Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

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

Climate Change Rallies Held Around Australia

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THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s news online is running with the headline ‘Climate change rallies held around Australia, with calls for Coalition to keep carbon tax’. So many could-be inspiring photographs and could-be inspiring captions follow the headline that I could have been on Facebook. Climate Change Rally

Indeed the ABC “news item” would tick most of the boxes for pure propaganda.

I’m filing some quotes from the “news item” here for posterity:

“There is no sceptic at the end of a fire hose.”

“Emergency workers played a significant role in warning about the dangers of unchecked global warming.”

“The Climate Council’s Tim Flannery told 30,000 people in Melboure that Australian must make their voices heard.”

“Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt evoked the memory of the 2009 Black Saturday bush fires, while firefighters spoke of their fears of increasingly hotter days.”

“Mr McNulty says scientists were clear that global warming would make extreme weather events more frequent and severe.”

Meanwhile I stayed at home reading Friedrich Nietzche, and note that he wrote:
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

Same Information: Different Opinion. Part 1, Attitudes to Natural Variation

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MIKE Haseler was once a candidate for the Scottish Green party.  He has worked in the wind industry, has knowledge of precision temperature controllers and is a blogger.   He is also interested in how:

“The two sides in the climate debate look at pretty much the same information and come to very different conclusions. Having met both sides, and tried to understand their motivation and outlook, I am thoroughly convinced that both approach the subject in what they think is the right way and both are horrified at the antics of the other.” Mike Haseler

But Mike has gone further than just pondering (or asking the respective camps to complete a Myers Briggs profile), he has started compiling his own table of key differences between the two sides based on categories such as employment sector, definitions of ‘quality’, experience in decision making, ‘main focus’, and more.

You can examine Mike’s categories here…

http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/sceptics-vs-academics/

There are several issues that Mike raises that I find particularly interesting.  But let’s start with just one:

  1. The idea that the sceptics and non-sceptics have a different point of view when it comes to natural variation.

[Read more…] about Same Information: Different Opinion. Part 1, Attitudes to Natural Variation

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.

Hazard Reduction, Only Proven Bushfire Management Tool

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The Volunteer Firefighters Association (VFFA), the body representing the Voice of Volunteer Rural Firefighters in New South Wales, refutes the claim by green alarmists that climate change is the cause of the recent bushfires in New South Wales.VFFA Truck

“It’s ridiculous to blame climate change when we know there has been far worse bushfires stretching back to the earliest days of European settlement in Australia including the Black Saturday Victoria 2009, NSW Bushfires 1994, Ash Wednesday Victoria 1983, Blue Mountains NSW 1968, Black Tuesday Hobart 1967 and Black Friday Victoria 1939,” said Peter Cannon, President of the VFFA.

The VFFA is angered by comments from the green lobby groups that tackling climate change was more important than prescribed burning of forest fuels to reduce bushfire risk. The real blame rests with the greens and their ideology as they continue to oppose and undermine our efforts to conduct hazard reduction in the cooler months and to prevent private landowners from clearing their lands to reduce bushfire risk.

Hazard reduction is the only proven management tool rural firefighters have to reduce the intensity and spread of bushfires and this has been recognised in numerous bushfire enquires since the Stretton enquiry into the 1939 Victorian bushfires.

“The amount of ‘green tape’ we have to go through to get a burn approved is beyond frustrating,” says Peter Cannon.

The VFFA is calling on the NSW State Government to reduce the amount of green tape involved in planning and conducting hazard reductions, so that our Volunteer Firefighters can get on with the job of conducting fire prevention works in the cooler months to prevent the inevitable summer bushfire disasters that are now becoming a more regular feature.

The NSW State Government must also provide sufficient funding for bushfire hazard reduction works on a planned and sustained basis, including the creation of asset protection zones and upgrades of all fire trails in high bushfire risk areas.

“Remember that it’s far more cost effective, say around 66 to 100 times more cost efficient, to prevent wild fires through hazard reduction than it is to have reactionary fire response, which is what we have at the moment. With the great number of lost homes and decreasing property values through these wild fires, what then will the total fiscal amount be… when it could have all been prevented by effective Hazard reduction.”

Mr Cannon says, “The area treated by prescribed burning on bushfire prone lands needs to be increased from the current level of less than 1% per annum to a minimum of 5% per annum, as recommended by the Victorian Royal Commission and many leading bushfire experts.”

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This is a media release from the VFFA made on October, 30, 2013.