Monday, December 10, 2012

Phew! That's a Relief

WE ALL KNOW that greenhouse gases will destroy all life on the planet (with the exception of coral reefs, apparently, which are poised to do quite nicely), but do you realise just how quickly the march of doom is progressing? According to the national broadcaster's Sarah Clarke, yet another quality journalist, the surge in atmospheric greenhouse gases is witnessing hikes that are approaching the exponential.

"With global greenhouse gases now 58 per cent higher than two decades ago," Clarke told viewers of last night's 7 o'clock news, "scientists warn there is no time for complacency." (The claim comes at about the clip's  2 minute mark).

As Clarke's commentary followed hot on the heels of an animated Indian gentleman's announcement that we are poisoning the future for all the world's little children, this news dropped into the Billabong with a most unsettling splash. Truth be told, global warming has always struck The Professor as nothing less than poetic justice. Young Master Bunyip was a dreadful, noisy, annoying and expensive child in his formative years, forever being dragged to hospital or police station, depending on whether or not his latest virus was more toxic than its host. Given the cost, concern and legal costs he inflicted on his poor parents, an adult existence spent diving for scraps in the flooded ruins of our major cities has long seemed no less than he deserved. The Professor would be long gone by that stage,  having drifted off to the Great Beyond on an air-conditioned cloud of profligate energy consumption, so why give a toss?

Could that grand timetable be in jeopardy? If Clarke's claim of a 58 per cent hike over 20 years was accurate then things must be heating up far too quickly, despite the fact that it remains too cold in Melbourne for the kikuyu grass to flourish at the golf course. There might not even be time to empty the cellar before soaring temperatures turn all the reds to vinegar!

It was with some relief, therefore, that a moment's googling turned up a ledger recording atmospheric CO2 all the way back to 1958, when the killer gas is said to have been running at 314.62 parts per million. Today's number is put at 391.57 ppm, which would indicate a jump of roughly 30 per cent over 53 years. As for Clarke's specified, two-decade time span, CO2 levels stood at a recorded 356.38 ppm in 1992, which is some 35 ppm less than today and quite easy to calculate, even by someone with nothing more useful than a media degree.

As a quality journalist, Clarke wouldn't just make this stuff up, no matter how keen her warmist sympathies. Nor would she simply parrot the propaganda fed to her by activists, as that would be stenography rather than journalism and entirely unworthy of a reporter whose labours are underwritten by the public purse.

So where did that figure of 58 per cent come? In the unlikely event that the ABC's in-house complaints department deems this mystery worthy of investigation, Clarke's explanation will be well worth hearing.






40 comments:

  1. Old Ranga from VictoriaDecember 10, 2012 at 10:34 AM

    IMHO, that ABC news report came close to being fraudulent.

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    1. "...close to being fraudulent."?

      Practice makes perfect. If she keeps at it, I'm sure it won't take her long before her reports bear the same relationship to accuracy, as do all OTHER news items on "Their" A.L.P.B.C.

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    2. Maybe the 'Walkley Award'handed out willy nilly to the luvvies has morphed into 'The Gillard'.

      An award for the largest bare-faced lie told by a journalist.

      Certainly Clarke and her young protege cannot be accused of failing the church of anthropogenic global warming.

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  2. I saw that report and was really taken by the visuals. The smoke stacks belching brown stuff, the cities overlaid with smog, haven't they realised yet the stuff isn't visible?

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  3. Cont. And Greg Combet unshaven.

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  4. Alas, accountability and moral conviction are fossil specimens buried somewhere deep on the other side of the fence. Clark or Clarke [you've used both above] will be chuffed by the attention and her raising the profile of her important contribution by it having contained the error.
    In his humblebrag Ben Cubby couldn't distinguish fame from infamy.
    The Prime Minister, seems no where near as impressed with right and wrong as she is with what can and cannot be gotten away with.

    CO2 is atmospheric growth factor and can be legitimately considered as a fertilizer. The differences in the total thermal capacity of the earth's atmosphere is immeasurably small. But the effect of economics of this insanity is about to hit in very real ways.

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    1. Thank you, Phillip. The spelling of Clarke's name has been fixed.

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  5. I draw all my philosophical stances from coffee mugs, desk calendars and bumper stickers as I find them a more reliable compass than the ABC.
    The most appropriate offering in the current circumstances is that old WW2 stalwart "Keep Calm and Carry On".
    I wouldn't uncork all the Grange just yet Prof.

    The Irish Lion

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    1. The most appropriate offering in the current circumstances is that old WW2 stalwart "Keep Calm and Carry On".

      This one's an ancient 1/32nd Bunyip family saying. It was a favorite of my Memaw with the low cheekbones. Who also drank a bit. As you do.

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    2. (directed at the warmies, obviously, not at you)

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    3. Yes indeed.
      I also like ......"I hunt, I fish, I vote, and the bullbar is for kangas and kombies"
      I am also somewhat suspicious when a barely literate Arts Graduate exhorts me to "follow the science"

      The Irish Lion

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    4. I am also somewhat suspicious when a barely literate Arts Graduate exhorts me to "follow the science"

      CO squared FTW!

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  6. I think the 58% refers to GHG emissions, not atmospheric CO2 concentration. GHG emissions have been rising exponentially but atmospheric CO2 concentration has only risen linearly, suggesting that natural sequestration mechanisms are doing a very good job of containing the 'problem'. Coupled with natural temperature control mechanisms, that have kept temperature rise to zero over the past 16 years, the CAGW scam looks shakier every day.

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    Replies
    1. Correct - the 58 per cent is emissions, and it's 1990 to 2012. See here: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-high-global-carbon-emissions.html

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  7. ABC News has significant form in made-up alarmist stuff.

    A few years ago I pinged them. It was the 7pm news on Earth Hour evening. The hour was only half earthed when they announced, live that over 600,000 people were already participating, as they spoke.

    I wrote in asking how on earth they could know that at the time. Even the stone-walling ABC complaints department had to admit that they had simply made it up.

    This one would be well worth a go, but I am tired of all the stone-walling I have received on other complaints. I do still treasure my little win though.

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  8. So up from 0.031462% of the atmosphere to 0.039157% in 50 years or so - this is clearly a big issue in the arts and politics departments, but the physicists, geologists and engineers are not concerned.
    The technical phrase I've heard them use is "fart in a thunderstorm".

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  9. The Old and Unimproved DaveDecember 10, 2012 at 12:47 PM

    The Warmists' cause seemed to start off relatively mildly, but as each prediction has failed, the subsequent retreads have been progressively more and more feverish.

    In some ways, in the way it builds, it resembles Robin Williams golf routine.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcnFbCCgTo4

    (Caution: Bad Language.)

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  10. Too bad Blankets Holmes is on his well earned break, otherwise he would be all over this like a rash.

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  11. No warming for 16 years. The wheels are starting to fall off their global warming gravy train. Its a delight to now see the warmist faithful huff and puff and screech hysterically as their legion of former followers start peeling away. They may have more luck herding cats! God love them.

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  12. I've seen claims from the CSIRO that the rate of increase of global GHG emissions has more than doubled since the 90s (from about 1.2 per cent to 2.5 per cent a year) but that is hardly the same thing.

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  13. Professor, even if the exaggerated claims by the ABC were true - what could their masters at the UN conceivably do? Apart from fleecing us of Billions of dollars that is?

    As Lord Monckton says when he was escorted out of Doha,

    "I was amiably accompanied out into the balmy night, where an impressive indaba of stony-faced U.N. officials were alternately murmuring into cellphones and murmuring into cellphones. Murmuring into cellphones is what they do best."

    God help if they are ever put in charge of the planet...

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  14. Bunyip, have you seen this challenge to Big Ted from our best journo?
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/baillieus-chance-to-be-hailed-as-a-taxi-reformer/story-fn7078da-1226533234798

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  15. Strange that the planet wasn't annihilated back when the concentration was spectacularly higher- back when in fact there were over 1,000 distinct species of elephant each of which ate from a bewildering variety of lush vegetation, itself a verdant explosion of species the like of which we have never seen.

    It's almost like the anti-humanist screed is the ...opposite... of the truth.

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    Replies
    1. by far the most important remark on the page.
      thanks

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  16. It's still too early to laugh about the fact that we will look back on this era of collective madness in the Dumb Country's history and wonder how we financed social monsters like the ABC and supported media perversions like ShakeMyHead.com.au for as long as we did.

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    1. The Old and Unimproved DaveDecember 10, 2012 at 4:54 PM

      What was it Henry Lawson wrote?

      "An' when they go, as like as not, we find we're taken in,
      They've left behind no learnin' -- but they've carried off our tin."

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    2. G'day Dave,

      I think it'll be analogous to the Man from Ironbark. Most Aussies are forgiving of an honest mistake but we get quite cranky when deliberately taken for a ride. The ?LP and AGW crew are the barber evading the enraged bushie.

      RussR

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  17. The IPCC's response to waning public interest in climate change seems to have been to crank up the alarmism which could, at least in part, explain the waning public interest in climate change. We can only hope this positive feedback mechanism hastens the demise of this embarrassing smirch on the timeline of modern humanity.

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    1. @Dave A

      Love it. I just know there's a whole new faculty of arts could be spawned by this kind of thinking.

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    2. "We can only hope this positive feedback mechanism hastens the demise of this embarrassing smirch on the timeline of modern humanity."

      Bring on the tipping point.

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  18. Bunyip it sounds to me as though you only had one - you lucky bastard.

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  19. Prof, I guess the scientists mean global emissions from burning ALL fossil fuels are now 58 percent above 1990 levels not just CO2. This would also include, carbon monoxide, methane, farting, belching, listening to Jon Faine, burnings at the stake of undesirables, witch dunkings into ponds of Emily Listers, protestations from Julia Gillard of her innocence etc. Julia is a big emitter and should wear a filter over her head. Its scientifically proven and peer reviewed by 98% of scientists. Read the latest IPCC reports. Its in there.

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  20. Come on guys! Lay off! Maths is sooooo hard when all you've got is grade 10 level before streaming into the arts. Sheash!

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  21. @Tom, and while we're wondering and shaking our heads, we'll keep doing it, if history is any guide!

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  22. "whence" did that figure of 58 percent come, Perfesser. Your chief sub should be dealing sixers for that.

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    1. Cheez whiz, cracka, why'ncha just go burn a cross on his front lawn then...? Racist.

      /grievance-industrial complex, bunyip protection division

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    2. Down, boy. Settle. You know maree always gets you barking.

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    3. Gosh, spotty, I made one injudicious comment aeons ago when I was pissed. Can we bury the hatchet (preferably in JG's head)? I'm apparently a nice person, according to my friends and family, and at least I'm not attempting to run the nation. Pax?

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  23. EARTH FIRST ......We will mine the rest of the planets later :)

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