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Top Advisor To Australian Gov't Says Climate Change is a UN Conspiracy
An anonymous reader writes: Maurice Newman, the top business advisor to conservative Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, today published an opinion piece (paywalled) in which he claims, "It's a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models ... have been found ... to be in error." He goes on to write "This is not about facts or logic. It's about a new world order under the control of the UN." While Newman's 'skeptical' views have long been on record, it's unclear when he came to believe in this vast global conspiracy. Last year, the Abbott government removed Australia's Emissions Trading Scheme, and recently gave $4 million in funding to contrarian Bjorn Lomberg, while cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from science across the country.
There is no doubt that politicians love to use this a leverage to gain more power and control over the lives of the people.
...even if it was all wrong. What's the side-effect of reducing pollute? We're all less likely to die of cancer?
Woe is me--such a terrible world! Why did not we do the rational thing and spend all of that money on bombs?! Hindsight, I stab at thee!
"It's a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models ... have been found ... to be in error."
Ha ha ha. He used the notorious passive voice: "have been found". I wonder why?
Clues:
1. Does not specify who did the finding.
2. Provides no link to any actual information.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I'm all for more sustainable industry and living, but what annoys me greatly is when some rich oligarch tells us that we should start living more sustainably. Yet he flew from his third house in the south of France, in his private jet, to said conference to give the speech. Those scientists, politicians, and their associated cronies are never subject to the brunt of their legislative powers.
You'll especially never see a fortune 500 C-level exec taking the sustainable route when it comes to their living.
I'd be more inclined to take a lot of their positions if they actually practiced what the preached. A lot of what I actually see from these people is, "austerity for you and not for me." Why should I live like a pauper so my neo-feudal Lord can consume more nice things for less?.
...It's a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models ... have been found ... to be in error....
Yes, most, if not all, of the climate are in error. They do not forecast the global climate with 100% accuracy.
.
They never will forecast the global climate with 100% accuracy. So they will always be in error.
However, they currently are accurate enough to forecast a future climate that has problems, and time is running out to prevent those problems from growing so large that they are all but irreversible.
The question is, do we start to address global warming now? Or do we wait until the models have 100% accuracy, at which time it will be too late to do anything about the problem.
If the President tried to set up something like that, Congress would refuse to fund it, Russia would Veto it, and the French would be against it just because the US was for it.
But even assuming it was possible for the UN to run a conspiracy, his own statements contradict him. Errors do not equal "Conspiracies", they equal incompetence. Conspiracies would involve intentionally falsified data - such as his personal statement that the UN is running a conspiracy.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
nobody has a grant which depends on finding out that global warming is real.
nobody has that grant because we have known it is real, for sure, since the 1980s
Any academic would stand to make a huge name for himself or herself by finding compelling evidence that it *wasn't* real.
Getting academics to agree on anything is like herding cats.
The key to herding cats is to simply move their food-bowl.
And unfortunately that is also pretty well the basic counter as to why all the science agrees - it's because the scientist's food-bowl ($$$) was moved.
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the moldy old texts DO have relevance today!
the need to control, scare and dominate people has never changed; we needed it thousands of years ago and we still 'need' it today.
at least, that's WHY religion has not died. its the great lie told to the poor to stop them from overtaking the rich. "you'll get yours later; just let us have what we have and you'll be rewarded later."
mankind's biggest lie, I think. meant only to control and keep people in their place.
its not useful as a book of fact, but as a book of scary stories, its as 'relevant' today as it ever was.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
They have not shown them to be wrong. They have shown them to be inaccurate. Nobody can predict a system as complex as weather and temperature with 100% accuracy.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Silly person.
Parent's comments allude to the fact that deniers will ignore the overwhelmingly accepted data that don't fit their world view. Your example alludes to the fact that some people will use the overwhelmingly accepted data to project a worst possible outcome.
Sure they are inaccurate (at least in the short term), but it's not like they're trying to refute the accepted science.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Seeing as actual measurements show a steadily increasing temperature, I'd say it's only a question of accuracy of the predictions as to how fast temperatures are rising, not the fact that temperatures are rising.
But the deniers like to play word games and nitpick over whether the models are 100% accurate, implying that they're completely useless just because they aren't perfect. Now THAT is "cognitive dissonance."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There is a distinction there surely. Rejecting something because of ignorance isn't scepticism nor is it denial. It's more like idiocy. A person isn't sceptical of atomic physics if they don't know anything about it, they are ignorant on the topic. A person isn't sceptical of climate change if they don't know anything about it, they are ignorant on the topic. If they reject science while being ignorant of it, they are not a denier but rather an idiot, because only an idiot would reject something he hasn't even understood.
Newmans points is :- let Australia keep digging up coal and selling it to China, As with all idiots like this, they are aligned with the fossil industry in some way.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Not at all. The concern over climate change is based on models and predictions, and those same models tell us that the steps proposed by the UN and national governments are not effective.
I have no idea what increasing ocean acidification will do, nor does anybody else. What is clear is that atmospheric carbon has been much higher than today and the oceans and life were doing well.
Your belief that climate change or ocean acidification are grade school level science only demonstrates your own complete ignorance of the subject.
Of course he is "aligned" with the fossil fuel industry, as is everybody who opposes limitations on fossil fuel; that's what the word "aligned" means.
It doesn't mean that he (or I) are "associated with" or "paid off" by the fossil fuel industry. I certainly am not. Nor does it mean that he or I want to keep wasting fossil fuel or continue a wasteful lifestyle; chances are that my carbon footprint is a lot lower than yours. It simply means that we disagree with the policies climate change activists propose because we believe they are wrong and harmful.
Now stop the ad hominems, and if you have an argument to make, make it.
So thinking that doubling the carbon dioxide and tripling the methane in an atmosphere will cause more heat to be retained is "wild speculation"? It's not a hard experiment to do, honors science classes do this in high school. In every single case the result has always been that more heat is retained. Always. This has been known for a century and a half, what is "wild speculation" about it? Or is your position that there is something magical about Earth's atmosphere that will make carbon dioxide and methane violate the laws of physics? And why would that be, when those gasses function as would be expected on Venus and Mars?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
While I can't speak to the newer generations of models, but climate models from the 1990's have already been tested in the way that you describe: ... The world is warming at a rate that is consistent with forecasts made by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 22 years ago."
"UN climate change projections made in 1990 'coming true'
http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yo...
The news article is based on: http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
We already know that some of the climate models in the 1990's have made two decades worth of accurate predictions.
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People like you must think that climate changes for magical reasons that are impossible to understand. Scientists on the other hand understand that in any physical system there are physical reasons for the changes they observe. For most scientists their whole reason for doing what they do is to better understand the physical processes that affect our world. It is a truism to say that climate is always changing but it's hand waving to say we can't understand why. Our whole civilization is built on our increasing understanding of the physical world based on the knowledge science gives us.
If you think what climate scientists tell us is a conspiracy to mislead us then it shouldn't be that hard scientifically to destroy their argument. The fact that after over 25 years of intense attention to the issue that hasn't been done is telling.
Well, actually since they quote 95% they're being conservative. 100% of the models are KNOWN to be in error. The questions are always "How much in error?" and "In which direction?". And nobody really knows the answers to those questions, though sometimes there are reasonable estimates.
What he's really saying is "I don't like your answers, so you're wrong. And I don't need to prove it." Since he's politically well connected this is actually largely correct. The only error is logically evident (from my phrasing of "what he was really saying").
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.