Posts by Russell Brown
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I think one thing that can be said is that there's an uptick in debate about climate change in the media. How much that reflects a genuine shift in positions amongst experts is another matter entirely.
Other reading: the report on Bali by Christopher Monckton. He abuses all and sundry present as "mad" (or "They would have been mad, if they’d had minds at all") and "zombies" and declares Wikipedia to be an "enviro-loony website". He comes across as a deranged egomaniac.
And there are a few bits of sheer disingenuousness:
“Well, then,” he said, “how dare you substitute your judgment for that of thousands of climate scientists?” I said that the crucial chapter in the Holy Book attributing rising temperatures to Siotu had been written by only 53 people, not all of whom were scientists, and that – by coincidence – 53% of the comments by 60 reviewers had been rejected by the authors of the chapter. Not exactly the 2,500 scientists claimed by the high priests, and not exactly a consensus either.
Ho ho. What Monckton doesn't share (but assuredly knows) is that nearly all the rejected comments were made by the Climate Science Coalition's Vincent Gray, a retired chemist who has never published a paper on climate change, and hasn't published any peer-reviewed research in 14 years, and Tom Harris, who is more of a PR guy than a scientist.
It's this sort of crap that leads me to form an unfavourable view of the sceptics. And Monckton has a history of weird and extreme views. In the late 80s he proposed that all people carrying the HIV virus should be rounded up and incarcerated for life.
George Monbiot's fisking of Monkcton's grand work for the Sunday is pretty startling too.
On the other hand, The Pew Centre on Global Climate Change presents an accessible and exhaustively-referenced resource. It's run by one of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which I have found to adhere to very high standards. (They're not a bunch of liberals either --the trusts were formed from the money of a conservative Christian oilman, and another Pew trust still offers scholarships for evangelical Christians.)
Guess who I am more inclined to regard as credible?
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Not a good sign for the "Global warming, we are all going to die!!" crowd when the NYT, of all publications, starts publishing articles skeptical of it.
Oh right. It's so sceptical that the guy it quotes says " I don’t doubt that climate change is real and that it presents a serious threat".
The story certainly has some merit, but it's essentially about the perils of associating short-term events with long-term predictions for media impact. Both sides of the climate change argument do this.
But the story is also disingenuous and selective. Implying that the striking shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap doesn't matter because part of the Antarctic ice cap has thickened (in line with projections from climate models, btw) is just silly.
Here's a new summary of research about the Arctic ice thinning -- which is happening much faster than any of the models have predicted. In terms of the science, it's a bloody big story.
I also see a "on one hand, and then on the other' rather balanced article on GW on Stuff.co.nz this morning.
This one. Right. On one hand, it quotes a Victoria University geologist who has been leading drilling research in Antarctica, and on the other, Bryan Leyland, an energy consultant and spokesman for the Climate Science Coalition, who is not a scientist, and is funded by Exxon.
Rather tends to support O'Sullivan's thesis on GW.
Er, how exactly?
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And yet they're saying explicitly "people should get gongs for giving scads of cash to political parties".
I'd wager that's John Roughan, trying to stay the right side of his "the more money in politics the better" argument.
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Selwyn John CUSHING, C.M.G., of Hastings. For services to business, sport and the arts.
This has political donor all written over it ( the CMG would suffice for his "contributions" to the areas listed).
Cushing was actually a National Party fundraiser for a while. Curiously, though, his knighthood was not greeted with mean-spirited and defamatory accusations like this.
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There's a distinct undertone of contrition in the Herald's editorial on Owen Glenn this morning ...
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A question: can the people who are objecting to supposedly non-qualified people speaking on climate change raise similar objections next time we Jane Kelsey - a legal academic - pronounces on economic policy?
Oh, don't start me on Jane Kelsey ... I am not a fan.
It's not so much non-qualified people commenting on climate change -- that would be me -- it's the way people dismiss it out of hand and declare people who do know what they're talking about to be not "rational". I try and respect expertise.
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Oh, and the thing I was supposed to blog about before feeling the need to sort out the Herald's stuff ...
Bird Nest Roys are playing with the Ghost Club at the Rising Sun on Auckland on Wednesday night. Yep, they're back together, for who knows how long. Not to be missed ...
Big Ross (aka Jimi Kumara) has a blog post about it.
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I agree with I/S. It looks as if he has bought himself an honour.
Fair enough, I guess. But his donation to the university's business school was the largest single donation to a New Zealand academic institution ever, he has committed himself to funding a Chair in Logistics at the university, gave $500,000 to the university's Leigh Marine Laboratory in 2003, and apparently supports various other charities and non-profit organisations here, so "services to business and community" seems a reasonable description.
As I said, it's a legitimate story; it was just the Herald's treatment of it that rankled. The no-comment from National was interesting. The story implies he has he has donated there too.
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Which is why those who perhaps really deserve it are nicely awarded by the other party. Jenny Shipley got her dame-hood equivalent from Labour, and I suspect Helen Clark will get something from National if she loses the next election.
Fran was campaigning hard for Doug Myers to get his "long overdue" honour earlier this year.
She wondered if the reason for his unaccountable failure to be honoured was "that his obvious manliness runs counter to the ruling femocracy".
Or perhaps that he's a platinum-played prick who dicked minority shareholders when he sold out of Lion Nathan, and who, to judge by this extraordinary column by Stephen Mayne this month, regards New Zealand with contempt and the law as being for little people.
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And then there was Malcolm McPhee: Climate of fear starting to make my temperature rise in Fridays Herald ...
Which was given a brisk fisking by Hot Topic, where it was described as "breathtakingly nonsensical".
Jim Hopkins shared his boundless wisdom on the topic of climate change on Friday too.
Is the Herald trying to look stupid?
HT also has a link to a blog that's been having fun with the "400 Club". Money quote:
TV Weathermen is one thing but TV Gardeners???
Three of them! I'm sure they're all eminent TV gardeners, but really ...
Owen McShane is also listed as a "prominent scientist", which will have certain actual scientists of my acquaintance choking on their leftover Christmas ham ...
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