Ponder this comment found on Bolt’s:

And just how is it doing that if its been cooler in the last decade ? more fairtails from the best scammers of all ,THE GREENGATE LIARS.I THINK THEIR LITTLE BRAIN MIGHT BE SHRINKING .I bet those Dinosoars were wondering how they got so big when it was so much hotter than now .c02 is the lowest its been in 600 million yrs according to the latest research .

My soul hurts.

I’m happy to admit that I don’t fully understand climatic science or the technical arguments behind global warming. I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of science but I’m not qualified in such areas. I’m happy to admit that my scientific knowledge is open to scrutiny. I haven’t brainwashed myself, to the point of intellectual orgasm, that I’m some kind of home-baked expert on the topic. I freely admit that an education in the liberal arts is about as relevant to climatic science as, say, doing Year 12 in Werribee or a drama degree in Queensland.

An engineering degree might have more relevance – or at least it would if you’d actually done any engineering work since graduating in the early-80s, like our unrepresentative in the Senate, Steve Fielding. Lately Steve has risen from his near-sickbed after receiving Tamiflu for a case of almost-swine flu, to take up the cudgels of global warming scepticism. He’s probably just after a dinner date with Bolta, we’ll never know, but whatever the reason the Herald Sun is playing along. Today it bellows “This is why Al Gore’s wrong“ on Steve’s behalf and links to the pseudo-Senator’s own website. The reason? Steve has done found himself a graph – and it’s a purdy one – showing the correlation, or lack thereof, between rising CO2 levels and ’steadying’ global surface temperatures:

Ain’t that sweet? But is it true? According to the Herald Sun “the graph was used by the UN in its reports on the effects of climate change” but I had a quick search and couldn’t find it. OK, no sweat, it cites temperature data from two sources: the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia. Was Fielding’s graph – or at least the temperature component of it – on their websites? Nope. Hmm.

So what do these places have to say about global surface temperatures? Here is the Hadley Centre’s summation of global average, land surface and sea surface temperatures. And here is the University of East Anglia’s. Each spans a longer timeframe than Steve’s 15-year snapshot, but nevertheless looks different to his Al-you’re-wrong graph.

In any event, doesn’t “air temperature anomaly” describe variations from the norm? All of the anomalies on Fielding’s graph are in the positive range, so if we accept this data as valid then all Steve has ‘proven’ is that global temperatures have risen less in some of the last 15 years. In 2008 it almost dipped down to average, but otherwise there’s been a steady increase of +0.3 or higher since 2001. The increase in global temperatures may have flattened out but global temperatures themselves have not returned to normal, in fact they more than a half-degree higher than when Steve Fielding was going through puberty.

I’m hoping Steve can pop around for a cup of rooibos tea and a Marie biscuit to explain to me where in his God’s name he got this graph, whether he thinks its title is deceiptful and if he genuinely believes it disproves a link between CO2 emissions and global warming. Just don’t bother dressing up as an inanimate object, and leave your Bible at home.

Great article about what Tim Lambert calls “The Australian’s War on Science” in the SMH:

Less well documented so far has been the industry’s influence on the media. Take the powerful News Corporation, which publishes two-thirds of our remaining newspapers. Despite a spectacular about-face on climate change in 2007 by News Corp’s chairman Rupert Murdoch, no media group can match the Murdoch press for consistently fomenting global warming scepticism and arguing against climate change mitigation measures.

News Corp’s tabloid provocateurs Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt rail against greenies every other day but don’t have the attention to detail to influence national debate on climate change science, emissions trading and reduction targets, and international negotiations on global warming.

The Australian – Rupert’s baby and local flagship – does. But nothing you read on climate change in The Australian can be taken at face value. Its coverage of the issue is effectively sponsored by the resources industry.

Read it.

The Gentle Right like to preach that global warming is “Leftist alarmism” despite the fact it’s based on sound scientific evidence (and why will no-one debate me? Oh, that’s right! I keep winning).

Alarmism obviously isn’t this:

When I grow up I want to be a principal or a caterpillar!

Nothing alarmist about that.

Not content with denying global warming, Bolt’s brave commenters have blown the lid off another “green con” – ozone depletion.

Who could forget the insidious leftist plot to kill off the aerosol can industry? Luckily, we will always have brave science warriors to point us in the right direction.

So, GrodsReaders, which scientific battleground will The Right be fighting next? “Carbon is a leftist myth”? “Newton’s second law of motion is a leftist myth”? “Oxygen in the atmosphere is a leftist myth”?

Suggestions in comments.

A firefighter joins the crowing:

Consider the devastation in Victoria. Research by the CSIRO, Climate Institute and the Bushfire Council found that a “low global warming scenario” will see catastrophic fire events happen in parts of regional Victoria every five to seven years by 2020, and every three to four years by 2050, with up to 50 per cent more extreme danger fire days. However, under a “high global warming scenario”, catastrophic events are predicted to occur every year in Mildura, and firefighters have been warned to expect up to a 230 per cent increase in extreme danger fire days in Bendigo. And in Canberra, the site of devastating fires in 2003, we are being asked to prepare for a massive increase of up to 221 per cent in extreme fire days by 2050, with catastrophic events predicted as often as every eight years.

So now even the firefighters are pleased about the bushfires. Because that is what you mean by crowing, isn’t it Bolt? We’re pleased that people have died, right? We’re using the dead to push our socialist agenda?

Just keep digging that hole.

Andrew Bolt is having a difficult week. Victoria has had the worst bushfires ever and suffered the highest temperatures of all time. This presents problems for little old Bolt because he is one of the chief global warming denialists in the media, and frequently responsible for spreading distorted information and outright lies (seven graphs, anyone?).

Obviously, global warming didn’t cause the bushfires, but years of dry conditions caused by global warming have made the situation a lot worse than it would have been thirty years ago.

Andrew is now stuck at an impasse – the massive bushfires we’re seeing are what his targets Tim Flannery and Robyn Williams have been warning about for years. Now they’ve arrived, and suddenly global warming isn’t looking like the Leftist conspiracy it once did.

So what does Andrew do?

His new tactic is to try to guilt people into not even mentioning “bushfires” and “global warming” in the same sentence. That’s wrong, you see. Maybe he thinks the bushfires were made worse by global cooling, I don’t know.

He’s already attacked Bob Brown for bringing up global warming. As previously mentioned here, it’s kind of stoopid to attack someone by claiming they’re trying to gain political mileage out of it, and then doing the same thing yourself. Real stoopid.

And now, fatally, he has accused Freya Matthews of “crowing“, a veiled hint that she is actually happy the bushfires came – because they prove her right!

That is probably one of the most disgusting things I think I’ve read about the bushfires yet (his mate Danny Naliah excepted). What an utterly repulsive thing to say.

I ask you, fair reader, to look over Freya’s piece and see if you can find any “crowing”. Chances are, you won’t, unless you’re an idiot. It’s a completely level-headed article that points out the reality of what we’re facing here in Australia. Andrew Bolt, basically, knows he’s fucked because for a long time he’s been pointing to extreme cold to “prove” global warming doesn’t exist, but when the shoe is on the other foot, he’s suddenly throwing wild accusations around and trying to paint those with honest opinions as gloaters and crowers.

Watch over the next few weeks, and months, as he wields this attack on anyone who dare mention global warming in relation to these fires.

It needs to be said that the only real gloating or crowing that has gone on so far is from his buddy Danny. But, according to Andrew, he’s just excercising his right to free speech.

Don’t trip over the hypocrisy, Andrew.

The latest denialism blog meme to pop up is the one about sea ice being at 1979 levels. Wanna know how they came up with that?

That’s right – they  drew a line linking a point in December 1979 with a point in December 2008, even though the trend is clearly down. This goes even further than Mantaray refusing to accept that climate and weather are different. This is the graphic equivilant of shoving your fingers in your ears, shutting your eyes and shouting “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”.

This is the difference between skeptics and denialists. The line in the sand is here.

Shocking stuff.

More at Open Mind and LP.

Andrew Bolt, whose deft scientific analysis provides the basis for many-a global warming denialist, describes linear trends thusly:

[A] graph of temperatures over just the past nine months, with a line drawn kind-of through them.

That’s right, denialists. This is the man who tells you what to think. Scary, huh?

Andrew Bolt sez:

Sky News runs yet another apocalyptic story on global warming, this time threatening the Sami of Lappland. No figures are offered, just a couple of anecdotes, and this evidence of a warming world:

There’s a lot more snow these days.

We’re also told the ice is now too thick for reindeer, but also too thin for snow mobiles.

We really need to collate this kind of reporting in some document for future generations. They will not believe how comprehensively the media lost its reason, and the media sure won’t be in the mood to remind them.

Science, research and evidence say:

The seasonal pattern of snow cover shows that there’s been no noticeable decline during fall and winter, so we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised by the large snowfall over the U.S. this past week. We can also plainly see that snow cover exhibits extremely large fluctuations, so again last week’s snowfall is no surprise whatever, and no harbinger of any reversal of global warming. But the rapid decline of springtime snow cover over the last four decades, and the even more rapid decline of summer snow cover, show the mark of global warming unambiguously. And despite what some like to shout, the statistically strong trends are what’s important, not the statistically normal noise.

It truly is a case of populist anecdotal evidence versus science. I’ll let you make up your own mind, dear reader.

Update: Beware – “Global cooling” alarmism is now taking hold:

Global warming,what global warming,we could get snow on the Gold Coast next winter.

Anyone?

Very occasional GrodsContributor, Bookmanoldstyle, was last night considering the end of the world and wondering whether it was worth washing her hair*, when she remembered that the Large Hadron Collider featured in Dan Brown’s novel Angels & Demons. So a-Googling she went and up pops a whole page on the CERN website devoted to a FAQ about the book. These are her favourite bits and they should be yours too.

Q: Does it consist of red brick buildings with white-frocked scientists running around carrying files?
No, that is rather far from reality; we have mostly white buildings made of concrete and the scientists wear everyday clothes and they mostly do not carry files.

Q: Can we make antimatter bombs?
No. It would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb having the same destructiveness as ‘typical’ hydrogen bombs, of which there exist more than ten thousand already.

Sociological note: scientists realized that the atom bomb was a real possibility many years before one was actually built and exploded, and then the public was totally surprised and amazed. On the other hand, the public somehow anticipates the antimatter bomb, but we have known for a long time that it cannot be realized in practice.

That sure puts my mind at rest.

* This last bit is probably not true. It’s probably made up by The Editor.

Some people say that the Large Hadron Collider is later today going to end the world by sucking the planet up its own arse. Most scientists say we’re perfectly safe, and Bruce is so confident the world’s not ending that he’s not having sex today. Not even a blow job.

But John Surname is not so sure. Even though he’s trying to look all casual by making lame jokes about giant krill and stuff, he has recorded his last words in this world for posterity just in case the world does end. And how fine the words are.

Seriously, U2, just fuck off.

So what will you do or say today to mark the end of the world?

Science nerds around the world are currently wetting their pants over the imminent first tests of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Here’s how Wikipedia explains exactly what a LHC does.

The collider tunnel contains two adjacent beam pipes, each containing a proton beam (a proton is one type of hadron). The two beams travel in opposite directions around the ring. Some 1232 bending magnets keep the beams on their circular path, while an additional 392 focusing magnets are used to keep the beams focused, in order to maximize the chances of interaction between the particles in the four intersection points, where the two beams will cross. In total, over 1600 superconducting magnets are installed, with most weighing over 27 tonnes. Approximately 96 tonnes of liquid helium is needed to keep the magnets at the operating temperature, making the LHC the largest cryogenic facility in the world at liquid helium temperature[10].

The protons will each have an energy of 7 TeV, giving a total collision energy of 14 TeV. It will take less than 90 microseconds for a proton to travel once around the main ring. Rather than continuous beams, the protons will be “bunched” together, into 2,808 bunches, so that interactions between the two beams will take place at discrete intervals never shorter than 25 ns apart. When the collider is first commissioned, it will be operated with fewer bunches, to give a bunch crossing interval of 75 ns. The number of bunches will later be increased to give a final bunch crossing interval of 25 ns.

Geddit? No? Well, here is the LHC in a hip hop nutshell.

(Cheers, Romany!)

Yesterday Andrew Bolt, with some of his trademark snip-and-drop editing,  turned an essay by art critic Robert Nelson from Freudian to freaky. Today Michael Carr-Gregg –  a media-happy Melbourne psychologist who makes his living flogging seminars and lectures to whoever is willing to pay - weighed in with his two bits:

“I don’t believe that any six-year-old could possibly have the cognitive or emotional maturity to consent to being photographed in the way that her mother has photographed her,” Dr Carr-Gregg said. “I’m really worried that these pictures are on the net already and they will go around the world and that they have the potential to haunt this little girl for the rest of her life.

I’m really worried too, Mike. Much like at Chuck’s house, in my family home there are faded old Kodachrome pictures of my siblings and I playing naked in the backyard, jumping under sprinklers and what-not. My parents have shown these to literally dozens of visitors over the past two decades, both relatives and friends. Mum and Dad are obviously peddlers of child-porn; I’m obviously mentally scarred. Carr-Gregg has really opened my eyes … but the best is yet to come:  

“Now she’s very mouthy at 11 years old, she’s already been paraded in front of the cameras, and I, as an expert in bullying, would be very, very concerned about what that might mean for her in her school life later on.” 

We’re getting closer to Carr-Gregg’s quaint philosophy now – and he knows all about kids too because he’s an expert (and is happy to tell us so). Olympia Nelson might have seemed “mouthy” to him but to me she seemed confident and articulate beyond her years – is that something psychologists wish to discourage? Is his advice to children ’shut the hell up or you’ll be bullied’? What kind of social vision is that to be articulating in the mainstream press? No wonder Carr-Gregg is the go-to man for tabloids when they run sensationalised stories about adolescent behaviour.

Dr Carr-Gregg said many of Freud’s psychosexual theories were being discarded. “I don’t think it’s a viable argument, the whole sensuality of children argument,” he said. “I think ordinary Australians can and do interpret what (Mr Nelson) has done as furthering the sexualisation of children, and no amount of misconstrued psychobabble is going to change that.”

A psychologist accusing someone of “psychobabble”; just taste the sweet irony. Remember when a number of teenage boys were charged with tormenting and sexually assaulting a girl in the Werribee area, filming the attack and distributing the DVD? Carr-Gregg said we shouldn’t imprison them because it was all down to ‘neurological underdevelopment’:

Research says the last part of the brain to develop is that responsible for planning, impulse control, risk assessment, and that any vestige of self-control disappears in a pack.  [There is] scientific evidence from neuro-imaging studies that teenagers do have less culpability than adults because of their brain development.

The Editor, John Surname, Ant Rogenous, Jeremy Sear and Craig discuss:

* The Garnaut Report
* Art vs. kiddie porn (round two)
* World Youth Day sex propaganda
* Ask A Barman
* Funniest things on the intertubes

** Because Jeremy Sear is flogging Wii Fit to death, use only the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **

[display_podcast]

Subscribe: