Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for January 25, 2009

Leprechauns Cause Global Warming?

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IT is always dangerous to use a proxy measure to make assumptions about a relationship.  At popular blog The Blackboard, Zeke has used the Irish population as a proxy for the population of Leprechauns …given that Leprechauns are invisible thus cannot be counted accurately.

“After retrieving the historic population of Ireland from Wikipedia which, despite its obvious pro-AGW bias due to the efforts of that disreputable scallywag William Connelley, has good data on other subjects. I plotted Irish population and GISS temperature data from 1930 to present, and the results were astounding!”

Yes, the chart shows a good correlation between the proxy for the number of Leprechauns and global temperatures.  But hey, correlation is not causation, so maybe Leprechauns don’t cause global warming.

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Click on the chart, for a larger view of the relationship.

Picture of the Leprechaun from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun

Story via Ian Beale.

Bond University Dismisses Climate Change Sceptic

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IT is common for Australian academics to publicly express an opinion on climate change including in our newspapers; think Tim Flannery, Ian Lowe and more recently Barry Brook.  

A couple of weeks ago Jon Jenkins, an Adjunct Professor at Bond University, had an opinion piece published by The Australian newspaper.  [1]

The piece was critical of the accepted dogma on anthropogenic global warming with a focus on how global temperatures are recorded and ended with a comment on sustainable development:

“Science is only about certainty and facts. The real question is in acknowledging the end of fossil fuels within the next 200 years or so: how do we spend our research time and dollars?

Do we spend it on ideologically green-inspired publicity campaigns such as emissions-trading schemes based on the fraud of the IPCC, or do we spend it on basic science that could lead us to energy self-sufficiency based on some combination of solar, geothermal, nuclear and renewable sources? The alternative is to go back to the stone age.”

Interestingly Bond University has a new name for its business and IT faculties, The Faculty of Business, Technology & Sustainable Development, but apparently didn’t like Professor Jenkins’ very public opinion on the subject of sustainable development.   For his opinion, Professor Jenkins received an official reprimand from the Bond University Registrar and then was informed last Friday that his adjunct status had been revoked.

No doubt he has contravened some rule or other at the University and no doubt this would have gone unnoticed if Professor Jenkins had a more popular opinion on these most politically charged subjects. 

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Update: January 30, 2009

The university has now clarified its position:

“Dr Jenkins was a member of staff here for some considerable time and resigned to enter the NSW Parliament. Dr Jenkins was asked to keep an association with University as an adjunct but indicated in 2008 that serious health problems would probably prevent him taking an active role. As a result Dr Jenkins was removed from the adjunct staff in 2008.

An administrative oversight resulted in Dr Jenkins not being informed of this change in status.”

That is, an administrative oversight resulted in Dr Jenkins not being informed of his change in status until after he published the controversial opinion piece in The Australian newspaper.

Perhaps if the piece had been more politically correct his name could have just been added back onto the list? 

I understand he has received an apology from the Vice Chancellor for the misunderstanding.  

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Notes and Link

1. The Warmaholics’ Fantasy.  The Australian January 6, 2009.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24876451-7583,00.html

Is Antarctic Warming Real or “Mann”-Made? A Note from Fred Singer

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THE recent report in the journal Nature of an unexpected Antarctic warming trend has created a certain amount of skepticism – even among supporters of AGW. [1]

But in an AP news story, two of its authors (one is ‘hockey-stick’ inventor Michael Mann from the Real Climate blog) argue that this refutes the skeptics and is “consistent with” greenhouse warming.  Of course, as Roger Pielke, Jr, points out, not long ago we learned from Real Climate that a cooling Antarctica was ‘consistent with’ greenhouse warming and thus the skeptics were wrong: “So a warming Antarctica and a cooling Antarctica are both ‘consistent with’ model projections of global warming. Our foray into the tortured logic of ‘consistent with’ in climate science raises the perennial question, what observations of the climate system would be inconsistent with the model predictions?”

The results are based on very few isolated data from weather stations, plus data from research satellites.  And here is the rub: these are not data from microwave sounding units (MSU), such as are regularly published by Christy and Spencer, but data from infrared sensors that are supposed to measure the temperature of the surface (rather than of the overlaying atmosphere, as weather stations do).

[Read more…] about Is Antarctic Warming Real or “Mann”-Made? A Note from Fred Singer

Decisive Vote against Seal Products

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THE European Union’s Environment Committee voted against the importation of products derived from seals last week and it was decisive: 43 in favour and one abstention.

The harvesting of seals is considered “morally unacceptable” and “in humane” but even with a ban on the commercial use of the seal products, seals would be culled in Canada to control population numbers.  

[Read more…] about Decisive Vote against Seal Products