By Joanne Nova
In the print edition the headline is “Newspapers should lead the country"*
David McKnight’s criticism of The Australian (Sceptical writers skipped inconvenient truths) makes a good case study of the intellectual collapse of Australian universities.
Here’s a UNSW “Senior Research Fellow” in journalism who contradicts himself, fails by his own reasoning, does little research, breaks at least three laws of logic, and rests his entire argument on an assumption that he provides no evidence for. Most disturbingly - like a crack through the façade of Western intellectual vigour - he actually asserts that the role of a national newspaper is to “give leadership”. Bask for a moment in the inanity of this declaration that newspapers “are our leaders”. Last time I looked at our ballot papers, none of the people running to lead our nation had a name like “Sir Sydney Morning Herald”. Didn’t he notice that we live in a country that chooses its leaders through elections?
The role of a national newspaper is to report all the substantiated arguments and filter out the poorly reasoned ones (like his), so the readers can make up their own minds.
“The swelling ranks of sceptical scientists is now the largest whistle-blowing cohort in science ever seen...”
The point of the “free press” is surely for the press to be free to ask the most searching questions on any topic. Yet here is a supposed authority on journalism attacking The Australian for printing views of scientists? And these scientists that McKnight wants to silence are not just the odd rare heretic. The swelling ranks of sceptical scientists is now the largest whistle-blowing cohort in science ever seen. It includes some of the brightest: 2 with Nobel Prizes in Physics, 4 NASA astronauts, 9000 PhD’s in science, and another 20,000 science graduates to cap it off. A recent Senate Minority Report contained 1000 names of eminent scientists who are skeptical, and the term “professor” pops up over 500 times in that list. These are the people that McKnight, an Arts PhD, calls “deniers”.
Just because thousands of scientists support the skeptical view doesn’t prove they’re right, but it proves it is nothing like the “tobacco” sceptics campaign that McKnight compares them to, in a transparent attempt to smear commentators he disagrees with.
Ponder the irony that McKnight-the-journalism-lecturer is demanding The Australian adopt the policy espoused by the dominant paradigm, the Establishment, and censor the views of the independent whistleblowers? He thinks repeating government PR is journalism, the rest of us know it as propaganda.
McKnight has so little evidence to base his assumptions on, that he resorts to name-calling - “denier”. He doesn’t name any scientific paper that any skeptic denies, instead it’s just a pre-emptive bully boy technique designed to stop people even discussing the evidence about the climate.
McKnight’s research starts with the assumption that a UN committee, which was funded to find a crisis, has really found one, and that they are above question. He probably has no idea that there are thousands of ivy league physics, geology and engineering specialists who are sceptical. His investigation appears to amount to comparing articles in Fairfax versus Murdoch papers, as if the key to radiative transfer and cumulative atmospheric feedbacks lies in counting op-ed pieces.
If he had made the most basic enquiry, McKnight might also have found out that the entire case for the man-made threat to the climate rests on just the word of 60 scientists who reviewed Chapter Nine of the Fourth Assessment Report. He’d also know that the people he calls deniers, far from being recipients of thousands of regular Exxon cheques, are mostly self-funded, many are retirees, and that Exxon’s paltry $23 million for 1990 - 2007 was outdone by more than 3000 to 1 by the US government alone which paid $79 billion to the Climate Industry during 1989 - 2009.
Just suppose, hypothetically, that the government employed many scientists on one side of a theory, and none of the other. McKnight’s method of “knowing” who is right involves counting up the institutions and authorities who support the grants...I mean, the theory. If science were exploited this way, McKnight would fall victim every time.
So “sharp” is McKnight’s analysis that he calls the independent unfunded scientists “a global PR campaign originating from coal and oil companies”, all while he is oblivious to the real billion dollar PR campaign that is waged from government departments, a UN agency, financial houses like Deutsche Bank, the renewable energy industry, the nuclear industry, and the multi hundred-million dollar corporations like WWF. Here’s a man who thinks David is Goliath.
The people in power, and many major banks, are telling us to be worried about a particular gas. Isn’t the point of an investigative journalist to err… investigate that? Not so, says McKnight. The job of a newspaper is to decide which scientist is right about atmospheric physics. Is Phil Jones from the East Anglia CRU right, or is Richard Lindzen - prize winning MIT meteorologist right? Add that to the new list of duties for aspiring national editors. Tough job, eh?
McKnight’s main error, “Argument from Authority”, has been known for 2000 years, and his entire synopsis is built around this fallacy. Just suppose, hypothetically, that the government employed many scientists on one side of a theory, and none of the other. McKnight’s method of “knowing” who is right involves counting up the institutions and authorities who support the grants… I mean, the theory. If science were exploited this way, McKnight would fall victim every time - blindly supporting the establishment. That doesn’t prove he’s wrong, but it proves he can’t think and that his methodology can be scammed. If he’s right, it could only be by accident. Why is the taxpayer supporting his work, when a random coin toss would do the same job for a fraction of the expense?
His muddy analysis is confused at every level. He claims The Australian has zig zagged from acceptance to denial, but then later, accuses the Australian’s columnists of repeating “the dominant editorial line”. But which editorial line would be dominant ...the zig type or the zag? Doesn’t it destroy the whole meaning of “dominant” if something changes regularly?
For someone who claims to be an authority on history, McKnight can’t tell the difference between science and religion. In science, evidence is the only thing that counts, not opinion. McKnight-the-follower-of-funded-opinions has the gall to question The Australian’s standards of evidence, but the only evidence he offers is only a collection of opinions.
Given that McKnight paints himself as an authority on journalism, yet fails to investigate his base assumption, research the targets of his scorn, or understand the role the free press: he is his own best example of why argument from authority is a fallacy.
If our journalism lecturers are feeding students with grandiose ideas of their own “leadership” roles, how decrepit is the institution where students are not even taught that the highest aim of a journalist is to ask the most penetrating questions, and leave no stone unturned, so that the people they serve might have the best information?
Such is the modern delusion of the trumped up activist-journo: McKnight wants to be the “leader” - to dictate what the public can “think” and to direct where public spending goes - but he doesn’t want to bother running for office or to expose his claim to open debate. He’s nothing more than a totalitarian in disguise. See post here.
Politico
Leading House climate skeptic Jim Sensenbrenner appears to have landed a perch to lead investigations into global warming science.
The Wisconsin Republican is set to become the vice chairman of the House Science Committee under incoming Chairman Ralph Hall (R-Texas), Hall told POLITICO Thursday.
“With his background, his insistence, he can do the mean things that we don’t want to do,” Hall said. “I’m a peaceful guy; he likes combat.”
Sensenbrenner, who has served as the top Republican on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming since 2007, tried to keep the panel alive to investigate the Obama administration’s global warming policies, but was shot down by GOP leadership.
Sensenbrenner agreed to take the No. 2 spot on the Science Committee in exchange for Hall’s backing in two years when his term limit runs out, according to a Republican select committee spokesman.
As one of the Republicans leading the charge against the science underpinning the Obama administration’s climate policies, Sensenbrenner is expected to take a lead role on investigations.
“I’ve had a reputation of really being a tiger on oversight,” he said in September.
Elsewhere on the Science Committee, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) will become chairman of the Investigations and Oversight subpanel next year.
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“Clean Energy Experts” Waste $33 Million (Canadian) “Studying IGCC”
Al Fin Energy
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
“Clean Energy Experts” Waste C$33 Million “Studying IGCC”
Faux environmentalists and so-called “clean energy experts” are happy to take endless amounts of money to study energy solutions. They will not actually help you to solve your energy problems, but they will study your problems for a price, and tell you why they cannot be solved economically.
“It’s a very expensive proposition from our perspective,” said Dave Butler, executive director of the Canadian Clean Power Coalition, an association of leading electricity producers that has mandate to research, develop and advance commercially viable technologies that lower power plant emissions.
Butler’s association, in conjunction with Edmonton,-based Capital Power Corporation, spent C$33 million over the past couple years studying goal gasification technologies.
“With the technologies we’ve looked at, it’s pretty much cost prohibitive,” Butler said.
In 2007, Capital Power Corporation proposed developing North America’s first IGCC coal gasification and carbon capture plant in Alberta. The company, in partnership with Butler’s association, conducted a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study for the proposed Genesee IGCC Project, which wrapped up last spring.
Do you see the problem? The association was not actually looking at IGCC as such, but was rather looking at IGCC when loaded down with unnecessary and wasteful carbon capture. Anyone could tell you without spending C$33 million that carbon capture is a waste of money. But “clean energy experts” have a lot of expenses, and must be funded at high levels.
In reality, coal IGCC without carbon capture is quite clean and economical in comparison with most forms of energy except for NGCC (natural gas combined cycle). Let’s look at a couple of US IGCC power generation plants and compare their costs with what a Canadian IGCC plant would cost when saddled with carbon capture.
Tampa Electric Company’s Polk Power Plant, located near Mulberry, Florida, was America’s first commercial IGCC plant. Completed in 1996 at a cost of roughly $303 million, the plant is capable of generating 313 megawatts of electricity.
...the Wabash River Coal Gasification Repowering Project in West Terre Haute, Indiana, came online in 1994. The full-size commercial IGCC plant cost $417 million and can produce 296 megawatts of electricity.
...Based on the Canadian Clean Power Coalition’s research, a 450-megawatt coal gasification plant with carbon capture facilities would cost about $5 billion to build.
A nuclear fission plant producing about 1,000 megawatts of power would cost between $2 billion and $4 billion to build, according to various estimates. So you can see that the IGCC coal power plant without carbon capture is much cheaper than either a nuclear plant or an IGCC plant with carbon capture.
The nuclear plant saves money in operations due to lower fuel costs, however. And if one is soft-headed enough to fall for carbon hysteria, nuclear power is carbon-free without expensive carbon scrubbers or carbon capture.
So if you are thinking about paying “clean energy experts” to study plans for IGCC, save your money. As good “carbon hysterics”, they will be looking at the most expensive and irrational possible choices.
You will come out ahead in the long run by educating the public to elect officials who are not carbon hysterics or members of the politicised quasi-religion and pseudo-science of CAGW. See post here. H/T GWPF
By Paul Chesser
After the failure in Copenhagen last year for countries who hoped for a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, lower expectations surrounded this year’s version of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun. That’s not the same as saying desires for a massive wealth transfer from developed countries to developing countries was diminished—it’s just that they went about it differently.
One effort was to put pressure on nations to create and finance a Global Climate Fund, and the creation part was successful. As the proceedings commenced, the international poverty-and-justice group Oxfam enlisted several corporations to co-sign a letter to President Obama that demanded the U.S. lead the initiative. The Hill reported:
Companies including Starbucks and Nike say U.S. officials should take the lead in creating a global climate change fund, a move that comes as some Senate Republicans are pressing the State Department to halt climate financing for developing nations.
A corporate coalition that also includes Timberland, eBay, and PepsiCo says in a letter to President Obama that the U.S. should drive creation of the fund at the ongoing United Nations climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, calling it “imperative that the United States reassert its credibility and leadership on climate change and establish a fund at this critical juncture.”
The letter read, in part:
It is imperative that the United States reassert its credibility and leadership on climate change and establish a fund at this critical juncture.
Climate change effects are global. So are our markets and supply chains. As outlined in your speech to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit on September 22, 2010, it is in our long-term economic interest to partner with developing countries, which will bolster their efforts to transition from poverty to prosperity through sustainable and equitable economic growth.
The establishment of an equitable, effective and accountable Global Climate Fund is just such a partnership. The U.S. should work alongside developing countries as they reduce their emissions, save their forests, and respond and adapt effectively to the climate impacts already being felt by companies and communities alike....
It is imperative that the United States lead in the creation of a Global Climate Fund, and the time to act is now. As the impacts of climate change continue to grow around the world, we must ensure that a fair, effective, and accountable fund is established so that nations are able to reduce their emissions and adapt in a sustainable way that has the confidence of all countries.
In addition to the above-mentioned corporations, the letter was also “signed” by Gap Inc., Levi Strauss & Co. and Symantec, as well as other lesser-knowns. ABC News reported on the creation of the climate fund:
The Cancun Agreements, adopted to cheers and ovations early Saturday after two tortuous weeks of talks, created a Green Climate Fund to manage and disburse tens of billions of dollars a year, starting in 2020, for green development in poor countries.
The fund also will help developing nations adapt to climate change that already has occurred, through such methods as shifting to drought-resistant crops or building sea walls against rising ocean levels and storm surges.
The accords also create a new mechanism for giving green technology to developing states and set guidelines to compensate countries that are preserving their forests.
Meanwhile another U.S. corporation made pledges to act on climate change in other talks near Cancun:
Three miles (seven kilometers) from the climate talks’ principal negotiating venue, Walmart chairman Rob Walton attended a function that addressed using everything from cattle in Brazil to palm oil in Indonesia as sustainable sourcing for the giant retailer founded by his father.
Walmart says it plans to reduce its carbon footprint over five years to what would be the equivalent of taking 3.8 million cars off the road. Much of that will come by reducing the energy used by suppliers in China, where most of its nonfood products come from.
“People are spending less time on the negotiations and shifting more focus on concrete action,” said Stephen Cochran, vice president of the New York-based nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, which works with Walmart in China and in the U.S.
With all the corporate firepower behind Cancun, you’d think there wouldn’t be a problem getting money for the Global Climate Fund. But Oxfam reports that those details haven’t been worked out yet:
Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs said: “With lives on the line, we must now build on this progress. Long-term funding must be secured so the Climate Fund can start to deliver, helping vulnerable communities protect themselves for the climate impacts of today and tomorrow.”
There are issues that need to be addressed, including finding the sources of new, long-term money to help fill the Climate Fund. An opportunity has been missed to establish levies on international aviation and shipping, which could have raised substantial new resources for fighting climate change in poor countries. This issue must be revisited with urgency next year. The concerns of women should be put at the heart of the new fund to ensure that those who are among the most affected, receive the funding they need.
Companies like PepsiCo and Walmart, like all good liberals, are prepared to push for global warming “solutions” only so far as it’s painless for them. But if they have to go to investors with plans to do things like contributing to a Global Climate Fund, they’d rather pressure the U.S. government to make American taxpayers pay for it. And that’s apparently what Congress plans to do in the omnibus bill, according to my friend Chris Horner.
See post here.