10 Comments

1. Graham_Land says:

   Oct 11th, 2010 at 20:51

   Nice use of red herrings and baseless blanket statements defining all climate scientists who believe in AGW and their own science as illegitimate. Nice that you’re so unbiased. You’ve had your say (thousands of words of propaganda on a blog post of around 200 words, mostly not dealing with the article) so give it a rest. Let these scientists criticize, argue and conduct science without you discrediting it due to your own conservative ideals and/or hate for the global justice movement. There’s no vast conspiracy of lefitsts posing as neoliberal capitalists. Green lobbies have nothing like the money of the fossil fuel industry, and lobby money is the biggest factor in US politics. Let it go.
   Oh and Al Gore does not fund Greenfudge.
   /
   Enjoy the consolidation of wealth in the hands of the few and the mysteries of climate change as they unfold and punish the masses of poor on this planet. Awesome job.
2. Pete Ridley says:

   Oct 10th, 2010 at 13:09

   Here are two scientists with totally opposing views about the processes and drivers of global climates.

   Michael E. Mann (director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University) on 8th October in the Washington Post article “Get the anti-science bent out of politics” (Note 1) “Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels. It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes. Even without my work, or that of the entire sub-field of studying past climates, scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity”.

   Harold Lewis (Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California) on 6th October in his resignation letter to the American Physical Society (Note 2) “It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

   So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it”.

   If scientists disagree so vigorously over the validity of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis is there any wonder that sceptics like me insist he the debate is not over.

   NOTES:
   1) see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705484.html
   2) see http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html

   Best regards, Pete Ridley
3. Pete Ridley says:

   Oct 8th, 2010 at 19:03

   Graham, I forgot to mention in my previous comment that precisely the same comment appeared on Chris Colose’s blog back in February under the name AJ on February 14 at 9:01pm (http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/richard-alley-at-agu-2009-the-biggest-control-knob/). We exchanged comments about it on Stormboy’s evangelical blog http://bloodwoodtree.org/2009/12/16/not-so-wonderful-copenhagen/ thread.

   Best regards, Pete Ridley
4. Pete Ridley says:

   Oct 8th, 2010 at 19:00

   Graham, you raised objections on another thread about me making personal comments then you allow that one allegedly from Stromboy. I know the original Stormboy with whom I have had numerous exchanges about The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis. Although his pseudonym is being used in the comment here I have every reason to believe that he did not post it. I have E-mailed him about it and hope to get his response soon. I have my suspicions about who is responsible as I have been having exchanges with her for months on Australian Senator Steve Fielding’s threads. Now she is a thoroughly nasty person.

   I’ll get back to you on this after I have heard from Stormboy.

   Best regards, Pete Ridley
5. Stormboy says:

   Oct 8th, 2010 at 05:41

   IMPORTANT WARNING REGARDING PETE RIDLEY

   Mr Ridley willingly admitted (http://bloodwoodtree.org/2009/12/16/not-so-wonderful-copenhagen/) that he spent four hours on the net hunting down my last name along with the names of my wife and children, photos of them and their activities, He also made it clear that he had contacts close to where I live. All of this was presented in a friendly “be more careful” kind of tone and was about as comforting as finding that someone had broken into your house and left a note in your child’s bedroom saying “you should check the kids more often”.

   People will find photos of your kids if there are any out there in newspapers, on Facebook etc. But when someone deliberately searches for them because they are angry and use it to win an argument, that person is demonstrating sociopathic behaviour. I encourage you to report immediately to the administrator if Pete Ridley or anyone else on this blog starts pushing you for more information about yourself or using this to argue with. Don’t fall for the con “I want to understand you to debate you”. Debate with facts and use reason, that’s all that’s needed.
6. Pete Ridley says:

   Oct 8th, 2010 at 00:47

   Graham, you said in a comment on your article New 10:10 film – Watch Gillian Anderson Being Blown Up “NEVER before has a complex scientific issue been so politicized and thrown into the public debate. People just repeat the statements of those who they like, whether it’s Al Gore, Inhofe, or even an actual climate scientist (gasp).
   I regret that this has turned into a climate science debate amongst people who are (I suspect) not climate scientists, but are rather cynical about what they view to be different power bases due to them having different world views. I happen to be more suspicious of right wing ideologues and those scientists funded by the fossil fuel industry than I am of university and government scientists. It’s kind of as simple as that: Extreme cynicism based on ideology vs having some faith in the scientific establishment”.

   I fully agree with the first paragraph, apart from the “gasp”, which leaves me cold, but I can’t say that “I actually laughed the one and only time I watched ‘No Pressure’,”, not even an “off guard” snigger (Note 1) – I must have a weird sense of humour. I wrote an article “Politicization of Climate Change & CO2” about this in 2007/8, the updated version of which you can read on my Global Political Shenanigans blog (Note 2) or see the original version at the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition site (Note 3).
   As for your second paragraph, I agree that there are a lot of people debating this issue who are far from being scientists. Many have a more artistic bent. These appear to be staunch supporters of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis, even though they often demonstrate little understanding of any science or technology whatsoever. It pays to be suspicious of people like that, many of whom come across as closed-minded left-wing environmental activists, animal rights activists, vegetarians/vegans and organic food lovers (is there a collective noun for these?). There were even some of them trying to persuade the UN to introduce a “Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights” (Note 4). This is the type of person that the majority of us label “green”. I’m sure that you will have encountered plenty of them in your debates.

   They are convinced that our use of fossil fuels (which will continue for many many decades to power our growing global economies) is driving us towards global climate catastrophe. In their passion to protect the environment (“trees have rights too”!!) from the evils of capitalism they refuse to accept the fact that the processes and drivers of the different global climates are poorly understood even by the research scientists who are closely involved in trying to unravel all of the uncertainties that remain to be resolved.

   These people insist that “The debate is over” (Al Gore, although he appears not to be a genuine “green”) or just have a policy of refusing to debate the issue at all (Greenpeace). One such individual had the audacity to tell me that “There is no point of “discussing” it” but then went on to say “Just because your beliefs are different doesn’t mean you have a right to call other people stupid. Not only because it’s rude, childish and primitive, but also because you might be wrong about the issue”. Apart from the fact that I don’t recall ever calling anyone stupid (“gullible” yes), the whole reason that both sides need to discuss this issue with open minds is because of the uncertainty that exists about the science. This really irritates me.

   One thing that at least one activist seem to overlook is that many of us engage in the same kind of sustainability practices without making a song-and-dance about it. I don’t boast that “I celebrate Buy Nothing Day by buying nothing” – I just buy as little as possible every day of the year. I don’t boast that “I eat leftovers”, I just do it. It’s the same with “I drink tap water”, “I bring my own cloth bags grocery shopping”, “I don’t wear fur”, “I use towels more than once before washing them”, “I am against sport-hunting” and “I do not eat at MacDonalds”. I just do it. Mind you I draw the line at “I talk to family & friends about being green” but 8 out of 10 isn’t bad!

   One thing that puzzles me about Greenfudge is how is it funded. One if the contributors on this blog claimed until very recently on facebook to be an employee of Greenfudge but there is little information about the people promoting it. Most blogs include such information on their “Home” or “About” pages, Woukld you be kind enough to comment on where the funding comes from? It can’t be from “Big Oil” since they only fund sceptics don’t they. Maybe Al Gore and his associates are behind the scenes.

   BTW, I popped into the library today and ordered a copy “The Carbon Diaries”. Although Saci says (Note 6) “”Let my books be real. No dragons and wizards with special powers, thank you” I’m guessing that it seriously distorts the facts, but then, fiction usually does.

   Also, in my previous comment I quoted from Stephen Scheider but forgot to make reference to the article “Stephen Schneider Greenhouse Superstar” by highly respected sceptic John Daly (Note 5).

   NOTES:
   1) see http://www.greenfudge.org/2010/10/06/thoughts-on-the-1010-film-aftermath/
   2) see http://globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com/p/sundry-papers.html
   3) see http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=374&Itemid=1
   4) see http://www.treeshaverightstoo.com/about/
   5) see http://www.john-daly.com/schneidr.htm
   6) see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/17/carbon-diaries-saci-lloyd-television

   Best regards, Pete Ridley.
7. Graham_Land says:

   Oct 7th, 2010 at 22:10

   Jesus, Pete. Your posts seem designed to be detected as spam. They’re selective deconstruction; poking a few holes in an entire history of a body of science as a means of winning an argument and resorting to character assassination. Why? (actually, please don’t answer.)
   /
   Regarding your earlier unapproved posts: I was at a wedding all day and then traveling for 18 hours straight. You wrote about us being ‘musicians’ and posted links to a creative writing blog I used to do a couple of years ago. It was creepy. I repeatedly state on Greenfudge that I’m not a scientist and I don’t write scientific research articles or criticisms. It’s an environmental news blog, not the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Nonetheless I feel I’m capable of critically reading the news despite the fact that I played guitar a few years ago. A decent education in humanistic and social sciences are OK for that I think.
   /
   Perhaps we are “gullible parrots” and you and a few others geniuses actually have stumbled on the truth that all major scientific organizations are lying in order to threaten the dominant global capitalist model. But admit the argument isn’t about science, but rather politics, cynicism and either an extreme ideological commitment to libertarianism or an equally desperate attempt to maintain conservative social ecology.
   /
   I suggest you write some articles yourself and I hope you are motivated by honesty and compassion. Otherwise, I fear you are a fanatic.
8. Pete Ridley says:

   Oct 7th, 2010 at 20:31

   Graham, thanks for letting my comment remain on your blog. I thought for a while that you were adopting trhe same stance as Greenpeace and refusing to engage in open debate about the validity of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis. I did try to ensure that I didn’t upset anyone with comments of a personal nature (although I do so hate to make generalised statements like “all deniers are or statements that are deliberately “vague” but where the intent is obvious. One such example is in the article Thoughts on the 10:10 film aftermath “Some voiced objection probably for damage control, others certainly”. Some might interpret this as “Supporters of The Hypothesis voiced objection probably for damage control whilst sceptics jumped on it to further their own agendas”.

   You said on your article New 1010 Film .. “There has already been lots of criticism about scientists .. ”. This should not be a surprise to anyone. In the 1970’s we had many scientists telling us that we were heading into a new ice-age. In 1988 we had the contamination of scientific objectivity by political dishonesty when scentist James Hansen (fully supported by producers Tim Wirth and friend Al Gore) offered his scare-mongering prediction of catastrophic global warming at a carefully orchestrated testimony to the US Senate (Note 1) on the carefully selected historically hottest day of the year. In 1989, we had scientist Professor Stephen Schneider (highly respected by staunch supporters of The Hypothesis) saying (Note 2) “ .. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both”. indicating that in his opinion scientists were not obliged to tell the truth but that he only hoped that they would. Then in 2009 we had the revelations of Climategate (Note 3) indicating that some significant scientists closely connected with the UN’s IPCC had chosen for 19 years to be what they considered to be effective rather than truthful.

   As Paul Jump says in his article “Don’t let views cloud scientific integrity” (Note 4) QUOTE: Global ethics guidelines set out researchers’ duties to be clear and above board, .. Researchers should make it clear that they are going beyond their professional expertise when they make recommendations about the policy implications of their research, .. The “Singapore Statement” was drawn up before the Second World Conference on Research Integrity, which took place .. in July .. Its 14 universal research “responsibilities” include an injunction to “clearly distinguish professional comments from opinions based on personal views” when taking part in public discussions.” .. UNQUOTE.

   The latest example of this distortion of the truth by scientists is presented by John O’Sullivan in his Suite101 article “Legal Defeat for Global Warming in Kiwigate Scandal (Note 4). He says “In the climate controversy dubbed Kiwigate New Zealand skeptics inflict shock courtroom defeat on climatologists implicated in temperature data fraud. New Zealand’s government via its National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has announced it has nothing to do with the country’s “official” climate record in what commentators are calling a capitulation from the tainted climate reconstruction”.

   John refers to the New Zealand branch of the International Climate Science Coalition when saying “According to the August official statement of the claim from NZCSC climate scientists cooked the books by using the same alleged ‘trick’ employed by British and American doomsaying scientists. This involves subtly imposing a warming bias during what is known as the ‘homogenisation’ process that occurs when climate data needs to be adjusted. The specific charge brought against the Kiwi government was that it’s climate scientists had taken the raw temperature records of the country and then adjusted them artificially with the result that a steeper warming trend was created than would otherwise exist by examination of the raw data alone. Indeed, the original Kiwi records shows no warming during the 20th century, but after government sponsored climatologists had manipulated the data a warming trend of 1C appeared”. (please read not only the article but also the comments)

   You said in your article Last Talks Before Cancun .. “If we believe the scientists, that is” so maybe there is a glimmer of hope for reasoned debate if staunch supporters of The Hypothesis like you are at long last recognising that what some scientists say is questionable!

   Joanna considers that “Climate Realists doesn’t sound good” but then, she (like you) is a supporter of The Hypothesis. To sceptics like me Sceptical Science, New Scientist and BOM don’t sound good either. Those blogs also choose to present their lay versions of the science in what is for them an effective rather than truthful manner. The owners and moderators of those blogs have closed their minds to the possibility that The Hypothesis has not been validated.

   NOTES:
   1) see http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=b6a8baa3-802a-23ad-4650-cb6a01303a65
   2) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Schneider
   3) see http://www.climate-gate.com
   4) see http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413603&c=1
   5) see http://www.suite101.com/content/legal-defeat-for-global-warming-in-kiwigate-scandal-a294157

   Best regards, Pete Ridley
9. Joanna says:

   Oct 6th, 2010 at 21:31

   “Joanna responded with “This way of putting statement (like is was the only truth) means either lack of knowledge or that the author is a fan of Machiavelli. Whichever it is, it is caused by laziness, selfishness and attitudinal myopia”. That was a rather harsh thing to say about someone who has spent many decades involved in the subject and much of his time understanding and writing about it. This is evidenced by his articles on that excellent blog Climate Realists (http://climaterealists.com)”

   Climate Realists doesn’t sound good.

   I guess you forgot to read the rest of the comments, Pete, or maybe didn’t want to? I am reposting one of them, since I’ve been allowed by the author to do so.

   There are many multiple lines of evidence from dozens of areas of scientific specialisation, by thousands of research institutes and universities, with tens of thousands of scientists all working on their area of science and observing, measuring and reporting on different indicators of climate change, summarising years of research into peer reviewed papers…. All of which conclude that climate change is real, human induced, very rapidly changing the temperature of the earth and on all reliable current indicators…. a threat to civilisation and 95% of species this century with Business As Usual
   Here are some reputable sites interpreting the more complex output of scientific teams in papers published in the peer reviewed journals, making it accessible to ordinary people.
   this site gives good simple answers on Climate Change and skeptics crap but no citations
   http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
   Climate change Instant Expert at New Scientist
   http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9903-instant-expert-climate-change.html
   Timeline on Climate Change
   http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9912-timeline-climate-change.html
   Climate Change: a guide for the perplexed
   http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462-climate-change-a-guide-for-the-perplexed.html
   Australian Bureau of Meteorology State of the Climate Report
   http://www.bom.gov.au/inside/eiab/State-of-climate-2010.pdf
   Australian BOM Special Climate Statement
   http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs20a.pdf
   US Joint Science Academies Statement on Climate Change
   http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/climatechangestatement.pdf
   Views and the science of climate change at NASA
   http://climate.nasa.gov/
   Any debate on climate change not happening is in my professional opinion a waste of time and energy, as those continuing such arguments are either ill-informed non-scientists, professional paid disinformation campaigners subsidised by the coal and oil companies or non-publishing, non-practising, scientists outside their area of expertise who, for a range of reasons that do not exclude grandiosity, narcissim and serious psychological disorders, are making pronouncements that they have no basis for, nor any integrity in doing so.
   The disinformation campaign is very simple and malicious, throw doubt, discredit the key scientists, tell lies, cherry pick the figures, misquote key papers, distort graphs, and then ignore anyone pointing out the errors in your argument. Koch Industries alone has thrown ~$73million dollars into community fronts and the same PR companies that lied for money about the dangers of asbestos, tobacco causing cancer and the dangers of 2nd hand tobacco smoke in the work environment and entertainment venues.
   Professor Ross Garnaut, advisor to all the Australian Governments stated that on the balance of probabilities, urgent action to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions was needed, and that any failure to act… would in all likelihood, haunt humanity for the rest of time.
10. Pete Ridley says:

    Oct 6th, 2010 at 21:01

    Hi Graham, I see no reason to expect that the UN’s COP16 gathering in Cancun will do anything other than waste valuable resources, add further pollution to the environment and guzzle enormous amounts of precious aviation fuel. Politicians in developing economies like China, India, etc are fully aware that there is no convincing evidence that their continuing use of fossil fuels to power their growing economies will lead to catastrophic global climate change. They have access to the necessary fossil fuel resources which will continue being used to fuel their economies for many many decades. The UN’s 2010 COP16 caper in Cancun can be expected to be an even bigger fiasco than the 2009 COP15 catastrophe in Copenhagen

    The processes and drivers of global climates are too poorly understood to be able to make any worthwhile predictions of future climates. I refer you to the words of Dr. Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change at Adelaide University and chief scientific advisor to the last Australian government. “There are a lot of uncertainties in science, and it is indeed likely that the current consensus on some points of climate science is wrong, or at least sufficiently uncertain that we don’t know anything much useful about processes or drivers” (http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/23/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/).

    The comments on your “New 10:10 film – Watch Gillian Anderson get blown up” thread by Stephen Wilde warrant further discussion. Stephen has developed a sound understanding of meteorology and the different global climates over many more decades than many staunch supporters of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis have been on this earth and deserves a fair hearing.

    Stephen correctly said “The truth is that the science of natural climate variability is nowhere near settled. Until natural variability can be nailed and quantified there is no point whatever thrashing about over human influences that may or not exist at all let alone be catastrophic. We all agree that more CO2 absorbs more energy and so reduces the speed of energy loss to space but there are other climate features with the power to negate that effect. Clouds, rainfall and a variable speed for the hydrological cycle are more than powerful enough to more than offset any effect from more CO2”.

    Joanna responded with “This way of putting statement (like is was the only truth) means either lack of knowledge or that the author is a fan of Machiavelli. Whichever it is, it is caused by laziness, selfishness and attitudinal myopia”. That was a rather harsh thing to say about someone who has spent many decades involved in the subject and much of his time understanding and writing about it. This is evidenced by his articles on that excellent blog Climate Realists (http://climaterealists.com)

    Considering those significant scientific uncertainties about the processes and drivers of global climates and Stephen’s knowledge of the subject some might consider such a response to be only mistaken but insulting.

    I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate Stephen Wilde for having the courage to make his comments in his own name, unlike many contributors to blogs. Many prefer to hide behind false names and express there opinions as though they were knowledgeable scientists when in fact they are simply parroting what others say. I also congratulate him and the rest of the team at ClimateRealists for their excellent efforts to get the message across to the general public that “The truth is that the science of natural climate variability is nowhere near settled”.

    The first significant exposure of this UN-inspired myth was the Climategate revelations, then came those numerous IPCC-gates. After that was the collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange (http://21stcenturywire.com/2010/08/27/the-great-collapse-of-the-chicago-climate-exchange/). Now we have the aftermath of the “No Pressure” film, global disgust and sponsors withdrawing their support for the originators, 10:10. All wonderful news for sceptics like me.

    Best regards, Pete Ridley