Jennifer Marohasy

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Cohenite

Ten of the Worst Climate Research Papers: 5 Years On

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I consider anthropogenic global warming, AGW, a failed theory, but it still shuffles on like an animated corpse sustained by money, politics and the faithful.  The faithful keep publishing junk science.  I put a list together of the 10 worst climate science research papers in September 2008 [1].  I added to this list in April 2009 [2].  There was more by me published at Jo’s  AGW ‘science’ has fallen over a cliff.  Now I’m adding another ten papers to the worst list, so I guess it’s the ten recent worst.

Regards, Cohenite.

1. Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content. By Magdalena A. Balmaseda, Kevin E. Trenberth and Erland Kallen. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, 2013. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract

Kevin Trenberth and his researchers have never been able to find the ‘missing heat’. Trenberth still insists it is at the bottom of the ocean. This is despite sea surface temperatures declining, demonstrable reasons why back radiation, the Deus ex machina of AGW, cannot heat the oceans and the top 700 meters of the ocean not warming, at least since the accurate measurement of Ocean Heat Content [OHC] began in 2003, as David Evans has shown.

Trenberth ignores all this and the basic point of how the bottom can heat while the middle and top don’t and explains why the deep ocean heat content is increasing: “Sensitivity experiments illustrate that surface wind variability is largely responsible for the changing ocean heat vertical distribution.”

So has there been increasing wind variability in the surface winds? Not according to the data!Cohenhite Waves

2. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. By John Cook et. al.  Published in Environmental Research Letters, 2013 http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

The consensus is the mainstay of AGW ‘science’.  According to Cook et. al. and many others it’s always the case that AGW is true because the majority of scientists say it is. But this is not science! It only takes one contradiction to disprove a scientific theory as Karl Popper’s swan analogy shows.  John Cook’s latest paper promoting the ‘consensus’ has been critiqued by Jo, Watts, some German guys and by Lucia. Lucia and Brandon Schollenberger analyse Cook’s methodology and Guidelines for classifying climate papers into ‘support’ and ‘reject’ AGW categories and find that Cook’s paper disproves the consensus. That is, analysis of Cook et. al. suggests that more climate papers reject AGW. So has Cook disproved the consensus theory of AGW? [Read more…] about Ten of the Worst Climate Research Papers: 5 Years On

Are Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO Reports Reliable? A Note from Cohenite

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THE CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology [BOM] are the peak Australian scientific institutions. Various governments in Australia rely on the scientific conclusions from these government-funded scientific institutions. The assumption is that the scientific advice from the CSIRO and BOM is not only reliable but reasonable. But is it?

 

A regular contributor to this blog, Anthony Cox, also known as Cohenite, examines the scientific evidence presented in the two most recent reports from the CSIRO and BOM: the BOM Annual Climate Summary 2011 and State of the Climate Report – 2012.

 

Cohenite is not a scientist, but he is interested in the evidence.

 

Download Cohenite’s note as a pdf here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/BOM-CSIRO-article.pdf

Garnaut’s Second Update, Sceptics are the White Swans: A Note from David Stockwell and Cohenite

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THE Australian government relies on various science experts to argue its case in favour of anthropogenic global warming [AGW]; people like Will Steffen, David Karoly and the ubiquitous Tim Flannery supply the scientific credentials for the government’s belief in AGW.

The economic gravitas to the government’s proposed economics measures to solve AGW are provided by their go-to man, Professor Ross Garnaut. Garnaut does come with some impressive economic academic credentials from ANU and the University of Melbourne. Garnaut also has considerable experience in private industry and is chairman of Lihir Gold, the New Guinea based gold-mining company.

In 2008 former PM Rudd engaged Garnaut to prepare an Interim Report to support the then Rudd government’s intention to introduce an ETS to solve AGW. With Rudd no longer PM, the current government under PM Gillard has commissioned Garnaut to provide updates to his 2008 Interim Report to justify the Gillard government’s intention to introduce a carbon tax to solve AGW; make of that what you will.

This article looks at Garnaut’s second update [there is a link to a critique of Garnaut’s first update below]. Garnaut’s second update looks at the science supporting AGW. This science shows warming over the recent period. That much can be agreed with, but just about everything else Garnaut’s science says, how much warming and particularly what has caused that warming, is problematic and subject to strong contrary scientific evidence. So, when Garnaut boasts in the press “I was right about climate change” that is a hollow boast.

[Read more…] about Garnaut’s Second Update, Sceptics are the White Swans: A Note from David Stockwell and Cohenite

David Stockwell and Anthony Cox reply to Lewandowsky and His Lies, Dam Lies and Statistics

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COGNITIVE science is about the action and process of knowing, that is about intelligence and rational and non-rational intellectual processes. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is a professor of Psychology specialising in cognitive process. He thinks the cognitive processes of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) sceptics is deficient and on the same level as “truthers” and other “conspiracy theorists”.  Furthermore, he is not backward in telling anyone who will listen that sceptics are “damn liars”.

Lewandowsky’s fulminations against sceptics continues a sinister trend in the AGW debate with a number of prominent AGW supporters casting aspersions about the moral legitimacy of scepticism and calling for sceptics to be jailed or prosecuted or at the very least banned as Senator Bob Brown advocates for leading sceptic Andrew Bolt.  However,  Lewandowsky’s diatribes go beyond legal and political action and calls into doubt the sanity of the sceptical position.

This is serious, for merely questioning the ‘science’ of AGW one now faces the opprobrium of having one’s mental ability questioned.

Lewandowsky has been very active, having several articles published at the ABC’s Unleashed. His most recent one is  cunning.  Apparently realising that the old stand-by of arguing from authority is not having any success in converting an increasingly cynical public, Lewandowsky has attempted to directly involve the public in the scientific process of validating the evidence for AGW. This process is described in his latest ABC article:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/43020.html

Because Lewandowsky is an award winning statistician and uses statistics in this latest paper another award winning statistician, Dr David Stockwell, thought having his sanity queried was worth the risk of highlighting the egregious statistical errors of Lewandowsky’s article.

While prepared to publish Lewandowsky’s offensive opinion, the ABC refused to publish the following rebuttal: 

[Read more…] about David Stockwell and Anthony Cox reply to Lewandowsky and His Lies, Dam Lies and Statistics

Rhetoric from Climate Minister Disputed by Anthony Cox

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MINISTER for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet, believes in anthropogenic global warming.  Send him a request asking he justify this belief and the reply is likely to be long and full of appeals to authority: 

“There is clear evidence that our climate is changing, largely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.  The Fourth Assessment Report, produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, states that global warming is ‘unequivocal’ and ‘most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th Century is very likely due to the observed increase in greenhouse gas concentrations’.

[Read more…] about Rhetoric from Climate Minister Disputed by Anthony Cox

Energy Targets and Australian Politics: A Note from Cohenite

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clean coalCLEAN coal increasingly appears to be neither scientifically feasible nor economically viable. The only real alternative for Australia is nuclear yet those most concerned about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) oppose it.

Clean coal is the process of trapping carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal to prevent those emissions from entering the atmosphere. Local expert John Harborne, in a recent article, notes that the energy cost of trapping the emissions is almost equal to the energy produced from burning the coal and the area required to store the trapped emissions exceeds the area of the mined coal. 

For its part the Federal government has introduced the Renewable Energy Target [RET] to combat the alleged problem of AGW. The RET mandates that twenty per cent of base-load energy must come from renewable energy [RE] by 2020. The Greens support this and with the fallacy of clean coal now revealed are demanding that all base-load energy come from RE.   [Read more…] about Energy Targets and Australian Politics: A Note from Cohenite