Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 16, 2009

Economist Reports on Climate Conference in New York

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SPAIN has business leakage, California has banned all coal-based electricity, cap and trade creates vested interests in property rights – these are some of the issues economist Alan Moran reports on in his summary of the recent Climate Change Conference in New York.  

Dr Moran also notes that scientists at the conference did not agree on whether there is likely to be global  warming or cooling in the near future or on the key drivers of climate. 

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An Organised Crisis: Notes from Steven Hayward

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ONE of the persistent problems with environmentalism is its bait-and-switch character. The essentially political character of the movement cloaks itself with the seemingly objective authority of modern science, as though science were immune from politicization, or led to self-evident political or policy conclusions.

Laying aside the value-laden premises of the ways science is used and misused in environmental controversies, it is startling to discover how limited our scientific grasp of many environmental conditions really is. The worst abuse of science comes in the almost daily predictions of future environmental conditions based on sophisticated computer models that often lack a solid empirical grounding for their assumptions and are seldom validated or back-tested with any rigor…

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