Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Books

Same Information: Different Opinion. Part 2, The Tragic versus Utopian Vision of Climate Science

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WE know that General Circulation Models underpin the theory of anthropomorphic global warming, rely on supercomputers, are expense to run and mostly output nonsense [1].

Earlier this year I sat in a seminar as a UK climate scientist acknowledged all the limitations of General Circulation Models, but then went on to claim that they had to be the future of weather forecasting because they were grand and incorporated all that was grand about science and that one day they would be better at predicting the weather and the climate.Steven Pinker

The Professor suggested that statistical models, including artificial neural networks, were just pattern analysis. He stated that even if statistical models could forecast rainfall in Australia, for example, better than the best General Circulation Models, these statistical models were so limited and so ordinary that this is not where science should be investing.

This professor perhaps sees grandeur, where I see waste and hubris. [Read more…] about Same Information: Different Opinion. Part 2, The Tragic versus Utopian Vision of Climate Science

Open Thread

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I’ve been reading ‘The Lucky Culture and The Rise of an Australian Ruling Class’ by Nick Cater. Mr Cater has been a journalist with News Ltd and interestingly has a degree in sociology from Exeter University in the UK.

The book is very much a sociologist’s perspective on the contemporary Australian inner city pseudo-intellectual. Mr Cater is extraordinarily accurate in his description of their totems and their prejudices.

Nick Cater

Why Aren’t There More Female Libertarians?

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“The thing about freedom is that its heights are limitless, and its lows are bottomless. Libertarians, I presume, look at that void and never consider that they will do anything but rise. And communalists, as the Research Institute dubbed the other end of the spectrum, probably look and are horrified by the many eventualities that could sink them. This is Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature: The strong snap up all the firewood and nuts and berries and whatnot, and the weak die starving and shivering in the cold.”[1]

This extract, from an article in New Republic entitled Why aren’t there more female libertarians, goes on to suggest that young white males can afford to embrace Libertarianism in a way that those more likely to fail in our society cannot.Virginia Postrel

There is a fundamental flaw though, in the argument as presented. The author, Nora Caplan-Bricker, assumes that there are not enough bits of “firewood and nuts and berries and whatnot,” to go around. The author presumably subscribes to the Malthusian catastrophe, etcetera.

In contrast, libertarians fundamentally believe that there is enough to go around, or at least that they will be able to gather enough to meet their basic needs.

Indeed, I’m yet to meet a libertarian concerned that humanity is about to run out of water, or energy.

Libertarians are not even concerned by overpopulation or anthropogenic global warming. Rather, libertarian believe in progress, and to quote Virginia Postrel they believe that today we have greater, wealth, health opportunity and choice than at any time in history.

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1. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115410/why-arent-there-more-female-libertarians

2. http://www.amazon.com/The-FUTURE-AND-ITS-ENEMIES/dp/0684862697

And the picture is of Virginia Postrel.

Against Collective Integration: Carl Jung

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In his review of the book ‘The Undiscovered Self’ by the psychiatrist and philosopher Carl JungCarl Jung, Maxwell Cynn suggests that:

“Dr. Jung noted that whenever individuals are pressed into a group an averaging effect occurs and part of the individual Self is sacrificed in order to fit-in to the norm of the group. We stop thinking in terms of Self and the group becomes our personae. The larger the group the more the individual suffers. He pointed to the Iron Curtain as a physical manifestation and symbol of a psychic schism within mankind.

He also warned that the freedom-loving West was not immune to the psychic infection of the communist Eastern Block, but rather more susceptible because of our free and open-minded societies. The fall of the Iron Curtain in modern times did not symbolize an end to the schism Jung described, but more ominously the acceptance in the West of collective ideals.

Jung’s words ring soundly today in our modern electronic society of larger groups, stronger connections, greater integration, and socio-political correctness. Our nationalism has turned to internationalism and our group has become global. Individualism is under greater assault today than at any point in history–Jung’s words live on in an almost prophetic sense. The Self continues to drown in a sea of collectivism.”

Ive been reading ‘The Undiscovered Self’ on my iPhone via Questia.com.

Open Thread

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I encourage you to share links to breaking news and interesting information at this thread. sausages barbecue

I intend to post more in the future about the need for Australia to have a comprehensive climate policy. In the meantime get informed by reading Bob Carter’s new book entitled ‘Taxing Air’. Electronic copies available on Amazon for instant download for $8.

http://www.amazon.com/Taxing-Air-ebook/dp/B00CY1EOZA

The Central England Temperature Index: A Useful Reference

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It has been suggested at this blog that it is too risky for mainstream politicians, for example the leader of the Coalition, Tony Abbott, to admit to being sceptical of anthropogenic global warming. It has been suggested journalists at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) would simply poke fun at him.

I disagree.

Indeed using Bob Carter’s new book Taxing Air as a reference, he could start educating ABC journalists on some of the basics. A good starting point is the longest established ground temperature record, termed the Central England Temperature Index (CETI).

Central England Temperature Index

This record starts in 1659, which was soon after the invention of the thermoscope but before the Fahrenheit scale came into use.

It is a 353 year-long data set, archived by the British Meteorological Office, and it shows that the average summer temperature in Central England in the eighteenth century was 15.46ºC while that for the twentieth century was 15.35ºC.

Yes.

Far from being warmer due to assumed global warming, comparison of actual temperature data shows that UK summers in the twentieth century were cooler than those of two centuries previously.

This is the sort of very useful information that Mr Abbott could share with ABC journalists.

He could then conclude, as Professor Carter does, that our longest available thermometer records, like our shorter and more accurate modern measures of temperature, offer little by way of evidence for the occurrence of dangerous human-caused global warming.

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To order your copy of Taxing Air and an extra copy to send to Mr Abbott, visit http://www.taxingair.com. The book has great charts like the one embedded into this post of the CETI.

Bob Carter is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers in professional scientific journals. The great majority of these concern interpretations of ancient environments, including paleo-climatic studies. Link to full of list of publications here http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_4.htm