If you ever wanted an entertaining, succinct, yet devastating critique of the media handling of Climate Change then John Oliver’s recent attempt from his Last Week Tonight show should be compulsory viewing. Here it is …
@ 01:25 minutes: “The debate about climate change should not be about whether or not it exists but what we should do about it.”
What we should not be doing, is developing unconventional oil technologies like deep sea oil drilling, or fracking, nor should we be opening up any more new coal mines.
This just makes a mockery of political parties that make aspirational statements about New Zealand being carbon neutral in 2030 or 2050 or what ever stupid distant date they care to name that lets them avoid taking action in the here and now.
Bottom line
No Deep Sea Oil Drilling
No New Coal Mines at Mangatangi, or Denniston.
Wind down the rest, starting now.
Anything less is blatant and hypocrisy.
Cancel the government subsidies to the polluters and switch them to renewables industry.
I don’t disagree with you Jenny but civilisation needs to rid itself of its addiction to petroleum but not crashing and burning at the same time. So we need to have a crash carbon diet. The politics of getting there are cursed.
1) A controlled ditching, on our terms with everyone well braced for impact OR
2) A flameout and nosedive from 35,000 feet with champagne still served in first class all the way down.
Let me think what our power elite are going to pick.
Greg when you say the politics are cursed, What do you mean?
Do you mean that the fossil fuel lobby is too powerful for democratic government to oppose?
Fighting climate change is not a technical matter it is a matter of political will, do we not have the political leaders with the needed courage and intelligence and the determination to advocate for even the most minimalist program?
Look this is not extreme. Deep sea oil drilling is something that we never had before and wouldn’t miss. And No New Coal Mines is an extremely minimalist policy. Hardly crashing and burning. If we are committed to starting new coal mines now. We will still be mining coal way into the future for the foreseeable lifetime of these mines, way past the time when we should beginning to grandfather the already existing mines.
It is the prevarication and commitment to Business As Usual position which is the extreme position and will which will result in crash and burn.
We need concrete action in the here and now. But it is not happening. Why not?
Are we waiting for a super storm like Sandy or Haiyan to crash on our shores?
I mean politics will limit how far society goes with measures to address climate change. If a party goes too hard they will lose, if they do not go hard enough then irreparable damage will occur. I am hoping that the democratic system is able to deliver leadership that will be able to stop irreparable damage. Time will tell …
Only grass roots pressure from widespread popular movements and civil society organisations have any hope of pushing Parliament to do the right thing. Any isolated leader, no matter how talented, willing or well intentioned, without these popular movements backing them up will find resistance to change from establishment players pretty much unsurmountable.
This is exactly true CV but it is a balancing act. Popular protest alone won’t do it. Neither will government ministers in isolation acting alone can do anything. There has to be a melding of the two. Leadership from above is just as important as pressure from below. The model I refer to is the one that made New Zealand Nuclear Weapons Free.
If you remember it was the Labour Party in opposition in league with the huge protest movement that brought the legislation to the floor of parliament. This is the model we need to emulate.
It is one of the main reasons that I call for the Greens to stand out from cabinet, so that they are able to champion and speak for the gains of any popular movement in parliament. Bound by collective cabinet responsibility they will be stifled from giving a voice to such a movement.
And No New Coal Mines is an extremely minimalist policy.
Actually, it’s a rather stupid policy. Coal is a useful resource when it’s not burned to produce electricity.
A better policy would be: No coal mined in NZ will be burned to produce electricity. And yes, that means not selling it to other countries because we can’t guarantee that it won’t be burned.
We need concrete action in the here and now. But it is not happening. Why not?
All indications are that our politicians are owned by the rich and quite possibly the rich in other countries.
All indications are that our politicians are owned by the rich and quite possibly the rich in other countries.
Draco T Bastard
I actually don’t believe that. But politics is a strange thing, it is all about pressure, it takes a very remarkable individual to go against the main flow of opinion, very few have ever managed it, even with a support group around them. Who is giving the lead and applying the pressure and who isn’t. At present the fossil fuel lobby are, and they have as yet not properly met up with a counterbalancing force in society, at least not one that reaches into parliament.
Unlike the current situation, the hugely successful antinuclear movement was able to reach into parliament and influence opinion amongst MPs effectively winning over Government Members Mike Minogue and Marilyn Waring, tilting the ballance of power in the house.
We follow much in the steps of the USA and the USA is already a plutocracy.
But the reality is that our politicians aren’t making the changes required by the facts and they’re not making the changes required by the population. So what is driving them to the policies that they do promote and implement if it’s not the two things that they should be making the decisions upon?
And don’t forget the attitudes and recommendations of the civil service bureaucracy and deep state, and how far corporate influences have got in there as well.
Transition towns are at least making a start, and without waiting for permission from the government to do so.
The Blueskin Energy project has resulted from that initiative, and I seem to recall they are intending to open source their project so that it can be duplicated around NZ.
Hi Molly I applaud and support the Transitions Towns initiative where I can. I see them akin to the heroic citizens of the International Brigade that volunteered and went off to confront fascism in Spain. But what we must take from this is that to really defeat international fascism on a global scale there had to be national government and wider society buy in.
I might also add that Transition Towns currently require a contribution of financial and other resources that a large part of the population simply don’t have, no doubt when the crisis hits these efforts will be rapidly scaled up, how successful this will be in protecting the majority of the population is anyone’s guess.
A draft report prepared for the United Nations suggests, out loud, what the U.S. needs to do about CLIMATE CHANGE: Cut emissions to one-tenth of current levels, per person, in less than 40 years.
It’s perilous to say these things in the U.S., where a mere description of the scale of the climate challenge too often invites ridicule and dismissiveness. AMERICANS are each responsible for about 18 tons of carbon dioxide a year. Taking that down 90 percent would mean a drop in emissions to what they were in about 1901 or 1902. Cue ridicule and dismissiveness.
The report is entitled Pathways to ‘Deep Decarbonization’
The study contains detailed sections on each of a dozen large national emitters, including the U.S., China, Russia and the U.K. It suggests to national leaders that cutting carbon may be possible, without ECONOMIC compromise and without fear that they’ll have to go it alone. Such analysis might help them generate the political support they’ll need to make the UN climate negotiations in Paris at the end of 2015 successful.
This is where we come in. We are not one of the dozen large national emitters, but we could give them a lead and an example to point to.
The big polluters are all waiting on each other to make the first move.
What New Zealand does in 2015 could make or break these talks. There is still time for the main opposition parties to start campaigning for a blanket ban on Deep Sea Oil drilling and No New Coal Mines, in 2015.
Our new government could then go to these talks as a world leader and openly say that we have taken these iconic positions to show this country’s seriousness in fighting climate change.
This would truly see climate change become an election hot potato. The government would be left floundering, it is their weakest performing portfolio. On the issue of climate change they have no answers, they are in effect the emperor without clothes.
80% of the population are opposed to deep sea oil drilling,
As Gareth Hughes of the Greens has said, “If we really want to beat Deep Sea Oil Drilling we have to fight it on climate change grounds.”
60% want the government to do more on climate change.
This is a large constituency just waiting to be tapped.
From the report:
Talking about cutting emissions back to 1901 levels should strike many as crazy talk. It would be nice if it were crazy talk. Instead, it’s a WORTHWHILE description of the challenge at hand.
There’s no question that there are still “technically feasible” pathways to a low-carbon economy. The bad news is that, without political buy-in, exploring technical feasibility is basically a parlor game. And political buy-in isn’t going to come about in the U.S. through reports suggesting that AMERICANS should reduce their emissions to a tenth.
Elected officials can use studies like this to generate support for clean-energy policies. But in some places, like the U.S., the same studies can hinder policy development. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing.
New Zealand could be that egg from which global action could hatch.
… national National government Party buy in. FIFY.
Same goes for child poverty, and every other issue under the sun. The Right is lost in belief and proud of it*. Either that or they’re intent on murder-suicide with the rest of us as the unwilling partners.
We would not be having this debate otherwise.
*I include Margaret Thatcher in this – her science-driven early (for a politician) recognition of the problem was dwarfed by the damage her dogma did.
if they admit to climate change then they wont be able to get any more soap or elastic for their underpants.
not to mention the estates in the hamptons and the 10 car garages, international travel adnd esxpensive hotels and personal assistants (slaves).
it means the end of the “system”.
show me any politician will go against the material things of no practical use produced by industrialism and the tawdry dreams manufactured by the dream factories.
sorry folks but humanity is just going to have to ride this one out.
tough titty.
in the meantime the seas will be acidified and species extinction will severely curtail the ability to continue unlimited growth and expansion.
The media problem is more general than this. When an established fact is at odds with either a significant number of viewers’ opinions or at odds with elite opinion, the media won’t report the fact. They will inevitably slip into reporting what the polls say as a means of avoiding taking a position.
It’s strange: the institutions that we employ to inform us about the facts that we don’t have the time or resources to find out for ourselves end up reporting to us what our uninformed opinion of those facts is. It’s an endless loop of mutually reinforcing derp.
Sometimes they’ll even report a fact as a fact and in the next sentence slip into talking about public opinion as a way of discounting it.
Look up the “Kochtopus” to see how big money influences what we got told in the media. From funding friendly research, to publishing only the results that are ‘acceptable’, to owning the media channels and spin merchants. It’s a complete system of disinformation.
A complete reform of the media is long overdue. Professional journalism plays an important role in a healthy society – metaphorically they are like the eyes and ears of the body of society.
No wonder we are deaf and blind to what is really going on.
The system of global media story syndication, evisceration of counterbalancing local investigative journalism, and funding of right leaning think tanks which pump out a continuous series of credible looking ‘news worthy’ discussion points, is how it is done.
It’s nowhere near perfect of course. Look at how we are able to discuss what we are discussing now. But you will note their many legal and technological attempts to start squeezing down discourse and dissent over the internet.
My usual gripe with ‘climate change’ which i will habitually mention here: depletion of affordable fossil fuels within 20 years is the main problem. It is going to lead to a chaotic and rapid decarbonisation of the global economy as well as a very limited ability to deal with the longer term effects of the climate change which is already inevitable.
We have this short time period within which to get NZs social, economic and infrastructure systems in place. If we do not use this remaining window of opportunity wisely, we will be making life for future generations of Kiwis much harder than it needs to be.
Despite Hurricane Sandy blowing right through their campaign and throwing their schedules into disarray, both Obama and Romney remained steadfast in giving the climate as little air time as possible.
And for the first time since 1984 climate change wasn’t mentioned in any of the presidential debates.
“End Climate Silence”
Here’s a remarkable thing. Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama – with the exception of one throwaway line each – have mentioned climate change in the wake of hurricane Sandy.
They are struck dumb. During a Romney rally in Virginia on Thursday, a protester held up a banner and shouted “What about climate? That’s what caused this monster storm”. The candidate stood grinning and nodding as the crowd drowned out the heckler by chanting “USA! USA!”. Romney paused, then resumed his speech as if nothing had happened. The poster the man held up? It said “End climate silence”.
While other Democrats expound the urgent need to act, the man they support will not take up the call. Barack Obama, responding to his endorsement by the mayor of New York, mentioned climate change last week as “a threat to our children’s future”. Otherwise, I have been able to find nothing; nor have the many people I have asked on Twitter. Something has gone horribly wrong.
The studied silence around climate change in the US presidential election race, in 2012 mirrored the same studied silence on the climate change that was observed by all parties in the New Zealand elections the previous year.
And sadly in David Cunliffe’s recent inaugural 2014 election speech given at the Labour Party congress last week.
In the wake of the severe flooding and storms in the North that look to become a regular seasonal event.
Just like Obama and Romney in 2012, after Sandy, if he continues this studied silence David Cunliffe risks becoming isolated and embarrassed in his silence over climate change.
My hope is that in deliberately leaving any mention of climate change from his inaugural election speech, that David Cunliffe intends to give this subject the proper attention it deserves and has prepared a dedicated address on climate change that will set out what concrete measures the Labour Party intend to implement on coming into government.
(That any policy can make a difference now): This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won’t make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.
“It’s just too late for it,” he says. “Perhaps if we’d gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don’t have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can’t say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do.”
We’ve already pumped enough CO2 into the atmosphere to precipitate catastrophe, talk of policy making a difference is delusional.The MSM keep up the pretence we still have control, the truth would cause mass dismay.
Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when “we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn’t know what to do about it”. But once the second world war was under way, “everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday … so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose – that’s what people want.”
James Lovelock
The only difference is that today we don’t anywhere seem to have the necessary gutsy determined political leadership ready to step up to give us that sense of purpose. Leaders who can’t be bought or intimidated or easily fooled. Leaders prepared to go out on a limb to shame the political quislings and cowards and name and denounce the open traitors,
With the self assurance and certainty of purpose to be able to rally the population,
With the sense to listen to the scientific advisors, and with the courage to be able to stand up in the face of the arrogant and powerful plutocrats determined to drive us deeper and further and faster down the road to disaster.
“on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do.”
That to me is the nub of the whole issue especially in our western middle class lives – we will do what we want and that is the way we roll – selfish, ignorant, delusional and greedy – fuck the planet, fuck the developing nations, fuck the poor, fuck the future generations, fuck everyone and everything that isn’t me – guess what human, mother nature doesn’t like that attitude. So for the many that are repelled by the attitudes expressed above – what are YOU doing to prepare, what part of the “immense amount to do” are you getting on with.
So for the many that are repelled by the attitudes expressed above – what are YOU doing to prepare, what part of the “immense amount to do” are you getting on with.
blockquote>….he started insisting to anyone who would listen that Middle-earth was doomed, that there was no hope left in elves or dying Númenor, that Sauron’s final victory would surely come before—oh, I forget what the date was; it was some year or other not too far from now. He spent hours reading through books of lore, making long lists of reasons why the Dark Lord’s triumph was surely at hand. Why did he do that? Why, for the same reason that drove him to each of his other excuses in turn: to prove to himself that his decision to refuse the quest hadn’t been the terrible mistake he knew perfectly well it had been.
Just read an excellent book edited by David Cromwell and Mark Levene “Surviving Climate Change” published by Pluto Press. This is the most comprehensive, honest and pragmatic collection of articles that I have read. The writers do not waste time trying to prove the obvious but get straight on to solutions, political and legal blockages to change, consequences.
Refugee flows are going to be one of the major issues as populations flee drought, competition for water and food, and wars. You can see John Key starting to get NZers used to the rhetoric of exclusion and prejudice in his reactions to refugees and boat people. He has possibly been briefed by American sources eg Schwarz and Randall report for the Pentagon.
The awful truth appears to be that American preparations for climate change are predominantly involved with preparing for control, exclusion and discipline of refugee populations through new “non lethal” weaponry. Steve Wright.s chapter on refugee flows and the Pentagon response is worse than the most outrageous conspiracy theories and science fiction.
Fortunately the rest of the book is less terrifying and deals with how to effect change. Seems we need to move off endlessly going over the same tired arguments. Is it isn’t it etc.
Corporate laws that insist on ever increasing profits are one of the major problems and this needs a political solution. Worth asking MPs at political Forums what their policy is on MIA treaty and TPPA, as these bind sovereign states into considering the profit motive above all other factors.
They also recommend local solutions and collective action as effective and psychologically healthy responses. New Zealand has many advantages as we are small and nimble and have the remnants of democracy which can be revived post election. This really is the do or die Election. We just have to change the Govt. to get started on positive action. We can be a positive model for the planet to follow.
the whole raison d’etre of the media is to sell stuff to the masses with the false consciousness that posessing goods is the only road to happiness.
They are like the Spartans who wouldnt change their minds about their political system even as it crumbled around around them and could have been saved with the correct mental adjustments.
The media have only one goal and that is to exhaust the wealth of the world now before industrialism collpases.
Oh finally incontrovertible proof climate change is a hoax – the official denial from Murdoch
In an interview on Sky News on Sunday, Mr Murdoch spoke candidly about climate change, Australia’s political environment and its relationship with China. He said climate change should be treated with ”much scepticism”.
If the temperature rises 3C in 100 years, ”at the very most one of those [degrees] would be man-made,” he said. ”If the sea level rises six inches, that’s a big deal in the world, the Maldives might disappear or something, but OK, we can’t mitigate that, we can’t stop it, we have to stop building vast houses on seashores.
”We can be the low-cost energy country in the world. We shouldn’t be building windmills and all that rubbish,” he said.
Actually, no, John Oliver’s critique is not “devastating”, because it is based on an obvious untruth. In setting up his mock debate, Mr. Oliver tries to represent that skeptics are a group of people who “deny” that ANY warming is occurring.
But he is not alone. For several years, many on the left have been trying to shut up the climate skeptics both by grossly misrepresenting their viewpoint AND by completely misrepresenting the results of consensus surveys as meaning (falsely) that 97% of climate scientists believe that man-made global warming will have CATASTROPHIC results, which then justify the urgency for the world’s industrial powers to make significant changes to their energy policies.
As for that 97% so-called consensus, this could also be critiqued based on both the logical fallacy of making scientific conclusions by consensus AND the fact anyone who looks into the details would see how it was based a clearly faulty premise which discarded most of the over 11,000 research papers for expressing no opinion, eliminated others based on the pollsters own subjective criteria, and based on their own limited, and dare I say, manipulated remaining sample (less than 100), drew conclusions based on opinions expressed only in those papers, and then reported the results as a percentage of that very small sample. Anyone with a basic understanding of statistical analysis should see the problem with this.
But putting that all aside, the authors of the consensus STILL did not specify the degree to which the warming was human caused (just some, nearly all, or somewhere in between), or whether the “97% thought the consequences of this warming would be mild, dire or could not yet be determined. Regardless of these glaring faults and omissions, advocates of the catastrophic view irresponsibly used this consensus as yet another weapon in their war on any opposing viewpoints.
Likewise, for years those holding the catastrophic view have falsely been portraying “deniers” as a group of people who deny the obvious – that the world has been warming since 1950, that CO2 in the air has been increasing, that the increased CO2 is at least part of the cause of this warming, and therefore that some of the warming we have experienced during that period is caused by human activities.
Naturally, the reason for both of these gross misrepresentations – regarding the viewpoints of skeptics and regarding the consensus survey results – is that the left wants to be able to claim that the “debate is over” and that the “science is settled”, so they can have American and other industrial powers move on to the next step of implementing dramatic changes to their energy policy.
However, the logical and practical next step is not to hastily move on to making major changes in energy policy, but rather to conduct a cost-benefit analysis that considers both the consequences of not making energy policy changes, along with what negative things might result from making those changes. And there is a good reason why the left wants to skip over this important step, because they know full well that limiting the use of fossil fuels, particularly in developing countries, would have serious, costly, and in many cases, fatal consequences for many people across the globe, and that once those facts come out, support for their agenda will wither away.
So no, this “optimistic” viewpoint is not something new. The acceptance of the basic premise of warming and human contributions has been there for many years, and I would be happy to provide multiple links to show that this is the case. However, those favoring the “catastrophic” (or, as it were, “pessimistic”) viewpoint have been constantly distorting this for years, as they would much prefer to engage in a one-sided demagogue than in a debate that they know they would lose.
And ironically, the only way industrial powers would ever be convinced to make the dramatic and global changes needed to have any serious effect on atmospheric CO2 and on climate would be if we actually have the debate I suggest and if, to my surprise, those holding the catastrophic view can put forth convincing data which shows that they are correct, and that therefore the costs and associated risks of making these sweeping energy policy changes is justified. So the irony is that the very debate that is needed in order to realistically bring about these changes is being suppressed by the side that believes that the changes or urgently needed.
As for that 97% so-called consensus, this could also be critiqued based on both the logical fallacy of making scientific conclusions by consensus AND the fact anyone who looks into the details would see…
Ok so you are simply lying. Lets be charitable and say that is simply because you are too ignorant to know how people doing science think. They are the “skeptics”. To be quite frank the “deniers” that I meet in discussion boards would have to be regarded as being simple minded amateurs compared to working scientists. They are trained to disbelieve their own ideas and test the multiple alternative hypothesis for validity. Because if they don’t then some other science prick will make a name out of disproving their ideas.
In 1978-1981 when I went to university to do a Earth Sciences degree we were aware as students of the anthropomorphic climate change theory. In terms of the physics, it was clearly correct that increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would cause greenhouse effects. It was easy to show that in the lab. It was also clear then from isotopic analysis that the most of the decade on decade culmative changes in additional CO2 in the atmosphere were from fossil carbon fuels, again easy to show in the lab.
My geochemistry texts had sections on the analysis based on papers going back to the 1950s, just as they did on meteorites and everything else. That was the “consensus” then. It is something that is obvious to anyone who spent time understanding the basic science. Something you clearly have put no effort into attempting to do.
About the only thing that wasn’t understood was why we weren’t seeing the expected effects as fast as the “pure” physics suggested should happen. But of course they weren’t manifesting themselves on a daisyworld. A real world with lots of volatiles around isn’t even remotely as simple. Almost all of the work done since then to establish the more recent “consensus” you’re referring to happened a lot later.
That became obvious over the following decade as they extended the temperature measurements outside of the dust polluted skies of Europe and the US via ground stations and satellite IR. Then the oceans chemistry, temperatures, volumes, and speed of movement had to be at least partially established. Ice melt were factored in. Every thing had to be measured ever more precisely, widely, and continuously. It has been quite apparent since the early to mid-90’s to anyone with any significiant knowledge of earth sciences what the broad outlines were. Humans were causing climate change well above and directly opposite the underlying trends. Everything else after that was merely refining the models with updated observational data and getting better at predicting the interfaces between climate and decadal weather.
These days, I don’t know of a reputable working scientist (ie one with their beliefs not paid for by oil, gas and coal (usually by the Heartland Foundation)) in the earth sciences areas who doesn’t think that the effects are likely to be catastrophic for our type of civilisation over the next few centuries. The only real questions are how fast it is likely to arrive at the point of causing serious damage, how much adaption time there will be, and how long it will take to adapt. Those are the risks requiring assessment. I notice that you don’t address any of them preferring instead (like so many of the other whining deniers that I see here) to avoid looking squarely at the issues you purport to raise.
However, the logical and practical next step is not to hastily move on to making major changes in energy policy, but rather to conduct a cost-benefit analysis…
Waste more time? Oh yay! Another munter from oil, coal and gas wanting to waste more time so they can realize their reserves. That analysis of your conduct seems like a good working hypothesis to me, bearing in mind the number of these kinds of arseholes I have seen over the years. To prove you are not, then I have a question for you at the end…
But we already know the basic conservative and almost certain risk levels of climate change over the next century. Those are the ones that the IPCC puts out. Book one gives the most conservative estimates of climate change by a combined voice of a lot of knowledgeable scientists working in the areas around climate change. That is the current conservative consensus. They only take high probability and proven results to put into the models to give the range of outcomes shown.
Of course the sequential reports keep getting worse as evidence is found of reinforcements the tilt to climate shifts, evidence of the buffering of oceans and ice sheets reaching its limits, and the very limited countervailing effects of things like additional cloud cover. AR5 showed a much higher risk than AR4 as more information entered the high probability range and gets incorporated.
And the reports for AR6 is going to be a lot worse because now there is some solid evidence this year about the WAIS instability has been long speculated on, but never had a high enough probability to get into the IPCC models.
And ironically, the only way industrial powers would ever be convinced to make the dramatic and global changes needed to have any serious effect on atmospheric CO2 and on climate would be if we actually have the debate I suggest and if, to my surprise, those holding the catastrophic view can put forth convincing data which shows that they are correct…
But the only way to get the type of “convincing” of proof that you seem to be demanding is to let it happen and then examine the consequences in the aftermath. Of course this could result in some megadeaths and I’m sure that the surviving people of Bangladesh, Holland, Florida, Louisiana, South East England, and many other places won’t want you strung up by your balls if you just happen to be wrong about how fast water will rise – yeah right!.
The issue really is risk management where there is incomplete data. This isn’t a completely untapped area of analysis. Insurance companies, stockmarket traders, and politicians do it all of the time. So do scientists. For that matter, even people in households looking at how much they have to hold in liquid savings for emergencies do it – they assess their risks with distinctly imperfect information.
This is no different to trying to analyze the effect of putting cobalt casings on to H-Bombs (in what I perceive is your scenario we should have dropped the damn things to see if the “On The Beach” scenario was feasible), continually adding more fluorocarbons to the atmosphere (we should have seen if we really could fry peoples eyes by removing more ozone), persisting in dropping heavy metals into rivers and harbours in industrial quantities (those lovely cancer and miscarriage clusters not withstanding), or even looking at social policies (free education won’t increase literacy because the peasants are too stupid to read), etc etc. All of the conservative myths of the past that said because something hadn’t happened before in the lifetime of the bozo saying it, that it couldn’t happen and ignoring known risk levels.
If you can suggest a experiment that emulates the whole world, then even then it isn’t “proof”, and in any case a dipshit like yourself won’t accept it as being “valid”. There are no frigging certainties in science except if you carefully measure them throughout the actual object undergoing whatever effect you are testing for. Even then it is subject to questions about retroactive instrumentation and observational effects and a need to repeat the experiment several times.
Unfortunately we actually live on this world, and many of us don’t like the experiment going on now. Quite simply we already have a conservative assessed risk that is making insurance companies routinely building changed weather patterns into their policies.
To me, you sound like a complete paid for fuckwit without an ability to think. But hey, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Lets run an experiment on you to see what type of “denier” you are. Following your argument, lets look at what would allow you to be satisfied about the various parts of the probability risk matrix (I did an MBA as well). A typical denier will do almost anything else apart from trying to define what it would take to convince them that their belief is in fact incorrect.
I’ve tried asking them to provide links to papers, and then never heard back from them after I use their own links to show that they hadn’t read the farking things or they hadn’t looked for critiques (in other words they’d pulled them off some denier site without reading them themselves).
The best way I’ve found of elucidating what type of person I’m dealing with is to ask them to define their own parameters of skepticism.
SO
Tell me explicitly what you would regard as “convincing data” and then tell me how long that data would take to collect. OR
Tell me explicitly what you would regard as data required to disprove anthropogenic CO2 induced climate change and then tell me how long that data would take to collect. OR
Tell me (from the other side) what the certainty is of developing the mitigation and adaption technologies in time to deal with the worst case IPCC AR5 case. Because in the event that you are the fool and are quite wrong, the the other side of the risk equation will be to make sure that the technology required is available.
My bet is that
1. You cannot do any of the above because you have about as much scientific knowledge in this area as the hamster that your accounting prose above indicates. So your response will be on the effective order of “let god decide” and other such chiliastic nonsense. Quite simply you probably wouldn’t be prepared to take the time and study that answering that question will require. In which case you have a lot in common with the leaders of the “industrial powers”. Like them you rely instead on believing in people and/or gods. Rather than believing in the people who actually study the subject I suspect you believe in the dumb munters who make you or your investments feel safe rather than facing reality.
2. That your assessment in the first two will effectively say to wait for another 20-30 years without any changes based on probable risks and let the carbon mining continue in the meantime, while we find out for “certain”. In the latter one you will ignore the history of technology development and assume that an engineered and distributable solution can be reached and testing within a few years despite all of the evidence of the last 50 years of large scale developments that it cannot.
3. Meanwhile you will oppose taking any precautions against the known risks of developing new technologies (look at the history of nuclear fusion) or abating the severity of the risks of climatic shifts by abating greenhouse gas pollution. In other words oppose any gradualistic approach to abate possible risks.
4. Now queue the usual disappearance or the whining about how I am so mean to dumb hamsters and keep calling them names.
I have seen so many of these dumb arse whiners and time wasting shills sprouting the latest spin from the Heartland Foundation and its oil and coal funded clones that I’m getting more than a wee bit sick and tired of them.
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters, PhD The 2020 global wildfire season brought extreme fire activity to the western U.S., Australia, the Arctic, and Brazil, making it the fifth most expensive year for wildfire losses on record. The year began with an unprecedented fire event ...
NOTE: This is an excerpt from a digital story – read the full story here.Tess TuxfordKo te Kauri Ko Au, Ko te Au ko Kauri I am the kauri, the kauri is me Te Roroa proverb In Waipoua Forest, at the top of the North Island, New ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Coming attraction: IPCC's upcoming major climate assessmentLook for more emphasis on 'solutions,' efforts by cities, climate equity ... and outlook for emissions cuts in ...
Ringing A Clear Historical Bell: The extraordinary images captured in and around the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 mirror some of the worst images of America's past.THERE IS A SCENE in the 1982 movie Missing which has remained with me for nearly 40 years. Directed by the Greek-French ...
To impact or not to impeach? I understand why some of those who are justifiably aghast at Trump’s behaviour over recent days might still counsel against impeaching him for a second time. To impeach him, they argue, would run the risk of making him a martyr in the eyes of ...
The Capitol Building, Washington DC, Wednesday, 6 January 2021. Oh come, my little one, come.The day is almost done.Be at my side, behold the sightOf evening on the land.The life, my love, is hardAnd heavy is my heart.How should I live if you should leaveAnd we should be apart?Come, let me ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 3, 2021 through Sat, Jan 9, 2021Editor's ChoiceAfter the Insurrection: Accountability, Reform, and the Science of Democracy The poisonous lies and enablers of sedition--including Senator Hawley, pictured ...
This article, guest authored by Prof. Angela Gallego-Sala & Dr. Julie Loisel, was originally published on the Carbon Brief website on Dec 21, 2020. It is reposted below in its entirety. Click here to access the original article and comments. Peatlands Peatlands are ecosystems unlike any other. Perpetually saturated, their ...
The assault on the US Capitol and constitutional crisis that it has caused was telegraphed, predictable and yet unexpected and confusing. There are several subplots involved: whether the occupation of the Michigan State House in May was a trial run for the attacks on Congress; whether people involved in the ...
On Christmas Eve, child number 1 spotted a crack in a window. It’s a double-glazed window, and inspection showed that the small, horizontal crack was in the outermost pane. It was perpendicular to the frame, about three-quarters of the way up one side. The origins are a mystery. It MIGHT ...
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)Will the COVID-19 pandemic prompt a shift to healthier cities that focus on wellness rather than functional and economic concerns? This is a hypothesis that seems to be supported by several researchers around the world. In many ways, containment and physical distancing ...
Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was ...
Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato and Valmaine Toki, University of WaikatoAotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Globally, there are 1,121 ...
An event organised by the Auckland PhilippinesSolidarity group Have a three-course lunch at Nanam Eatery with us! Help support the organic farming of our Lumad communities through the Mindanao Community School Agricultural Foundation. Each ticket is $50. Food will be served on shared plates. To purchase, please email phsolidarity@gmail.com or ...
"Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here." Prisons are places of unceasing emotional and physical violence, unrelieved despair and unforgivable human waste.IT WAS NATIONAL’S Bill English who accurately described New Zealand’s prisons as “fiscal and moral failures”. On the same subject, Labour’s Dr Martyn Findlay memorably suggested that no prison ...
This is a re-post from Inside Climate News by Ilana Cohen. Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here. Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and ...
. . American Burlesque As I write this (Wednesday evening, 6 January), the US Presidential election is all but resolved, confirming Joe Biden as the next President of the (Dis-)United State of America. Trump’s turbulent political career has lasted just four years – one of the few single-term US presidents ...
The session started off so well. Annalax – suitably chastised – spent a pleasant morning with his new girlfriend (he would say paramour, of course, but for our purposes, girlfriend is easier*). He told her about Waking World Drow, and their worship of Her Ladyship. And he started ...
In a recent column I wrote for local newspapers, I ventured to suggest that Donald Trump – in addition to being a liar and a cheat, and sexist and racist – was a fascist in the making and would probably try, if he were to lose the election, to defy ...
When I was preparing for my School C English exam I knew I needed some quotes to splash through my essays. But remembering lines was never my strong point, so I tended to look for the low-hanging fruit. We’d studied Shakespeare’s King Lear that year and perhaps the lowest hanging ...
When I went to bed last night, I was expecting today to be eventful. A lot of pouting in Congress as last-ditch Trumpers staged bad-faith "objections" to a democratic election, maybe some rioting on the streets of Washington DC from angry Trump supporters. But I wasn't expecting anything like an ...
Melted ice of the past answers question today? Kate Ashley and a large crew of coauthors wind back the clock to look at Antarctic sea ice behavior in times gone by, in Mid-Holocene Antarctic sea-ice increase driven by marine ice sheet retreat. For armchair scientists following the Antarctic sea ice situation, something jumps out in ...
Christina SzalinskiWhen Martha Field became pregnant in 2005, a singular fear weighed on her mind. Not long before, as a Cornell University graduate student researching how genes and nutrients interact to cause disease, she had seen images of unborn mouse pups smaller than her pinkie nail, some with ...
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidates for President and Vice President respectively for the US 2020 Election, may have dispensed with the erstwhile nemesis, Trump the candidate – but there are numerous critical openings through which much, much worse many out there may yet see fit to ...
I don’t know Taupō well. Even though I stop off there from time to time, I’m always on the way to somewhere else. Usually Taupō means making a hot water puddle in the gritty sand followed by a swim in the lake, noticing with bemusement and resignation the traffic, the ...
Frances Williams, King’s College LondonFor most people, infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – leads to mild, short-term symptoms, acute respiratory illness, or possibly no symptoms at all. But some people have long-lasting symptoms after their infection – this has been dubbed “long COVID”. Scientists are ...
Last night, a British court ruled that Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the US. Unfortunately, its not because all he is "guilty" of is journalism, or because the offence the US wants to charge him with - espionage - is of an inherently political nature; instead the judge accepted ...
Is the Gender Identity Movement a movement for human liberation, or is it a regressive movement which undermines women’s liberation and promotes sexist stereotypes? Should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sport, use women-only spaces (public toilets, changing rooms, other facilities), be able to have access to everything ...
Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of BirminghamSpace exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth. The coming year is shaping up to be just as interesting. Here are some of ...
Michael Head, University of SouthamptonThe UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine. The British government ...
So, Boris Johnson has been footering about in hospitals again. We should be grateful, perhaps, that on this occasion the Clown-in-Chief is only (probably) getting in the way and causing distractions, rather than taking up a bed, vital equipment and resources and adding more strain and danger to exhausted staff.Look at ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... Story of the Week... Many Scientists Now Say Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to ZeroThat’s one of several recent ...
The situation in the UK is looking catastrophic.Cases: over *70,000* people who were tested in England on 29th December tested positive. This is *not* because there were more tests on that day. It *is* 4 days after Christmas though, around when people who caught Covid on Christmas Day might start ...
by Don Franks For five days over New Year weekend, sixteen prisoners in the archaic pre WW1 block of Waikeria Prison defied authorities by setting fires and occupying the building’s roof. They eventually agreed to surrender after intervention from Maori party co-leader Rawiri Waititi. A message from the protesting men had stated: ...
Lost Opportunity: The powerful political metaphor of the Maori Party leading the despised and marginalised from danger to safety, is one Labour could have pre-empted by taking the uprising at Waikeria Prison much more seriously. AS WORD OF Rawiri Waititi’s successful intervention in the Waikeria Prison stand-off spreads, the Maori ...
Dear friends, it’s been a covidious year,A testing time for all of us here—Citizens of an island nationIn a state of managed isolation,A team (someone said) five million strong,Making it up as we went along:Somehow in typical Kiwi fashion,Without any wild excess ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Dec 27, 2020 through Sat, Jan 2, 2021Editor's Choice7 Graphics That Show Why the Arctic Is in Trouble Arctic Sea Ice: NSIDC It’s no secret that the Arctic is ...
One of the books I read in 2020 was She, by H. Rider Haggard (1887). I thoroughly enjoyed it, as being an exemplar of a good old-fashioned adventure story. I also noted with amusement ...
Scottish doctor Malcolm Kendrick looks at the pandemic and the responses to it 30th December 2020 I have not written much about COVID19 recently. What can be said? In my opinion the world has simply gone bonkers. The best description can be found in Dante’s Inferno, written many hundreds of ...
I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or the numbers seem very low please check this out. After correcting send me the URL for your ...
As we welcome in the new year, our focus is on continuing to keep New Zealanders safe and moving forward with our economic recovery. There’s a lot to get on with, but before we say a final goodbye to 2020, here’s a quick look back at some of the milestones ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Babies born with tongue-tie will be assessed and treated consistently under new guidelines released by the Ministry of Health, Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. Around 5% to 10% of babies are born with a tongue-tie, or ankyloglossia, in New Zealand each year. At least half can ...
The prisoner disorder event at Waikeria Prison is over, with all remaining prisoners now safely and securely detained, Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says. The majority of those involved in the event are members of the Mongols and Comancheros. Five of the men are deportees from Australia, with three subject to ...
Travellers from the United Kingdom or the United States bound for New Zealand will be required to get a negative test result for COVID-19 before departing, and work is underway to extend the requirement to other long haul flights to New Zealand, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed today. “The new PCR test requirement, foreshadowed last ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has added her warm congratulations to the New Zealanders recognised for their contributions to their communities and the country in the New Year 2021 Honours List. “The past year has been one that few of us could have imagined. In spite of all the things that ...
Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment David Parker has congratulated two retired judges who have had their contributions to the country and their communities recognised in the New Year 2021 Honours list. The Hon Tony Randerson QC has been appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the New Year’s Honours List 2021 highlights again the outstanding contribution made by Pacific people across Aotearoa. “We are acknowledging the work of 13 Pacific leaders in the New Year’s Honours, representing a number of sectors including health, education, community, sports, the ...
The Government’s investment in digital literacy training for seniors has led to more than 250 people participating so far, helping them stay connected. “COVID-19 has meant older New Zealanders are showing more interest in learning how to use technology like Zoom and Skype so they can to keep in touch ...
A nationwide poll has found majority support for the government to continue to closely monitor abortions in New Zealand and the reasons for it, despite the Ministry of Health recently suggesting that there is not a use for collecting much of this information. ...
The out-of-control growth in gangs, gun crime, and violent gang activity is exposing our communities to dangerous levels of violence that will inevitably end in tragedy, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The recent incidents of people being shot and ...
Successive governments have paid lip service to our productivity challenge but have failed to deliver. It's time to establish a Productivity Council charged with prioritising efforts. ...
Understanding the connection between chronic fatigue syndrome and ‘long Covid’ might be helpful in treating symptoms that doctors will find all too easy to dismiss.When people began to report signs of “long Covid”, characterised by a lack of full recovery from the virus and debilitating fatigue, I recognised their stories. ...
Nadine Anne Hura, who never considered herself an artist, reflects on what art and making has taught her.I couldn’t clean or cook or wash the clothes, but I could sew. That’s a lie, I’m a terrible sewer, but I left work early to fossick around in the $1 bin of ...
Summer reissue: In the final episode of this season of Bad News, Alice is joined by Billy T award winner Kura Forrester to look at how well we’re honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 2020.First published September 3, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The ...
Lucy Revill’s The Residents is a blog about daily life in Wellington that has morphed into a stylish, low-key coffee-table book featuring interviews and photographic portraits of 38 Wellingtonians. In this extract, Revill profiles Eboni Waitere, owner and executive director of Huia Publishers. The Residents features names like Monique Fiso ...
Pacific Media Watch correspondent The pro-independence conflict in West Papua with a missionary plane reportedly being shot down at Intan Jaya has stirred contrasting responses from the TNI/POLRI state sources, church leaders and an independence leader. A shooting caused a plane to catch fire on 6 January 2021 in the ...
“Last year ACT warned that rewarding protestors at Ihumātao with taxpayer money would promote further squatting. We just didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it is in Shelly Bay” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “The prosperity of all ...
Our kindly PM registered her return to work as leader of the nation with yet another statement on the Beehive website, the second in two days (following her appointment of Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council on Wednesday). It’s great to know we don’t have to check with ...
A Pūhoi pub is refusing to remove a piece of memorabilia bearing the n-word from its walls. Dr Lachy Paterson looks at the history of the word here, and New Zealand’s complicity in Britain’s shameful slave trading past.Content warning: This article contains racist language and images.On a pub wall in ...
Supermarket shoppers looking for citrus are seeing a sour trend at the moment – some stores are entirely tapped out of lemons. But why? Batches of homemade lemonade will be taking a hit this summer, with life not giving New Zealand shoppers lemons. Prices are high at supermarkets and grocers that ...
You’re born either a cheery soul or a gloomy one, reckons Linda Burgess – but what happens when gene pools from opposite ends of the spectrum collide?In our shoeboxes of photos that we have to sort out before we die or get demented – because who IS that kid on ...
Summer reissue: Prisoner voting rights are something that few in government seem particularly motivated to do anything about. Could a catchy charity single help draw attention to the issue?First published September 1, 2020.Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its ...
Hundreds more Cook Islanders are expected to begin criss-crossing the Pacific, Air NZ will triple the number of flights to Rarotonga next week, and about 300 managed isolation places will be freed up for Kiwis returning from other parts of the world. When Thomas Tarurongo Wynne took a job in Wellington at ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Ena Manuireva in Auckland It seems a long time ago – some 124 days – since Mā’ohi Nui deplored its first covid-19 related deaths of an elderly woman on 11 September 2020 followed by her husband just hours later, both over the age of 80. The local ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Turnbull, Postdoctoral research associate, UNSW A global coalition of more than 50 countries have this week pledged to protect over 30% of the planet’s lands and seas by the end of this decade. Their reasoning is clear: we need greater protection ...
The Reserve Bank Governor’s apology and claim he will ‘own the issue’ is laughable given the lack of answers and timing of its release. Jordan Williams, a spokesman for the Taxpayers’ Union said: “It’s been five days since they came clean, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Kokshagina, Researcher – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, RMIT University Are too many online meetings and notifications getting you down? Online communication tools – from email to virtual chat and video-conferencing – have transformed the way we work. In many respects they’ve made ...
The Reserve Bank acknowledges information about some of its stakeholders may have been breached in a malicious data hack. The Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has commissioned an independent inquiry into how stakeholders' information was compromised when hackers breached a file sharing service used by the bank. “We ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland This story contains spoilers for Ammonite Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809. ...
A tribute to the sitcoms of old? In the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Yup. Sam Brooks reviews the audacious WandaVision.Nothing sends a chill up my spine like the phrase “Marvel Cinematic Universe”. Since launching in 2008 with Iron Man, the MCU has become a shambling behemoth, with over 23 films (not ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University The alt-right, QAnon, paramilitary and Donald Trump-supporting mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 claimed they were only doing what the so-called “founding fathers” of the US had done in ...
The Point of Order Ministerial Workload Watchdog and our ever-vigilant Trough Monitor were both triggered yesterday by an item of news from the office of Conservation Minister Kititapu Allan. The minister was drawing attention to new opportunities to dip into the Jobs for Nature programme (and her statement was the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Kupz, Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University In July 1921, a French infant became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), after the mother had died from the disease. The vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG), is ...
The first Friday Poem for 2021 is by Wellington poet Rebecca Hawkes.While you were partying I studied the bladeI your ever-loving edgelord God-emperorof the bot army & bitcoin mine subsistingon an IV drip of gamer girl bathwaterfinally my lonelinessis your responsibility………. you seeI need a girlfriend assigned to me by the ...
The arming of police officers in Canterbury was inevitable with the growing numbers and brazenness of the gangs across the country – this should be a permanent step, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is unfortunate that we have come to the point ...
Celebrations in Aotearoa New Zealand to mark the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will begin on Thursday 21 January with ICAN Aotearoa New Zealand’s Wellington and online event, and continue on Friday ...
Hardly anyone is using their Covid Tracer app. Something needs to change.As the mercury approaches 30°C in Aotearoa, there is a good deal of slipping and slopping, but, let’s face it, piss-all scanning. As few as around 500,000 QR codes are being scanned by users of the NZ Covid Tracer ...
On the East Coast, a group of Māori-owned enterprises is innovating to create new revenue streams while doing what they love.New Zealand’s remote and sparsely populated regions are typically not the best places to create thriving brick-and-mortar businesses. In small communities miles away from any major centres, there are so ...
As we reach the height of summer, it’s not too late to do a safety check on your gas bottle. The Environmental Protection Authority’s Safer Homes programme has some tips and tricks to keep in mind before you fire up the grill. "If you’ve ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37)If you’re in any way unsure about ...
“We may as well knock on the gang headquarters around this country and tell them we all give up," says Darroch Ball co-leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust. “It is simply outrageous that violent offender, James Tuwhangai, has been released from ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Ireland, Israel, and Lebanon. Chart by Keith Rankin. The countries with the most recent large outbreaks of Covid19 are those with large numbers of recent recorded cases, but yet to record the deaths that most likely will result. In this camp, this time, are Ireland, Israel ...
RuPaul is in Aotearoa, kicking back in managed isolation to await the filming of an Australasian version of her hugely popular reality show Drag Race. But not everyone is happy about, explains Eli Matthewson. The world’s most famous drag queen, RuPaul, is in New Zealand, the government confirmed earlier this week ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong What can we make of Clive Palmer? This week, he announced his United Australia Party (UAP) would not contest the upcoming West Australian state election on March 13. After a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gisela Kaplan, Emeritus Professor in Animal Behaviour, University of New England Have you ever seenmagpies play-fighting with one another, or rolling around in high spirits? Or an apostlebird running at full speed with a stick in its beak, chased by a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Jackson, Program Director, Centre for Policy Development, and Associate Professor of Education, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University Childcare centres across Australia are suffering staff shortages, which have been exacerbated by the COVID crisis. Many childcare workers across Australia left when parents started ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Barrett, Senior Lecturer in Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Rhetoric plays an important role in tax debate and therefore tax policy. If your side manages to gain traction in the public imagination with labels such as “death ...
*This article was first published on The Conversation and is republished with permission* Whoever leads the Republican Party post-Trump will need to consider how they will maintain the rabid support of his “base”, while working to regain more moderate voters who defected from the party in the 2020 election. In a historic ...
Covid-19 fears accelerated banks’ moves towards cashless transactions. But the Reserve Bank is fighting to protect cash, and those who still use it. ...
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@ 01:25 minutes: “The debate about climate change should not be about whether or not it exists but what we should do about it.”
What we should not be doing, is developing unconventional oil technologies like deep sea oil drilling, or fracking, nor should we be opening up any more new coal mines.
This just makes a mockery of political parties that make aspirational statements about New Zealand being carbon neutral in 2030 or 2050 or what ever stupid distant date they care to name that lets them avoid taking action in the here and now.
Bottom line
No Deep Sea Oil Drilling
No New Coal Mines at Mangatangi, or Denniston.
Wind down the rest, starting now.
Anything less is blatant and hypocrisy.
Cancel the government subsidies to the polluters and switch them to renewables industry.
I don’t disagree with you Jenny but civilisation needs to rid itself of its addiction to petroleum but not crashing and burning at the same time. So we need to have a crash carbon diet. The politics of getting there are cursed.
Unfortunately I suspect our options now are:
1) A controlled ditching, on our terms with everyone well braced for impact OR
2) A flameout and nosedive from 35,000 feet with champagne still served in first class all the way down.
Let me think what our power elite are going to pick.
Greg when you say the politics are cursed, What do you mean?
Do you mean that the fossil fuel lobby is too powerful for democratic government to oppose?
Fighting climate change is not a technical matter it is a matter of political will, do we not have the political leaders with the needed courage and intelligence and the determination to advocate for even the most minimalist program?
Look this is not extreme. Deep sea oil drilling is something that we never had before and wouldn’t miss. And No New Coal Mines is an extremely minimalist policy. Hardly crashing and burning. If we are committed to starting new coal mines now. We will still be mining coal way into the future for the foreseeable lifetime of these mines, way past the time when we should beginning to grandfather the already existing mines.
It is the prevarication and commitment to Business As Usual position which is the extreme position and will which will result in crash and burn.
We need concrete action in the here and now. But it is not happening. Why not?
Are we waiting for a super storm like Sandy or Haiyan to crash on our shores?
I mean politics will limit how far society goes with measures to address climate change. If a party goes too hard they will lose, if they do not go hard enough then irreparable damage will occur. I am hoping that the democratic system is able to deliver leadership that will be able to stop irreparable damage. Time will tell …
Only grass roots pressure from widespread popular movements and civil society organisations have any hope of pushing Parliament to do the right thing. Any isolated leader, no matter how talented, willing or well intentioned, without these popular movements backing them up will find resistance to change from establishment players pretty much unsurmountable.
This is exactly true CV but it is a balancing act. Popular protest alone won’t do it. Neither will government ministers in isolation acting alone can do anything. There has to be a melding of the two. Leadership from above is just as important as pressure from below. The model I refer to is the one that made New Zealand Nuclear Weapons Free.
If you remember it was the Labour Party in opposition in league with the huge protest movement that brought the legislation to the floor of parliament. This is the model we need to emulate.
It is one of the main reasons that I call for the Greens to stand out from cabinet, so that they are able to champion and speak for the gains of any popular movement in parliament. Bound by collective cabinet responsibility they will be stifled from giving a voice to such a movement.
A democratic system probably would – pity we don’t have one.
Actually, it’s a rather stupid policy. Coal is a useful resource when it’s not burned to produce electricity.
A better policy would be: No coal mined in NZ will be burned to produce electricity. And yes, that means not selling it to other countries because we can’t guarantee that it won’t be burned.
All indications are that our politicians are owned by the rich and quite possibly the rich in other countries.
I actually don’t believe that. But politics is a strange thing, it is all about pressure, it takes a very remarkable individual to go against the main flow of opinion, very few have ever managed it, even with a support group around them. Who is giving the lead and applying the pressure and who isn’t. At present the fossil fuel lobby are, and they have as yet not properly met up with a counterbalancing force in society, at least not one that reaches into parliament.
Unlike the current situation, the hugely successful antinuclear movement was able to reach into parliament and influence opinion amongst MPs effectively winning over Government Members Mike Minogue and Marilyn Waring, tilting the ballance of power in the house.
We follow much in the steps of the USA and the USA is already a plutocracy.
But the reality is that our politicians aren’t making the changes required by the facts and they’re not making the changes required by the population. So what is driving them to the policies that they do promote and implement if it’s not the two things that they should be making the decisions upon?
And don’t forget the attitudes and recommendations of the civil service bureaucracy and deep state, and how far corporate influences have got in there as well.
Transition towns are at least making a start, and without waiting for permission from the government to do so.
The Blueskin Energy project has resulted from that initiative, and I seem to recall they are intending to open source their project so that it can be duplicated around NZ.
Hi Molly I applaud and support the Transitions Towns initiative where I can. I see them akin to the heroic citizens of the International Brigade that volunteered and went off to confront fascism in Spain. But what we must take from this is that to really defeat international fascism on a global scale there had to be national government and wider society buy in.
I might also add that Transition Towns currently require a contribution of financial and other resources that a large part of the population simply don’t have, no doubt when the crisis hits these efforts will be rapidly scaled up, how successful this will be in protecting the majority of the population is anyone’s guess.
The report is entitled Pathways to ‘Deep Decarbonization’
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-09/fix-the-climate-problem-easy-cut-u-s-emissions-to-1901-levels.html
This is where we come in. We are not one of the dozen large national emitters, but we could give them a lead and an example to point to.
The big polluters are all waiting on each other to make the first move.
What New Zealand does in 2015 could make or break these talks. There is still time for the main opposition parties to start campaigning for a blanket ban on Deep Sea Oil drilling and No New Coal Mines, in 2015.
Our new government could then go to these talks as a world leader and openly say that we have taken these iconic positions to show this country’s seriousness in fighting climate change.
This would truly see climate change become an election hot potato. The government would be left floundering, it is their weakest performing portfolio. On the issue of climate change they have no answers, they are in effect the emperor without clothes.
80% of the population are opposed to deep sea oil drilling,
As Gareth Hughes of the Greens has said, “If we really want to beat Deep Sea Oil Drilling we have to fight it on climate change grounds.”
60% want the government to do more on climate change.
This is a large constituency just waiting to be tapped.
From the report:
New Zealand could be that egg from which global action could hatch.
…
nationalNationalgovernmentParty buy in. FIFY.Same goes for child poverty, and every other issue under the sun. The Right is lost in belief and proud of it*. Either that or they’re intent on murder-suicide with the rest of us as the unwilling partners.
We would not be having this debate otherwise.
*I include Margaret Thatcher in this – her science-driven early (for a politician) recognition of the problem was dwarfed by the damage her dogma did.
that is very funny..and john oliver is very very good…
..i have built quite a tidy little john oliver archive..
..should you desire more..
http://whoar.co.nz/?s=john+oliver
..(i had that climate-one back on 13th may..)
if you polled the rightwing-jerks that inhabit most of our media..
..probably most of them are denialists..’the jury’s still out’ kinda people..
..and funny story..!..
..rich republicans overwhelmingly are denialists..
..the ‘rich idiots’..
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/07/climate-denial-wealth-rich-republicans
The Jackalman had a good post last week – including questioning of National Party Conference attendees regarding climate change.
Pretty much as you would expect, but the arrogance still shines through…
(So good to have him posting again coming up to the election)
Yeah, love those posts of his.
if they admit to climate change then they wont be able to get any more soap or elastic for their underpants.
not to mention the estates in the hamptons and the 10 car garages, international travel adnd esxpensive hotels and personal assistants (slaves).
it means the end of the “system”.
show me any politician will go against the material things of no practical use produced by industrialism and the tawdry dreams manufactured by the dream factories.
sorry folks but humanity is just going to have to ride this one out.
tough titty.
in the meantime the seas will be acidified and species extinction will severely curtail the ability to continue unlimited growth and expansion.
Won’t the Hamptons be under the ocean in a few years? Maybe the effects of global warming will wash out all the neo-liberals.
The media problem is more general than this. When an established fact is at odds with either a significant number of viewers’ opinions or at odds with elite opinion, the media won’t report the fact. They will inevitably slip into reporting what the polls say as a means of avoiding taking a position.
It’s strange: the institutions that we employ to inform us about the facts that we don’t have the time or resources to find out for ourselves end up reporting to us what our uninformed opinion of those facts is. It’s an endless loop of mutually reinforcing derp.
Sometimes they’ll even report a fact as a fact and in the next sentence slip into talking about public opinion as a way of discounting it.
My guess: it’s money.
Look up the “Kochtopus” to see how big money influences what we got told in the media. From funding friendly research, to publishing only the results that are ‘acceptable’, to owning the media channels and spin merchants. It’s a complete system of disinformation.
It’s a complete system of disinformation.
Yes it is. I keep wondering exactly where it’s Achilles Heel is. Nothing is invulnerable.
For how long did we imagine that the Iron Curtain was impregnable – then suddenly it was gone?
The Herald does it on a regular basis. Not sure the Koch’s reach that far.
A complete reform of the media is long overdue. Professional journalism plays an important role in a healthy society – metaphorically they are like the eyes and ears of the body of society.
No wonder we are deaf and blind to what is really going on.
Then i would add that a deep reform of academia to meet the needs of society needs to follow.
The system of global media story syndication, evisceration of counterbalancing local investigative journalism, and funding of right leaning think tanks which pump out a continuous series of credible looking ‘news worthy’ discussion points, is how it is done.
It’s nowhere near perfect of course. Look at how we are able to discuss what we are discussing now. But you will note their many legal and technological attempts to start squeezing down discourse and dissent over the internet.
Tom, are you suggesting the Herald is impervious to the commercial and political will globally focused on maintaining the status quo?
My usual gripe with ‘climate change’ which i will habitually mention here: depletion of affordable fossil fuels within 20 years is the main problem. It is going to lead to a chaotic and rapid decarbonisation of the global economy as well as a very limited ability to deal with the longer term effects of the climate change which is already inevitable.
We have this short time period within which to get NZs social, economic and infrastructure systems in place. If we do not use this remaining window of opportunity wisely, we will be making life for future generations of Kiwis much harder than it needs to be.
Will climate change become an election issue?
In 2012,
Despite Hurricane Sandy blowing right through their campaign and throwing their schedules into disarray, both Obama and Romney remained steadfast in giving the climate as little air time as possible.
And for the first time since 1984 climate change wasn’t mentioned in any of the presidential debates.
“End Climate Silence”
The studied silence around climate change in the US presidential election race, in 2012 mirrored the same studied silence on the climate change that was observed by all parties in the New Zealand elections the previous year.
And sadly in David Cunliffe’s recent inaugural 2014 election speech given at the Labour Party congress last week.
In the wake of the severe flooding and storms in the North that look to become a regular seasonal event.
Just like Obama and Romney in 2012, after Sandy, if he continues this studied silence David Cunliffe risks becoming isolated and embarrassed in his silence over climate change.
My hope is that in deliberately leaving any mention of climate change from his inaugural election speech, that David Cunliffe intends to give this subject the proper attention it deserves and has prepared a dedicated address on climate change that will set out what concrete measures the Labour Party intend to implement on coming into government.
(That any policy can make a difference now): This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won’t make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.
“It’s just too late for it,” he says. “Perhaps if we’d gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don’t have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can’t say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do.”
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
We’ve already pumped enough CO2 into the atmosphere to precipitate catastrophe, talk of policy making a difference is delusional.The MSM keep up the pretence we still have control, the truth would cause mass dismay.
..@johnm..
..+1..
The only difference is that today we don’t anywhere seem to have the necessary gutsy determined political leadership ready to step up to give us that sense of purpose. Leaders who can’t be bought or intimidated or easily fooled. Leaders prepared to go out on a limb to shame the political quislings and cowards and name and denounce the open traitors,
With the self assurance and certainty of purpose to be able to rally the population,
With the sense to listen to the scientific advisors, and with the courage to be able to stand up in the face of the arrogant and powerful plutocrats determined to drive us deeper and further and faster down the road to disaster.
And time is running out
“on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do.”
That to me is the nub of the whole issue especially in our western middle class lives – we will do what we want and that is the way we roll – selfish, ignorant, delusional and greedy – fuck the planet, fuck the developing nations, fuck the poor, fuck the future generations, fuck everyone and everything that isn’t me – guess what human, mother nature doesn’t like that attitude. So for the many that are repelled by the attitudes expressed above – what are YOU doing to prepare, what part of the “immense amount to do” are you getting on with.
JMG posted two excellent essays/stories on exactly this:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/refusing-call-tale-rewritten.html
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/the-time-of-seedbearers.html
A wry re-write of the Tolkein tales.
Yep he is seeing the future trajectory of humanity with clarity imo an essential read is JMG
+1
Exactly.
Your mission should you choose to accept it:
<
blockquote>….he started insisting to anyone who would listen that Middle-earth was doomed, that there was no hope left in elves or dying Númenor, that Sauron’s final victory would surely come before—oh, I forget what the date was; it was some year or other not too far from now. He spent hours reading through books of lore, making long lists of reasons why the Dark Lord’s triumph was surely at hand. Why did he do that? Why, for the same reason that drove him to each of his other excuses in turn: to prove to himself that his decision to refuse the quest hadn’t been the terrible mistake he knew perfectly well it had been.
Just read an excellent book edited by David Cromwell and Mark Levene “Surviving Climate Change” published by Pluto Press. This is the most comprehensive, honest and pragmatic collection of articles that I have read. The writers do not waste time trying to prove the obvious but get straight on to solutions, political and legal blockages to change, consequences.
Refugee flows are going to be one of the major issues as populations flee drought, competition for water and food, and wars. You can see John Key starting to get NZers used to the rhetoric of exclusion and prejudice in his reactions to refugees and boat people. He has possibly been briefed by American sources eg Schwarz and Randall report for the Pentagon.
The awful truth appears to be that American preparations for climate change are predominantly involved with preparing for control, exclusion and discipline of refugee populations through new “non lethal” weaponry. Steve Wright.s chapter on refugee flows and the Pentagon response is worse than the most outrageous conspiracy theories and science fiction.
Fortunately the rest of the book is less terrifying and deals with how to effect change. Seems we need to move off endlessly going over the same tired arguments. Is it isn’t it etc.
Corporate laws that insist on ever increasing profits are one of the major problems and this needs a political solution. Worth asking MPs at political Forums what their policy is on MIA treaty and TPPA, as these bind sovereign states into considering the profit motive above all other factors.
They also recommend local solutions and collective action as effective and psychologically healthy responses. New Zealand has many advantages as we are small and nimble and have the remnants of democracy which can be revived post election. This really is the do or die Election. We just have to change the Govt. to get started on positive action. We can be a positive model for the planet to follow.
+1
The rich and powerful don’t want us making decent labour laws either. But we don’t lay down and give up that fight.
+1
the whole raison d’etre of the media is to sell stuff to the masses with the false consciousness that posessing goods is the only road to happiness.
They are like the Spartans who wouldnt change their minds about their political system even as it crumbled around around them and could have been saved with the correct mental adjustments.
The media have only one goal and that is to exhaust the wealth of the world now before industrialism collpases.
Oh finally incontrovertible proof climate change is a hoax – the official denial from Murdoch
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/fight-climate-change-by-building-away-from-sea-rupert-murdoch-20140713-zt66s.html#ixzz37LlwBiw4
Actually, no, John Oliver’s critique is not “devastating”, because it is based on an obvious untruth. In setting up his mock debate, Mr. Oliver tries to represent that skeptics are a group of people who “deny” that ANY warming is occurring.
But he is not alone. For several years, many on the left have been trying to shut up the climate skeptics both by grossly misrepresenting their viewpoint AND by completely misrepresenting the results of consensus surveys as meaning (falsely) that 97% of climate scientists believe that man-made global warming will have CATASTROPHIC results, which then justify the urgency for the world’s industrial powers to make significant changes to their energy policies.
As for that 97% so-called consensus, this could also be critiqued based on both the logical fallacy of making scientific conclusions by consensus AND the fact anyone who looks into the details would see how it was based a clearly faulty premise which discarded most of the over 11,000 research papers for expressing no opinion, eliminated others based on the pollsters own subjective criteria, and based on their own limited, and dare I say, manipulated remaining sample (less than 100), drew conclusions based on opinions expressed only in those papers, and then reported the results as a percentage of that very small sample. Anyone with a basic understanding of statistical analysis should see the problem with this.
But putting that all aside, the authors of the consensus STILL did not specify the degree to which the warming was human caused (just some, nearly all, or somewhere in between), or whether the “97% thought the consequences of this warming would be mild, dire or could not yet be determined. Regardless of these glaring faults and omissions, advocates of the catastrophic view irresponsibly used this consensus as yet another weapon in their war on any opposing viewpoints.
Likewise, for years those holding the catastrophic view have falsely been portraying “deniers” as a group of people who deny the obvious – that the world has been warming since 1950, that CO2 in the air has been increasing, that the increased CO2 is at least part of the cause of this warming, and therefore that some of the warming we have experienced during that period is caused by human activities.
Naturally, the reason for both of these gross misrepresentations – regarding the viewpoints of skeptics and regarding the consensus survey results – is that the left wants to be able to claim that the “debate is over” and that the “science is settled”, so they can have American and other industrial powers move on to the next step of implementing dramatic changes to their energy policy.
However, the logical and practical next step is not to hastily move on to making major changes in energy policy, but rather to conduct a cost-benefit analysis that considers both the consequences of not making energy policy changes, along with what negative things might result from making those changes. And there is a good reason why the left wants to skip over this important step, because they know full well that limiting the use of fossil fuels, particularly in developing countries, would have serious, costly, and in many cases, fatal consequences for many people across the globe, and that once those facts come out, support for their agenda will wither away.
So no, this “optimistic” viewpoint is not something new. The acceptance of the basic premise of warming and human contributions has been there for many years, and I would be happy to provide multiple links to show that this is the case. However, those favoring the “catastrophic” (or, as it were, “pessimistic”) viewpoint have been constantly distorting this for years, as they would much prefer to engage in a one-sided demagogue than in a debate that they know they would lose.
And ironically, the only way industrial powers would ever be convinced to make the dramatic and global changes needed to have any serious effect on atmospheric CO2 and on climate would be if we actually have the debate I suggest and if, to my surprise, those holding the catastrophic view can put forth convincing data which shows that they are correct, and that therefore the costs and associated risks of making these sweeping energy policy changes is justified. So the irony is that the very debate that is needed in order to realistically bring about these changes is being suppressed by the side that believes that the changes or urgently needed.
Ok so you are simply lying. Lets be charitable and say that is simply because you are too ignorant to know how people doing science think. They are the “skeptics”. To be quite frank the “deniers” that I meet in discussion boards would have to be regarded as being simple minded amateurs compared to working scientists. They are trained to disbelieve their own ideas and test the multiple alternative hypothesis for validity. Because if they don’t then some other science prick will make a name out of disproving their ideas.
In 1978-1981 when I went to university to do a Earth Sciences degree we were aware as students of the anthropomorphic climate change theory. In terms of the physics, it was clearly correct that increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would cause greenhouse effects. It was easy to show that in the lab. It was also clear then from isotopic analysis that the most of the decade on decade culmative changes in additional CO2 in the atmosphere were from fossil carbon fuels, again easy to show in the lab.
My geochemistry texts had sections on the analysis based on papers going back to the 1950s, just as they did on meteorites and everything else. That was the “consensus” then. It is something that is obvious to anyone who spent time understanding the basic science. Something you clearly have put no effort into attempting to do.
About the only thing that wasn’t understood was why we weren’t seeing the expected effects as fast as the “pure” physics suggested should happen. But of course they weren’t manifesting themselves on a daisyworld. A real world with lots of volatiles around isn’t even remotely as simple. Almost all of the work done since then to establish the more recent “consensus” you’re referring to happened a lot later.
That became obvious over the following decade as they extended the temperature measurements outside of the dust polluted skies of Europe and the US via ground stations and satellite IR. Then the oceans chemistry, temperatures, volumes, and speed of movement had to be at least partially established. Ice melt were factored in. Every thing had to be measured ever more precisely, widely, and continuously. It has been quite apparent since the early to mid-90’s to anyone with any significiant knowledge of earth sciences what the broad outlines were. Humans were causing climate change well above and directly opposite the underlying trends. Everything else after that was merely refining the models with updated observational data and getting better at predicting the interfaces between climate and decadal weather.
These days, I don’t know of a reputable working scientist (ie one with their beliefs not paid for by oil, gas and coal (usually by the Heartland Foundation)) in the earth sciences areas who doesn’t think that the effects are likely to be catastrophic for our type of civilisation over the next few centuries. The only real questions are how fast it is likely to arrive at the point of causing serious damage, how much adaption time there will be, and how long it will take to adapt. Those are the risks requiring assessment. I notice that you don’t address any of them preferring instead (like so many of the other whining deniers that I see here) to avoid looking squarely at the issues you purport to raise.
Waste more time? Oh yay! Another munter from oil, coal and gas wanting to waste more time so they can realize their reserves. That analysis of your conduct seems like a good working hypothesis to me, bearing in mind the number of these kinds of arseholes I have seen over the years. To prove you are not, then I have a question for you at the end…
But we already know the basic conservative and almost certain risk levels of climate change over the next century. Those are the ones that the IPCC puts out. Book one gives the most conservative estimates of climate change by a combined voice of a lot of knowledgeable scientists working in the areas around climate change. That is the current conservative consensus. They only take high probability and proven results to put into the models to give the range of outcomes shown.
Of course the sequential reports keep getting worse as evidence is found of reinforcements the tilt to climate shifts, evidence of the buffering of oceans and ice sheets reaching its limits, and the very limited countervailing effects of things like additional cloud cover. AR5 showed a much higher risk than AR4 as more information entered the high probability range and gets incorporated.
And the reports for AR6 is going to be a lot worse because now there is some solid evidence this year about the WAIS instability has been long speculated on, but never had a high enough probability to get into the IPCC models.
But the only way to get the type of “convincing” of proof that you seem to be demanding is to let it happen and then examine the consequences in the aftermath. Of course this could result in some megadeaths and I’m sure that the surviving people of Bangladesh, Holland, Florida, Louisiana, South East England, and many other places won’t want you strung up by your balls if you just happen to be wrong about how fast water will rise – yeah right!.
The issue really is risk management where there is incomplete data. This isn’t a completely untapped area of analysis. Insurance companies, stockmarket traders, and politicians do it all of the time. So do scientists. For that matter, even people in households looking at how much they have to hold in liquid savings for emergencies do it – they assess their risks with distinctly imperfect information.
This is no different to trying to analyze the effect of putting cobalt casings on to H-Bombs (in what I perceive is your scenario we should have dropped the damn things to see if the “On The Beach” scenario was feasible), continually adding more fluorocarbons to the atmosphere (we should have seen if we really could fry peoples eyes by removing more ozone), persisting in dropping heavy metals into rivers and harbours in industrial quantities (those lovely cancer and miscarriage clusters not withstanding), or even looking at social policies (free education won’t increase literacy because the peasants are too stupid to read), etc etc. All of the conservative myths of the past that said because something hadn’t happened before in the lifetime of the bozo saying it, that it couldn’t happen and ignoring known risk levels.
If you can suggest a experiment that emulates the whole world, then even then it isn’t “proof”, and in any case a dipshit like yourself won’t accept it as being “valid”. There are no frigging certainties in science except if you carefully measure them throughout the actual object undergoing whatever effect you are testing for. Even then it is subject to questions about retroactive instrumentation and observational effects and a need to repeat the experiment several times.
Unfortunately we actually live on this world, and many of us don’t like the experiment going on now. Quite simply we already have a conservative assessed risk that is making insurance companies routinely building changed weather patterns into their policies.
To me, you sound like a complete paid for fuckwit without an ability to think. But hey, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Lets run an experiment on you to see what type of “denier” you are. Following your argument, lets look at what would allow you to be satisfied about the various parts of the probability risk matrix (I did an MBA as well). A typical denier will do almost anything else apart from trying to define what it would take to convince them that their belief is in fact incorrect.
I’ve tried asking them to provide links to papers, and then never heard back from them after I use their own links to show that they hadn’t read the farking things or they hadn’t looked for critiques (in other words they’d pulled them off some denier site without reading them themselves).
The best way I’ve found of elucidating what type of person I’m dealing with is to ask them to define their own parameters of skepticism.
SO
Tell me explicitly what you would regard as “convincing data” and then tell me how long that data would take to collect.
OR
Tell me explicitly what you would regard as data required to disprove anthropogenic CO2 induced climate change and then tell me how long that data would take to collect.
OR
Tell me (from the other side) what the certainty is of developing the mitigation and adaption technologies in time to deal with the worst case IPCC AR5 case. Because in the event that you are the fool and are quite wrong, the the other side of the risk equation will be to make sure that the technology required is available.
My bet is that
1. You cannot do any of the above because you have about as much scientific knowledge in this area as the hamster that your accounting prose above indicates. So your response will be on the effective order of “let god decide” and other such chiliastic nonsense. Quite simply you probably wouldn’t be prepared to take the time and study that answering that question will require. In which case you have a lot in common with the leaders of the “industrial powers”. Like them you rely instead on believing in people and/or gods. Rather than believing in the people who actually study the subject I suspect you believe in the dumb munters who make you or your investments feel safe rather than facing reality.
2. That your assessment in the first two will effectively say to wait for another 20-30 years without any changes based on probable risks and let the carbon mining continue in the meantime, while we find out for “certain”. In the latter one you will ignore the history of technology development and assume that an engineered and distributable solution can be reached and testing within a few years despite all of the evidence of the last 50 years of large scale developments that it cannot.
3. Meanwhile you will oppose taking any precautions against the known risks of developing new technologies (look at the history of nuclear fusion) or abating the severity of the risks of climatic shifts by abating greenhouse gas pollution. In other words oppose any gradualistic approach to abate possible risks.
4. Now queue the usual disappearance or the whining about how I am so mean to dumb hamsters and keep calling them names.
I have seen so many of these dumb arse whiners and time wasting shills sprouting the latest spin from the Heartland Foundation and its oil and coal funded clones that I’m getting more than a wee bit sick and tired of them.
Yes, the planet got destroyed…