Denniss in Denial

Poor Dr. Richard Denniss is the executive director of The Australia Institute and is a great denier.  Denniss recently appeared with Christopher Monckton, third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, at the National Press Club and, instead of attempting to shew that any empirical evidence supports his credulous acceptance of the orthodox belief in the pseudo-scientific conjecture of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, preferred to use false analogies and fallacious arguments and a little raillery against conspiracy-theories.  The mathematical Monckton, however, thoroughly kicked his opponent’s arse.  Accordingly, having been publicly humiliated as a denier of logic, a denier of reason, and a denier of articulate argument, Dick Denniss now tries to deny that he lost the debate to Lord Monckton. 

At Crikey, Dick the Denier lies to the gullible congregation of believers, asserting that he and not Monckton employed reason:

A good question to ask climate sceptics in general, and one I put to Lord Monckton, was why he was so opposed to a carbon price and so quiet about Tony Abbott’s far more expensive direct action scheme.

Actually, Dick, that is not a good question to ask the sceptics of CAGW; the silly, politically-biassed question foolishly supposes that those who oppose the Government’s stupid plans for a ruinous ‘carbon’ tax must, with seeming inconsistency, support the Opposition’s proposed solution to a non-existing problem.  Lord Monckton explained that he did not support any measure predicated on a false conjecture but, like nearly everything else Lord Monckton said, Dr Dennis barely listened, absorbed as he was with calculating the insurance premiums of an entire planet and wondering whether Lord Monckton really be entitled to be addressed as “Lord”—he is.
After Monckton’s accurate refutation of the silly notion that carbon dioxide is pollution, Denniss mocked Monckton’s assertion and said that carbon dioxide is an unwanted byproduct of industry and is therefore pollution.  Well, Dick, the byproduct of a hydrogen engines is water, so water must be pollution.  A byproduct of burning coal is water vapour—a greenhouse gas!—, so water vapour is pollution:  let’s tax it immediately.
One of Denniss the Denier’s favourite arguments is the analogy of oncologists’ consensus:  there’s a consensus of climate-scientists, he says, so they must be right.  Unfortunately, the doctor in denial has not yet determined that before treating a fever with radical surgery and expensive medication (for that noted diagnostician, Al Gore has declaimed that “Earth has a fever”) a good, prudent doctor first determines whether the patient have a fever.
If we must argue from analogies, let us consider two scenarios.  Which would you choose?

Scenario One:

Patient:  Doctor, I think I’d like this boil on my wrist removed.
Modern-consensus GP:  This might be problematic; and, when I say “might be”, I mean it’s very probably a malignant lesion; and, by “very probably”, I mean almost certainly a potentially lethal cancer; so, here’s your referral to an oncologist.

[later]

Modern-consensus oncologist:  All right, we’ve already entered all your details into this modelling software.
Patient:  Won’t you need to examine me?
Modern-consensus oncologist:  No, the consensus of opinion is that computer models are far better that mere data-collection.  Sadly, several iterations of our program prove that you will almost certainly develop cancer in that arm, and in one of your legs, over the course of the next fifty years, and the likelihood, nay, certainty is that what you ignorantly call a boil is, more probably—in fact, definitely—the incipient sign of a very nasty, metastasising, life-threatening, malignant tumour.  We shall, therefore have to remove the entire right arm, and your left leg from the knee down, I’m afraid.  So, you go to surgery first thing in the morning.
Patient:  Hang on, you haven’t even examined me!  Shouldn’t you at least look at my boil?
Modern-consensus oncologist:  I assure you, that the entire world-wide community of oncologists agree that this software is consistently and irrefutably reliable.  Crazed, conspiracy-theorists have complained of one or two or, at most, a dozen well-publicised errors which were just typographical errors, I assure you.   Are you a denier of scientific consensus?
Patient:  Nonetheless, I really think I ought to seek a second opinion
Modern-consensus oncologist:  Assuredly, and I have already sought my colleagues’ advice, and all accept the excellence of this software.  If, however, you still have any unreasonable doubts, I can send you next door, to Dr. Mann or Dr. Hansen, if you like,
Patient:  Well, how much will all this cost?
Modern-consensus oncologist:  Apart from costing you an arm and a leg, you’ll have to close your business, sell your assets, pay a ruinously higher tax rate for the rest of your life; and then we have to consider my fees.  Still, you have to act now because if we wait any longer your health will be critically endangered.

Scenario Two:

Patient:  Doctor, I think I’d like this boil on my wrist removed.
Old-fashioned GP:  Well, first I’ll examine it.  You’ve had it for more than a few weeks?  Yes, that boil had better be incised and drained.  Right, I’ll just grab a few instruments ... swab it with this ... cover it with this; there you go, done.

See also Noel Sheppard’s “The global warming debate Al Gore refused to have” at Newsbusters, as well as Jo Nova and diverse commentators here and here.

A Clean Energy Future

Change Leads to Change

“Inevitably,

climate change brings a rise
of temperature.”*

Thus the desperate
Labor members advertise
their ‘carbon-tax’ cure.

Those fools can’t measure
any other problem’s size
but, on this, they’re sure.

Clearly, all change brings
change, they’ll proselytise,
for their hearts are pure.

A Sad Want of Sound Counsel

Is there no-one wise
near the PM to advise
her, “stop telling lies”?

*  The Government’s “Clean Energy Future” advertisement claims: “Climate change is predicted to lead to further rises in temperature, rises in sea levels and some extreme weather events becoming more common, making life more difficult.”  So, climate change brings climate change.  See “Clean Energy Future advert: count the lies”, at Australian Climate Madness, and see also “An Explanation of Change”.

Evidence against CAGW

The pseudo-scientific conjecture of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, a world-wide fraud, is finally coming to an end.  Here is some of the evidence that CAGW is not a threat to our planet:–

1.  Proponents of CAGW don’t consider it a threat.

Here in Australia, the federal Government has provided some details of its proposed massive new tax—a Supposed ‘Carbon’ Abatement Measure, or SCAM—whereby industrial emitters of carbon dioxide are taxed but many people hurt by the concomitant rising costs of electricity and the like are “fully compensated”.  Some of the revenue raised will help subsidise more expensive, but allegedly cleaner, production of electricity.  The taxation will cost the Government more that it will raise.  None of the revenue raised by the new tax will be spent on mitigation projects.

2.  Proponents of CAGW don’t propose infrastructural projects.

If temperatures were about to rise alarmingly, instead of taxing a trace gas which has supposedly helped warm the atmosphere very slightly, some worthwhile projects, surely, would be to build pipelines, canals, waterways, roads and other infrastructure, in order to help send water, food, medicines and technological assistance to people affected by droughts, floods, food shortages and the like.  Forests could be planted, shady porticoes and air-conditioned malls could be constructed, new and more efficient farms, orchards and plantations could be established, safer housing could be provided.  The fact that the pseudo-scientists, politicians and journalists who promote the conjecture of CAGW never suggest ameliorative measures other than promoting subsidies of solar power and wind-turbines, and similar schemes, suggests that they don’t really believe that the average world-wide temperatures—an immeasurable and irrelevant figure, for the most part—will rise dangerously.

If the world’s seas were about to rise alarmingly, instead of taxing a trace gas which has supposedly helped warm the atmosphere very slightly making arctic ice and glaciers melt, and making the seas rise, some worthwhile projects, surely, would be to protect low-lying coastal areas, to build sea-walls and dykes, to dredge silted rivers to clear harbours, to use human ingenuity to forestall, to mitigate, and to prevent damage from rising waters.  The fact that the pseudo-scientists, politicians and journalists who promote the conjecture of CAGW never suggest ameliorative measures other than promoting subsidies of solar power and wind-turbines, and similar schemes, suggests that they don’t really believe that the seas will rise dangerously.

3.  There has been slight, recent global warming.

As Prof. Bob Carter explains, a mild warming of only half of one degree occurred between 1979 and 1998, and that was followed by some slight global cooling over the subsequent decade: dangerous global warming, therefore, is not occurring.  Conterminously, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increased by 5%: emissions of carbon dioxide, therefore, are not driving catastrophic warming.

4.  Proponents of CAGW accept that there has been little or no recent global warming.

As we have already explained in our previous post, “Awarmists Admit No Recent Warming”, we can draw only two conclusions from the latest silly paper conceding that there has been no warming but that the lack of warming was caused by China’s additional burning of coal: either there has been no warming forced by anthropogenic carbon dioxide for a decade, meaning (by their own terms) that coal-burning power stations are not responsible for global warming—wherefore they should not be scrapped by our Government—, or there was no warming for a decade because of emissions from power stations, meaning that coal-burning power stations prevent global warming—wherefore they should not be scrapped by our Government.  Either way, we have no need of a tax on carbon dioxide.

5.  Proponents of CAGW predicate their conjecture on flawed computer models.

No computer model has yet been developed which could, from data of the first half of the twentieth century, predict worldwide temperatures and frequency of storms for the second half of the twentieth century.  Until climatologist can demonstrate that they can forecast the climate of the last half century we need not trust anything they predict about the next half century.  Predictions of proponents of CAGW have been consistently wrong, and they need to prove that their forecasts are credible before we believe them.

6.  Proponents of CAGW propagandise with deceits and tricks and lies.

If truth were on their side, why lie?  In Australia, the activist, defamatory organisation GetUp! is now resorting to threats of boycotts.  See “Chris Landsea and the Moral Midgets”, by Donna Laframboise at No Frakking Consensus.  See how the Australian Climate Commission, in its error-ridden document, The Critical Decade: Climate science, risks and responses, features a conclusion which contains four lies in four sentences.  See how egregious errors in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, are still taught in schools.  The revisionist, notoriously corrupt IPCC is clearly conflicted.  “Climate-gate”.  The Australian Government continually claims, duplicitously, that Australia is the highest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide, and continuously refers to carbon dioxide as pollution.
Despite awarmists’ hyperbolic claims, the seas are not rising and will not soon rise alarmingly, the antarctic glaciers are not melting, the Maldives are not sinking, there was a Mediæval Warming Period, and a small amount of extra warmth would be good for most life on earth and not harmful.  On the other hand, the stupid policies and crazy schemes which awarmists advocate are already ruining lives and economies around the world.

7.  Proponents of CAGW don’t practice what they preach.

It’s always “do as I say, not as I do” with those hypocrites (such as the Greens), who demand luxuries for themselves but counsel temperance and renunciation for the swinish multitudes, and who insist, for example, that emissions of carbon dioxide from aeroplanes and automobiles are dangerously warming the earth.  If flying around the world in aeroplanes were really so bad for the planet, surely those who tell us not to fly would stop doing it themselves.  If being driven to work by a chauffeur instead of walking or cycling to work were really so bad for the planet, surely those who tell us not to be transported in cars would stop doing it themselves.

Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young demonstrating that she does not believe the Greens’ lies.

8.  Proponents of CAGW ignore water vapour (and anything else harmful to their conjecture).

Water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas, but the proponents of CAGW do nothing and advocate nothing to alter the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere.  Water vapour—whereof at least 99.99% occurs naturally—is responsible for only 95% of the earth’s greenhouse effect whereas anthropogenic carbon dioxide is responsible for as much as 0.117% of the greenhouse effect!

9.  Proponents of CAGW claim an erroneous but irrelevant consensus.

Our credulous but mendacious Prime Minister often claims to respect science, yet she constantly proclaims that she accepts the “consensus” on CAGW.  No real scientific theory has ever needed an appeal to its popularity to demonstrate its validity.  See “Anthropogenic Global Warming: a crippled conjecture”, from Jeff Glassman’s “Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law: the Basis of Rational Argument”:

AGW is a centuries-old conjecture elevated to an established belief by a little clique of quacks who proclaim themselves the Consensus on Climate, guardians of the vault of exclusive knowledge.  [...]  As a matter of science, as opposed to a matter of belief, the AGW conjecture is gathering more contradictory evidence than supporting.  The layman can test it and understand its failings by applying just the few principles [...].
AGW fails the test because it is proclaimed by a consensus.   Science places no value on such a vote.  A unanimous opinion, much less a consensus, is insufficient.  Science advances one scientist at a time, and we honor their names.  It advances one model at a time.  When the article gets around to saying “most scientists believe…,” it’s time to go back to the comics section.  Science relies instead on models that make factual predictions that are or might be validated.

See also Lawrence Bodenstein’s “Regarding Anderegg et al. and climate change credibility”:

[The oft-cited study by Anderegg et al. which fallaciously argues a consensus among researchers supporting the IPCC’s politicised position on CAGW] employed suspect methodology that treated publication metrics as a surrogate for expertise.  Credentialed scientists, having devoted much of their careers to a certain area, with multiple relevant peer-reviewed publications, should be deemed core experts, notwithstanding that others are more or less prolific in print or that their views stand in the minority.  In the climate change (CC) controversy, a priori, one expects that the much larger and more “politically correct” side would excel in certain publication metrics.  They continue to cite each other’s work in an upward spiral of self-affirmation.  The authors’ treatment of these deficiencies in Materials and Methods was unconvincing in the skewed and politically charged environment of the CC hubbub and where one group is in the vast majority.  The data hoarding and publication blockade imbroglio was not addressed at all.  [...]
Scientific merit does not derive from the number, productivity, or prominence of those holding a certain view—truth by majority rule or oligarchical fiat.  The history of science is replete with views (e.g., a geocentric universe or the immutability of species) that were widely held, held by the most prominent of men, and wrong.

10.  CAGW explains everything.

A certain sign that any belief is completely kooky is when it assigns responsibility to one substance or group—quartz, grey aliens, the Illuminati, cider vinegar, the Stone-cutters, table salt, Xenu—to explain (or cure) everything.  Any attempt to explain everything with one encompassing cause moves away from the zone of scientific verifiability into the domain of religion.  CAGW, according to its heterodox believers, has a prelapsarian, ideal world—the world before modern industrialisation—which is doomed by an evil agent—carbon dioxide—unless the true believers fight opposing forces to defeat the evil one.  For many awarmists, the increasing amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere completely and indisputedly explains a dearth of rains, more hurricanes, the flooded plains and dry demesnes, mildewy grains, quite fruitless pains, all noisome drains, reactive chains, old weather-vanes, expensive gains of poor champagnes, love-smitten swains with sore chilblains infesting lanes in dreary trains, young princely Danes of sad refrains and ghostly banes, asthmatic cranes and, in short, anything else whereof the mob which feigns to believe complains.

We invite readers to add to our list.

Hogwash

Well, I try to heed the experts who say that I am dumb,
I have monitored the HOGWASH and listened to the SCUM.*
Our progress is the enemy, it seems from what they cry;
if climates change, inventive man will just give up and die.

So how could men survive the worst the weather threw at them
in ages past?  Did they just quit and moan a requiem?
The ice-age men and bedouin and cunning Eskimo,
have demonstrated humans can survive both drought and snow.

If all the oceans rise and flood the land whereon we dwell
we’d build more ocean liners and make mountain homes as well.
We’d surely have some time to plan— a little breathing space —
before supposing climate change must doom the human race.

Environmentalists today who claim they want to be
at one with nature are, in truth, against humanity.
The answer is quite simple for each carbon-hating dunce;
to end their exhalations and to suicide at once.

*  acronyms for Hysteria over Global Warming and Suchlike Hooey, and Stupidly Criminal Unscientific Misanthropes.

UPDATE I (9 July):  See “Climate Change Hoaxers Add to the ‘Official Stupid Things Used to Fear Monger about Global Warming’ List”, by Jeff Dunetz.
See also Paul Clark’s “Summary Disproving AGW”.

UPDATE II (10 July):  See “What Is Modeling?” at Synthetic Information.

UPDATE III (10 July):  See Doug L. Hoffman’s “The Sensitive Kind”; see Dr. Roy Spencer’s “Global SST Update: Still No Sign of Resumed Warming”; and see TWAKI’s “Hell freezing over for global warming politicians”:

The consensus is building on both sides of the debate—we are in for cold in the coming decades, not warmth.  Reason—our sun is going spotless, now with the occasional specks, solar activity is very low and history shows this correlates with periods of cold throughout the earth.

UPDATE IV (10 July):  See Lord Monckton’s “Gillard’s Tax on ‘Carbon Pollution’ – the Facts”.

Awarmists Admit No Recent Warming

Power Stations Cool the Planet*

China’s emissions,

awarmists say, are cooling

the globe on the whole.

It it obvious

what we must do for the Earth:

we should burn more coal.

*  see “Global warming lull down to China’s coal growth”, by the BBC’s Richard Black:

The lull in global warming from 1998 to 2008 was mainly caused by a sharp rise in China’s coal use, a study suggests.  [...]
But the new study, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that smog from the extra coal acted to mask greenhouse warming.  [...]
Although burning the coal produced more warming carbon dioxide, it also put more tiny sulphate aerosol particles into the atmosphere which cool the planet by reflecting solar energy back into space.

From what the awarmist aerosols say, there are only two conclusions from their latest concession: either there has been no warming forced by anthropogenic carbon dioxide for a decade, meaning (by their own terms) that coal-burning power stations are not responsible for global warming, wherefore they should not be scrapped by our Government or there was no warming for a decade because of emissions from power stations, meaning that coal-burning power stations prevent global warming, wherefore they should not be scrapped by our Government.  Either way, we have no need of a tax on carbon dioxide.  See also “Sic et Non:  Unsettled Science”.
All this doubt from the believers constitutes another example of what we might call the Gaia Paradox:  those (like the very silly Prof. Tim Flannery or many of the Greens) who believe most in the goddess Gaia—the planet as one, divine, living being—are the very people who assign to her the least power to look after herself.

UPDATE I:  See Luboš Motl’s “Did Chinese coal cause the cooling since 1998?” at The Reference Frame:

So [Kaufmann et al.] wrote a paper that explains everything.  And because crackpot papers that explain everything and indirectly confirm the consensus of ideologues and brainwashed simpletons are politically correct (especially if the authors are surfer dudes), this stuff was instantly published by Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, a journal that does [its] best to reject all papers from genuine scientists such as Richard Lindzen.

UPDATE II:  See as well “Global Warming?  Little Ice Age?  The Only Certainty Is that We’re Paying for the Hysteria of Our Politicians”, by Christopher Booker, in The Daily Mail:

Whatever happens now, whether it [be] hot or cold, whether we get heatwaves or record snowfalls, floods or droughts, sooner or later we hear those familiar little voices piping up to tell us that the blame for all these ‘extreme weather events’ still lies on ‘disruption’ to the climate caused by the sinful activities of mankind.

They’re all at it—from the environmental activists of Greenpeace, the WWF and their allies in the BBC and the Met Office, to those thousands of scientists across the world who have received billions in funding from governments investing in climate change research and prevention—all still battling to keep in being the greatest scare story in the history of the world.

The truth is that it becomes ever more obvious that none of them really has a clue as to what is responsible for the changes in our climate.  They can’t even tell us what global temperatures will be next month or next year, let alone what they will be in 100 years’ time, as they like to pretend their computer models can predict.†  But the really terrifying thing about all this is that our politicians have become so locked into the scare story that there is not yet the slightest sign they are prepared to notice the reality now crowding in on them on every side—that global warming is by no means a certainty.

†  this, unfortunately, is a fallacious but common argument.  Of one thousand healthy young people, for example, epidemiologists cannot guess with much likelihood of success which of them will die in the next year; but, with a fair degree of certainty, they can predict what proportion of the thousand will die from coronary disease and various cancers over the course of decades.  Climate models, so far, have been practically worthless, mainly because climate is chaotic and non-linear with far too many unknown variables; but the lack of predictive utility is not proven by their inability to make accurate short-term forecasts.

UPDATE III (8 July):  See Warren Meyer’s “Return of ‘the Plug’.”

UPDATE IV (18 July):

Or Maybe Not

Just out, a new paper
(from Not A Space Agency)
asks, “What would they know?”

Vernier et al.
write, “Don’t blame the Chinese, but
the odd volcano.”^‡

‡  I paraphrase.  See “New NASA paper contradicts Kaufmann et al., saying it’s volcanoes, not China Coal”, by Anthony Watts at WUWT.