Jennifer Marohasy

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When The Facts Change: Mark Latham and Robert Manne are Stuck

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FORMER Labor leader, Mark Latham, is clearly not an empiricist, though he claims to be and he claims that another leading Australian advocate for anthropogenic global warming, Robert Manne, is also an empiricist and always quick to change his mind should the facts change.

Indeed the opening comments in his long opinion piece, published in today’s Financial Review, suggests that it’s all about evidence and that the evidence is on their side. But as the piece progresses Mr Latham shows that he has no concept of evidence, but that the average Australian just might. The piece is essentially an appeal by Mr Latham to a belief in experts while lamenting that ordinary Australians no longer seem to believe in global warming. Mr Latham writes:

“At face value, society’s small-talk about the weather is frivolous. But in the debate about global warming, it is a highly significant habit. Everyone is an expert on the weather, so why shouldn’t they have a strong opinion on climate, regardless of what the professional researchers say? This is a recurring problem for climate-change believers and lobbyists: how to separate, in the public’s mind, short-term events from long-term trends. Most people are inherently empirical, relying on the things they see around them was a way of gauging the future; the practicality of Aspirational Australia.

“Weather events are commonly extrapolated into discussions about climate change, even though this is akin to using daily sharemarket bulletins as a way of comprehending Kondratiev economics (50-year patterns in the business cycle). Five years ago, at the beginning of the debate, Australia’s drought conditions were seen as synonymous with global warming. It was a simple equation: dryness equals heat. Now, with record rainfall and flooding along the east coast, this notion has lost credibility. Wetness equals coolness.”

Yep. We have climate cycles in Australia and when it’s wetter, it’s cooler.

Conditions have changed, many so-called experts proven wrong, but many of the arrogant and ignorant appear incapable of an honest reassessment of the evidence.

More here: http://afr.com/p/lifestyle/review/climate_change_denial_not_just_for_sFAw16a7QU34KIj2tmN4eJ

Brown Leaves Greens

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ON Friday, the leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, announced he was stepping down and also retiring from Australian federal politics.

Miranda Devine has a piece in today’s Herald Sun that begins:

“THE intergalactic phones still didn’t ring on Friday after the earth-shattering news that Greens Leader Bob Brown had resigned.

Was that nutty speech to his ‘Fellow Earthians’ in Hobart last month a sign that he was on his way out the door?

Was it a final mad explosion of pent-up hubris that had him calling for a one-world government, an ‘all-of-the-Earth representative democracy’?

It was certainly time to go, Brown told a press conference on Friday, flanked by his successor, Christine Milne, and his handsome, bearded partner Paul Thomas.

People had taken to stopping him in Hobart’s Salamanca Place to say, ‘Thank God for the Greens’.

With a desperate Labor minority government belatedly turning on its Greens partners, and the Greens vote going backwards in state elections, Brown, 67, had passed the zenith of his career.

Best to get out while the going is good, with his legacy intact and before anyone notices the decline of the party he has led as a senator of 16 years.

As usual, a woman is left to clean up after the party, formidable and not to be underestimated though Christine Milne is.

In her first comments at Brown’s farewell press conference, Milne, 58, made a pitch to rural and regional voters, claiming “the Greens and the bush” simply misunderstood each other.

‘I’m going out there as a country person to say to other country people it is time that the Greens and country people worked together.’

Good luck with that, considering greenies are the chief cause of grief to the bush.

Let us count the ways. Forestry towns destroyed by irrational green tree worship. Uncontrollable bushfires caused, not by global warming, but by green opposition to hazard reduction.

National parks left to feral animals that rampage though neighbouring farms. Dams never built thanks to greenie protests. Wind turbines plonked all over bucolic hillsides. A live cattle industry brought to its knees…

Read the entire article here: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/greens-country-girl-christine-milne-is-no-friend-of-the-bush/story-e6frfhqf-1226326602622

I’ve written many blog posts cranky with Mr Brown for being such a hypocrite and for so often telling made-up stories and trying to pass them off as ‘saving the environment’.   Remember my blog post of June 2009 ‘The Already Bankrupt Brown Green’ about the pristine forest that was once a thriving timber town known as Wielangata…

Read more here:  https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2009/06/the-already-bankrupt-brown-green/

The Fiction World of Rajendra Pachauri: Tony Thomas

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HOW much do you really know about IPCC Chief Rajendra Pachauri and melting Himalaya Glaciers?

‘The Fiction World of Rajendra Pachauri’ by Tony Thomas is an easy to read, informative and insightful piece of investigative journalism available here:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2012/3/the-fictive-world-of-rajendra-pachauri

It includes comment that:

“The IPCC’s Himalaya forecast was based on nothing more than speculation by an Indian scientist, Syed Hasnain, in an Indian eco-magazine in April 1999, recycled into the New Scientist and then into a report in 2005 by the activist group WWF. The grey-lit WWF report was then cited in the IPCC’s draft glacier chapter in 2007…

Six IPCC experts reviewed the draft chapter and none saw anything odd. Twelve reviewers looked at it again in second draft. One of them (from Hebron University) said caustically that two elements in the forecast contradicted each other. Another, (from Newcastle University in the UK) told the authors to look up certain contrary references that cited glacier expansion (the IPCC authors’ brief is to assess the full range of scientific views on a topic). The reviewers’ comments were ignored. None of the total eighteen reviewers found anything untoward about the lone WWF citation for the dramatic forecast…

Later, the second draft was taken up and run in the all-important Summary for Policy Makers. The draft summary was reviewed line-by-line by 190 government representatives (if the politicians’ changes clash with the science sections, the science sections are altered retrospectively). Only one commented, hitting the bullseye: “This is a very drastic conclusion. Should have a supporting reference otherwise should be deleted (Government of India).”

Even then, IPCC rigour was not to be seen. The summary was watered down, leaving untouched the howlers in the source text.”

Statement by The Heartland Institute on Peter Gleick Confession

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“Earlier this evening, Peter Gleick, a prominent figure in the global warming movement, confessed to stealing electronic documents from The Heartland Institute in an attempt to discredit and embarrass a group that disagrees with his views.

“Gleick’s crime was a serious one. The documents he admits stealing contained personal information about Heartland staff members, donors, and allies, the release of which has violated their privacy and endangered their personal safety.

“An additional document Gleick represented as coming from The Heartland Institute, a forged memo purporting to set out our strategies on global warming, has been extensively cited by newspapers and in news releases and articles posted on Web sites and blogs around the world. It has caused major and permanent damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and many of the scientists, policy experts, and organizations we work with.

“A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.

“In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a “rational debate” from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.

“Gleick also claims he did not write the forged memo, but only stole the documents to confirm the content of the memo he received from an anonymous source. This too is unbelievable. Many independent commentators already have concluded the memo was most likely written by Gleick.

The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.

Tiny Budget for Heartland Institute Trying to Counter Global Climate Madness and Scientific Fraud

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Heartland Institute bad – DeSmogBlog says so! ‘Did you know the Heartland Institute employs skeptics?’ ‘And it’s ‘suggested’ they get money from people who agree with them and have interests in carbon dense energy!’

The Heartland Institute is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit http://www.heartland.org

Yesterday afternoon, two advocacy groups posted online several documents they claimed were The Heartland Institute’s 2012 budget, fundraising, and strategy plans. Some of these documents were stolen from Heartland, at least one is a fake, and some may have been altered.

The stolen documents appear to have been written by Heartland’s president for a board meeting that took place on January 17. He was traveling at the time this story broke yesterday afternoon and still has not had the opportunity to read them all to see if they were altered. Therefore, the authenticity of those documents has not been confirmed.

Since then, the documents have been widely reposted on the Internet, again with no effort to confirm their authenticity.

One document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,” is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute. It was not written by anyone associated with The Heartland Institute. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact.

[Read more…] about Tiny Budget for Heartland Institute Trying to Counter Global Climate Madness and Scientific Fraud

Ron Paul for US President

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RON Paul for President is not exactly what Daniel Kogoy, a Greens Councillor for Leichardt in Sydney, is suggesting in an article published today at On Line Opinion. But the article does explain some of the reasons why I would vote for Ron Paul…

“Debate raging between Left, Greens and Progressives on whether or not to support Libertarian Republican outsider Dr Ron Paul’s bid to win the Republican nomination for President.

Really, it is a no brainer, of course the left should be supporting Dr Ron Paul’s bid to win the Republican nomination and many are – see Blue Republican movement. All the other candidates are openly saying that the United States should bomb Iran, whose key allies include China and Russia. All of the other Republican candidates would do nothing to address Wall Street’s crimes. All the other candidates would happily attack civil liberties further.

Obama has done nothing to address Wall Street’s crimes. His administration is full of people from Wall Street and Goldman Sachs is his largest donor. Civil liberties have been further decimated, and tensions with Iran have been raised to dangerously high levels.

Read more here:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13140