The dope on climate change …

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  • 80 percent of all marijuana grown in the USA comes from California.
  • In 2013, California authorities seized 329 outdoor pot grow sites with: 1.2 million plants, 119,000lbs of trash, 17,000lbs of fertilizer, 40gal. of pesticides, 244 propane tanks, 61 car batteries, 89 illegal dams, and 81 miles of irrigation pipe.
  • During California’s growing season, outdoor grows consumed roughly 60 million gallons of water a day – 50% more than is used by all residents of San Francisco.
  • In California, indoor pot growing accounts for about 9% of household electricity use.
  • For every pound of pot grown indoors, 4600lbs of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere. California’s production equates to emissions of 3 million cars.
  • The energy needed to produce a single joint is enough to produce 18 pints of beer, and creates emissions comparable to burning a 100 watt light bulb for 25 hours.

Source – “Mother Jones” magazine.

Facts are not enough …

I cannot believe these people, are they intent on scuttling their own case?

In yet another own goal, and once again at the Conversation, which our taxes are paying for …

A colleague of mine recently received an invitation to a Climate Council event. The invitation featured this Tim Flannery quote: “An opinion is useless, what we need are more facts.”

My first thought was that my colleague was taking the piss. Tim Flannery is an experienced science communicator, but that phrase made my jaw drop. It was apparently meant in earnest, but it’s wildly off the mark.

The quote is ludicrously, appallingly, almost dangerously naïve. It epitomises the reasons we are still “debating” climate science and being overwhelmed by climate skeptics/deniers/contrarians in the public space.    Rod Lamberts, Deputy Director, Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science at Australian National University.

One of the traps folk are prone to fall into is to think of those that do not share our opinions as a homogenous other, and since they don’t share our opinions a stupid homogenous other.

What on earth is a climate denier? The climate is a fact of life … no one denies it. Climate change is quite another thing … and again climate change is a fact of life, no one with any brain denies that, the geologic record is rich in evidence that climate changes. Anthropogenic global warming? OK, now we have a debate.

A recent study of the skeptics in that debate finds them to be well educated, engaged and well informed, most have tertiary qualifications. They are well aware that an there is an inconvenient difference between the warmist predictions and the measured temperature. Aware too that the earth has been warming since the little ice age and aware that along the way there have been several periods where the rate of warming matched that of the late 20th century …

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Also aware that there has now been no significant warming in 17 years despite an increase in atmospheric CO2. There is, in fact, no convincing evidence that the climate is doing anything different from its previous behaviour at all, temperature may continue to trend up or even down. There is a considerable amount of evidence that up will provide a net benefit to human productivity and it is abundantly clear that previous down turns in temperature have been rather bad for civilisation. Nonetheless the Deputy Director argues …

The fact is that the time for fact-based arguments is over.

We all know what the overwhelmingly vast majority of climate science is telling us. I’m not going to regurgitate the details here, in part because the facts are available everywhere, but more importantly, because this tactic is a core reason why climate messages often don’t resonate or penetrate.

and a little bit of circular reasoning …

How much more evidence do you need than the singular failure of scientific facts to convince deniers that humans are buggering up the climate?

… leads inexorably to the Orwellian conclusion …

What we need now is to become comfortable with the idea that the ends will justify the means. We actually need more opinions, appearing more often and expressed more noisily than ever before.

No, Rodney, the debate is going against you because the opinions you express are derived from computer models that are delivering predictions that simply do not match the facts. Shouting at me will not re-educate me.

Jail beckons …

The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw this article was agent provocateur, it was a fake written to discredit the thermageddonites. But, folks, there is a Rochester Institute of Technology not far from the shores of Lake Ontario in New York State. It has a web site. Professor Torcello is listed, he exists …

Lawrence Torcello, assistant professor of philosphy at Rochester Institute of Technology, calls for the funders of climate skepticism to face sanctions for criminal negligence.

Accurately understanding our natural environment and sharing that information can be a matter of life or death. When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.

He goes on to discuss the case of the Aquila earthquake in Italy in 2009 after which six Italian scientists and a local defence minister were subsequently sentenced to six years in prison, takes the critics of that case to task and comes up with …

The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus.

Can we generalise from this that Professor Torcello places a high value on accuracy in presenting information about important matters? Or should we should we consider the alternative explanation that he has made up his mind and therefore further discussion should be suppressed? Is he on the side of accuracy or censorship?

There is a clue in his paper. One of the references the good professor cites in his support is the Guardian Newspaper. This is an article published just over two years ago based on leaks from an insider revealing that the Heartland Institute was engaged in a concerted campaign, funded by Big Oil interests, aimed at “dissuading teachers from teaching science.” This was a big story for the alarmists, the smoking gun that nailed Big Oil and the Koch brothers.

It subsequently turned out that the anonymous whistle blower was not an insider at all. Enter Peter Gleik who runs a Californian research organisation called the Pacific Institute …

The Pacific Institute’s Integrity of Science Initiative responds to and counters the assault on science and scientific integrity in the public policy arena, especially on issues related to water, climate change, and security.

Integrity however was not high in his attributes when he faked his identity, fraudulently obtained documents from the Heartland Foundation and released those documents to the press. And here’s the good bit, the documents did nothing to incriminate the foundation … but the two page fake memo that was added to them was a ripper.

He was eventually obliged to make an apology in which he acknowledges “a serious lapse of my own and professional judgment and ethics” and concludes …

My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.

Please note the words “and prevent this debate“. Just who is trying to prevent debate? And what better way to suppress debate than to throw one side of the debate in jail.

On the other hand we could go back to the title of Professor Torcello’s article, Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?, and if it is we might start to think of suitable punishments for those who misinformed us that …

… snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event, Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Dr David Viner, CRU, March 2000.

 So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and river systems”, Tim Flannery (Australian Climate Commissioner) 2007.

The entire north polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years” Al Gore, 2008.

50 million climate refugees by 2010. United Nations Environment Programme 2005.

seas could rise 100 metres in a century. Robyn Williams of their ABC, 2007.

to mention just a few.

Can you trust Habib … ?

Sometimes I despair at the news.

The new racism is a reality. The way you use it is to scream racism every time you can massage the facts anywhere near enough to maybe get them somewhere close to where a one-eyed supporter of your pet cause might, at a stretch, think you a victim. Even the Liberal party will do it. What chance have we got of free speech?

Lets take an out-and-out example of racism. In the heat of the moment we let go at our footy opponent with … “You stupid black bastard!!”

We’re gone for all money. The black word gives the game away. Expect to be sitting out a few seasons. We may well point out that the word black is the only true word in the whole sentence, it will avail us nought.

Can you trust Habib? She’s a politician, right, so probably not. Especially if it’s your back against the wall, not hers. The wall, in this case, being a thinly veiled racial slur.

Her name is Habib, seems reasonable to call her that. To call her trustworthiness into account? Fine by me.

Racist? Get real.

Translator’s note.

Liberal, is the Australian word for conservative. I guess we don’t call them conservatives because they no longer believe in free speech. We don’t call them republicans because , with a few notable exceptions, they cling to the monarchy.

Full of hot air …

Peter Reith on Mrs Palmer’s little boy …

Personally, I doubt Palmer will last longer than Pauline Hanson but it’s the voters who will eventually decide his fate and their first chance is coming within weeks.

In elections in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania, Palmer will be spending millions to persuade voters to vote for him even though he is not a candidate anywhere. Voters are being bombarded with the Palmer money machine with the message that a vote for Palmer will be good for voters.

He is entitled to spend his own money, he’s entitled to be ambitious, but his lack of democratic instincts and his populist policies, especially to spend billions of dollars by printing money, do not deserve support.

In Tasmania Palmer’s campaign appears to be particularly focused on stopping Will Hodgman from becoming premier. His antagonism towards Hodgman suggests if Palmer does not secure the balance of power, he wants Labor returned. If that is his game, he should say so.

He is not much more open on his proposed spending spree, starting with more ferries between Tasmania and the mainland. His claim that his ferry service will be like the ferries that cross the English Channel is odd. There is a big difference between crossing the 38-kilometre Channel and making the 392-kilometre trip across Bass Strait. On top of that, Palmer will not say where the money will come from for his ferry scheme.

Worse still, in WA Palmer has advocated more GST funds should be returned to that state, which means fewer dollars for places like Tasmania. Telling one story in one state and a different story elsewhere is too cute by far.

He has tried the same trick by advocating a breakaway new state in north Queensland but without mentioning his plans to voters in other places where people might think that the states should be abolished.

And then there is his plan to abolish higher education fees. Once again he offers no answer to the question of how he can pay for his plan. The truth is that he has no answer and he demonstrates once again that populism is his principal modus operandi. But free education is small beer for the big man.

His most irresponsible policy is that the government should be turning on the printing presses to the tune of $70 billion. The US has such a program. It intends to cut it back and its rationale was high unemployment. Australia does not have that issue and we have gross domestic product growth of nearly 3 per cent. It would be folly in the extreme to massively increase Australia’s already large deficits and debt. Our AAA rating would be at risk, our interest rates would most likely be pushed upwards and we would be more vulnerable to economic downturn.

Needless to say, this Palmer thought bubble is a guide to his unimpressive populism. At a time when economic reform and fiscal responsibility is more important than ever, Palmer is a man out of his depth and drowning in his own ego.

Is there any truth, I wonder, to the rumour that the new Tasmanian ferries will be airships created in his own image …
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