ABC: “Climate change talk has been around for 30 years. Where’s the action?”

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Richard Aedy of the Aussie ABC wants to know why there has been no progress addressing climate change despite 30 years of green activism. The answer, of course, is staring him in the face.

Climate change talk has been around for 30 years. Where’s the action? 

ABC Radio National / 

By Richard Aedy for Hot Mess

I can’t tell you what I was doing on June 23, 1988, though I can take a guess.

I was a week or so from finishing my journalism course and ā€” how times have changed ā€” I’d already been offered a job.

That’s what would have been occupying my time ā€” along with my girlfriend and my friends and going out. I definitely wouldn’t have been thinking about climate change.

But some people were. Because on June 23, 1988, James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, appeared before a US Senate hearing with a warning for the world.

In 2001, the IPCC released its third assessment report. This one was more certain and spelt out the consequences of climate change this century.

Unfortunately it came out nine days after September 11 and disappeared completely.

Over the next few years, something else became apparent.

It wasn’t just that the government wasn’t acting on climate change ā€” increasingly, there was pushback against the science.

Kevin Rudd defeated a tired Howard government, and gave me hope.

For more than two years I thought he and then-environment minister Penny Wong were going to get emissions trading to happen.

When he abandoned it, I wrote a furious letter to my then-MP, Maxine McKew. I never heard back.

And yet we’ve done very little. I want to know why. That’s why I’ve made this series.

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-17/climate-change-action-has-been-missing-hot-mess-richard-aedy/12200196

Why has there been no action in 30 years, despite countless conferences and high level expressions of concern?

The answer to this paradox is there has been plenty of action, but nothing attempted has worked. Greens long ago won the political debate, but they squandered their victory on failure.

30 years of non-achievement is surely compelling evidence that Renewables do not work. Generous government subsidies and forced purchases of “green” energy have failed to spark a renewable revolution. The billions of dollars poured into the renewable revolution have achieved nothing worthwhile. There is no conspiracy to suppress renewables, a point Michael Moore made very clear in his documentary Planet of the Humans. They just don’t work.

What caused the pushback Richard mentions?

ABC reporter Richard Aedy quoted former NASA GISS Director James Hansen’s 1988 warning to Congress right at the start of his article, but Richard left out a few important details.

Long before Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans”, Hansen was upsetting environmentalists by telling them nuclear power was the solution to staving off the coming climate catastrophe. A few years ago Naomi Oreskes called James Hansen a “Denier” because of Hansen’s repeated claim that renewables alone cannot decarbonise the economy rapidly enough to prevent Hansen’s predicted climate disaster.

If greens had embraced a viable solution to reducing CO2 emissions from the start, I suspect many climate skeptics like myself would never have questioned the science. What first prompted me to question the science was that the proposed solution didn’t make sense. The math is not complicated. Anyone with an ounce of engineering skill can perform the calculations for themselves using publicly available data, use their own expertise to confirm that renewables are a joke.

The green push for useless renewables is a big red flag. If the proposed solution doesn’t make sense, maybe the problem is nonsense as well.

You don’t have to dig very deep to find big problems with climate science.

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Patrick MJD
May 16, 2020 6:10 pm

“The answer to this paradox is there has been plenty of action, but nothing attempted has worked. ”

I disagree. What has worked is the extraction of untold trillions of dollars being taken from the poor and being poured in to the pockets of those who setup the s@cm. That has worked extremely well, ask Al Gore.

michel
Reply to  Patrick MJD
May 18, 2020 1:20 am

Disagree for a slightly different reason, or perhaps a different take on the same reason.

“And yet weā€™ve done very little. I want to know why.”

As always, ask: who is this ‘we’?

As Patrick says, one reason why ‘we’ have done very little is that what we in the West have done has had minimal effect on emissions. And could not have had because its primarily been about installing huge quantities of intermittent electricity supply, which in itself does not reduce emissions, and anyway only could reduce electricity sector emissions which are less than one third of all emissions.

But the second reason is that we in the West are only doing about 25% of global emissions, and no-one else is reducing, in fact they are increasing as fast as they can manage to build the coal-fired power stations.

So ‘we’, that is the we in the West, are attacking less than 10% of global emissions with measures that have no material impact on them, at the same time as the rest of the world builds in more emissions as fast as it can.

Is it it at all surprising, then, that ‘we’, whoever is meant by ‘we’ are not reducing global emissions? Or even our own!

Joel Snider
Reply to  Patrick MJD
May 18, 2020 2:50 pm

Or perhaps a better way to say it is, ‘climate change talk has been around for thirty years. Where’s the crisis?”

Monster
Reply to  Joel Snider
May 18, 2020 4:30 pm

This!

toorightmate
May 16, 2020 6:19 pm

Please don’t take this too seriously.
The Australian ABC is a 3rd class outfit with 3rd class left-wing journalists.
It’s a pity, because until about 40 years ago the Australian ABC was a world class outfit with world class journalists.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  toorightmate
May 16, 2020 6:40 pm

They may be 3rd class but they are paid 1st class, taxpayer funded, salaries. Then they moan about salaries paid to journalists in the private sector.

Loydo
Reply to  toorightmate
May 16, 2020 7:42 pm

The ABC is repeatedly found to be Australian’s most trusted news source.
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8064-abc-remains-most-trusted-media-201907220424

Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 8:14 pm

Thatā€™s like the CBC here in canada

The most trusted…….by 1% of the population

lee Riffee
Reply to  Pat from kerbob
May 17, 2020 2:21 pm

You nailed it – just because something can claim to be the “most trusted” doesn’t in any way mean that most, or even very many people trust it!

Peter Franzmann
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 8:25 pm

Obviously Australians like to watch news sources that they donā€™t trust so much, as more watch other news outlets. I think the ABC only asked people who watch the ABC who they trust most for their news.

RobbertBobbert
Reply to  Peter Franzmann
May 17, 2020 1:33 am

Peter…This …most trusted news source factor…is often brought up about OUR ABC Down Under yet when it actually comes to eyeballs on the Telly it becomes a different matter.

TV Tonight is our ratings service here and 9 and 7…the commercial channels dominate the news time slots all week with the ABC getting a top 5 position on weekends….Channel 10, which is the other commercial channel is pathetic at ratings.

The big 2 commercials get 1 to 1,2 million each most nights while ABC gets about 800000 -900000….
The Current Affairs comp is a close battle between ABC 7.30PM and A Current Affair on 9 with Channel 10 and its blatant woke The Project well back in 3rd place.

Donald Schmitt
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 8:34 pm

Although it is possible:.
Trusted often not the same as trustworthy.

Mr.
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 8:42 pm

Which is why only about 30% of the population consume it?
Seems there’s a disconnect there somewhere.
Especially since it’s all free,

aussiecol
Reply to  Mr.
May 16, 2020 9:02 pm

Exactly. I pay to watch Fox news rather than the free biased ABC.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Mr.
May 16, 2020 9:33 pm

It’s not free!

Mr.
Reply to  Patrick MJD
May 16, 2020 10:45 pm

True Patrick.
It’s really very very costly.
For taxpayers.
But I suspect a large % of the ABC audiences are net negative tax contributors.
So free for many, if not all.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Patrick MJD
May 16, 2020 11:21 pm

Itā€™s not free!

It’s free I view it, at least. Obviously, like all media, we end up paying for it somehow. This one we have to pay for whether we watch it or not, which irks me as a non-viewer your over 30 years.

At least in the UK I had a choice not to pay for it, which I exercised. Here, I have no choice, and in Italy it’s a part of my property taxes too.

aussiecol
Reply to  Patrick MJD
May 17, 2020 12:30 am

True, I guess we still pay for it via taxes.

aussiecol
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 8:59 pm

From your site Loydo, ”In April 2018 and April 2019 we conducted additional surveys of approximately 1,200 Australians asking which MEDIA they TRUST and DISTRUST ā€“ The Media Net Trust Survey”
1,200 Australians, wow that is a compelling figure from out of 25 million people. And I bet the surveys were conducted just in the major cities centres full of lefties.
The ABC is becoming more and more a biased left leaning media outlet and is becoming more and more on the nose to average Aussie.

Loydo
Reply to  aussiecol
May 17, 2020 1:07 am

If there is some evidence that fails to confirm a bias it is just ignored; no fact checks done, no research undertaken, no attempt to refute and the zombie misapprehension is mindlessly repeated – as if its fact. Try gnashing your teeth, that might help a bit too.

Bill Toland
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 2:58 am

Loydo, thank you for your confession.

fred250
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 3:02 am

Try using your brain.. loy-doh.

Asking ABC viewers if the trust the ABC.. DOH !!!

ABC is a joke, they are hard-left greenie bias

Around 80% of the ABC journos vote Greens .

They thrive on the ignorance and gullibility of people like you.

LdB
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 3:26 am

Well I am still currently waiting for a complaint response I lodged to ABC about using a Greenpeace twitter post (which was incorrect) as a news source. I am giving them a couple more weeks and then I get to launch a formal complaint to ACMA.

MarkW
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 12:35 pm

Once again, Loydo fails to actually address the arguments given. Instead she once again resorts to throwing insults.

Joel Snider
Reply to  Loydo
May 18, 2020 3:15 pm

‘If there is some evidence that fails to confirm a bias it is just ignored; no fact checks done, no research undertaken, no attempt to refute and the zombie misapprehension is mindlessly repeated ā€“ as if its fact. Try gnashing your teeth, that might help a bit too.’

Boy – talk about projection.

Evil can’t see it’s own reflection – ask any vampire.

Waza
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 9:33 pm

No one asked me.
Five free to air tv stations in Australia.
Re News
Sunday night news is biggest audience.
Nine and Seven interchange first and second place with about 1.1 to 1.2 million viewers.
ABC is currently fifth with about 800,000 viewers.
LEGO masters and Masterchef are currently third and fourth.
But
Survey was 1200 people only.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 11:17 pm

The ABC is repeatedly found to be Australianā€™s most trusted news source.

Only a rabid leftist would even consider that as remotely possible.

Ah, it’s Loydo. OK.

Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 12:03 am

From your link…
”ā€œAustralians told us that their trust of the ABC is driven by its lack of bias and impartiality, quality journalism and ethics”

They must have taken this poll in Northcote…

ozspeaksup
Reply to  Mike
May 17, 2020 4:25 am

im a 24/7 abc rn listener for 30 yrs almost
why?
because i hate the even thicker msm and the music n ads
do I LIKE? or TRUST? abc
NO I do NOT at all trust or like the majority of their programming
theres the odd good show but theyre rarer by the year
knowing what theyre rabbiting on about and what the sheeple in the whitecollar and unis etc are hearing n believeing however IS important so I can throw the odd cracker in amongst em, and inform people about whats planned or being lobbied for so we can speak out against it;-)
knowledge being power and all that etc

Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 1:10 am

Loydo

Based om ABC’s polls the ABC is Australia’s most trusted news source except that it isn’t

Forget ABC instigated polling tripe of less than 2,000 carefully selected respondents, Australia’s TV rating agencies which sampled over 20 million viewers delivered a totally different result. For the week beginning 10 February 2019 the ABC had a network share of 16.9% with the ABC News attracting significantly less than TWO percent of all viewers, which is consistent result going back to 2010.
As much as the ABC promotes itself with its taxpayer funded budget of $1.2 million a year, it is definitely not Australia’s most trusted news source, It is certainly not Australia’s most watched.

Yalla-Y-Poora Kid
Reply to  Terence stackpole
May 17, 2020 1:51 am

Typo I believe, budge of 1.2 BILLION a year

Reply to  Terence stackpole
May 17, 2020 2:02 am

OOOOps ABC budget $A 1.2 billion a year and it wants more to promote its anti Australian propaganda.

Megs
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 4:02 am

I agree with Pat, Loydo seriously who trusts the ABC? They are nothing more than a leftist propaganda machine, why else would Getup support them?

Gerald Machnee
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 6:10 am

Now we know why the Australians have a problem – they place their trust in the worst.

Komrade Kuma
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 10:18 am

Loydo, that is not saying much at all. Journalists are down with used car salespeople and politicians in the trust department to start with. As for the ABC it still has a number of baseline national broadcaster shows typically to do with rural matters that are generally apolitical and they probably form the trust basis.

Megs
Reply to  Komrade Kuma
May 17, 2020 2:57 pm

People in rural areas listen to the ABC because often that is the only radio you can get. It’s not even a matter of trust. The Sky Channels are available free to air in many rural areas so at least we are able to get a balanced view.

richard verney
Reply to  toorightmate
May 17, 2020 11:14 am

Well a bit like the BBC, but that went downhill in the 1960s.

May 16, 2020 6:19 pm

“… there was pushback against the science.”

What science? There’s not one shred of actual science supporting the climate alarmists. Science was no longer relavent to the effect of CO2 emissions once the IPCC got involved who needed a large effect to justify their existence and their agenda of redistributing western wealth to third world despots.

Herbert
May 16, 2020 6:24 pm

As to the problem itself, we should ā€œlisten to the scienceā€.
The science tells us that the current CO2 level of 416 ppm.has never been this high in at least the last 400 thousand years.
However the science of geology also tells us that our current geologic period ( Quaternary) has the lowest average CO2 levels in the history of the Earth.
The average for the past 800,000 years was 230 ppm.
(h/t Gregory Wrightstone, ā€˜Inconvenient Factsā€™)
This ā€œsettled scienceā€is very unsettling.

Reply to  Herbert
May 16, 2020 8:20 pm

“has never been this high”

According to the dry extraction method, which underestimates co2 concentration by 2-3 times.

fred250
Reply to  Herbert
May 17, 2020 3:05 am

Never been this high..

Ah yes, the CO2 fudge… Very selected data.

comment image

old construction worker
Reply to  Herbert
May 17, 2020 5:03 am

“230 ppm.” Just 50 ppm above keeping plants alive. That’s close.

old construction worker
Reply to  Herbert
May 17, 2020 5:07 am

“230 ppm” Just 50ppm above keeping plants alive. That’s close

OldRetiredGuy
May 16, 2020 6:35 pm

Just a thought. How about a running metric of how much, all in, has been spent in the US, per person, on the failed “green” solutions. And to top it up, the estimated cost to dispose of the waste the failed technologies have created, which at this point is basically unfunded. I’m sure this group can provide that analysis to the people of the US.

Reply to  OldRetiredGuy
May 16, 2020 7:13 pm

Every solar panel is a future hazardous waste problem. BTW, it’s not low cost labor that makes Chinese solar panels cheap, as the manufacturing process is highly automated.

DPP
May 16, 2020 6:38 pm

He wrote to his then left wing Member of Parliament Maxine McKew, thatā€™s really funny because she herself was a long time ABC ā€œjournalistā€. She was also married to Bob Hogg, former president of the Australian Labour Party. You can imagine how impartial she was as a ā€œjournalistā€ for the ABC.

And of course in this piece he talks about ā€œthe scienceā€. Didnā€™t professor Brian Cox recently tell us that there is no ā€œthe scienceā€ when talking about scientific advice to government on covid19. But of course Brian was happy to refer to ā€œthe scienceā€ when talking about climate only a few years earlier. Seems that there is good ā€œthe scienceā€ and bad ā€œthe scienceā€.

The majority of Australians taxpayers are sick and tired of government pending just over $1 billion a year on this Ultra Looney Leftist cesspit called the ABC.

Loydo
Reply to  DPP
May 16, 2020 8:00 pm

If you’re describing Australia’s most trusted news source as “Ultra Looney Leftist cesspit”, what does that say about all the other news sources? I guess it means they’re even worse.

aussiecol
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 9:05 pm

”what does that say about all the other news sources? I guess it means theyā€™re even worse.”
No, it means other news sources aren’t as biased to the left.

LdB
Reply to  aussiecol
May 17, 2020 3:22 am

Loydo isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed .. yep most other news sources probably besides Guardian and BBC would simply be more right.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 9:36 pm

“Loydo May 16, 2020 at 8:00 pm

If youā€™re describing Australiaā€™s most trusted news source…”

Most reasonable thinking residents of Australia think it is biased, with a massive dose of left!

Tom Panic
Reply to  Loydo
May 16, 2020 9:50 pm

Loydo, the argument is that while they may be “most trusted’ they are NOT most watched and that by definition casts some doubt on the most trusted moniker. The reality is that “market research” like all research is highly susceptible to having the results influenced by the starting assumptions, the sample size and selection process, the style of questions and how they are worded as well as “errors” and outright chicanery in the data collection and processing methods at the very least. In other words, just because research is done by some university academic or some trusted research company doesn’t remove the impact of all the usual human failings and biases thereby delivering fantasy rather than fact.

fred250
Reply to  Loydo
May 17, 2020 3:07 am

“what does that say about all the other news sources”

Since they are not quite as looney leftist as the rabid ABC,

you wouldn’t want to watch them Loy-doh !

Joel Snider
Reply to  Loydo
May 18, 2020 3:13 pm

You’ve said that at least twice, Loydo – the classic appeal to authority – which isn’t even an authority. Lefties are pretty easy to sucker – all you have to do is appeal to fear and bigotry.

Kenji
May 16, 2020 6:57 pm

– increasingly, there was pushback against the science

This simplistic, moronic, Communist sloganeering has got to stop. There is always a pushback WITHIN science … peer review, for example. Legitimate peer review. Hiding your data … as ā€œproprietaryā€ is NOT REAL science. REAL science stands up to scrutiny. Stands up to skeptics.

Iā€™m really not surprised that some twit who graduated in 1988 with a degree in *snicker* Journalism doesnā€™t understand what science actually is. I expect he hasnā€™t taken a real science class since his sophomore year in High School.

Stephen Watkins
Reply to  Kenji
May 16, 2020 9:24 pm

I agree.

Len Werner
May 16, 2020 6:57 pm

30 years is a convenient cut-off. Expand it to 50 years, and the lack of action on Global Cooling would have to be included. Go back a century, and only those suffering from schizophrenia would be able to keep up with the regularly-switching crises.

One of the fundamental reasons that there has been no action on Climate Change….is that there’s been no Climate Change. Quite a few weather cycles–nearly every one of which has spawned yet another Climate Crisis in the minds of those prone to regarding every change as a crisis.

Thankfully no action was taken on the 70’s Global Cooling scare, because things seem to have warmed slightly by themselves and cancelled the need. If we’re lucky and action by ‘experts’ continues to be not taken, we just might be able to continue to adapt to the swings and get out of this alive.

MarkG
Reply to  Len Werner
May 16, 2020 7:59 pm

“Thankfully no action was taken on the 70ā€™s Global Cooling scare, because things seem to have warmed slightly by themselves and cancelled the need. ”

Yeah, but the ‘action’ they were demanding back then was… more taxes, more regulation and less fossil fuels. So if we had acted back then, we’d have prevented Global Warming by stopping Global Cooling.

It’s science, man.

Mark Green
Reply to  Len Werner
May 17, 2020 12:00 am

Glad you mentioned ‘global cooling’. I covered this impending crisis as a journalism student back in the 70s. It was a very big deal back then. ‘Global cooling’ was front page news. It was slightly fake but was news. Below is none other than Leonard Nimoy telling us about the perils of ‘global cooling’ in 1979.

Fortunately, ‘global cooling’ (if/when it hits) will be a phenomenon that is caused by natural forces. So there will be no need to raise taxes, abolish gas-powered cars, and create new government agencies to undermine human freedom. Keep in mind that we moderns are living in a temporary ‘interglacial period’ that will inevitably come to a close, perhaps sooner rather than later. Global cooling is coming, eventually.

Latitude
May 16, 2020 7:02 pm

there’s been plenty of action…..we made the guys at Solandra rich as sh** for one thing..

..and for another we brought the largest percentage of chinese out of poverty buying all those China scams

May 16, 2020 7:12 pm

So this guy has just figured out what most people already know, including a 17-year old high school dropout – that gobsh!ting about “tackling climate” is easier than actually doing anything, and it wouldn’t have any effect anyway. Plus, of course, the only thing that leftists can do is gobsh!te about anything and everything. Why else would they be clinging onto this dead horse so vehemently? They know they can’t function in the real world – that’s why.

Just vote.

Mervyn
May 16, 2020 7:14 pm

The green environmentalist movement is like those feral environmentalists you see in places like England, having their country gatherings, and trying to go back to basic medieval times.

And meanwhile, not too far away from their tents and camp fires are their petrol and diesel vehicles they drove to get to the site… and in their hands are their mobile phones… products created by fossil fuel intensive industries.

KT66
May 16, 2020 7:25 pm

Yep, 30 years and nothing has happened. No catastrophic global warming.

May 16, 2020 7:27 pm

“Climate change talk has been around for 30 years. Whereā€™s the action?”

There’s plenty of action down in the Maldives

https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/14/maldives-sinking/

toorightmate
Reply to  chaamjamal
May 17, 2020 2:45 am

The list of alarms for the Maldives are almost verbatim as the alarms of the 1930s for the Maldives.

May 16, 2020 7:29 pm

“Richard Aedy of the Aussie ABC wants to know why there has been no progress addressing climate change despite 30 years of green activism. ”

Hello Climate Change. How are you? I’m fine.

There, it’s been addressed.

Waza
May 16, 2020 7:36 pm

My local laundromat has a pile of old National Geographic magazines.
volume 176 no 4 October 1990 has an extensive article with all the players.
Under the Sun – Is our world warming?
It has a ā€œFever Chart of a warming planetā€
2020 should be between 0.5 and 1.7degC warmer than the 1950-1979 average from the University of East Anglia historic temperature graph
I canā€™t find this graph but eyeballing current Had CRUT4 graphs look like 0.6deg C rise.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Eric Worrall
May 17, 2020 6:03 pm

Trouble is alarmists always have the gun with the dangerous end pointed at their feet.

Reply to  Waza
May 17, 2020 2:15 am

“National Geographic magazines.
volume 176 no 4 October 1990 has an extensive article with all the players.
Under the Sun ā€“ Is our world warming? It has a ā€œFever Chart of a warming planetā€
2020 should be between 0.5 and 1.7degC warmer than the 1950-1979”

To go back through history and find forecasts that turned out to be right is a form of circular reasoning called the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. It does not provide useful information.

Here is a longer list of all the things that were said back then.

https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/22/old-climate-fears-revisited/

May 16, 2020 7:36 pm

Anyone with knowledge of the chemical and mechanical engineering subjects heat transfer and thermodynamics knows that the idea of CO2 affecting atmospheric temperatures should be able to work out that it is nonsense. The second law of thermodynamics is a good start.

Tom Abbott
May 16, 2020 7:42 pm

From the article: “It wasnā€™t just that the government wasnā€™t acting on climate change ā€” increasingly, there was pushback against the science.”

No, there was pushback against the lack of science.

That’s still the case today. There is no evidence for Human-Caused Climate Change. None. So when someone comes along and claims there is evidence, there is pushback demanding that evidence for the claim be presented.

No evidence for the claim has ever been presented. Not once.

Do you notice how alarmists and American Democrats obsess over injecting the word “science” into their conversations. They think presenting themselves as taking the side of science makes them look like they are on the right side of the issue, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is denying “the Science”.

Most of these people wouldn’t know what science was if it walked up and bit them. They use it as a club to beat their opponents. At least, they think they are beating someone using “the science”. More stupidity.

StephenP
Reply to  Tom Abbott
May 17, 2020 1:22 am

Where was the “science” in the model of the Covid19 outbreak?
15000 lines of flaky computer code.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  StephenP
May 17, 2020 7:00 am

“Where was the ā€œscienceā€ in the model of the Covid19 outbreak?
15000 lines of flaky computer code.”

This is how “flaky” the computer code is: Original estimate of mitigated deaths (UW) = 100,000 to 140,000.

Actual mitigated deaths to date = 89,486

So how long do you think it is going to take to reach 100,000 actual deaths? That’s how long you have before you have to admit you are wrong about the model President Trump uses to guide us through this mess, the University of Washington estimates. I would say you have less than two weeks before you can no longer claim the model is “flaky”..

richard verney
Reply to  Tom Abbott
May 17, 2020 11:27 am

That might have some weight, if the lockdown mitigation achieved anything, but we can now see that lockdowns do not reduce the total death toll.

There have been many approaches from all but no lockdown to extreme lockdowns, but there is no substantial difference in the number of deaths per million no matter what response has been adopted. In fact the countries with the most extreme lockdowns (such as italy and Spain) have fared the worst, and those with all but no lockdowns such as Sweden (presntly standing in 10th place on deaths per million) and Brazil (about 23rd place on deathsper million) have fared among the best. .

Tom Abbott
Reply to  richard verney
May 17, 2020 6:55 pm

“That might have some weight, if the lockdown mitigation achieved anything, but we can now see that lockdowns do not reduce the total death toll.”

Really? How’s that? Please explain.

Lockdowns are figued into the estimates, including the original estimate, which has almost been equalled by the actual death toll.. A subsequent estimate from the University of Washington was for 134,000 deaths from Wuhan virus by Aug., and now the latest estimate is 137,000 deaths. The last two estimates took less social distancing into consideration in their estimates because the States are starting to open their economies. So you may not be taking lockdown mitigation into consideration and dismiss it, but the modelers are not.

Dixon
Reply to  richard verney
May 18, 2020 8:00 am

I’m not convinced. Our death rate in Western Australia is tiny. Almost all our cases came from cruise ships and we locked down and closed the borders to prevent community transmission. Granted we are lucky we are so isolated, but still, we could easily have let it get a grip. We were on an exponential curve (from incoming travellers, and recording our first community transmissions when we started enforcing strict self-isolation for incoming travellers. We rapidly closed the borders and locked down and from that moment on the exponential growth ceased. Trouble is we can’t live in a bubble for ever – much as I’d like to, we have everything we need here.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/359bca83a1264e3fb8d3b6f0a028d768

marklm
May 16, 2020 7:48 pm

You’d think they/world would realize that the CO2 theory is wrong by now but they have so much personal worth invested that they can’t admit the truth.

May 16, 2020 8:05 pm

The reason there’s been no action is that everyone knows there’s no problem.

Al Miller
May 16, 2020 8:09 pm

Gee, it sounds like you should be able to remember global cooling from the early 80’s. it too was a scam by people using “science “, I mean the word, not actual real science- and not much has changed. Now we have Bill Nye the actor guy and Greta teenage dropout with 0.00 qualifications along with the obvious scammers like Al Gore.
It is truly amazing that nothing has changed- but what is most amazing is that the scammers re still trying to scam us into believing in CO2 induced global warming and they keep on lying…

May 16, 2020 8:22 pm

~200 years of geothermal denial by climate “scientists”.

http://phzoe.com/2020/04/29/the-irrelevance-of-geothermal-heat-flux/

May 16, 2020 8:27 pm

‘Renewables’ do not work to power civilisation and over that 30 years there has been no deleterious climate change. The increased CO2 has benefited forestry and agriculture. The other element of society that has benefited is the noisy Elite who have sucked off the trillions of dollars wasted on ‘Renewables’.

May 16, 2020 8:39 pm

Well, we did get Michael Mann, Al Gore, AOC and Greta Thunberg, among other notables, in the balance.

Was it worth the 30 year effort?

Mr.
May 16, 2020 8:53 pm

30 years ago the ECS was purported to be 1.5C to 4.5 C.

And after all this time (~ half of a 3-sore and 10 lifetime), and $,000,000,000s spent researching this “answer” to the question of AGW, what is the IPCC now reporting ECS to be?

(No points for answering – “pass”)

Dnalor50
Reply to  Mr.
May 16, 2020 9:45 pm

I think it was notrickszone who graphed the estimated ECS values from various studies done since the Charney report and found that the average value was approaching zero. Some outliers even came up with a negative value.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Dnalor50
May 17, 2020 7:07 am

“I think it was notrickszone who graphed the estimated ECS values from various studies done since the Charney report and found that the average value was approaching zero. Some outliers even came up with a negative value.”

Yes, people should keep this in mind when they hear some scientist claim they know how much warmth CO2 adds to the atmosphere. Nobody knows. CO2 may actually cool the atmosphere, not warm it. Nobody knows.

We shouldn’t spend Trillions of dollars based on this much uncertainty. We shouldn’t take any actions based on this much uncertainty.

Science by Assertion is not equivalent to certainty.

Reply to  Tom Abbott
May 17, 2020 10:05 am

Regardless of warming or cooling, isn’t an awful lot of work being demanded of these 1 out of 2500 air molecules?

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Tom Abbott
May 18, 2020 4:52 pm

The warming potential of CO2 is largely saturated above 350ppm/v, so adding more does zip!

Ian Coleman
May 16, 2020 10:42 pm

“Science” used to be a neutral word. Now it’s the key word in various political slogans, most often used as a means of denying reasonable dissent. When an environmentalists says, “I believe the science,” he means, people who disagree with him are ignorant and dishonest, and should not be heard in public.

Read the Climategate emails, and know that the lads who wrote them have no more regard for the scientific method or peer-reviewed expressions of it than Thomas Jefferson had for the proposition that all men are created equal. Even the review committees that exonerated them of wrongdoing were forced to critique them for suppression of data.

ren
May 16, 2020 11:03 pm

Great amounts of rain will fall in the coming days over the Great Lakes and northeast US and eastern Canada.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=total_cloud_water/orthographic=-100.49,37.15,1183

John F. Hultquist
Reply to  ren
May 17, 2020 11:58 pm

Recent reports from the Great Lakes indicate the region doesn’t need any more rain.
I think they are full.
This should be interesting.

Billy
May 16, 2020 11:08 pm

Richard Aedy studied journalism. He clearly doesn’t know what science is.
The “science” is just expert opinion and modelling based on assumptions, not application of the scientific method.

Tim Beatty
May 16, 2020 11:50 pm

The problem isn’t even renewables. The red flag on climate change was the out of hand rejection of nuclear energy. The equated Climate Change with drowning and when presented with a life preserver, they turned it down. They rejected zero-carbon nuclear power while claiming CO2 emissions were the largest threat to the planet. At that point it becomes clear that it’s no longer a science issue and is a political one.

yarpos
May 17, 2020 12:02 am

Better question. Outside of normal variability and established trends , where is this “climate change” that we as humans control?

Rod Evans
May 17, 2020 12:08 am

The answer to the 30 year old inaction on climate change puzzle, despite $trillions being thrown at the issue is this.
It is impossible, to solve a problem that does not exist!

Kozlowski
May 17, 2020 12:40 am

It is in part due to an earlier generation of environmentalists that we find ourselves in this position. Had we gone nuclear in the ā€˜60s & 70ā€™s with electricity too cheap to meter no one would be having this conversation.

How is it that they consistently get it wrong again and again?

It is my opinion that there has been no progress for the left due to a willful lack of debate. My ā€˜red pill moment was watching a CAGW promoter walk off the John Stossel set to avoid debate with a dissident.

WUWT and similar people will go down in history as heroes who helped prevent the barbarians from destroying our economy.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Kozlowski
May 17, 2020 7:26 am

“It is in part due to an earlier generation of environmentalists that we find ourselves in this position. Had we gone nuclear in the ā€˜60s & 70ā€™s with electricity too cheap to meter no one would be having this conversation.”

Maybe not. France went nuclear energy early and about 75 percent of their electricity is supplied by nuclear power plants and now they are talking about shutting them down. The same with Germany (Angela is afraid a Tsunami will hit Germany). It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s delusional Greens for you.

pat
May 17, 2020 4:07 am

Aedy has been with ABC since 1998, with a break to work at BBC for four years, so says his mini bio at ABC. all those years with taxpayers’ paying his wages.
ABC is finally coming out of their covid hysteria (so little happening on that front, especially in Australia, which remains in a semi-lockdown), and is, therefore, returning to their climate hysteria, which has been less obsessive in recent weeks; thus the “Hot Mess” series of which Aedy writes.

15 May: NoTricksZone: Climate Alarmist Rahmstorf Quietly Concedes Models Are Crap, Running Way Too Hot
By P Gosselin
Stefan Rahmstorf on the IPCC modelling breakdown: Reason to breathe a sigh of relief, new climate models are far too sensitive.
By Die kalte Sonne
(Translated by P. Gosselin)
https://notrickszone.com/2020/05/15/climate-alarmist-rahmstorf-quietly-concedes-models-are-crap-running-way-too-hot/

VIDEO: 7m: 17 May: Facebook: Sky News Australia: Expert over-reaction ‘destroyed the very fabric of our nation’
Coronavirus and the so-called global warming crisis share the same ā€œfake catastrophe built on a fraudulent threat of doomā€ DNA, according to Outsiders host Rowan Dean.
https://www.facebook.com/SkyNewsAustralia/videos/556611055259746/

above program had lengthy interview with Matt Ridley (no video online as yet), but they discussed some of the following:

9 May: UK Spectator: We know everything ā€“ and nothing ā€“ about Covid
It is data, not modelling, that we need now
by Matt Ridley
The famous ā€˜Rā€™ (R0 at the start), or reproductive rate of the virus, could have been very high in hospitals and care homes, and much lower in the community. It makes no sense to talk of a single number for the whole of society. The simplistic Imperial College model, which spread around the world like a virus, should be buried. It is data, not modelling, that we need now…
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-know-everything-and-nothing-about-covid

16 May: Fox News: Imperial College model Britain used to justify lockdown a ‘buggy mess’, ‘total unreliable’, experts claim
By Peter Aitken
ā€œIn our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust,ā€ David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco, told the Daily Telegraph…
The Imperial model works by using code to simulate transport links, population size, social networks and healthcare provisions to predict how coronavirus would spread. Researchers released the code behind it, which developers have criticized as being unreadable…

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have further claimed that it is impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data using the model. The team got different results when they used different machines, and even different results from the same machines…
https://www.foxnews.com/world/imperial-college-britain-coronavirus-lockdown-buggy-mess-unreliable

ozspeaksup
May 17, 2020 4:32 am

hot mess really should be renamed
as?
Steaming Pile

Gerard
May 17, 2020 5:33 am

It has been longer than 30 years. As a young draftsman my very first job at the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works in June1981 was to plot sea level rises on a contour map of Melbourne showing the impact of 200 mm, 500mm and 1 metre sea level rises due to climate change.

richard
May 17, 2020 6:41 am

“Greens long ago won the political debate” but have made hardy a dent as political parties. Clue in there.

Megs
Reply to  richard
May 17, 2020 2:47 pm

They worked a way around that Richard and so don’t need the numbers in their own Party. They have simply infiltrated both major Parties, that way they can’t loose. Many of our sitting senior Ministers are ‘deep green’, that’s why the renewables policies are so strong. They have even convinced the Prime Minister that the people want renewables.

May 17, 2020 8:19 am

Greta preaches many of the first Earth Dayā€™s failed predictions. Many of the spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions from Earth Day 1970 are being regurgitated on todayā€™s social and news media outlets on the forthcoming demise of civilization from climate change. Weā€™ll need to critique the 2020 unscientific doomsday predictions in the year 2050 and see if they were any better than those that failed from the first Earth Day 50 years ago! https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/greta-preaches-many-of-the-first-earth-days-failed-predictions/

observa
May 17, 2020 8:32 am

“And yet weā€™ve done very little. I want to know why. Thatā€™s why Iā€™ve made this series.”

Well Dick you could have stood in front of the mirror and answered your own question. You got the taxeating job with a concomitant claim on the fossil fuelled productive sector and when you went out with the friends and girlfriend did you all walk and drink warm beer in the dark? What about nowadays?

observa
Reply to  observa
May 17, 2020 9:10 am

When Richard isn’t ‘MC, mediator or speaker for your next corporate event, seminar or workshop series’ he gets around a bit in aircraft too unless he’s paddling a canoe-
https://www.celebrityspeakers.com.au/richard-aedy/
When the world is your oyster Dick would like a few pearls of wisdom as to why we’ve done very little.

mikewaite
May 17, 2020 9:55 am

For me the real meat of that tirade from Richard Aedy was in the sentences :
-“For more than two years I thought he and then-environment minister Penny Wong were going to get emissions trading to happen.
When he abandoned it, I wrote a furious letter to my then-MP, Maxine McKew. I never heard back.”-

Emissions trading – the true heart of warming alarmism.

Gerry O'Connor
May 17, 2020 12:43 pm

There is action on climate change….in 2023 our last coal mine in The Socialist State of Victoria is due to close down in response to regulations designed to make it too expensive to run.

Megs
Reply to  Gerry O'Connor
May 17, 2020 3:35 pm

I can never understand that comment either Gerry. Renewable infrastructure is becoming extreme in Australia so what planet are they living on? So much for research. Three Renewable Energy Zones have been nominated for NSW and I live in one of them. Of course city folk aren’t confronted by it. The ABC and research shouldn’t be put in the same sentence. What’s to trust?

Have they researched the 1,000 hectare wind and solar plants that are going in around small and historic towns? Do they know that the people who live in these towns have no say. Do They know the depths of depression being suffered by those affected? As if they don’t have enough already dealing with the regular droughts and bushfires. Do they know that these small towns are mostly near mines and that once the renewables infrastructure is completed, which is very short term, they’ll be wanting to shut the mines down?

Do they know that where the mines are shut down, the towns will die just like the town in Planet of the Humans, thousands of workers put out of work. Do they know the history that is lost with the death of these towns?

Do they know the devastating destruction that is being done to ecosystems (and economies) by renewable energy and that it is not renewable or largely recyclable?

They haven’t done any research, that’s not their job after all. They exist purely to spout propaganda and lies. Not doing enough? They haven’t got a clue.

Plenty is being done and none of it is good!

Gerry O'Connor
Reply to  Megs
May 18, 2020 2:37 pm

Yes…Megs, youā€™ve covered a lot of action there…ā€none of it goodā€ as you say….in fact devastating …..I have a theory we wonā€™t see anything to counteract the green push until Sydneysiders feel the impact….itā€™s where our leaders come from and itā€™s the seat of powero of both big Parties.

The ABC loves to whine of course and perhaps itā€™s readying the troops for a possible post-viral reaction where the left gets a version of Guilliame Barre Syndrome …..all feeling anguish but no legisalation moving on climate change….like in NZ

May 17, 2020 3:12 pm

What climate change, global snowing ?
comment image

comment image

comment image

Graphic source:
https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/

Roger Knights
May 17, 2020 3:17 pm

The ABC journalist asks why no action.
Answer: there was an election in which Labor advocated a carbon tax and was defeated. That’s why.

observa
May 17, 2020 5:29 pm

Here’s a good summary of how the ‘magic moments’ of the doomsters in Oz faded away every time they wanted to ‘incentivise’ their deplorables-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/australias-most-senior-former-public-servants-and-scientists-reveal-their-anger-about-climate-policy-failure/ar-BB14drgg
You can hand out CF and then LED light bulbs, pink batts, shower heads, door draught stoppers, subsidised solar panels and FIT largesse but whatever you do don’t start talking about ‘incentivising’ or you’re history bozos. That and the prices of costal/esplanade RE are the true measures of Ozzies belief in the plant food dooming meme and no amount of Cook up sampling and surveys will change it stoopids.

Bruce of Newcastle
May 18, 2020 12:25 am

Since nothing has happened for almost thirty years the action is commensurate with the problem.

Carbon500
Reply to  Bruce of Newcastle
May 18, 2020 8:45 am

Well said, Bruce. Where’s the dangerous climate change that keeps getting rammed down our throats by the politicians and the media?
The IPCC was as noted formed in 1988 -‘intergovernmental’- there’s the clue as to why we get all the garbage that’s thrown at us – gullible unquestioning politicans with no scientific background at work.
Trivial, fraction of a degree temperature changes are micro-dissected to the point of tedium – I live in the UK, and have done for all of my 71 years. To suggest that the British climate has changed is nonsense. Hot dry summers, wet summers, cold winters, warm winters – the British climate is as variable as it ever was.
How about those who post here from other countries around the globe? Your opinions as to your own climate would be interesting!

Megs
Reply to  Carbon500
May 19, 2020 6:19 pm

Carbon 500, Australia has always experienced extreme weather events. Drought, heatwaves, bushfires, storms and floods are not a new phenomena. We have famous poems written more than a hundred years ago describing these events!

They talk about ‘unprecedented’ temperatures, and I have memories of actual events where the temperature was higher. Then of course they have stated that particular past temperature records are invalid for one reason or another. Why? And why wouldn’t we assume cherry picking?

When I lived in Sydney the temperature difference between where I lived and Sydney airport (less than twenty kilometers away) could vary up to 4C! Sometimes they got heavy rain and we got none and sometimes the reverse.

It’s the same here in the country, the official weather station is nearly 30 kilometers away and again sometimes the differences are significant. How do they decide where to take their measurements from?

And don’t get me started on Average temperatures! What does that even mean? Our country is so large we have different weather events going on all at the same time from heatwaves to minimum anomalies. Australia is 7.692 million square kilometres, 5% of the world’s land area and is the world’s largest island! And all they talk about is the maximum temperature of one town! For how long? Five minutes? Funny they never talk about the coldest maximum temperature on record.

I like to keep track of the temperatures over a month to see how they compare to previous years. They keep telling us that April 2020 was the hottest April on record! Where? We had below average minimum and maximum temperatures here! I only know that from my own daily observations, the weather site that I follow is supposed to get it’s information from BOM but they seem to leave out the weekends for some reason. The minimum and maximum temperatures show up every day but the April almanac had 12 days of information missing. They average the data that is there and post that as the average minimum and maximum! This happens every month. The averages for our area are totally meaningless!

Why should I believe anything I’m told about ‘climate’ when they can’t even accurately report the facts about the ‘weather’ my own area?

Inconvenient Facts!

ResourceGuy
May 18, 2020 12:02 pm

The “action” has been in ad spending on a massive scale. There was also a lot of action infecting board statements of professional societies, position statements at religious bodies, and of course candidate buying. Good “progress” was also made in undermining science, fact checking, and public policy. But in real terms there has been no “action and no “progress.”

May 18, 2020 5:04 pm

ABC : “Where’s the action ?”

Do they mean, “where is the climate clown show ?” ?

The answer is quite obvious :
– At the ABC premises !

Carbon500
Reply to  Petit_Barde
May 19, 2020 8:46 am

A very interesting video -thanks! Yes, whatever happened to investigative journalism?