Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Climate & Climate Change

Australian Parliamentarian, and Sceptic, Banned Prevented from Tabling Climate Data

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DR Dennis Jensen BAppSc (RMIT), MSc (Melb), PhD (Monash) is the only member of the Australian Parliament with any training in science a PhD in a science discipline. 

[As correctly pointed out in the comments following this posting, my brother Jim Turnour, also a member of the Federal Parliament, has a Batchelor of Agricultural Science.  Other members with science and science-related degrees are listed in a comment in the following thread.]    

Yesterday Dr Jensen suggested in the Australian Parliament that many of the current problems facing the Murray Darling Basin are the result of low runoff as a consequence of changed land management practices (including more plantations in the top of catchments), catchment-wide drainage management plans (place in the 1980s and 1990s to lower water tables) and more efficient water use (resulting in less leakage). 

He explained that it was wrong to blame climate change for the low levels in the dams, because there had been no long term decline in rainfall in the Basin. 

Dr Jensen also explained that many of the climate models used to predict regional rainfall, including the CSIRO models (relied upon by Ross Garnaut in his report on climate change to the Australian government), are unreliable and unduly pessimistic.

When Dr Jensen asked to table supporting information in the Parliament by way of charts and tables, the request was denied. 

Much of the information that Dr Jensen was banned from tabling can be found in a recent publication from the IPA entitled ‘What’s Happening to the Murray River?’.

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The picture of Dr Jensen is from his parliamentary website.

Advice for Climate Conference in Poznan

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PROBABLY one of the best ways to cut CO2 emissions dramatically would be to cancel climate Conferences, starting with Poznan. 

One has only to look at the skies filled with private jets and the subsequent use of limousines to ferry delegates to these.  Once there, consider the great increase in emissions required to pamper these people in the style to which the climate industry has accustomed them.  Carbon neutral?  What a joke. 

[Read more…] about Advice for Climate Conference in Poznan

Obama to tell 10,000 in Poland about Science

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LAST year they met in Bali, tomorrow they meet in Poland, again under the direction of the United Nations, again about 10,000 people will gather to progress the global warming agenda.   In particular, they will discuss policy options for averting a ‘climate crisis’.

According to Christopher Booker writing in the UK’s Telegraph: 

“They will see a video of Mr Obama, in only his second major policy commitment, pledging that America is now about to play the leading role in the fight to “save the planet” from global warming.

Mr Obama begins by saying that “the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear”. “Sea levels,” he claims, “are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we’ve seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”

Far from the science being “beyond dispute”, we can only deduce from this that Mr Obama has believed all he was told by Al Gore’s wondrously batty film An Inconvenient Truth without bothering to check the facts.

Each of these four statements is so wildly at odds with the truth that on this score alone we should be seriously worried.”

How did we get to this sorry state of affairs? 

I would be much happier if Mr Obama didn’t claim to know anything about “the science”.  Why doesn’t he just say: “I am a lawyer by training, but I have been lead to believe sea levels are rising.”?

Why does he, and every other politician, claim to understand the science of climate change?