Posts by cindy baxter
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Andrew,
I agree - there's so many bits of climate science that are still unclear: how much sea level rise, how fast, how much warming, how fast, etc etc.
This should all be discussed and researched rigorously and with peer reviewed research, in the halls of science.
But this is NOT what Heartland and its cronies do. They simply cherrypick bits of old science to come to the same [non peer reviewed] conclusion every single time.
That is a little suspicious don't you think?
it goes back to that great quote from Frank Luntz, republican comms advisor, which I'll repeat again here:
"The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science...Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."
Luntz, however, changed his mind. But the Republicans (well the Bushies) haven't, thanks to Heartland et al.
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Kyle:
their original book is a pile of crap.See my post earlier for both Singer and Avery's biographies. I have much more info on Singer but won't bore people with it here. The book has not been through a peer review process.
Heartland does nothing "innocently", esp on global warming. Everyone's looking at their main website - but see the full and glorious extent of their global warming campaign here
Their conference was, well, hilarious, is the only way to put it. Andy Revkin at the New York Times noted that when they went to take the photo of all the scientists (in room of 200 people), 19 men stood up.
I think Real Climate has the best description of the conference's intentions in its blog "what if you held a conference and no (real) scientists came?".
A brief glance through Heartland's full bibliography - the Peter Wardle DSIR reference is from a paper he wrote whilst at the DSIR in 1973. hmmm.
Two of the other NZ science refs are from 1979 and 1988 - and Jim Salinger's from 1995.
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exactly, Lyndon.
But going back to their "unstoppable global warming..." book - let's have a wee look at the authors of this un-peer reviewed work:
Fred Singer: rent-a-contrarian.
He has been cited as a scientific expert - supporting industry and no action - on the following issues:* second hand smoke (no problem)
* ozone depletion (at one point he suggested mirrors in the sky to solve the problem, but still said there was no problem).
* nuclear waste (good for you, apparently)
* nuclear power (he was hired by the nuclear industry in 1998 to talk about the scientific case for how safe it was).
* toxic waste (also no problems)
* he has even been cited as a WHALING expert.Singer is not a climate scientist - hasn't published a peer reviewed paper on climate for at least 20 years - if ever (am still trying to find one). He has received money from various oil and coal companies for his work in the past.
Denis Avery: Studied Agricultural Economics at the University of Michigan. Sigh. Works for Hudson Institute. Apparently an expert on food issues there.
So these guys are better climate experts than NIWA? yeah right.
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check Heartland's references - most of the NZ scientists they cite they refer to as working for the - erm - DSIR? So the scientific papers would be more than 20 years old.
One of the NZ scientists was a student at Waikato and hasn't been seen in the climate science world for 25 years.
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Great excerpt from BBC's Hardtalk interview with the PM - good point on that Russell - it's a shame we don't get to see such interviews and probing here in NZ - I've yet to see anyone here pushing her on exactly HOW we become carbon neutral esp with exporting so much coal.
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"it's all there in quite nice quality"... well not quite yet - third section not up yet.
It might be useful if they were labelled 1,2 and 3 with the dates?
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this legal action should keep Bell Gully busy for a while. They'll have to slapp Hard News, Kiwiblog, Poneke, Deltoid and the rest. The NZ Herald also ran the story...
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Re: THE LISTENER
By the look of The Listener's headline headline covering the "viewpoint" two page spread, it seems not even the subs there know what's going on.
"The latest UN Climate Change Conference canvassed many opinions..." - gives the impression that the Bali conference was debating whether climate change is real or not.
It wasn't. All govts there accepted the IPCC's 4th assessment report. The debate was around how to tackle climate change.
RE: MICHAEL MANN'S HOCKEY STICK:
actually the "hockey stick" wasn't discredited. There have been a number of other studies producing pretty much the same result as Mann. The IPCC examined - and accepted - these findings - they are included in the 4th assessment report. Mann was absolutely right to take this to the Press Council.
The only study which purported to discredit Mann and others was written by two darlings of the climate sceptic industry, Sallie Baliunas ans Willie soon. It was funded by the American Petroleum Institute and published by NZ sceptic Chris de Freitas in "Climate Research" where he was an editor.
The publication of what was termed a "poor paper" subsequently caused a number of editors at Climate Research to resign. There's a good summary of the sorry tale here (scroll down to page 13) .
De Freitas is no longer an Editor at Climate Research. Maybe his tenure was up - who knows. He's never said.
The Baliunas/Soon paper has since been __thoroughly__ taken apart.
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speaking of weird weather...
The BBC reported last month that in a good year, Australia's wheat yield is around 25 million tonnes. But they've been hit by drought, and the 2006 yield, for the world's second largest exporter of wheat, was just 9.8 million tonnes.
And this drought has been put down to climate change.
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absynthe - I tried what I think was the "old stuff" in Barcelona many years ago in the late 80's. You could only get it in 3 bars in the city because it was banned everywhere else (makes you go blind, I heard).
It came in an unmarked bottle. It was like Pernod - clear, but cloudy when mixed with water. It served by pouring it over a sugar cube, with a touch of water.
And after three of them I was definitely hallucinating. The fact that we were in a very old very dodgy backstreet Barcelona bar with a lot of weird-looking people and straw on the floor added to the confusion I'm sure, but visual hallucinations they definitely were.
We went back a couple of times then the bar was closed for "Vaccaciones" which lasted for two months - probably the best thing for our health...