I’m wondering how the sooty owl, rescued by a reader of this blog last week, is fairing? 
Archives for October 2014
Patrick Moore has Nothing New to Offer
HIS greatest claim to fame is that he co-founded Greenpeace. Not something I would be proud of. Of course, I’m referring to Patrick Moore. He is touring Australia at the moment and every other day I get a request from someone asking I promote the tour here, at this web blog.
Steve Kates heard Moore speak last night and wrote at Catallaxyfiles.com today that it was very “rewarding”. Kates also wrote that you may have heard it all before.
People generally have favourite stories that they like to hear repeated. These tend to be stories that give comfort, provide an escape – even make us feel smug.
I suspect that’s why people on our side of the global warming divide like to hear Moore: he cleverly articulates their prejudices even if he doesn’t actually say anything particularly new, or provide any real solutions.
If this was the extent of the experience I may have been inclined to provide some free advertising here, but Moore actually optimises everything that I find increasingly frustrating about being a sceptic who is trying to achieve something positive.
In my opinion very little progress has been made towards a new theory of climate, an alternative to anthropogenic global warming, because most sceptics, and also the institutions that support scepticism of anthropogenic global warming, won’t invest in the same. They prefer to claim we are dealing with an essentially chaotic system, rather than consider what a new theory of climate might actually include. Indeed at the recent Heartland Institute climate change conference, Moore went as far as to suggest that it was impossible to forecast rainfall and always would be. The inference is that there is no scientific answer to the big questions in climate science. I disagree.
Of course John Abbot and I have spent much of the last three years showing that it is possible to make skilful monthly rainfall forecasts, and we are beginning to document how and why in the peer-reviewed literature. But there is no interest in this research by those who are promoting Moore’s tour of Australia – perhaps because it’s about science, while their interest is essentially in the politics.
What is missed in all of this, and was missed by Moore in his answer to one of Steve Kates’ question last night, is that there is a way to defeat “green policies” that are not scientifically-based, including policies derived from the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The answer is in promoting and supporting alternatives, because, as I wrote in the IPA Review last year, history shows that failed scientific paradigms are only ever replaced, they are never disproven until there is a replacement theory. [last six words added Sunday morning, following a comment from Pat Frank]
Open Thread
Lots of stories in the Weekend Australian about climate change and related issues… the editorial includes commentary about Graham Lloyd’s reporting on ‘the pause’. 
Also comment by John Ferguson, Victorian Political Editor, that:
“THE consumer bill for the nation’s largest desalination plant is set to rise to more than $2 billion, as heavy rain and soaring dam levels make redundant tremendously expensive facilities across the eastern seaboard.
New figures obtained by The Weekend Australian show the Victorian desalination plant, southeast of Melbourne, will have cost water users $1.2bn by the November 29 state election, rising to $2bn by the end of the next financial year.
The cost has soared, despite no water having been drawn from the facility since its opening in 2012 and dams being more than 80 per cent full.”
Of course another prolonged drought could hit Victoria shortly.
The Secret is To Keep Thinking
ACCORDING to a Marxist, and good friend of mine, ‘the left’ has lost its way because too many adopt the ‘correct line’ on issues without any need to investigate first. In essence, they have stopped thinking. 
All this is explained in his first post at ‘C21st Left’ with the slogan/subheading, ‘Sous les paves, la plage!’ (beneath the paving stones, the beach).
But it’s not just the left that has stopped thinking.
After I returned from the Heartland Climate Conference in Las Vegas I penned ‘Three facts most sceptics don’t seem to understand’, as I despaired the absence of critical thinking, and
enlightenment values, in the most popular keynote addresses. I suggested that scepticism should be of entrenched dogmas, while supporting ideas and research that can potentially contribute to human progress.
My favourite Marxist touches on similar themes in his first blog post:
Support Progress. I use a capital ‘P’ in order to stress that there is such a thing. It happens through human imagination, ingenuity and engineering. As Engels pointed out long ago, humans are distinguished from all other animals in that we can create what we can imagine.
Harmony with Nature – Sustainability – have never been part of the left’s lexicon. Marxists believe in unleashing the productive forces through the further mastery of Nature and through freeing research and production from the social relations imposed by capital. This is the opposite of the ‘green’ world outlook.
Here the Marxist is directly attacking the romantic vision that is now very much a part of correct thinking in Australia.
While this blog is normally focused on issues concerning the natural environment, I’m opening the following thread to thoughtful comments on the more general topic of ‘correct thinking’ with the addition of the following comment from ‘C21st Left’:
Internationalism: ‘they’ are ‘us’. Be ‘they’ oppressed people resisting a fascist regime in Syria or asylum seekers reaching our shores in unauthorised boats. Or ‘foreign workers’ arriving lawfully on special visas. In a globalising world, humanity is one, as never before.
The circles one mixes in too often dictate responses to such issues as sustainability and immigration, when what is perhaps needed is more critical thinking.
A problem, to quote C.G. Jung, is that, “Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the effective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies.”
Empty slogans and wish-fantasies can be found everywhere and on all sides. The secret is, perhaps, to check whether or not we are ‘thinking’, rather than just adopting ‘a correct line’ dictated by someone who stopped thinking long ago.
Opera House Still Above Sea Level: Despite Homogenisation
ONE of the longest continuous sea level measuring gauges is not far from the Sydney Opera House at Fort Denison. The mean sea level trend is 0.65 millimetres per year based on monthly sea level data from 1886 to 2010. 
Except that sea levels haven’t trended consistently up each year but rather follow 50-60 year cycles, then there is the impact from El Nino events, and of course the moon is responsible for the neap tides and the king tides.
To be clear, that is NOT 0.65 centimetres per year, but rather MILLImetres per year. Tiny. Particularly given much of the New South Wales coastline has sustained an approximate 2 metre drop in sea levels over the last few thousand years. Not a 2 centimetre drop, but a 2 metre drop. This is not controversial, but rather a well-established fact in the technical literature. The arguing is not that the fall has been of this approximate magnitude, but whether the approximate 2 metre fall in sea levels has been more-or-less continuous or through step changes.
In the scheme of things the rise since 1886 is but a blip in an otherwise falling trend. Of course go back just 16,000 years and sea levels were rising, and significantly faster than at present. Yes. The climate changes.
But, what about Tuvulu, I hear someone ask? It’s an atoll in the Pacific that is sinking. Add to this pressure from a growing population resulting in the depletion of aquifers, and saltwater intrusion can give the false impression of sea level rise.
But none of this is new information to readers of this blog. What is new, is that Bob Carter and colleagues have just written a long report pointing out that there are wide variations in rates of tectonic uplift and subsidence (sinking) around the world at particular times and that any coastal management plan for New South Wales should be based on a good understanding of the local geology, as well as long-term rates of sea level rise. Professor Carter’s new report also suggests that in order to create an impression of sea level rise, rather than just plot raw data, there is a good amount of homogenization. In particular, the high sea-level rise figure of 3.3 mm per year reported for the Fort Denison tide gauge in the report does not represent the original data measurements, but results from computer modeling combined with the selection of a short and atypical section of the available sea-level record.
All this as rebuttal to what might appear to be an innocuous report by Whitehouse and Associates entitled ‘South Coast Regional Sea Level Rise Policy and Planning Framework’. But apparently it could become something of a blue print for the further erosion of the property rights of coastal residents more generally.
Bottom-line: we are unlikely to lose the South Coast or the Opera House to sea level rise from climate change, but it doesn’t hurt to have your own plan in case of a tsunami. According to Ted Bryant, recently retired from the University of Wollongong, six big tsunamis have hit Sydney during the last 10,000 years, the most recent in 1491.
I’m adding this youtube on a bad moon rising for fun.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.