particularly radical, it’s just a smaller modification to the way goods and services are taxed than the GST, which at the time I’d strongly opposed and thought would be a disaster for Australia. I was wrong about the GST, and I’m certain that you’re wrong about the much smaller carbon tax (which will eventually transition to a market based cap and trade system). The GST theoretically negatively impacted on services over goods. The carbon tax will negatively impact on use of fossil fuels and wasteful use of them, giving an advantage to companies and consumers who can use renewables or become more energy efficient.
The Greeks are victims of their own foolishness, thinking that they could avoid everyone paying their fair share of tax, instead running government and providing services by debt.
Talking about world government is just paranoid delusions. That’s never going to happen, or at least not until technology develops such that everyone in the world has equal access to the basics of life; food, water and energy.
@Rohan: I’d lose track if I tried to do that without some kind of ‘bible’ that defined the personas. And I don’t have the time or inclination to do that.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_(writing)
@Michael Peters: Laconic? Why thank you.
A sceptic is someone who doesnt go along with the offical story.
@Wayne Robinson
Milankovich cycles eh!
You say: You’re falling for the fallacy that greenhouse gasses are the only factor driving climate.
I say: I don’t think that for a minute but I wanted to use a currency “Warmers” accept..
You say: The Earth’s orbit isn’t fixed, it goes three cycles, a 100,000 year cycle etc
I say: Yep thought someone would say that so let’s look at things since 1000 AD. C02 levels relatively stable while temperature has fluctuated certainly more than 1 degree in that time despite Milankovich cycles not applying.
You say: It’s the cycles that have got the Earth out of the glaciations.
I say: Exactly; so what is the deal with the extra C02 when such dramatic events drive climate change?
You say: With warming, oceans release more of the dissolved CO2, so in previous interglacial periods, the warming has preceded the rise in CO2 levels. This isn’t a contradiction of AGW, it’s well known to all climatologists, it’s only sceptics and denialists who make a big fuss about it.
I say: Straw man. I am not making this argument.
You say: Bill Ruddiman in ‘Plows, Plagues and Petroleum’ has a theory that it was humans development of agriculture that changed the present interglacial, that humans have been affecting climate far longer than the 250 years since industrialization. He explains the so called ‘Little Ice Age’ as being due to the plagues and epidemics of the middle ages, such as the Black Death.
I say: He is entitled to his theory.
You say: Australia isn’t leading the pack. It’s about in the middle, neither leading nor lagging.
I say: there is substantial opposition to such taxes in most countries of the world, especially those countries which rely on coal as a major generator of low cost power, and which are among the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. They include the USA, China, Japan, and Russia among many others. Canada has no federal carbon tax but new Zealand does and so does Costa Rica.
In Europe, a number of countries have imposed energy taxes in some cases based partly on carbon content including Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. None of these countries has been able to introduce a uniform carbon tax for fuels in all sectors. Japan doesn’t have one, India has some general thing and Korea replaced another tax for this one to keep the UN happy.
You say that you were wrong about the GST.
I say: No you weren’t – the GST was a ruse to engineer a massive transfer of control from the states to the federal government and now we are paying the price as the states go cap in hand to the feds every year for a handout. If they had any sense they would tell the Feds to buzz off and institute their own taxes. Now as for carbon taxes – conspiracies aside, the Carbon Trust argues that a carbon tax suffers from combining a set price for carbon along with a transfer of revenue from industry to government. They say this guarantees that the tax will not be set at the appropriate level, but will instead be determined by the politics of large-scale revenue transfers. With a cap, however, the revenues from emission allowances can be separately negotiated with industry. Further, there is also the problem of whether the emissions reductions they supposedly bring about actually exist. This is called the “additionality” of emissions reductions by the Carbon Trust. The “additionality” of a carbon tax is difficult to establish due to effect that other policies have on emissions, e.g., subsidies and regulations. It would, for example, be possible for a government to introduce a carbon tax and then offset the impact of this by making other changes in tax structures. E.g. petrol exemptions I think they mean.
You say: The Greeks are victims of their own foolishness, thinking that they could avoid everyone paying their fair share of tax, instead running government and providing services by debt.
I say: The Greeks are victims of their own spineless politicians and the destruction of the nation state and its sovereignty by global corporations who lend money to politicians and local bankers knowing they can never pay it back, then short the country and thereafter, deliberately set out to make the short come to fruition. Iceland told the global bankers to drop dead, the Greeks, the Irish, and heck knows how many more Euro countries are victims of the same tactics from corporations with larger balance sheets than the GDP of those nations they are setting out to loot.
You say: Talking about world government is just paranoid delusions. That’s never going to happen, or at least not until technology develops such that everyone in the world has equal access to the basics of life; food, water and energy.
I say: How naïve! Technology can be used to reduce population as well as support it.
I also say: This government is selling us out to the UN.
Anyway, Paul Murray’s piece in the Australian on February 28 this year should leave no one in any doubt about what this is all about and why the ruling clique in Canberra is so desperate to get it over the line! We are being sold down the river Wayne. Murray states:
“The Gillard Government is party to a UN agreement which Climate Change Minister Greg Combet entered into in December at a meeting in Cancun, Mexico, under which about 10 per cent of carbon taxes in developed nations will go into a Green Climate Fund. Even when Ms Gillard was denying there would be a carbon tax last August, her government had committed to spend $599 million on climate change handouts over the current three-year Budget period, mainly in the Pacific and South-East Asia. About $470 million has already been allocated.”
“Billions of dollars raised by Australia’s carbon tax will end up overseas, helping poor countries battle climate change. “Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s new tax will be used to allow Australia to meet its share of a $100 billion-a-year United Nations fund to transfer wealth from rich countries to help undeveloped nations adapt to global warming.
“The scale of the potential overseas carbon tax payments dwarfs the $500 million in educational foreign aid to Indonesia which provoked recent bickering between the Government and the Opposition”
This is a disguised UN tax and it is only going one way - north! Any Australian government worth its salt and which cared about this country, would tell the UN that the people of Australia aren’t going to fund the carbon taxes of the Third World and to drop dead!
Richard Wilson has pulled the conspiracy theory cards so beloved of deniers. World government conspired by the UN, federal govt oppressing the citizen through taxes, even that Greece & Ireland are not responsible for their own problems.
What small credibilty remaining has now been destroyed.
Richard Wilson,
Your very first sentence, after the salutation, reads ‘In the 420,000 years that the Vostok ice core data supposedly allows us to examine with ‘great precision’ the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as well as the temperature over that extended period, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 never exceeded 290 ppmv yet the temperature during that period fluctuated by what, 10 degrees if not more, through ice ages and warming periods and so on’.
Which is the appropriate length of time for Milankovich cycles, particularly for the current ice age, which has lasted around 3 million years. Actually talking about ice ages and warming periods is inaccurate. You should be referring to glaciations and interglacial periods.
I went on to refer to some of the reasons why the current interglacial period is different markedly to all the preceding ones, and actually referred to the last 1,000 years, with its so-called ‘Liitle Ice Age’.
I stand by my comment that the GST wasn’t the disaster I’d feared. I hardly notice it. If it causes Colin Barnett, my state premier, some Angst each year, then I heartily approve. I also think that Australia, as a rich society, has the moral obligation to donate foreign aid. If some of the aid is for carbon mitigation or adaptation, then so be it. I’d only be concerned that the foreign aid is being well spent and achieving the aims it’s set out to do. I don’t take any notice of anything published in the Australian. I cancelled my subscription months ago, instead reading the Melbourne Age.
A sceptic isn’t one that doesn’t go along with the official story. That’s a contrarian. A sceptic is, or rather should be, a person who examines all the evidence for and against a position, weighs the evidence and comes to a provisional assessment as to whether the position is accepted or rejected, and is still open to changing the opinion if new evidence appears.
@ Wayne Robinson
As far as foreign aid goes ..the payments usually come with strings attached. The money has to be used for “approved projects” which usually require to be fulfilled by the donor country’s corporations. This can be easily argued to be little more than a transfer of wealth from the donor country’s taxpayers to the their corporations. In other words, it doesnt go to more teachers, doctors or general care and well being for the recipient country but to infrastructure which is useless to 90% of the population.
You may like to read Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins who is a whistleblower working in league with the IMF and World Bank (and their fellow traveler global charities who specialise in doing this type of stuff) for about 10 years before his conscience couldn’t take it any longer.
By the way, you know who was the biggest giver of foreign aid to Haiti as a result of the devastation there recently? It turned out to be Cuba!
Evidenced based scepticism …I am all for it and thus I bekieve my definition holds. Examine what is behind the official story and you’ll be surprised nine times out of ten.
And don’t fool yourself into thinking things ever get better or worse with regard to global issues or national issues depending upon who is the state premier. It is out of their hands. There is one policy which all have to follow. Your vote is given to you to make you feel good not to change anything.
Richard Wilson,
I might read the book you recommend, ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ (so many books to read, so little time …). I find it ironic that in the opening preface of the book, John Perkins advances the thesis that it is American corporations and government that is trying to control the world. A far cry from your paranoid delusion of an UNO or World Bank inspired conspiracy of setting up a world government.
Any comment about your characterization of the Milankovich cycles? Humans have been around for perhaps 200,000 years, and have lived through one at most two previous interglacial periods out of the approximately 50 interglacial periods of the past 3 million years. The current interglacial period is different to all the previous ones, and Bill Ruddiman’s book goes a long way to explaining why, and I still strongly recommend it to you. It also has a very good discussion of what drives climate.
@ Richard Wilson
“A sceptic is someone who doesnt go along with the offical story.”
I like it as about as good a pithy version as you need. Chimes with “always ask questions”. Both good as long as you don’t start questioning claims to have got good value with “But couldn’t you have got that at Myers, and cheaper too?
@MikeB
Here is the world you are denying exists.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7000
@Richard Wilson
I’d hardly be going to that site for credible news or commentary.
Richard Wilson,
It seems as though you should read Clive Hamilton’s books ‘Affluenza’ and ‘Requiem for a Species’. I think it’s madness that CEOs should be paid 500 times the pay of the lowest paid worker in the company. Once you get such disparities in wealth in societies, then you get social cohesion breaking down.
You’ve got to have taxation to pay for social security benefits, which means that people do have to pay their fair share of taxation. What happened in Greece was that tax evasion was rife and the taxation authority wasn’t willing to get the revenue needed, so services were funded by debt.
@Wayne: CEO pay is irrelevant, really. And if they paid 100% of what they earned, it would only run a country for a few hours in a year.
Meski,
No, actually the level of a CEO’s pay isn’t irrelevant. What need does a person have for an income of millions of dollars in a year? Countries that have a more equal distribution of income, say 100:1 instead of Americas 500:1 appear to have better social cohesion, so that if hard times come, there’s more willingness for all to suffer the pain.
Make of this what you will.
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/spencer-clashes-with-monckton-live-on-air-20110707-1h3gr.html
I THINK THE EYES HAVE IT!
Do the arithmetic. Work out how much the millions of people would get if you divided the few CEO’s pay amongst them. Now do you get why it’s irrelevant?
UK Telegraph today says we could be in for a mini ice age:
“The latest news is that the world may be threatened by a sharp drop in temperatures, possibly so severe that it could herald a new mini ice age. And one reason being put forward for this is that all the pollution being chucked out by thousands of coal-fired power stations may be blocking the sun’s heat from the Earth. Dr Robert Kaufman of Boston University blamed China this week. ‘During the Chinese economic expansion there was a huge increase in sulphur emissions,’ he said. And this was the cause of global cooling.”
God love ‘em. And from an entirely different source we have:
“Scientists think Britain and Europe could be in for a chilly few years predicting a ‘Little Ice Age’ could be on its way,” says 3 Jul 2011 article in UK Mail Online.
According to the study led by Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading University, the average winter temperature in Britain could drop below 2.5C (36.5F) compared to the average winter now of 5C (41F). This drop in temperature would be caused by a decline in sunspot activity.
Lockwood’s discoveries mirror three different studies announced just last month from heavyweight scientists at the US National Solar Observatory, at NASA, and at the US Air Force Research Laboratory, which concluded that sunspot activity looks set to decline over the next 10 years.
Same ratbags…just different outcome!
Meski,
You still don’t get the point. Evolutionarily, human society has been egalitarian. There has never been this disproportionate inequality between the very rich and very poor till industrialization. Happiness in countries is inversely proportional to the degree of income inequality. For example, Australia with its lesser inequality is generally happier than America. CEOs of large companies are getting obscene sums of money, often for running their companies into the ground. Why should they get more than 10 times than the PM, whom I feel is unfairly treated by the public, not being respected and being subjected to ugly vitriol. Go back and reread what I’ve written. It’s easier to get nations to do unpleasant but necessary things if the people feel that they’ll all in it together.
Richard Wilson,
The Chinese coal power plants with their sulphur emissions can be easily solved in the same way that it was solved in the West.
Predicting what’s going to happen with solar sun spots in the next 10 years is impossible. We still don’t have an adequate model of the Sun.
Mr Robinson, you are indeed not now or historically Robinson Crusoe on the happiness and equality business. But I recall the suggestions when a wealth tax (we only had land taxes, rates, death duties, stamp duties but no capital gains tax at the time) got a bit of a run pointing out that it would perhaps be fair to impose an extra tax on people’s prestigious titles.
The inequality- happiness nexus makes that connection stronger. Think of all the striving academics who never, or only very late, get the title of full Professor. Think, for that matter, of the destruction of future capital (like putting a Green ban on a great uranium deposit) by giving up knighthoods and damehoods. Remember “KBE, Humphrey!” The Brownlow Medal is very invidious because it so clearly rewards talent which most people simply never could have. Etc. etc.
The unhappiness derived from inequality per se (rather than actual worry about being bankrupted by health care costs as one of the worst examples of what being being neither rich enough, nor poor enough in the USA can inflict) is a surely contemptible product of personal deficiency, even moral deficiency. Helmut Schoeck (cited by someone on a Crikey blog who put me on to this) wrote “Envy” about 50 years ago and made a very good case for both Ancient Greeks and Christians having benefited enormously from completely non-material ways of dealing with envy. By contrast envious African peasants were known to act in very hostile fashion towards the more successful (because cleverer, more diligent, or just luckier) farmer.
But, basically, I think you start with one wrong premise when you say “evolutionarily, human society has been egalitiarian”. Wrong in two ways. Specifically, evolution works by competition which works because there are inequalities. But let us say that you are really intending to say that over long periods of pre-history during which human beings were struggling towards a materially richer division-of-labour society they were egalitarian right up to the industrial revolution. Again, completely wrong I suggest and again there are two points.
Go back to our hunter gatherer forbears and one can be quite sure, to start with, that women were not treated as equals despite their best gathering efforts and cunning manipulations of dumb men’s libidos. And within the ranks of males they may have shared rations but the seniors got the girls.
Move on to the last 10,000 years and you don’t find wives being shared out equally in societies where polygamy remained acceptable. Nor wealth in gold or goods, nor slaves - oh yes, an omission, one might consider the pre Industrial Revolution general;acceptance of slavery or serfdom which had nothing to do with race.
I don’t want to suggest that there is nothing in the point you make but there are two early 20th century insights which tend to limit the importance of what you say based, as it is on a purely material, indeed financial, reckoning. One is Freud’s “narcissism of minor difference” which acutely points to the fact that it is keeping up with the Jones’s (or ahead of them in some trivial way) rather than keeping up with the Duke and Duchess of Jonesville or Hiram P. Jones lll with his Robber Baron forebear’s fortune renewed on Wall Street, that is key to psychological bounty or distress.
The other is Robert Michel’s “the iron law of oligarchy” (recently quoted on Crikey by someone who revivied my memory, perhaps imperfectly as to the precise words). Let’s face it we are not born equals in most measurable or perceptible human characteristics and we are born to be competitive and status conscious (part of the engine of evolution no doubt, though not working well now for humans) so, if you reduce the income inequalities between CEOs and the unskilled labour force you aren’t going to prevent the able and energetic chancing their luck to get to the top of whatever tree there is in the given society: just ask anyone who lived in the Soviet Union.
While consumerist capitalism is a vastly wasteful way of achieving any human ends (but like democracy perhaps, just better than the likely alternatives) there is at least an argument for saying, (a) in a huge empire sized country like the US or China or India, 50 to 1 income ratios are both more likely and more necessary to sort out the winners in the competition, (b) where a society lacks the extraordinary homogeneity of the Japanese, or Scandinavians till PC about immigration hit them, competition and big rewards for the winners are more acceptable and perhaps more necessary (how generous do taxpaying Americans feel towards their underclasses, particularly when many are so visibly different, and how resentful they can be when forced to subsidise ways of life they disapprove of, and (c) if you have to make a competitive capitalist system work (while someone rewrites the Marxist and Christian Socialist source books to give them plausibility after 150 years of failure) there is a lot to be said for putting wealth into the hands of those who have at least proved able in getting to the top of the big corporate ratrace or starting a business which gets them into those higher strata. It has been pointed out that Bill Gates enjoyed some amazing luck, but, apart from his recent charitable activity, isn’t he a better person to give the reinvestment of $50 million to than a committee of, well, Mandarins (just to make the point by allying it to what we know about China’s 500 years of time out)?
But to show what a disinterested seeker after truth I am WR I cite this before I have even read it
Tendency Toward Egalitarianism May Have Helped Humans Survive
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/science/05angier.html
Thirst for Fairness May Have Helped Us Survive
By NATALIE ANGIER
************************
Actually [still totally unfread] I think it is probably only going to show yet another range of explanations for the undoubted fact that the evolutionary struggle did produce genes and gene combinations for altruism, co-operation etc beyond the early work of William Hamilton on kin preference and inclusive fitness.
Cripes, Michael, can’t you ever be succinct.
In hunter-gatherer society, there’s no incentive for wealth, because everything has to be carried. Meat from hunting was scrupulously equally shared out. There was no alpha male system as in common chimps, and all males had access to females. Humans have thrived through cooperation not competition. King Solomon’s 300 wives and 700 concubines was an invention of King Josiah, who apparently thought it a good idea, but he was killed in his first battle trying to regain the fictional glory of Israel.
I don’t have anything against capitalism (my direct share investments and superannuation shares probably amount to around $2.5 million).
What I object to is the disproportionate incomes between the very rich and the very poor. I still think that societies that have such a disproportionate distribution of wealth are less happy.
Democracy is definitely the best form of government, the more the better. Would South Korea have done as well as it did during the Asian financial crisis if it hadn’t been a democracy?
Pain has to be equally shared during crises. What happened during the global financial crisis was obscene with the guilty bankers being shielded from their errors and then putting out their hands for bonuses from tax payer funds to rescue their banks.
And actually, I don’t have any problems with moderate income disparity. I gave a figure of 100:1, which is greater than what you reckon happens in America, 50:1, whereas it’s probably more like 500:1.
What’s so great about conspicuous consumption? Clive Hamilton gave some good (or bad) examples in his books, including rich Texans who enjoy wood fires in their houses, so they have to have air-conditioning running at the same time, and gold powder filled capsules, the only effect of which is to make your … Um, you know what I meant to write, glisten, even if it doesn’t make it smell better. The second example I didn’t believe until I checked on the Internet; 3 capsules for $750 from Canada.
Further to the Envy element in the arguments for and against egalitarianism, is it not interesting that no malice is directed towards the lottery winner of some huge sum - large even for very high net worth individuals - and one doesn’t find the same criticism of the remuneration of a multi-millionaire golfer’s winnings as of a CEO who has struggled to the top by unremitting hard work (plus some mostly good and useful qualities and maybe some Machiavellian ones without paying too much attention to the fashion for finding psychpaths at the top)?
Moral outrage at what has been wrought on and by Wall Street over the last 20 years (not to mention the odd bad year in the previous 150) is in order but perhaps deserves better aim. The appalling consequences of the intellectual failures of Greenspan and all the Wall Street and Washington acolytes of the Chicago School of Efficient Market ideologues suggest that one shouldn’t put it all on the natural non-egalitarian greed of those who saw a honey pot that was inviting them to plunge their hands in.
OK Michael,
Pretend that you win $10 million in a lottery. Would you be happy if your name and address were published in the newspaper? You’d soon find out the envy verging on malice you’d collect.
I’m still trying to rid myself of the thought of someone plunging their hands into a honey pot (the mixed metaphor gets to me …).
And no, for the xth time, I don’t have any problems with reward for effort. I don’t have any problems with sportsmen (and it usually are men) earning millions for all the effort and training they put into their short productive careers. It’s just disproportionate rewards that are objectionable. Many people unfairly begrudge the salaries our politicians get. At least it’s open. Business executives have their salaries and benefits decided by remuneration committees, consisting of their business friends.
FWIW I wouldn’t mind the publicity about a big lottery win on envy or malice grounds though I would have to invent some humorous replies to use when friends expressed their shock that I was such an idiot as to buy lottery tickets. And if I were living in Sicily I should certainly worry about the special private tax collectors that I would expect a call from. From MPs who have to put in returns of their assets for public inspection I gather that even the richest have been left alone since the first couple of years after the legislation was brought in.
The fact that we don’t want extra tax levied on the lucky winners just might be because we know that the tax is paid by everyone who buys a ticket. Why we think that becoming famous enough to advertise products one only pretends to use for very large sums of money doesn’t invite a special rate of tax especially when the ex-Aussie pays his minimal tax in the Bahamas is not easily explained if one resents the paying of very large salaries to someone who has worked for 30 years to get there.
I am not sure what you mean by disproportionate, how it would be determined or to whom you mean to apply it - perhaps Greg Norman, perhaps not. It does sound as though you want some supposedly objective expert to determine it on criteria unstated rather than the willingness of some market participants to pay whatever large remuneration package is in question. You do make a partly valid point in noting the existence of remuneration committees - hardly like an oldfashioned taxing master clipping a lawyer’s fees! But you go too far in using the word “friends”. That I would think would be the exception. But they are of course all within the magic circle of “people like us” who need to be paid well enough to pay the green fees at Long Beach on the business trip….. After all they would do the same for us wouldn’t they, just as a new copper is immediately covered up for by the incumbent team.
Michael,
In America, lottery winnings are taxed at heavy rates, so the Australian exemption isn’t universal. No, I don’t buy lotto tickets either; they’re a stupidity tax.
Endorsement by athletes and other celebrities I ignore as a matter of course.
The Australian Shareholders Association almost as a routine recommends rejection of remuneration committee reports at AGMs, which aren’t binding on the board anyway, even if rejected.
You’re not the Michael Peters who is a lecturer at the Australian School of Business are you? No, I doubt it; I’ve heard that Michael Peters talk and he isn’t prolix and actually makes some sense.
Time to stop this thread …
@Wayne: You’ve got a very selective view on history. Or do you not recall the feudal system?
Michael,
That article in the New York Times says exactly what I’ve been saying. There was an article in this morning’s ‘Age’ about an investment fund manager who earned $5 billion dollars last year and paid tax at a rate lower than that his chauffeur paid. Where’s the fairness in that?
The article in the Times finishes up by noting that Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, if given a choice how wealth was distributed, would opt for a flatter spread of wealth similar to that of Scandanavia.
Meski,
In feudal times, the aristocracy and nobility didn’t actually have the disproportionate wealth that the superrich have today. Kings were constantly searching for money to wage war. Nobles depended on providing support and risking dying in battle to maintain their power. They might have had better food and housing than their peasants, but it wasn’t as marked a difference. Life in feudal societies was still nasty, brutal and short regardless of your standing, except for perhaps religious orders.
Actually, religion is the factor that lead to the reduction in egalitarianism. If priests can claim that god has set one group to be superior and to rule, then that stops any dissent immediately.
The nobility owned the land, the peasants were only able to rent it. What greater wealth item do you want? For that matter, they didn’t even own 100% of their labour. And yes, religion was more of a factor then than now… They endorsed the right to rule.
Meski,
Owning the land doesn’t lead to wealth unless you have the tenants and serfs to work it. The Black Death in the 14th century led to the destruction of the feudal system, because agricultural workers suddenly became in short supply and were better able to demand better conditions.
Reminds me, I must get around to reading Barbara Tuchman’s book ‘A Distant Mirror’…
Indeed the Black Death was enormously valuable for England’s (England’s particularly) future prosperity. Not just higher wages (and of course further diminished control over the rural tenant or feudal peasant or worker) but better nutrition. (English average heights had declined from about 800s and then reached the 800s level again in the late 1500s if memory correct). Unlike Japan (which was a much more hygeinic country more than incidentally and used its human waste productively) in England the population grew slowly for hundreds of years and Greg Clark’s thesis in “A Farewell to Alms” would seem relevant to explanations of England’s later breakout into economic superiority (if not immediate prosperity for the masses once they began multiplying). So, what the hell is Bill Gates doing, and what have all those medical missionaries and others been doing, promoting Third World population population growth? (Yemen to overtake Russia in population within 25 years: now that is really a scary one presumably attributable in large part to widespread dissemination of Western medical knowledge and drugs). Who benefits? Or is it just bloody religion again?
WR, interesting about the taxation of lottery winnings in America. One can find just about everything in the US. But good government is difficult to find now that they have pushed so far into the globalised economy in which they no longer have vast amounts of fertile land to appropriate for modern farming or oil to make the Middle East a peripheral interest (though they don’t actually get most of their imports from the ME, it is part of the functioning global economy the US needs to keep playing its tunes).
How well the US system of government and attitudes worked for making America rich and powerful and, for a brief moment (as seen by the Chinese let us say) capable of upholding the Anglosphere’s moment and its values which, though sometimes eruptions on Crikey would make one doubt it, are basically our own higher ones. And now one has to moderate one’s dismay at America’s disarray by entertaining the hope that the stand off between mad Republicans and just about as mad Democrats, with the sensible in both parties ovewhelmed, is only temporary and that America can get back to that state of prosperity and genial complacency that will allow their expensive system of checks and balances to work well enough. As usual it will be prosperity for most which makes such improvement possible. After all there is no outside body to force needed reforms as there is for Greece.
**********
I would join with the Australian Shareholders Association in voting against many remuneration packages and admit to finding it comfortable to rationalise high pay (though the argument may be better than mere rationalisation) on the ground that those bank dividends which keep one’s superannuation healthy are not something one would like to risk by being cheeseparing or envious. But I really don’t mind someone else scoring a $100 million addition to their net wealth - not even when it is a multiple of that and it is a Nathan Tinkler who is on the receiving end - and to learn even that a friend has realised $50 million out of selling his/her share of an old family business doesn’t touch my envy locus. What does really get my goat is the apparent absence of intelligence in public company’s remuneration packages. I am wedded to the old idea that the self-made widget manufacturer of old who made a fortune was prima facie a good thing for us all and senior executives and boards of directors these days should have their rewards geared to success or failure in the same way instead of their being so little penalty for failure.
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I am not surprised by the polling in the US which shows people wanting a flatter distribution as in Scandinavia - despite the huge demographic differences between the US and Scandinavia, but also partly because of them: there are huge numbers of quite poor people in the US unlike Scandinavia as I don’t need to point out. But, so what, I wonder. A once Young Turk Liberal MP in the days of the revival of actual competition and economic rationalism in the Liberal Party’s working image of a prosperous economy told me that he had entertained a petty bourgeois branch with a quiz which he had rigged to allow them to evince attitudes which were absolutely the reverse of his. E.g. a good Liberal government should try to ensure that all businesses made reasonable profits….. I remember thinking “rigged” was an apt word. The points validly made about the questions asked in polls prove, as much as anything else, that most people for good and sensible reasons, spend most of their lives being at least several hours of study and discussion away from a well grounded intelligent view of how some important policy goal ought best to be pursued.
WR: Yes
WR: I wonder whether fairness is as useful a concept as one might hope when one gets into the realm of people making a billion dollars and paying no tax while the chauffeur pays some tax at least. I am more impressed with the fact that government in its many arms has too few people with the brains and expertise and motivation to devise good regulatory controls and an efficient and effective tax system - as well as running the government economically and not wasting too much on the transfer payments.
A young friend (well, met socially anyway) recently was flying very high with a very well regarded business and even put his own most recent $500 million bonus straight back into it. Unfortunately, though his judgment proved better than that of 99 per cent, the extreme exigencies of the GFC meant that his business went under completely leaving his investors very unhappy - and him almost broke. Life ain’t fair. My point, mildly asserted only because I do think fairness should be the catchcry of all political parties (at least then it would require intelligent subtle discussion instead of appeals to gut instincts alone) is that focusing on fairness won’t do much for the bigger problems. I include resolving Keynes-Minksy v. Freshwater School disputes about what causes financial crises as a much bigger problem.
And you then follow that statement with seven paragraphs, 300 odd words? PKB.
Meski,
OK, I’ll be really be really succinct. This is my last posting. Richard Wilson got us off topic of the Mad Lord with his linked video.