Tag: Bob Carter

Bob Carter: innumerate and irrational?

Bob Carter, in Shhsshh … don’t talk about the science, Quadrant Online, Feb 28 2011:

So what about the famous global warming which occurred in the late 20th century, whatever happened to that? Well, not only did the gentle warming terminate in 1998, but in accord with natural climate cycling that warming has been followed by a gentle cooling since about 2001. That’s ten years of no temperature increase, let alone dangerous increase, over the same time period that atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by about 5%.

Run that past me again, Professors Garnaut and Flannery – your advice to government still remains that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming?

Ross Garnaut, in his introduction to the Garnaut Climate Change Review – Update 2011, Update Paper five, March 10 2011: The science of climate change, after noting that statisticians confirmed (again) the presence of a warming trend in the latest data:

The statistical evidence did not stop assertions in the public debate that the earth was cooling, but it does seem to have discouraged at least the numerate and rational from repetition of errors into which they had carelessly fallen.

So where does that leave Carter, I wonder? I think we can rule out his being careless in the presentation of the facts. And he can’t really be innumerate — the Royal Society of New Zealand does not welcome the mathematically challenged to its ranks. Irrational? How else do you describe someone who argues the exact opposite of the truth? What’s the term I’m striving for? Is he being economical with the truth or simply telling lies? I leave that for the reader to decide.

Bob Carter: untroubled by hobgoblins

It is always a privilege to follow the development of a great man’s thinking, and the Australian public — or at least that portion of it that listens to the ABC’s AM news show (“sets the agenda for the nation’s daily news and current affairs coverage”) — was lucky enough to witness evolution in action last Friday, when the programme chose to “balance” a report on the World Meteorological Organisation’s announcement of record temperatures in 2010 by talking to Bob Carter. Readers with long memories will recall that Carter has been louder than most in insisting that the planet’s been cooling for the last ten years, so the programme had a marvellous opportunity to make the great man squirm. Sadly, they blew it.

Here’s what he had to say in April 2009:

First, there has been no recent global warming in the common meaning of the term, for world average temperature has cooled for the last ten years. Furthermore, since 1940 the earth has warmed for nineteen years and cooled for forty-nine, the overall result being that global average temperature is now about the same as it was in 1940.

So how did he cope with the bad news that warming continues? Here’s the transcript & podcast:

Continue reading “Bob Carter: untroubled by hobgoblins”

How to believe in impossible things

Despite the huge number of mutually contradictory claims denialists make, there is something they all have in common: no matter how much green ink a they use in their writing, denialists never formally criticise each other.

The term cognitive dissonance was coined by Leon Festinger, a psychologist who (in 1954) infiltrated a UFO cult that had been promised a ride into space to avoid a great flood. The UFOs didn’t show. But instead of the cult imploding they turned instead to self justification and denial as they learned, via automatic writing from God, that their goodness had persuaded Him to call it all off.

Continue reading “How to believe in impossible things”

The man don’t give a….

Rodney Hide’s warm-up act for the launch of Bob Carter’s new book Climate: The Counter-consensus — a Scientist Speaks in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago took the form of a remarkable speech, now available at the ACT web site. I know that it’s customary on these occasions to be nice to the author, but Rodney seems to have gone just a tad over the top:

Professor Bob Carter has written the best book on the science of human-induced global warning I have read.

 

Par for the course. Hardly likely to say that he preferred Plimer’s book, was he?

It’s a very significant book. It will save countless lives.

It will also save trillions of dollars in resources, natural, human and physical. Precious resources that the human race striving to provide every human being with the means for them to reach their full potential can ill-afford to lose.

In the strange version of reality being explored by Carterist science, everything is upside down.

His book stands in stark contrast to the dry and boring and politicised IPCC tomes. And so in this book Bob Carter rescues both the world and science and what could be a more valuable contribution than that.

Bob rescues the world! And science! Hurrah!

Some truth here, though:

We are easily fooled. That’s why Prof Carter’s work is so important.

Too true, but not perhaps in the way Rodney intended.

Science doesn’t deliver truths down from on high by consensus.

Pardon? If real science doesn’t do consensus, how can Carterist science offer a counter consensus?

I know that if “Climate: The Counter Consensus” had been published two years ago New Zealand would have been spared its wealth-sapping Emissions Trading Scheme.

And much more in the same vein. Risible, if it weren’t coming from an associate minister of education in the New Zealand Government. But it is, and that makes it tragic.

[Super Furry Animals]

Hide’s Aussie holiday: warming up for Carterist science’s new consensus

Rodney “The Hood“ Hide is taking an Aussie break during the current Parliamentary recess — popping over to Melbourne and Sydney to act as warm-up man for Bob Carter at the launch of Carter’s magnum opus, Climate: The Counter-consensus – a Scientist Speaks. And it appears Hide is as happy to allow his hosts to misrepresent his qualifications as he is to mislead Parliament. The flier for the “Quadrant dinner” in Sydney says:

Rodney has a degree in environmental science, and is a powerful and well-informed public speaker.

He may be a powerful speaker, but Hide does not have a degree in environmental science, and he is woefully ill-informed on climate matters. Hide has Masters degrees in economics and resource management (Wikipedia, NZ Parliament bio), and as this comment at Hot Topic two years ago suggests, he could have completed the latter without encountering any science at all. But he’s good for a bit of rabble-rousing, and I expect his “ditch the ETS” rhetoric, liberally laced with attacks on NIWA’s stewardship of the NZ temperature record and chanted lines from the climate crank catechism will make the Quadrant dinner worth every cent of the A$74 being charged…

Meanwhile, Carterist science is finally getting the recognition it deserves, and the Heartland climate con is on its way to Sydney. Carter’s been appointed Chief Science Advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition.

 

Here’s Carter welcoming his appointment:

“Working with ICSC as Chief Science Advisor is a welcome opportunity to counter the widespread but erroneous belief that dangerous global warming is occurring, and that it has human causation”. Professor Carter continued:  “Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring.

So, do we have ambiguous evidence of problems caused by that unmeasurable warming, or is Carter just repeating standard climate crank nonsense? I think we know the answer to that one…

In one sense, however, Carter is breaking new ground in crank thinking. The title of his book (Climate: The Counter-consensus – a Scientist Speaks) suggest that a “counter-consensus” is assembling. For there to be a counter-consensus there first has to be a consensus in mainstream climate science to counter, but for years sceptics, deniers and cranks have been claiming loudly that there is “no consensus“. Indeed, point 5 of the “core principles” of the organisation that has just appointed Carter its chief science advisor says:

Claims that ‘consensus’ exists among climate experts regarding the causes of the modest warming of the past century are contradicted by thousands of independent scientists.

But if there is no consensus, how can a counter-consensus assemble? Does Carter support the ICSC’s core principles? And what about that modest warming? According to Carter it’s not measurable, or not happening. At this point, dear reader, you will forgive me if I pour another glass of wine and ponder the many contradictory things you have to believe at the same time if you are to be a true climate septic…

Finally, the Heartland Institute is holding a one-day climate sceptic conference in Sydney next Friday, October 1st. Carter’s talking, of course, and Chris de Freitas is popping over to talk about Developments in Climate Science: Potential Drivers of Emissions Policy Beyond 2012 (at a guess, wishful thinking will be involved). Interestingly, the climate day follows on from two days of “workshops and brainstorming with free market advocates from the Pacific Rim” at the Pacific Rim Policy Exchange: chief sponsors Heartland, Americans for Tax Reform (a Koch & Scaife funded lobby group), the Property Rights Alliance (an ATR spin-off), and Australia’s free market Institute of Public Affairs. And NZ’s pulling its weight on the agenda, with the Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr on a panel considering free trade, and (somewhat more surprising, to me at least) Kiwiblogger and National party stalwart David Farrar taking part in a “working lunch” on “getting the message out”. Interesting to see he’s happy to take the Heartland shilling…