New Science Scandal: Polar Bear Researchers ‘Hide The Increase’
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop criticises US president Barack Obama for a speech in Brisbane last weekend in which he claimed climate change threatened the Great Barrier Reef. It is highly unusual for an Australian foreign minister to openly criticise a US president. Ms Bishop also said Australia currently had no intention of committing extra forces or resources to the mission against Islamic State, even though the White House had discussed it with the Abbott Government. —Radio Australia, 20 November 2014
Why did the Southern Beaufort polar bear population survey stop in 2010? It’s clear that the recently-published and widely-hyped new study stopped before the population rebound from a known decline was complete. The researchers of the recently-published paper knew before starting their mark-recapture study in 2007 that the population decline had taken place. They also knew why the numbers dropped and that previous declines, caused by similar conditions, had been followed by a full recovery. In fact, a US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) fall survey of Southern Beaufort polar bears in 2012 found numbers were higher than they had been in a decade. –Susan Crockford, Polar Bear Science, 19 November 2014
Chemicals giant Ineos is to announce plans to invest up to $1bn (£640m) in shale gas exploration and production in the UK, the BBC understands. The company plans to use the gas as a raw material for its chemicals plants, including Grangemouth in Stirlingshire. Grangemouth is currently running at a loss but Ineos believes shale gas will transform the economics of the plant. BBC industry correspondent John Moylan says the move will be seen as a significant vote of confidence in the sector, and will position Ineos as one of the major players in the emerging industry. —BBC News, 20 November 2014
The UK government’s plan to build a new nuclear power station is in danger of collapse amid turmoil at the French group which designed the reactor, experts warned today. Areva, the crisis-torn nuclear company, could be forced to pull out of the consortium set to build the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) at Hinkley Point as its losses escalate, it is feared. The difficulties come after Areva, which is state controlled, admitted that with losses escalating, it was unable to set financial targets for the next two years. Le Monde, the French daily, said its failings had plunged the entire French nuclear industry into ‘torment’. –Adam Sage & Tim Webb, The Times, 19 November 2014
I notice that my Labour colleagues who are troubled by the cost of the war on climate change, and especially when I point out that its costs fall heavily on the poorer classes, while its financial benefits go to rich landowners and individuals on the Climate Change Committee, still won’t face those facts because they want to cling on to the new climate faith because they want to believe it is in the common good. They are not bad or stupid people. Many are better and cleverer than me. But they have a need for a faith which they believe is for the global good. They don’t want a moral vacuum. And the current leaders of the social democratic parties in Britain and Europe are not offering them much else. For Ed Miliband, who is not a bad or stupid man, but coming from a Marxist heritage, when asked for more vision, he grasps climate change like a drowning man clasping a lifebelt. –Bernard Donoughue, Bishop Hill, 15 November 2014
h/t to Dr. Benny Peiser from The GWPF
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
After reading thru a series of the posts, I decided I had hit the wrong bookmark on google chrome. WUWT is no longer about climate science, its about snarky politics and snarky people. Time to reactivate the moderators.
Well then Peter, that just shows that Austrailians are dumber than Americans that voted for him 5 to 4. No surprise who you would vote for. With his lies he could have been a good climate “scientist”
it was only a matter of time before Ove popped up!!!
21 Nov: SMH: Peter Hannam: Great Barrier Reef will be ‘slaughtered’: scientists dismiss Julie Bishop’s claim reef not at risk
While Ms Bishop and other Coalition leaders have criticised the US President’s intervention, leading scientists have come to his support…
President Obama was “right on the money”, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the university’s Global Change Institute, said. “He was stating a fact.”
“We have one of the jewels of the planet in our possession and we should care a lot about climate and he wasn’t getting that from our leader [Prime Minister Tony Abbott],” Dr Hoegh-Guldberg said…
The reef has already shrunk by half in 30 years, he added, with climate change a factor in its retreat…
Charlie Veron, a former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, went further saying the Abbott government was downplaying the dire future facing the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs everywhere.
“In the long term, that is the whole of this century, we are going to have the Great Barrier Reef slaughtered,” Charlie Veron, a world authority who has scientifically named about one quarter of all known corals, said. “There’s no doubt about that at all, if carbon-dioxide emissions keep on tracking as they are.”…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/great-barrier-reef-will-be-slaughtered-scientists-dismiss-julie-bishops-claim-reef-not-at-risk-20141121-11r4a6.html
Oh I read that. Hannam, what a joke of a writer. Constantly posting alarmist drivel. What he, and all other alarmists fail to recognise, is that *ALL* of the environmental studies/approvals and sign-offs were done under the ALP/Green coalistion. Hunt, LNP, just approved the whole project.
Obama’s speech was a gross insult to Australia as the host country of G20,as well as being scientifically incorrect. Julie Bishop was at her diplomatic best in describing his gaff as “poorly informed”, but it came as quite a shock to the government ,and, I admire Tony Abbott for being restrained in not tearing shreds off Obama. But, he had his hands full dealing with Putin.
“snarky politics and snarky people”…..well, they started it.
That is absolute rubbish. You might as well ask if they would prefer Kim Kardashian.
An ACTUAL Australian election has occurred since this was published. And Australians overwhelmingly rejected a party which clings to global warming as a policy platform. Australians overwhelmingly voted for a party to remove the carbon tax and emissions trading scheme, and to remove mining taxes.
As for the claim that the borrow-and-spend-a-thon that the previous government undertook, which is still damaging business confidence – Australia was the only OECD country with no net debt when they took the reigns. The currency dropped, iron ore and coal prices spiked, and the profits rolled in. This is what prevented recession, not blowing a measly 10 or so billion on handing out cash. The tiny bit of government handouts and make-work schemes were a drop in the ocean compared to the cash pouring into the resource sector.
But, the clay-footed government couldn’t even get that right and instituted a tax to take all of a mining companies profit over a ‘natural rate of return’ – naturally set by the government. They couldn’t wait to get their greedy socialist mitts on that cash. So the mining companies up and left, and wound down the investment pipeline. About now is when that effect is hitting home, killing the economy.
All because a bunch of climate-obsesseed marxists lied their way into office by promising one thing and doing the exact opposite.
You know nothing about Australian politics. Nothing.
Lord Monckton is best informed to respond to this nonsense from Yeo, Deben, etc:
21 Nov: Age: Paolo Totaro: UK Tories slam Tony Abbott on climate policy
The attitude of Prime Minister Tony Abbott to the global challenges of climate change is “eccentric”, “baffling” and “flat earther”, according to a group of senior British Conservatives.
The group, including Prime Minister David Cameron’s Minister for Energy and a former Thatcher Minister and chairman of the Conservative Party, says Mr Abbot’s position on climate change represents a betrayal of the fundamental ideals of Conservatism and those of his political heroine, Margaret Thatcher.
According to Lord Deben, chairman of the independent Climate Change Commission and a minister in both the Thatcher and Major governments, Australia will come under increasing market pressure to respond to the global shift toward renewable energy.
A former chairman of the British Conservative Party, Lord Deben said Mr Abbott has betrayed the fundamental tenets of conservatism itself…
Tim Yeo, chairman of the UK’s parliamentary select committee on energy and climate change and a former environment minister under John Major, likened those who question the existence and the science of climate change as “the flat earthers of the 16th century”…
“If I was Australian, I’d be concerned if my country’s economic future and prosperity became dependent on continued coal export.” …
Mr Abbott declined to comment.
http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/uk-tories-slam-tony-abbott-on-climate-policy/ar-BBeQHyp
James Delingpole: ‘Trougher’ Yeo recants on global warming
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100219218/trougher-yeo-recants-on-global-warming/
also check Bishop Hill’s “Why does Lord Deben misreport the science of extreme weather?” on 17 November.
We know Cameron’s family has vested interests in renewables, what of the others in the article? Abbott is trying to repair the disaster the Rudd – Gillard – Rudd 6 year pantomime left behind. Abbott is being blamed for manufacturing industries going off-shore. Now, if memeory serves Holden (GM) and Ford announced they are pulling out of Australia in 2016 and they announced that under the Rudd – Gillard – Rudd Govn’t citing costs in labour and ENERGY (After the carbon tax was installed) were major drivers in the decision.
I like Julie Bishop. She has that calm self assured reasoning with deference to the facts that truly good politicians have.
I give up. Where’s the “rebuke”? How is “We are working with the UN to keep the reef healthy” a rebuke for “The great barrier reef is threatened by climate change.”?
Must have been a bit of a shock for Tony. He was following the standard pattern for Australian politicians of all parties, being a good little poodle for the Americans, yapping at Putin and so forth. (Canberra is supposed to be a minor branch office of Washington.) And then the Big Boss gives him a slap in the face.
But it is still astonishing to see the Australian Government have the guts to stand up for Australia. Doesn’t happen often.
(Last time that happened was when Rudd rebuked Israel for misuse of Australian passports. He got bounced out do office immediately afterwards, of course.)
Here is an article that mentions the poll. Strange, the commenter here didn’t find it bogus.He noted that Australia is a much more left leaning country than the US as one reason voters there would have a strong preference for Obama. Do you have evidence the poll was bogus?
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/australians-deluded-on-meaning-of-us-election-20120827-24wia.html
The speech by Obama was not only diplomatically rude, and probably “unprecedented” in the context of being given at a function in a friendly host nation, but was also directly against the advice of the American Embassy in Canberra.
Two speeches were given by foreign Presidents that week and to any unbiased outside observer, the Chinese President is more a friend to Australia than the American one is. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider who our friends really are? For a start the Chinese will sell us their equivalent of the F 22 (which America will not sell to friends) for about 1/2 the price we will pay for the F 35.
I say this in all seriousness. The actions of Obama while here is leading many Australians to wonder exactly how much of a “friend” the USA will be when Democrats have control. We expect consistency in the foreign policy of our friends towards us and cannot allow ambivalence in this. A friend that changes from “good friend” to “sh*tstirrer” every few years is no friend at all and something we can do without.
“Standing together” doesn’t just mean that we stand with you, but also that you stand with us. Your President has forgotten this and if the attitude continues America will find that it stands alone.
P.S. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Julie Bishop finishes up as our Prime Minister and she won’t be a lightweight like Gillard was.
Obama on a future holiday at The Great Barrier Reef
http://resources3.news.com.au/images/2014/11/21/1227131/318255-43c0ba62-715a-11e4-9152-957a1213fec7.jpg
I have to admit, that doesn’t say much for Australians. I’m really disappointed.