Recently, in response to two articles written by Rossleigh, we were honoured by the presence of two gentlemen from the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) who disagree with the widely-held consensus on anthropogenic global warming and its effect on climate change.

Tom Harris, a mechanical engineer who was formerly the Executive Director of the now-defunct Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP), and who currently is the Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), said:

“The only thing that counts in this debate is whether or not human produced carbon dioxide emissions is causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming.

The reason no one properly demonstrates this is because the idea of consensus on this topic among these people is an urban legend and of no merit what-so-ever.”

When directed to the NASA site showing the consensus he dismissed it as “simply a statement by an official government body”.

After much discussion about his credentials, previous employment, and funding, Mr Harris said “Kaye Lee’s comments are largely just aggressive attacks made up to divert attention from the failings in the science, which, even she admitted previously, is all that really matters.”

And I agree with him. If the science is right then who funds it doesn’t matter. But he steadfastly ignored all scientific arguments placed before him, and ignored all questions until the following.

When asked “what percentage of global GDP mitigating CO2 will cost and what percentage it will cost the world if manmade CO2 is not mitigated and the globe continues to warm?” he provided a link to the Lord Monckton Foundation.

Having written previously about Lord Monckton, I was interested to have a look, and what an eye-opener it was. The linked page started with a very spurious graph (which appears to be repeated on every page on the site), and then launched into an appeal for funds to make a “powerful and ‘game changing’ video to communicate Lord Christopher Monckton’s recent calculations on the cost of climate mitigation vs the cost of adaptation.”

“This video will require significant travel. We are interviewing internationally renowned experts such as President Vaclav Klaus, Anthony Watts, Fred Singer, Henry Ergas and others. A camera crew will need to literally lap the planet to film these experts and capture their thoughts and views on the current state of climate mitigation etc.

Long story short, we have calculated a budget of $156,000 all together. Needless to say we don’t have that in the piggy bank beside our bed, so we’re running a crowd funding campaign to try and gather the money we need to make this video happen.”

Interesting experts.

Outgoing Czech President Vaclav Klaus was charged with high treason for granting amnesties resulting in multiple high-profile corruption cases being suspended. In one fell swoop, a dozen high-profile corruption cases – cases that involve millions of dollars in asset-stripping, bribes and fraud – were thrown out. The senators also accuse Mr Klaus of flouting the constitution by refusing to ratify European treaties, and for refusing to rule on the appointment of judges despite being ordered by courts to do so.

Siegfried Frederick Singer (S. Fred Singer) is a former space scientist and government scientific administrator. Singer runs the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), an organization which focuses on global warming skepticism. According to their website, SEPP also covers topics such as nuclear radiation, DDT, science and regulation at EPA, energy policy, and space exploration.

According to leaked documents, Singer has been receiving $5,000 a month from the Heartland Institute. His affiliations with tobacco and oil industries are well documented.

Henry Ergas is an economist and a columnist for the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper. He has been appointed by long-time friend, Malcolm Turnbull, to do the cost benefit analysis for the NBN, a venture he has widely criticised in the past. I have been unable to find any qualifications in climate science but hey, he probably knows Maurice Newman and Cardinal Pell, those other unqualified “experts” on climate change, and they may have had rousing discussions at IPA birthday bashes with Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Gina, Rupert and our fearless PM. Close enough.

Anthony Watts is an American TV weather presenter and runs the blog Watts Up With That. He founded surfacestations.org, which questions the reliability of the surface temperature record whilst ignoring the thousands of lines of evidence such as melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, retreating glaciers, thousands of species migrating, seasons shifting, local populations of species going extinct. As for the temperature record, warming is also being observed over the ocean, well away from urban heat island and microsite influences.

Rather than watching the YouTube video, I went to Lord Monckton’s paper entitled “Is CO2 mitigation cost-effective?” As it was basically unintelligible for a layperson (and I suspect equally so for scientists), I will share an abstract:

“Australia’s carbon tax: This note, originally presented before distinguished delegates at the 2012 annual seminars on planetary emergencies of the World Federation of Scientists, summarizes and updates Monckton of Brenchley (2013), which applies a simplified but robust method of climate-mitigation investment appraisal to the recently-introduced Australian carbon dioxide tax (Parliament of Australia, 2011). For the first time, mainstream climatological and inter-temporal-appraisal approaches are combined. The cost of the tax over the intended ten-year term is compared with its benefit in the cost of warming-related damage avoided by successful implementation and the consequent intended cut in Australia’s emissions. A zero inter-temporal discount rate is assumed. The minimum market rate would be 5% (Murphy et al., 2008).

Conclusion: This analysis is deliberately simple, but complexity would be unlikely to change the outcome sufficiently to render any policy to mitigate CO2 emissions at all cost-effective. Removal of some of the simplifying assumptions would tend to worsen the cost-benefit ratio still further, for most of them lead to understatement of it. Results from other case studies broadly confirm the outcome in the Australian case. Therefore, future adaptation at need is recommended, but present-day mitigation is not.”

It took only one page for Lord Monckton to determine that mitigation in the next ten years will cost more than adaptation. “Bugger anyone who lives longer than ten years from now” seems to be the scientific basis of this rather ‘interesting’ page.

I figured there had to be a longer version and yes, I found one that was 11 pages long. Girding my loins to wade into a detailed scientific analysis, I found this. Nice colours!

With some trepidation, I ventured further and found “A plain-English service to science and truth by the Lord Monckton Foundation 1 January 2014.”

NO WORRIES, MATE!

Australia’s fave Lord puts the bedwetting profiteers of doom at the failed Climate Council straight about global warming.

Bullsh*ttin’ bedwetters

The latest propaganda sheet from those bedwetters at the now axed Climate Council says the world has kept on warming. Not for the last 17 years 3 months it hasn’t. The RSS graph shows no global warming at all despite ever-rising CO2 in the air.

There’s nothing like the real data to reveal the Inconvenient Truth (geddit?).

The Climate Council bedwetters say scientists are “more certain than ever” that Man made most of the global warming since 1950. But it was Australian scientists who proved that only 0.3% of 11,944 papers published since 1991 said most of the warming since 1950 was our fault. Oops!

Science consensus? 0.3% consensus!

We can’t affect the weather much

The bedwetters say warming of 3 Cº this century would be a big deal. In your dreams! The Vostok ice-core data show global temperature has gone up or down only 3 Cº in the past 420,000 years, despite ice ages, solar flares, orbital changes, meteorites and stuff. So if we succeed in turning 1/3000 of the air from oxygen to plant food in 100 years, will we cause mega climate change? Nah, it won’t happen.

The bedwetters say global warming (that isn’t happening) will cause more extreme weather. But the UN’s climate panel reports “no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency” for 100 years. Ask the captain of the ship stuck in Antarctic ice in summer about extreme weather.

Extreme weather?

Seen it all before!

‘We made the global warming since 1950!’

The bedwetters say the only possible explanation for the 0.7 Cº global warming since 1950 is that it’s all our fault. B*ll*x! Natural variability probably caused most of the global warming that stopped over 17 years ago. As we scientists say, “Sh*t happens! Get over it! Get a life!”.

‘But it must be our fault!’

In the left corner, CO2 concentration change. In the right corner, change in the Sun’s output of heat. Which one is a whole lot closer to the real temperature changes, in blue on both graphs?

Yup, you got it. It’s the Sun, stupid!

Climate change? No worries, mate!

Mate, if this is your idea of “science downunder” you may have to take a summer course (geddit?)

Or you could take a gander at some of those peer-reviewed papers that work on a slightly longer timescale than ten years.

Or you could listen to the commenters here because I am sure they will be more than happy to assist in your edumacation. No wuckins!