Letter to Editor

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Proof please, not propaganda

quill pen

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

9th May 2011

We need proof that carbon dioxide is a pollutant in the atmosphere. There is none – only political propaganda.

We need proof that global temperatures are controlled by man-made carbon dioxide. There is none – only computer models which are fiddled to fit the past but unable to predict the future.

We need proof on how the emissions targets will be achieved, especially if the big emitters are exempted and consumers are compensated. How many power stations, steel furnaces and cement plants will need to close, what will replace them and when?

We need proof that a tax on carbon dioxide will produce net benefits for the climate or the environment. There is none – just scare stories, misleading pictures and green fairy tales.

We need an independent audit into the mishmash of mandates and subsidies promoting the ethanol, solar, wind, carbon forest and carbon trading industries. There is none – only government spruikers and lobbyists for vested interests.

On the other hand there is voluminous evidence that carbon dioxide is a beneficial plant food not a pollutant, that global temperatures are set by natural cycles and processes, that a tax on carbon dioxide will increase living costs and close Australian industries and that the climate agenda has more to do with wealth redistribution than with climate or the environment.

Viv Forbes
Chairman
Carbon Sense Coalition

Visits: 70

Posted in: General \ Tagged: , , , ,

18 Thoughts on “Letter to Editor”

  1. Pete Ridley on 10/05/2011 at 12:41 am said:

    Hi Richard, I’m sure that there are thousands of honest scientists saying that same thing to the disciples/followers of the CACC doctrine. I have been having some interesting exchanges about how some scientists follow the Steven Scheider approach of presenting to the general public scary scenarios while keeping quiet about the significant uncertainties that remain to be cleared out of the way.

    Professor Iain Stewart, the presenter of the BBC’s “Climate Wars series in Sept 2008 appears to be one scientist. Much more on that can be found at Rogerfrom NewZealand’s Dare I Call These People Alarmist blog on the “Suzuki Elders – We’re Doomed” thread (http://globalwarmingsupporter.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/suzuki-elders-we%E2%80%99re-doomed/#comment-449) and on The Naked Scientists forum ““What does Iain Stewart’s CO2 experiment Demonstrate” thread http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=38723).

    I have also provided an update to my research into the questionable validity of the ice core CO2 record on the “Fallen Snow” thread (https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2011/03/fallen-snow/#comment-45771) that you opened here. I hope you find it and the links of interest.

    Best regards, Pete Ridley

    Reply↓
  2. Andy on 10/05/2011 at 5:18 pm said:

    Speaking of propaganda, this week’s Listener magazine (NZ) has a multi-page spread on climate change. All the usual suspects (Manning, Hansen), and a veritable cornucopia of well-worn alarmist cliches.

    It’s a shame that they don’t print it on absorbent paper so that I could recycle it in the newly anointed long-drop that is de rigeur for east-side Christchurch residents.

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  3. Andy on 11/05/2011 at 9:51 am said:

    Doug Mackie over at Hot Topic seems to like Richard T’s submission for the ETS review, and even kindly provides a link.

    There is a small quibble over the exact figure spent on climate science over the years, but that seems of little consequence compared with the fairy tale that there is a “denialist propaganda machine” financed by Big Oil and te Koch Brothers.

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  4. Andy on 11/05/2011 at 2:44 pm said:

    And for more propaganda

    “I’m a Climate Scientist Rap Video”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiYZxOlCN10&feature=player_embedded

    Shame there’s no humour in there.

    H/T Gareth

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  5. Doug Proctor on 12/05/2011 at 3:41 am said:

    The do-it-now warmist does not require, nor should require, proof that CAGW is real, as he follows the Precautionary Principle. If we were looking at lead pipes and their effect on health back in Roman days, we would agree with this view. The Precautionary Priniciple is valid … when applicable.

    Here the PP is not applicable as the time-frame for determining the truth about CAGW is enough that we can delay action action. Since the “CO2 warming” is supposed to have started about 1980 (“appreciatively”), and doom is clear in 2050, we are already 31 years into a 70 year story. If another five years goes by without rocketing temperatures, then we are also 16 or so years into no significant change (by satellite, not Hansen). The disconnect will be obvious then.

    Proof is coming. We need to stall action for only a few more years. And it looks as though the governments are doing that already.

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  6. Andy on 12/05/2011 at 8:56 pm said:

    James Hansen was on NZ TV One tonight, with the usual doom mongering.

    You can check out the audience reaction to this on CloseUp’s facebook page

    http://www.facebook.com/closeup

    Seems to me, anyway, that there are a lot of sceptical voices out there.Dr Hansen doesn’t seem to be getting his message across, perhaps?

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  7. Peter Fraser on 12/05/2011 at 11:49 pm said:

    I turned him off

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  8. Richard C (NZ) on 13/05/2011 at 7:18 am said:

    Hansen’s message:- I can’t get my CO2 forced climate model to mimic the climate for love nor money but New Zealand must leave coal in the ground anyway because this REALLY IS the last decade to save the planet.

    And the boy still cries “Wolf”.

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    • Andy on 13/05/2011 at 11:13 am said:

      The Herald has run a story on Hansen’s visit

      http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10725266

    • Richard C (NZ) on 14/05/2011 at 11:09 am said:

      Who’s funding Hansen’s visit?

    • Andy on 14/05/2011 at 1:19 pm said:

      Who is funding Hansen’s visit?

      Dr Hansen has been invited to New Zealand by a group of environmental, social justice and business organisations, academics and committed individuals, as a contribution to the ongoing debate about climate change – and coal. Groups and businesses involved: 350.org, 350 Aotearoa, Greenpeace, Organic Systems NZ, Oxfam, The Pure Advantage (business leaders group), the Institute of Policy Studies – and a number of interested academics and individuals.

      http://www.350.org.nz/our-projects/james-hansen-visit

    • Richard C (NZ) on 14/05/2011 at 1:56 pm said:

      “Dr Hansen will explain why we cannot get climate change under control, while preserving a decent future for our grandchildren, unless we leave most of the remaining coal in the ground” said Jeanette Fitzsimons, spokesperson for the coalition* bringing Dr Hansen to New Zealand.

      “Every week, there is new scientific information showing us how urgent the situation is, yet we hear of even more plans to increase New Zealand’s addiction to fossil fuels. Why, when we have such potential here to switch to a sustainable energy future?”

      Really Jeanette?

      There’s certainly “new scientific information showing us how urgent the situation is” but where is the old scientific information (you know – the observed condition) showing us how non-urgent the situation is?

      Or has post-normal science completely subsumed the scientific method?

      I feel an email to the NZ govt Office of Climate Change (Cc to the PMSAC) coming on. Attachments will be “Climate Metrics” and “Climate Drivers”.

  9. Andy on 13/05/2011 at 11:04 am said:

    James Delingpole reports (via Facebook) a possible NZ trip (he is going to Oz I believe) – maybe November this year.

    I guess this is partly to promote his new book, “Watermelons”.

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  10. Richard C (NZ) on 13/05/2011 at 11:59 pm said:

    Empirical proofs (or otherwise) of AGW / IPCC predictions that come to mind would include the following predictions vs observed measurements starting 1 Jan 2000 for convenience in calculating average annual targets (e.g. a 1m sea level rise by 2100 requires 10mm per year on average):-

    Atmosphere

    1) Water Vapour Levels – global data not published for over a decade, AGW prescribes an increase

    2) Global Average Temperature – not increasing as prescribed by AGW

    3) Tropospheric Hot Spot – not observed as prescribed by AGW

    4) Backradiation Levels – not increasing as prescribed by AGW

    Ocean

    5) Sea Surface Level – not accelerating as prescibed by AGW

    6) Sea Surface Temperature – not rising as prescibed by AGW (except North Atlantic)

    7) Ocean Heat Content – not increasing (since 2004) as prescribed by AGW

    Any others?

    If Sir Peter Gluckman responds re water vapour, I will take the opportunity to present this list along with a linked list of natural climate driver science papers and articles (solar, lunar, celestial, ocean oscillations). If he doesn’t respond, I will send this to the PMSAC office anyway.

    Reply↓
  11. Flipper on 14/05/2011 at 4:21 pm said:

    On a different thread, but highly relevant and entertaining – a letter sent today by R C E Wyndham to The Listener following the rubbish published in the current issue.
    Rupert is currently visiting the Wairarapa;

    Dear Ms. Stirling

    I am a visitor to New Zealand, and only yesterday had sight of your 14 May edition of the New Zealand Listerner with its entertainingly fanciful lead story, accompanied by appropriately lurid graphics.

    Since this is a topic which raises much controversy, let me try and see if I can encapsulate in a few lines what it is that you would wish you readers to believe. You propose, it would seem, that marginal increases in the concentrations of what is no more than a trace gas, amounting in total not to 10% of the earth’s atmosphere, not even to 5% – nay, not even to 1%. can bring about cataclysmic changes in global climate. So, what exactly is the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? Why, to be sure, it is a gasping, asphyxiating 1/27th part of a single percentage point. But even that’s not the complete picture, is it? After all, as someone (such as you) who has addressed the data for herself will know, even human induced climate change proselytisers acknowledge that, by itself, the radiative potential of CO2 (vanishingly small anyway) fails to account for the “scenarios” promoted by them and by unquestioning and compliant organs of the media – such, indeed, as The New Zealand Listener. So, to get over this this little inconvenience, what should be done? Why, to be sure, invoke another critical life affirming compound (dihydrogen oxide) to provide a “positive forcing”, thereby adding to the so-called greenhouse effect. Regrettably, the very scientists (well, anyway, let’s call them that for the sake of convenience) can’t actually tell you whether the forcing resulting from atmospheric water vapour is positive (so allegedly bringing warming) or negative (so allegedly bringing the opposite). Clouds, for example, have a cooling effect. Have these ‘climate scientists’ with their rinky dinky computers ever managed to incorporate them in their so-named General Circulation Models? Answer – the heck they have!

    And neither still is that the whole story, is it? For, while CO2 might have some modest radiative potential, that potential is governed by a relationship to concentration that is logarithmic not linear. In simple layman’s terms, the more you shove in, increasingly less do you get out. In other words, the system is self limiting – well, well, fancy that!

    So, to you, let me pose a multi-part question. Even at first sight, does this seem plausible? Possible? Or, is it, perhaps, just stark barking?

    Finally, let’s pause briefly on your Gotham City phantasmagoric cover photo. This, from its appearance, could quite easily be a fictional montage designed, of course, to promote a propagandist scaremongering agenda to an ill informed public. In any event, and as far as New Zealand is concerned, as a journalistic professional dealing with a matter of major public importance, you personally should be fully aware that the Flinders University, Adelaide, trans-Pacific tidal buoy project, after ten years of careful monitoring, was wound up a year or two ago after failing to find evidence of any increase whatsoever in rates of sea level rise. These data have since been confirmed by satellite readings – much disliked by AGW propagandists, since they usually undermine the party line. Neither are such contra-indicative findings confined to the S. Pacific. If, in the face of such scientific findings, you have published your story, then you are guilty of lying. If you were unaware of such data, you are guilty of professional negligence, and I speak as a one time journalist myself in publications somewhat more elevated (or, at any rate, more globally celebrated) than the New Zealand Listener.

    Actually, let’s be candid. Your piece is not journalism at all, is it? It is mere agit-prop. In essence, as between what you have published (and, I suspect, publish routinely) and what your counterparts disseminated in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, Maoist China any difference is negligible.

    Rupert Wyndham

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  12. Richard C (NZ) on 14/05/2011 at 5:47 pm said:

    Sent today
    ——————————————————————————————————————————
    To the Climate Change Office, Ministry for the Environment,

    I am inquiring as why the relevant actual climate metrics relating to the anthropogenic global warming (AGW – climate change) hypothesis are not monitored, compared to AGW / IPCC predictions and published on the Climate Change Office website for public viewing?

    Relevant metrics for the 21st century would be:-

    Atmosphere

    1) Water Vapour Levels – global data not published for over a decade, AGW prescribes an increase

    2) Global Average Temperature – not increasing as prescribed by AGW

    3) Tropospheric Hot Spot – not observed as prescribed by AGW

    4) Backradiation Levels – not increasing as prescribed by AGW

    Ocean

    5) Sea Surface Level – not accelerating as prescibed by AGW

    6) Sea Surface Temperature – not rising as prescibed by AGW (except North Atlantic)

    7) Ocean Heat Content – not increasing (since 2004) as prescribed by AGW

    I am also inquiring as why the current global warming hiatus is not explained by the AGW hypothesis and why the New Zealand public are not being informed of the situation?

    Given the uncertainty and divergence from reality of the AGW / IPCC projections and failure to explain the 21st century climate metrics, is the Office of Climate Change studying natural climate driver science which not only does explain the climate but can be used to make successful climate predictions?

    Please find attached articles and peer reviewed science supporting the above.

    These questions are topical in the public arena at present in view of the visit by Dr James Hansen. There is a great deal of controversy surrounding this person, among which is his adjustments to the NASA GISSTemp global temperature record and extrapolations of Arctic temperatures. Please note in the attached Climate Metrics that Dr Hansen’s predictions are the most extreme outliers and divorced from reality.

    I quote from Jeanette Fitzsimons, spokesperson for the coalition bringing Dr Hansen to New Zealand.

    “Every week, there is new scientific information showing us how urgent the situation is, yet we hear of even more plans to increase New Zealand’s addiction to fossil fuels. Why, when we have such potential here to switch to a sustainable energy future?”

    There’s certainly “new scientific information showing us how urgent the situation is” but where is the old scientific information (the observed condition – not the “scenarios”) showing us how non-urgent the situation is?

    Or has post-normal science completely subsumed the scientific method?

    Sincerely

    Richard Cumming

    Reply↓

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