Tag: Climate change

IPCC – Religious Sect or Scientific Community?


Global Warming
Image by mirjoran via Flickr

The climate change question is starting to look really farcical to me. If anyone – especially a lay person – is really interested in finding out if there really is global warming caused by human beings, at least of the sort which requires major modification to our industries and consumption, he can do a lot worse than start at this site (“Watts Up With That?”).

The scientists at IPCC are more politicians – the sort who elbow each other in a corporate environment to jostle for pole positions – than scientists. They stack peer review committees with fellow converts, and would not admit any views from the other side, even when such views are presented in normal scientific papers with normally accepted standards. If you only preach and listen to the converts, these puppies are more akin to climate change high priests of a closely guarded sect than an open scientific community.

At best, it is an issue for which the jury is still well and truly out. Why wreck the economy and livelihoods for this rubbish?

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Global Warming and the Carbon Tax … Nuts.


Want to know what a recent expert study on climate change says? See the following excerpts, and you’d think the whole thing is uncertain enough to avoid implementing the carbon tax scheme, but then again we’re dealing with Gaia land maniacs here.

The report: Dr Robert Lindzen and YS Choi, as published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences

The excerpts:

  • Doubling of CO2 will only result in a 1 deg increase in warming (as opposed to at least 1.5 – 5.0 deg in other reports);
  • Simple regression methods used by several existing papers generally exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative;
  • The foregoing imply that the existing models are exaggerating climate sensitivity;
  • The current models have serious coupling issues, where warming may have been wrongly associated with other factors; and
  • The study was a follow-up on a previous one, addressing some feedback and criticisms on its previous approach.

It’s a serious, normal scientific endeavour, which shows if nothing else, climate change is a an issue on which the jury is still well and truly out. Given this uncertainty, why is the Gillard Government and her mob especially Bob Brown, Christine Milne and the Greens in general so hell bent on wrecking our economy, especially since even if the science is a settled issue, what Australia does in addressing emission will ever only have a totally negligible effect? Whatever Australia does, if it does it alone, will not change anything one bit.

In a way, this Labor Government is very similar to the UMNO government in Malaysia. Sick.

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Mod-Com – Cause of Hypocrisy?


The problem of disconnect between what we know is the right thing to do, and actually doing the right thing and living a life that reflects that knowledge, is a perennial one. We all struggle with it, down from the trivia minutiae such as having that sausage roll for breakfast instead of my oat and muesli cereal, to living our lives in acknowledgment of the true boss – God himself.

For too long, we have allowed the otherwise (often) neutral nature of the finer things in life, to sprout red horns, grow a red tail and reach out for that long fork. Look at the below article – Dominique Strauss-Kahn knew what was right and was in a position to influence the world to push his very just cause. Perhaps in his case it was immoral and illegal response to his lust which triggered his downfall, and not his love for money or what it can bring.

With the other examples of this article however, the finger can rest easily on the mod-com’s of this life as the cause of their betrayal. If we focus on and extol the virtues of finer things in life and the way it makes our life easier, richer and more comfortable we can lose sense of what is right in the wider perspective of things.  Why drive a small cheap Korean import when you can drive a huge, expensive and luxurious German machine? Never mind that all the extra resources expended to produce and own this luxury are actually wasted in the sense that it is hard to see how they advance the cause of humanity – it exudes beauty, elegance and harmony… and all that.

It is true of course that beauty and pleasures are good things and they can give us glimpses of heaven but to what extent do we pursue them? At what cost?

***

(from Herald Sun site, Andrew Bolt’s blog pages)

THERE are great moral causes, and then there are the men who rush to lead them. Take Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

He is a socialist. In fact, he’s such a socialist that he was tipped only a fortnight ago to become France’s next president, as the Socialist Party’s candidate.

Socialism, I’m told, is the cause you sign up for if you want to take from the rich and give and give again to the poor. If you want to stop the workers from being exploited by the powerful. If you hate racists and really worry about asylum seekers.

So how does Strauss-Kahn end up being charged in New York with the rape of a maid who’d come to the US as an asylum seeker?

And while he pleads not guilty to the rape, how does this prominent socialist explain the scene of the alleged crime in his room at a $3000-a-night hotel?

Still, at least he believes now in giving away his tax-free salary of $420,000, since he this week resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund.

That a socialist could find himself on this salary, in that room, charged with the rape of such a woman will surprise no one, in a way. We’ve lost that moral sense or expectation of having actions matched to words, lifestyle to cause.

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the global warming crusade — the first religious movement led entirely by shameless hypocrites.

Only this week came yet another example, with the Herald Sun reporting that just two of the Gillard Government‘s Cabinet ministers drive fuel-efficient hybrid cars, despite wanting to foist on the rest of us a ruinous plan to cut our emissions.

Even Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet prefer gas guzzlers.

But so habituated are we now to sanctimonious spin that I doubt this shocked a single Australian.

We’re forced to swallow far worse almost daily. There’s Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery, boasting he’d written his latest book almost entirely on gassy aeroplanes.

There’s global warming alarmist Al Gore crying shame at mankind’s terrible environmental footprint from a desk in one of his five homes.

There’s actor Jeremy Irons announcing he’s become a green campaigner who wants us to live less decadently, although he himself owns seven houses and a castle painted pink.

It’s such a bizarre disconnect. True, the popes of the 15th and 16th centuries could be scandalously corrupt, with a mistress in every Vatican bed. But at least most tried to hide it, demonstrating that hypocrisy is indeed the homage vice pays to virtue.

Now we rarely demand even a pretence.

Take Sir Richard Brazen, the Virgin entrepreneur, who preached global warming to students at Gold Coast’s Bond University — and then choppered out in his private helicopter.

Or take Strauss-Kahn, the socialist. Please.

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Listen to Cate Blanchett on Carbon Tax? You’re Dreaming.


I first discovered what a great actress Cate Blanchett is, in The Fellowship of the Rings. Frodo and Co had just escaped Moria by the skin of their teeth and wondered into Lothlorien when they were confronted by Elves who took them to Galadriel, played of course by the beautiful and talented Cate Blanchett. As Lady of the Wood who could look into minds, she was very powerful – one of the bearers of the Rings which was to determine the fate of Middle Earth. It wasn’t The Ring of course, but she was a player – she had one of the rings (3, I think).

As Lady of the Woods, she’d be friends with the Greens, dont you think? At last, she is now – she now fronts the ads which sings praises for the carbon tax, together with Michael Caton, he of The Castle fame. I dont know what Cate and Michael are thinking, to be honest. All the clean energy and decarbonised economy of Australia would make next to no impact to global warming. The economy will be severely damaged for nothing as notwithstanding Australia‘s pre-eminent status as the per capita biggest emitter in the world, cleaning up Australia would do diddly squat to global warming.

Do Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton really think Australia makes a difference? Michael should know better – to think that, one has to say to him, “You’re Dreaming”. But of course it wouldnt matter to them. The extra costs will mean little to them. I suppose they really are actors and Australians would be fools to think they make sense when it comes to global warming. I’d go on watching their movies because they’re good at that. They arent however, social scientist or economists so they’re probably two of the last people I’d give any time of day for carbon tax matters.

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If Will Steffen is right, will $100 a tonne cut it?


Will Steffen heads up the Climate Commission. He – the Commission – has issued a report demanding urgent action to deal with the human caused climate change. Or else – sea level would rise and we’d all have to live like Kevin Costner in water world.

Julia Gillard has pointed to the report and sort of said – I told you so. But if that were the case, and given the urgency to bring emission down straight away or else, the carbon price she touted – $20 a tonne – would be like introducing Norhafiz Zamani into the Birmingham City attack to solve the Blues’ woes in front of goal. It would be toothless, a complete waste of time and may well be counter-productive. [I confess I have just only googled the current Malaysian football team striker. I also confess this is the first time in God knows how long I took an interest in NEP infected football in Malaysia]

To be responding to Will Steffen’s Climate Commission doomsday report, the carbon tax should be so prohibitive – say $100 a tonne just like the Greens said – to be of any effect unless of course, Julia is lying again.

If Julia Gillard could not be trusted and lied in saying there would be no carbon tax under a government she leads, why would we trust her to keep carbon tax to $20 a tonne, especially if she endorses the Will Steffen Climate Commission – we must act now or perish – report? The Greens are looking at a minimum of $100 per tonne and they will want to include petrol in their target. If Will Steffen and his Climate Commission report is to be taken seriously that is the bare minimum step. But that would send most of us back to the caves, wouldn’t it?

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