Essay by Eric Worrall
Joëlle Gergis, who had an erroneous hockey stick climate paper spectacularly withdrawn in 2012, has accused Aussie politicians of using “trickery” to conceal climate policy failures.
Joëlle Gergis
Exposing net zero’s climate delusionsDenial is a funny thing. We have to find slippery ways of trying to live with high levels of cognitive dissonance: the discomfort we feel when faced with the reality that our thoughts and actions are contradictory. We must somehow rationalise the ways in which we fool ourselves. In the words of Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
…
The truth is Australia is still not on track to meet its legislated target of a 43 per cent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. Australian governments have a long history of relying heavily on the land sector to demonstrate progress towards reducing emissions while continuing to export enormous quantities of coal and gas to the rest of the world. The safeguard mechanism, Australia’s signature climate policy, allows the largest industrial polluters to buy carbon credits to balance out their impact on the environment, allowing them to achieve “net zero” emissions. Scientific and legal experts have criticised Australia’s carbon offset scheme as being very low integrity: people are receiving carbon credits for not clearing forests that were never going to be cleared, for growing trees that already exist and for growing forests in places that will never sustain them in the long term. Instead of requiring heavy polluters to actually reduce the huge volume of carbon they are dumping into the atmosphere for free, they can pay to offset their emissions by planting a few trees. Therein lies the fatal flaw in the net zero logic: no matter how the continued exploitation of fossil fuels is justified, real zero is the only way we can genuinely pull back from planetary disaster.
This trickery of using the land sector to mask the negligible reductions in total emissions has allowed the government to claim that Australia’s emissions have fallen 28.2 per cent per cent since 2005. Excluding land use from the latest data shows that total emissions, across industrial processes, transport, electricity and other sectors, have declined by just 1.8 per cent.
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Read more: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2024/09/28/exposing-net-zeros-climate-delusions#mtr
For once Gergis and I agree on something, at least about the land use trickery. There appear to be a number of questionable practices when it comes to using alleged enhancements to land’s ability to absorb CO2 to balance the books on emissions reduction claims, some of which have been exposed by WUWT.
Australia is especially prone to bushfires, so any attempt to accumulate carbon biomass in arid woodlands goes up in smoke whenever a fire sweeps the region. The apparent policy of allowing the accumulation of dry, flammable plant litter in poorly managed Aussie woodlands, instead of conducting regular low intensity burnoffs, makes the fires more ferocious when they do occur.
As for the rest of Gergis’ climate belief system, I believe a little healthy skepticism is in order. Just look at how she reacted when flaws were discovered in her scientific work.
Gergis’ 2012 paper (which eventually got withdrawn) got shredded pretty badly by Steve McIntyre. Instead of accepting she made a mistake by mis-describing and mishandling the data used in her analysis, she tried to argue it didn’t matter, and smeared people who objected to her methodological error as amateurs – “… Just to clarify, there was an error in the words describing the proxy selection method and not flaws in the entire analysis as suggested by amateur climate skeptic bloggers. …”.
It didn’t stop in 2012, Gergis returned with another paper in 2016, which was again eviscerated by Steve McIntyre, in McIntyre’s article Joelle Gergis, Data Torturer. McIntyre even suggests Gergis used a form of “Hide the decline”.
Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes big mistakes. The right thing to do in my opinion would have been to show a little grace and immediately accept she had stuffed up – this would have settled the matter quickly and cleanly. But to arrogantly dismiss people who pointed out the mistake as “amateurs”, to try to claim the “mistakes” were just an issue with wording, then to apparently make similar mistakes in a later paper, lets just say I’m not going to be losing any sleep over her climate warnings.
Update (EW): Nick Stokes points out he was the first to explain what went wrong on the Gergis 2012 paper on Climate Audit (Acknowledged by Steve McIntyre).
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“Denial is a funny thing. We have to find slippery ways of trying to live with high levels of cognitive dissonance: the discomfort we feel when faced with the reality that our thoughts and actions are contradictory. We must somehow rationalise the ways in which we fool ourselves. In the words of Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” I think she needs to apply this to herself. Themself? Itself?
Hmmm…her past papers and this recent land use revelation all have a common thread. Which is the desire to impress people with what a caring member of society you are, and the importance to humanity of your work with a view toward justifying your continued employment.
Very common amongst government workers once you are above the pothole repair worker level….
Probably why she pours disdain on “amateurs” (a.k.a. experts who aren’t sucking on a government teat like she does)
“the pothole repair worker level”
Hey.. that’s a bit harsh. 😉
These guys are absolutely indispensable and have a lot of experience.
On the other hand, the world could easily do without climate shysters like Gergis.
“Therein lies the fatal flaw in the net zero logic: no matter how the continued exploitation of fossil fuels is justified, real zero is the only way we can genuinely pull back from planetary disaster.”
No. BOTH the “net zero” and “real zero” logic are the disaster. The planet will be fine, and we will be OK too if we ditch this misguided obsession with emissions of CO2. China, India, and other nations are building new fleets of coal-fired power plants using sound logic.
Gergis has been singularly undistinguished for a very long time.
Gergis accuses.
A new sitcom coming soon on the climacatastrophe channel.
Our rating? 5 hockey sticks.
When your only hammer is to “Torture the Data!”, every piece of data looks like a nail.
Has any alarmist come forward with proper science to back up their claims? Anything other than climate models and anecdotal evidence. You know pictures of melting glaciers or manufactured record heat waves.
“Has any alarmist come forward with proper science to back up their claims?”
No, they have not. And they have been looking for 50 years.
All Climate Change Alarmists have is speculation, assumptions, and unsubstantiated assertions about Earth’s climate and CO2.
If the Earth were not currently in a warming phase, we would never hear from Climate Alarmists. The bastardized temperature record is the only thing keeping them going. If the temperatures cool substantially in the future, then the Climate Alarmists are sunk. Their only indication that CO2 has anything to do with Earth’s climate will be gone.
Unfortunately, that’s not true. “Alarmist” is a general, not-specific label. If you’re true goal is power and control, one can use any crisis to be an alarmist. If no current crisis is convenient, create one. If the earth was not currently warming, you would have the alarmists alarming about the coming “ice-age” apocalypse.
Never underestimate an alarmist’s ability to exploit or create a crisis.
Well, we did have climate alarmists alarming about the coming ice age, but when the temperatures started warming up, the Human-caused Global Cooling folks went away.
I think the same thing will happen to the Human-caused Global Warming folks if the temperatures cool for a couple of decades.
I was around for the first episode. I hope to be around for the next one, too. The next one will be a dandy! Thousands of folks will be eating crow.
Unfortunately, when the temperatures cool in the next decade or so, you will hear the Climate Alarmists claiming victory, that it was due to their efforts.
Sadly, I have to respectfully disagree with you. If they claim victory, they have no more cause to fight for. The climate alarmists’ crises are cyclical, just like the climate. if the temperatures cool in the next decade or so, the coming ice age will be the next climate crisis, and very few of us that are old enough to remember the last one will be around then.
They will merely have to identify a different windmill to joust.
I think Michael Mann has already tried to pre-empt any cooling that might occur in the future by claiming that a couple of decades of cooling does not mean that Human-caused Global Warming is not real.
What else would we expect him to say? All the Climate Alarmist will say this.
But I think they are going to have a hard time selling the CO2 meme if temperatures keep falling while CO2 keeps rising.
And falling temperatures will not be conducive to promoting more windmills and solar. People will say why should we continue to bankrupt outselves trying to hit Net Zero when it appears that CO2 is not having the effects Climate Alarmist claim it is having?
Australia is required to accept the emissions created (in Australia) to produce food it exports – the importing countries are not responsible for those Australian ‘created’ emissions.
But, somehow … if Australia exports fossil fuels to other countries for consumption – the rabid lefties insist Australia should also be responsible for the emissions created by those other countries.
.
Logic (essential to the scientific process) is NOT their ally.
One doesn’t need logic once one is in power and control.
” allows the largest industrial polluters to buy carbon credits to balance out their impact on the environment “
Very similar to:
The medieval indulgence was a writ offered by the Church, for money, guaranteeing the remission of sin, and its abuse was the spark that inspired Martin Luther’s 95 Theses. [worldhistory dot org]
Don’t you love it when history rhymes?
You first, lady.
Gergis has written a few climate disaster science-fiction books.
Obviously feels she not getting enough from the main climate trough.
It’s all part of the Gergis Kahn
More like Gergis Kahn’t
I always thought it was spelt “Khan”…. ie “h” before the “a”
That’s the Con
👍 😉
‘I feel my heart breaking today’ – a climate scientist’s path through grief towards hope: (COP26) in Glasgow … “last chance” to stabilise the climate, instead current net-zero emissions pledges have us hurtling towards global warming of 1.4–2.8°C … an emergency that is unfolding in real time; I don’t know how this story will end …
And so on, the hysterical hyperbole is not the result of discovering ‘hockey sticks’ in palaeoclimate studies but the opposite, ‘hockey sticks’ are a result of the hysteria.
“I feel my heart breaking”..
Comment like that, in regard to “climate” always make me laugh at the ignorance and idiocy behind them.
Not to mention the fact that it’s also a lie.
“”Gergis’ 2012 paper (which eventually got withdrawn) got shredded pretty badly by Steve McIntyre. Instead of accepting she made a mistake by mis-describing and mishandling the data used in her analysis, she tried to argue it didn’t matter,””
In fact I was the first to explain what had actually gone wrong. They claimed a significant result after detrending. That would be a considerable achievement; the general usage at the time was not to detrend. It turned out that they had not actually detrended. That of course requires the paper to be rewritten, but they still had a significant result according to the usual method of analysis. And as such, it was eventually published.
Thanks for the link to Climate Audit Nick.
The comment I liked most was this one from Ben –
There once was a lass from down under
Who relished statistical blunder
What should make her blush,
only led to a hush…
No worries! Pols still won’t defund her
🙂
Thanks Nick I didn’t remember that sorry.
UPDATE – I’ve added an acknowledgement to the article.
…yes, with
At that point it was speculation but it turned out to be correct.
The fact JeanS couldn’t replicate the results when detrended, absolutely killed their result. Withdrawing the paper was the only option.
The detrended nature of the analysis was central to the confidence in the result. The fact it didn’t actually work gives a whole different meaning to “significance” and meant Gergis was no longer a scientist worth listening to as she’d proven her bias.
“At that point it was speculation but it turned out to be correct.”
I had done the calculations here. The Gergis claims worked without detrending, but not with. So it is well-based speculation.
It seems that cognitive dissonance is a picnic compared to non-cognitive dissonance.
Well, they are mostly …
Do as I say, not as I do.
The oddity of writing by Dr Gergis forms a medium sized file in my personal computer, alongside the PAGES2K attempted reconstruction of past global climate from selected proxies – but including no proxies from mainland Australia.
This file inclusion was prompted by the wiggly ways that she and colleague Dr David Karoly tried to claim that they discovered the fault in their paper (that led to the editor retracting it) just days or hours or minutes before Stephen McIntyre discovered the fault.
The file is kept as a go-to should a discussion topic involve attempts at devious evasion of a mistake in climate research.
However, of more interest and importance are the most recent McIntyre the graphics showing a dozen or so time series of proxy temperature data, mostly without hockey stick shapes, that are combined for PAGES2K into a strong hockey stick with a recent temperature rise that invites expressions like crisis and alarming. It defies imagination how harmless proxied can be combined to create alarm. Geoff S
Belief will only take you so far-
Victoria’s emergency backstop mechanism for solar (energy.vic.gov.au)
I believe in my prime I can beat the world’s best marathon runner-
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-sets-spectacular-new-records-for-wind-solar-and-negative-demand/
Just that my average speed is clocked over a flying 20 metres whereas….
Its that time of year when heating and cooling are not used much if at all.
Plus South Australia doesn’t really “DO” much… hardly a hive of manufacturing !
8pm in SA at the moment.
Gas 699MW, Wind 527 MW, Imports 391MW (brown coal power from Victoria)
From the article:
“Joëlle Gergis
Exposing net zero’s climate delusions
Denial is a funny thing. We have to find slippery ways of trying to live with high levels of cognitive dissonance: the discomfort we feel when faced with the reality that our thoughts and actions are contradictory. We must somehow rationalise the ways in which we fool ourselves. In the words of Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
I think Joelle has just described herself. A climate crisis is not a lie if you really believe it, Joelle.