Tuesday, June 16, 2009

What Senator Fielding asked Senator Wong


Here is the list of questions Family First Senator Steve Fielding asked Climate Change Minister Penny Wong on Monday - questions to which he has yet to get an answer:
This briefing paper outlines questions put forward by Senator Steve Fielding to the Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, the Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett and Professor Will Steffen.
 
While the questions below are those which the Senator would like answered, the supporting material has been supplied from some leading scientists from Australia and overseas.
 
These are questions Senator Fielding would like answered so he can make an informed decision on whether or not an emissions trading scheme is the best course of action for Australia to take to deal with climate change and global warming.
 
The Senator remains open minded and has requested that the government address these questions, the answers to which are fundamental to shaping any climate change legislation.
 
QUESTION 1.

Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period (see Fig. 1)?
 
If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
 
QUESTION 2.
 
Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth’s history (Fig. 2a, 2b)?
 
If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions; and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?
 
QUESTION 3.
 
Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling. (Fig. 3)?

If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?
(No link to the briefing paper and its graphs.)
 
I’m disappointed, but not surprised, unfortunately, that the media has shown so little interest in what questions were actually asked, and why Wong so struggled to answer. We are interested in the science, aren’t we?
 

Interestingly, The Australian has been trying to get Professor Sackett to write a piece for its opinion pages that answers Senator Fielding's questions. You'd think she'd jump at the opportunity. I mean, the science is settled isn't it? Should be the easiest thing therefore to put the good senator's mind at ease. And yet...
 
SINCE open-minded Family First senator Steve Fielding reported on his climate change excursion to the US on this paper's opinion pages, opinion editor Rebecca Weisser has been doing her level best to persuade the government's chief scientist Penny Sackett to help Fielding out by writing a piece in reply. Her assistant helped Sackett dodge the bullet by saying she couldn't possibly make the deadline (Strewth tried that tactic once; never again). Weisser offered to extend the deadline, but it must be terribly busy in Sackett's office as no one has managed to get around to replying.
 
Now, I have no doubt that Professor Sackett is a very busy woman indeed, but I also suspect that there's a faint air of exasperated panic in her office also at the moment.
 
While climate change is real, because the climate is always changing, the alarmist case for "catastrophic" climate change has never had any real world evidence to support it.
 
This may surprise people. But it is true. There is no evidence to support the hysterical speculation of scientists committed to the cause, (many of whom, such as James Hansen, have gone too far with their alarmist predictions to easily go back and thus have to admit that they were wrong), and the assorted other hangers-on and carpetbaggers that have attached themselves for various reasons to the climate change bandwagon.
 
The basis of their speculation about doomsday is nothing more than a series of computer models that even the IPCC admits do not even come close to properly understanding the complexity of the climate system.
 
So as Senator Fielding rightly asks of Senator Wong, how on earth can these things be used to frame public policy that will involve disruption to our lives and economies on a scale never before seen in human history?
 
Especially as we actually know that the hard evidence of geological history clearly shows the alarmist case to be false.
 
The earth has been much warmer in the past and has had much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere than today, (though NOT necessarilly at the same time), and the world didn't reach a "tipping point," it didn't end.
 
The oceans did not become acidic.
 
And really, if performance of predictions made is reckoned to be the critical factor in judging a scientific hypothesis, then you'd have to say that global warming alarmism isn't doing very well, as this graph clearly shows.
 
Figure 1: Moncktonized IPCC Trends Compared to Koutsoyiannis IPPC trends.
 
Ignore the purple line, as that represents a sceptic over-egging his own pudding.
 
The red, orange and brown lines represent IPCC model predictions for the earth's average global temperature assuming increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
 
The yellow line is its model temperature prediction assuming NO increase in CO2 levels.
 
The blue and green lines (and their extensions) are what happened in the real world.
 
Even the IPCC's no CO2 increase model predicted higher temperatures than actually occurred.
 
However, as we all know, CO2 emissions continued to rise rapidly in this time.
 
At the least this should give us cause to draw back, calm down and at least think it possible that we might be mistaken.
 
And we do have time to do that, despite what the preachers of the new eco-religion tell you.
 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you Garth. It is reassuring to know that there might be some sane people out there.

Experiencing Fairfax peices and ABC programs that seem to actively seek to belittle Stephen Fielding with gratuitous ad hominem attacks, whilst not even attempting to grapple with these very live economic and scientific issues, has been very depressing for me, even though I don't know the guy under attack and probably don't even like him or his politics.

I am genuinely bewildered by all this journalistic bullying. Why are so many of these apparently educated people whose job it is to enquire into institutional error and to defuse spin, just sniffing the school-yard popularity wind, and jumping on a perceived zeitgiest, so unquestioningly?

Western journalism as a vocation seems to have swallowed this AGW mantra whole, without even chewing on it. And I don't get how they can be so lacking in a sense of responsibility that they seem to think its quite OK to be open about their personal agendas on this. How can they be so lacking in self perception or self regard that they are prepared to abandon all semblance of professionalism when they report on climate change issues and emmissions trading?

Surely all of these investigative reporter types don't actually believe all this alarmist trumped up catastrophic funding fodder; do they? Some of them sure. But all of them? Is the need or desire to sell media to the masses so great a force in their consciousness that it has completely clouded both their moral and intellectual judgment to the extent that we are seeing?

Maybe you know a Fairfax hack or an ABC staffer (or even a snotty BBC-ist) who is prepared to publicly admit to AGW scepticism. I haven't see any convincing evidence of their existence anywhere in their publications or programmes.

I guess I must therefore be a global journalism sceptic too. But I won't be villifed by them for that type of scepticism. That would be so uncool. You only get villified for not drinking the CO2 greenhouse effect hypothesis kool-aid with them, even whilst the corelation of CO2 to global temperature is so spectacularly poor. And, as Feilding asks of Wong, if you only look only at the most recent 60 years since WWII:

1945 to 1978, the post war economic boom (30 years plus), with CO2 emissions rampant. Global temperatures: down.
1998 to 2009, the China/India growth boom (10 years plus), with CO2 emissions rampant. Global temperatures: even.

What is it that is so much more important about rising global temperatures from 1979 to 1997 (a mere 20 years plus) that has caused this massive outbreak of hand wringing speculative neurosis in our society?

Are we the only sane people left or is it us who have gone mad?

BobG, Sydney

Garth Godsman said...

Thanks for your very thoughtful comment Bob.

I do ask myself from time to time not am I mad, but certainly am I wrong?

(BTW, I am reassured that Ian Plimer has a section in his book called "What if I am wrong." I like that. It at least implies a properly scientific scepticism.)

And maybe I'm fooling myself, but I still reckon that we passed the high water mark of climate alarmism a while back. I hope I'm right.

And yes, I have had my reservations about Fielding myself, especially about his media stunts. But he's the guy with the crucial senate vote, not anyone I'd have made my first choice. Such is life. Having said that, I think he has played his cards pretty well so far and his questions to Senator Wong were to the point and pretty well weighted.

Certainly you call much of the media's response correctly. It is just outright bullying and lacks even an appearance of really trying to understand a different point of view.

It has been one of its most egregious failures of recent years.

Seeing as most journalists are of basically Left wing politics, there is an aspect of belief involved. Many would sincerely believe in the claims of the environmental movement and accept them uncrotically and at face value. It's part of what some see as being expected with a certain political position.

We all do it to some extent - assume the position. However, we expect more from journalists. We expect them to be spectical and be always looking for the flaws.

Though yes, there has to be an element of trading on alarmism because that is what apparently sells newspapers and gets people watching the TV.

Perhaps we human beings are suckers for apocalyptic doomsday scenarios.

But getting back to what I think is my central point, I still can't see, given what we know about the planet's geological history and the climate variability of just the last 10,000 years, quite what all the fuss in about.

Brentbo said...

I've learned to instinctively distrust any 'journalism' or 'science' that supports politically correct positions. The hockey stick model for global temperatures has been discredited; if it had been correct, that would have been something to worry about. But Garth is exactly right -- nothing in recent climate behavior is at all unusual.

It's fun to watch people stand on their head and try to say that global cooling is really a consequence of global warming -- ummmm -- climate change. Or something.

Garth Godsman said...

"I've learned to instinctively distrust any 'journalism' or 'science' that supports politically correct positions."

Just simple commonsense you would have thought, but apparently not ;)

A lesson that needs to be driven home I reckon.

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