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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Jo Nova: From Down Under


We know there is something wrong when we pay public servants to serve us, and they provide us with temperature records that are not the same as the original data, but they won’t explain why they adjusted them. We know the system is rotten when the inexplicable adjustments are used as an excuse to take even more money. We’ve tried FOI to get the information, but they ignore it. We’ve asked the National Audit Office to audit the records, but the people who adjusted the records are essentially the same ones who control them, so they just changed the records again, and said the audit request applied to a set they did not use now.
Today we announce a new approach - Anthony Cox and others are pursuing the legal option. It’s a creative strategy - he’s approaching this through consumer protection laws.
Is there a chance consumers could be misled by reports that don’t include the uncertainties?
We think so. -Jo
Australians will pay $77 million per week in carbon taxes, while Europe with the 30 most green countries pays just one third of that, according to the Mineral Council of Australia. “Australia’s carbon tax starts generating $77.3 million per week from today. New figures from the Centre for International Economics show that Europe’s emissions trading scheme — which covers 30 nations — has generated $23m per week so far in 2012.” Wholesale electricity prices have stepped up by $21-25MWh (roughly doubling) overnight across the three largest states – apparently $2 more than was expected. The ACCI points out the contradiction in sending a price signal but intimidating anyone who dares to say how big that signal is.


t was for a moment the clash of the Nobel Prize winners on climate change… just barely, but nothing like this has happened before in the debate-that-isn’t. Normally this is not a show the heavyweights turn up too. But there were three Nobel winners in the room at the same time. Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland won the 1995 Nobel for work on Ozone. Both of the first two are fans of the man-made global warming theory and they both spoke just prior to notable skeptic Ivar Giaever (who won a Nobel for tunneling in superconductors in 1972). [UPDATE: Watch Giaever speak - the whole speech - it's excellent. h/t Roberto Soria] As usual, the core arguments of believers comes down to argument from authority. Can they attack the credentials of the dissenters? The skeptics, the real scientists, talk about evidence.
Weather from before coal fired power stations — shock — not perfect?
Australians are spending $77 million a week to try to replicate  the stable climate we had with CO2 at 280ppm. So just how ideal was that climate? Newspaper reports of the times were filled with stories of droughts, then floods, bitter cold, and fires that wasted the land. Hmm. Something to aim for then?

And what did the scientists of the day say then? Back before anyone had a hand-calculator or a satellite, the choices were: Orbits, natural cycles, magnetic effects and man’s influence. How times have… not really changed all that much.

Just which Big Scare Campaign is the worst?  The Australian Labor Party has been crying “Tony Abbott’s Scare Campaign” in every second interview on the carbon tax. I guess we could call this whipping up a scare about the scare campaign. Except that Abbott was responding to the primary scare, so cries of “Scary Abbott” are the counter scare to the scare that counters the real scare campaign.  We’re not just talking of job losses and electricity bills. The ALP forecasts Hell. The prophesies are for centuries of killer heat waves and mega-fires –  seas may rise 7 m threatening 700,000 houses and melting Greenland; the houses that aren’t inundated might be razed by fire; acid will leach through the oceans wiping out the Great Barrier Reef (and 60,000 jobs). The entire agriculture industry of the Murray Darling irrigation basin will disappear….and deadly mosquito plagues will spread and put more than a million people at risk.



Cheers from Jo

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