Posts tagged…Evidence
EU incentives for milk production
Sun, Jan 25 2009
The re-introduction of intervention-buying and export subsidies for milk products in the EU comes after the steady fall of EU milk/milk-product prices to near the (undistorted) world market price over the past decade. The 'gap' between the distorted EU price and the undistorted world price is the 'nominal rate of assistance' (NRA) to EU milk that can be plotted in the Agricultural Incentives…
Read more…Emission controls not warranted by facts
Tue, Dec 16 2008
Some environmentalists (and The Age newspaper) are predictably crying foul at Kevin Rudd's relatively modest White Paper option of up to 25% or 35% cuts from the estimated business as usual level of Australian GHG emissions in 2020. Nevertheless, the proposed ETS conforms to the government's threat to "reform and transform our economy" (Climate Minister, Penny Wong), by effectively choking it…
Farmers unhappy about CSIRO drought ‘alarmism’
Thu, Aug 07 2008In my experience you can count on farmers to sniff out hype. Even before David Stockwell completed his statistical analysis, the NSW Farmers' Association President thought the CSIRO had exaggerated the problem.
"Association president Jock Laurie says while the Climate Report does say ‘exceptionally high temperatures’ are likely to occur frequently, this does not equate to drought. Alarmist…
CSIRO Drought Model ‘fails’
Wed, Aug 06 2008David Stockwell at Niche Modeling has completed his analysis of the CSIRO's Exceptional Circumstances Drought Report. His conclusion punctures the hyperbole of it's launch.
"In a statistical re-analysis of the data from the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report, all climate models failed standard internal validation tests for regional droughted area in Australia over the last century. The most…
Spencer’s ‘smoking gun’
Wed, Jul 23 2008Dr. Roy Spencer, former NASA climate researcher, now managing the satellite temperature data collection at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, claims to have found a 'smoking gun'signal on climate sensitivity
[W]e now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that…the real climate system appears to be dominated by negative feedbacks’—instead of the positive feedbacks……
Another Galilean ‘dissenter’
Fri, Jul 18 2008David Evans, ex-GreenHouse Office:
"The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming … Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory." extract from: The Australian
You need a model?
Fri, Jul 04 2008I can't get a response out of the Garnaut Review website—probably overloaded—to download the Review report. But here's an extract from Prof Garnaut's address to the Press Club on a 'curious turn' in AGW 'dissent':
"The dissent took a curious turn in Australia in 2008, with much prominence being given to assertions that a warming trend had ended over the last decade. This is a question that is…
Six out of ten in UK doubt climate change is ‘settled science’
Sun, Jun 22 2008First it was the Irish rejecting an overblown and incomprehensible Lisbon treaty on the consolidation of the EU's political machinery. Now it's the British public who are failing to live up to their leaders' expectations.
"Ipsos MORI polled 1,039 adults and found that six out of 10 agreed that 'many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change', and that four out…
Aids campaign a moral panic
Sun, Jun 15 2008"It is time to recognise that the Aids scare was one of the most distorted, duplicitous and cynical public health panics of the past 30 years. Instead of being treated as a sexually transmitted disease that affected certain high-risk communities, and which should be vociferously [sic, 'vigorously'?] tackled by the medical authorities, the 'war against Aids' was turned into moral…
Climate Change, Trade and Competitiveness
Sat, Jun 14 2008The papers from a recent Brookings Institution conference on the trade, production and 'competitiveness' impacts of emissions controls and border-tax adjustments are now available (thanks to Simon Lester for the pointer). There's some evidence that border-tax adjustments related to 'carbon taxes' (at feasible rates) would be more trouble to administer and collect than they'd be worth.
Border-tax…
The empricist’s telescope
Thu, Jun 12 2008
"E pur si muove". It seems there's no proof that Galileo ever said this ("And yet…it [the earth] moves, after all").
But it's one of those stories that should be true. Dragged before the Inquisition, Galileo was forced to recant his apparent dissent from the "settled science" of the unmoving earth and the orbiting sun. If he didn't mutter this famous phrase after his recantation, then he should…Science, dogma and dissent: Ross Garnaut’s Heinz Arndt lecture
Mon, Jun 09 2008What a disappointment.
I hoped that Prof. Garnaut would use his Heinz Arndt Lecture to describe the balance he intended to strike in his recommendations between evidence for risky climate change and a growing body of evidence that the risks are low to moderate (at most). Given his well-known views, I expected to find the balance tilted in favor of the former but I hoped to find that it would be…