Michael Mann: You Cannot Be Serious!

By Dr. John Happs ~

“Apart from being a tetchy, hotheaded, rude, bullying, cackhanded, ignorant, malevolent and embarrassingly useless excuse for a scientist, Professor Michael Mann – the guy behind the serially-discredited Hockey Stick – is also the most outrageous liar.”       (journalist James Delingpole)

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/03/31/delingpole-michael-mann-vs-the-truth-at-congressional-climate-hearing/

Dr. Michael Mann

In 2023, Dr. Michael Mann was interviewed on campus for the Pennsylvania State University publication Penn Today.  That interview established 3 things:

1. That Penn Today is prepared to believe and publish just about anything Mann says about climate change, without checking the facts;
2. Mann is in complete denial about his “hockey stick” temperature graph that was initially displayed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and later removed when it was shown to be fabricated;
3. Mann admires other environmental alarmists such as Paul Ehrlich and Rachel Carson.

In a recent interview with Michael Mann, Penn Today unashamedly reported that Mann is “known for his ‘hockey stick’ graph that hammered home the dramatic rise of the warming climate.”

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/climate-scientist-michael-mann-makes-home-penn

Perhaps the Penn Today reporter could point to empirical evidence that would show a “dramatic rise of the warming climate” when Dr. Ross McKitrick has confirmed:

“In sum, based on a preliminary analysis the new NOAA data do not support a claim that warming in the troposphere has undergone a statistically-significant change in trend.”

https://financialpost.com/opinion/ross-mckitrick-the-important-climate-study-you-wont-hear-about

Why didn’t the Penn Today reporter find out that uncontaminated satellite data show we have temperature stasis whilst atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise?

https://rclutz.com/2023/04/07/the-less-it-warms-the-louder-is-zero-carbon-push/

I also wonder why the Penn Today reporter failed to point out that Mann is widely known and criticised for the infamous and discredited “hockey stick” graph that he produced for the political/ideological Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Mann disregarded the IPCC’s statement about climate change in its 2nd Assessment Report, released in 1995. This stated explicitly that:

1. “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate) changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
2. “No study to date has positively attributed all or part (of observed climate change) to anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) causes.”
3. “Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”

Additionally, the IPCC produced the following graph that correctly showed the Medieval Warm Period to be much warmer than current temperature, along with the significant global temperature downturn during the Little Ice Age:

Mann also appeared to dismiss those significant climate shifts over the last 10,000 years that took place without any input from anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions:

 

In other words, IPCC contributing scientists could find no evidence for human-driven climate change in the literature but they documented the two major climate shifts (warming and cooling) that had occurred over the last 1,000 years. Both were shown to be global, significant and independent of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The MWP and LIA are well documented in both the scientific and historic literature:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/12/more-evidence-that-the- medieval-warming-period-was-global-not-regional/

Of course, this would never do for UN officials since the IPCC has always been about politics, United Nations control and the re-distribution of wealth from developed countries that have earned their wealth, to those developing countries that simply want it.

Carbon dioxide emissions were to be blamed for global warming and extreme weather so the IPCC was given the following politicised brief:

“To assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change.“  (My emphasis)

The many other climate-influencing factors would be downplayed or completely ignored since the UN needed to show that human-induced climate change was real and the result of industrial emissions.  In fact, only data and statements supporting that contention would be seriously considered so changes were made in the Summary for Policymakers, by UN officials knowing that this document would be sent out to scientifically-challenged politicians and the alarmist media. Without any supporting empirical evidence, the Summary for Policymakers stated,

“The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”

Since there is no empirical evidence to show, or even suggest, there is a discernible human influence on global climate, one might reasonably argue that this represents an attempt to deceive.

Dr. Frederick Seitz, Past President of the NAS and American Physical Society, was appalled by this blatant abuse of the scientific process. He commented:

“This Report is not what it appears to be– it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American Scientific community, including service as president of both the NAS and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer- review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.”

Such corruption of the scientific process by the IPCC continued, leading to the resignation of many IPCC contributing scientists, such as IPCC Coordinating Lead Author Dr. Philip Lloyd who said:

“I am doing a detailed assessment of the UN IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policymakers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science.”

Dr. Johannes Oerlemans was Lead Author for 3 working group assessments. He said:

“The IPCC has become too political. Many scientists have not been able to resist the siren call of fame, research funding and meetings in exotic places that awaits them if they are willing to compromise scientific principles and integrity in support of the man-made-global-warming doctrine.”

Many other former IPCC contributing scientists have spoken out about the IPCC malfeasance they witnessed. See for instance:

https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/climate-ecology/46-statements-by-ipcc-experts-against-the-ipcc/

UN personnel ignored the resignations from those contributing scientists who objected to the IPCC’s modus operandi.

Enter Dr. Michael Mann who provided the IPCC with data from dendrochronology or tree-ring analysis, using tree growth-rings going back to the year the tree started growing.  Mann “found” exactly what the IPCC was looking for when he produced his “Hockey-Stick” graph.

Tree Rings

Curiously, other scientists, who also used tree-ring data, couldn’t find any evidence for the dramatic temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution that Mann claimed to have found but that didn’t stop the IPCC from making Mann’s “Hockey-Stick” their prize exhibit:

The publication of the IPCC’s “Hockey-Stick” temperature graph was immediately criticised by many scientists who knew how temperature had fluctuated markedly over the last 10,000 years without any evidence for input from atmospheric carbon dioxide:

They also knew that the gentle warming towards the end of the last century was mild when compared to the Roman Warm Period and Minoan Warm Period.

Leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed that Dr. Keith Briffa really had his doubts about Mann’s data. He said:

“I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago. I do not believe that global mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands of years as Mike appears to and I contend that there is strong evidence for major changes in climate over the Holocene … .” (My bold)

Climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry agreed, saying:

“Temperatures have been warming for more than 200 years, and, that in the 20th Century, 40 percent of the warming occurred before 1950 when carbon dioxide was not a factor in the warming.”

https://dailycaller.com/2015/12/09/climate-scientist-turns-the-tables- on-dem-senator-trying-to-discredit-her-video/

Dr. Phil Jones and Dr. Keith Briffa, from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, produced data that disagreed with Mann, but Mann wanted all the other data to agree with his, so he got around the problem of data contradictions by incorporating data from Mann et al. (1999); Jones et al. (1998) and Briffa (2000).  Incredibly, it appeared that Mann then added post 1960 instrumental data and “smoothed” the data to hide the temperature decline, whilst showing a dramatic up-tick following the Industrial Revolution:

IPCC Third Assessment Report Figure 2.21: Comparison of warm-season (Jones et al., 1998) and annual mean (Mann et al., 1998, 1999) multi-proxy-based and warm season tree-ring-based (Briffa, 2000) millennial Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions.

This attempt to “hide the decline” has been widely falsified and satirised:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqc7PCJ-nc

And here:

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/04/17/hide-the-decline-2/

Mann’s “hockey-stick” graph appeared several times in both the IPCC report and the political/ideological Summary for Policymakers that went out to politicians and the media. Unfortunately, the damage was done and the climate alarmists had a field-day.

Not surprisingly, the media, green activists and politicians lauded Mann’s graph, but many scientists questioned his “hockey-stick” including Dr. Stephen McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick.  McIntyre was an expert IPCC reviewer and, when he requested that the IPCC show the data used to generate the “hockey-stick”, he was refused and Mann began his personal attacks on his critics:

As Dr. Jim Lacey pointed out:

“Rather than contest McIntyre’s findings with evidence and data, Mann decided that his best alternative was to smear his challenger’s reputation. Skeptics always had to be on the watch for Mann’s spiteful attacks. But what is interesting is that many of his fellow warmists had a low opinion of his work. Despite this, they were slow to criticize Mann – partly because they did not want to give the skeptics any more ammunition, but also because they were afraid of him. As one warmist wrote to Jones, Mann was a “serious enemy” and “vindictive.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/11/scientists-behaving-badly-jim- lacey/

There was an outcry from numerous scientists as they pointed out that temperatures fluctuated markedly during the last 10,000 years whilst the more recent Earth climate history is well documented in both historic and geo-chronological records. Such history showed:

The Roman Warming Period between 200 BC and 600 AD:

http://www.co2science.org/articles/V15/N24/C2.php

The Dark Ages Cold Period between 600 and 900 AD:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959683617693898

During the Medieval Warm Period, between 900 and 1300, the world experienced warming which exceeded (by at least 3oC) 20th Century temperatures.  Greenland was colonised; agriculture flourished in Europe and people prospered.

http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/vineland.htm

The disgraceful episode involving Mann’s imaginative “Hockey Stick” graph was described by Mark Steyn in his book: “A Disgrace to the Profession”.

Steyn’s book can be located here:

https://www.amazon.com.au/Disgrace-Profession-Mark-Steyn-editor/dp/0986398330

Steyn said:

“And of course there was the mother of all scandals, the “hockey stick” itself: a graph that purported to show the warming of the last three decades of the twentieth century as unprecedented in a millennium, a graph that the IPCC was so thrilled with that it published it six times in its third assessment report and displayed it behind the IPCC chairman at his press conference.”

https://www.steynonline.com/7013/encyclical-variations

Andrew Montford has given a detailed analysis of the “Climategate” affair and the corruption behind the infamous “Hockey Stick” in his book: “The Hockey Stick Illusion”

Montford’s book can be located here:

https://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Stick-Illusion-W-Montford/dp/0957313527

The “thrill” of the “Hockey Stick” didn’t last long and the IPCC quietly removed it when criticism, bolstered by empirical evidence from the scientific community, gained momentum.

A thorough rebuttal of Mann’s “Hockey Stick” has also been published by Dr. Stephen McIntyre and Dr. Ross McKitrick:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43734600

But back to Penn Today’s interview with Mann who seems to think that his “hockey stick” graph was “inconvenient” to skeptics rather than fraudulent. He told the reporter:

“Paul Ehrlich, Rachel Carson, scientists before me were attacked because their message was inconvenient.”

Perhaps we should look at the “inconvenient messages” provided by Ehrlich and Carson.

Dr. Paul Ehrlich

Dr. Paul Ehrlich is Professor of Biology and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, he said that the Earth was becoming so overpopulated that global famine would be inevitable and millions would die in the next few decades.

Ehrlich claimed:

“The battle to feed humanity is over.”

And:

“By the year 2000 the UK will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people”.

And:

“If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

Ehrlich also claimed:

“I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.”

So, what happened in 1971?  In fact, food production in India grew significantly:

https://knoema.com/atlas/India/Food-production-index

Ehrlich went on to propose mass sterilization, sex-selective abortion, and infanticide as measures for radical population control. He said he would prefer “voluntary methods” but if people were unwilling to cooperate, he was ready to support “various forms of coercion.”

Ehrlich added:

“To allow women to have as many children as they want is like letting people throw as much of their garbage into their neighbor’s backyard as they want.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/05/01/williams-great-population-hoax-turns-50/

The Population Bomb sold some 3 million copies and influenced an entire generation. Ehrlich received a Swedish Royal Academy of Science prize in 1990 and the MacArthur Foundation’s $345,000 “genius award” for promoting a “greater public understanding of environmental problems.”

In 2012, Ehrlich and his wife Anne published a paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in which they continued their food shortage alarmism, saying:

“No civilization can avoid collapse if it fails to feed its population.”

And:

“Climate disruption may pose insurmountable biophysical barriers to increasing crop yields. Indeed, if humanity is very unlucky with the climate, there may be reductions in yields of major crops.”

And:

“Rising temperatures already seem to be slowing previous trends of increasing yields of basic grains and unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced, dangerous anthropogenic climate change could ravage agriculture.”

Contrary to the messages of food doom and gloom, people will continue to be fed by dramatic advances in farming and breeding techniques, along with better storage and transport methods.

I wonder if Ehrlich knows that carbon dioxide is plant food and that carbon dioxide fertilization is greening the planet:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

I wonder if Ehrlich knows that the world production of crops continues to grow:

Undeterred by his many failed predictions, Ehrlich continued with his alarmism, saying:

“Warming and acidification of the oceans threaten the protein supply of some of the most nutritionally vulnerable people.”

And:

“Warming must be held well below a potential 5^oC rise in global average temperature, a level that could well bring down civilization.”

And:

“The odds of avoiding collapse seem small because the risks are clearly not obvious to most people and the classic signs of impending collapse, especially diminishing returns to complexity.”

https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2013-PRE-and-AHE-Can-a-collapse-be-avoided.pdf

Adding to the misery, in 2021 Ehrlich ventured into climate alarmism:

“If we continue on the long-range energy course we are on, sooner or later we will melt the polar ice caps.”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/08/29/smh-paul-ehrlich-got-everything-else-wrong-but-we-should-have-listened-to-his-climate-message/

In 2023, Ehrlich further continued his alarmist nonsense, telling CBS:

“In ten years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct.”

He added:

“Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.”

https://mercatornet.com/paul-ehrlich-60-minutes-environment/82482/

I suggest that Ehrlich reads and comments, with some intellectual honesty, the following publication:

https://co2coalition.org/publications/a-primer-on-carbon-dioxide-and-climate/

Apparently, empirical evidence has little impact on Ehrlich who, in 2023, in response to a 60 Minutes program on extinctions, said:

“The 60 Minutes extinction story has brought the usual right-wing out in force. If I’m always wrong so is science, since my work is always peer-reviewed, including the POPULATION BOMB and I’ve gotten virtually every scientific honor.  Sure, I’ve made some mistakes, but no basic ones.”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/06/friday-funny-ehrlich-discredits-the-peer-review-process/

It would appear that a “mutual admiration” exists between Ehrlich and Mann since Ehrlich proclaimed, in his publication: “A Triumph of Denial Propaganda” (2015):

“It is sad that with humanity facing catastrophic climate disruption as part of an existential threat that there are still people willing to attack Mike Mann, one of the real heroes of climate science.”

And:

“Mike Mann is admired by all real climate scientists.”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/13/friday-funny-paul-ehrlichs-review-of-steyns-book-on-michael-manns-work/ehrlich-review/

Dr. Tim Ball

So why didn’t all those admiring “real climate scientists” come to Mann’s aid during his 3 courtroom battles with Dr. Tim Ball, the National Review and Mark Steyn.

Ball and Steyn said, in no uncertain terms, that Mann’s “Hockey-Stick” was contrived, causing Mann to unsuccessfully sue Ball for libel in the Supreme Court of British Columbia after Ball expressed his opinion that Mann belongs in “the State Pen, not Penn State.”

https://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2011/11/

Steyn summed up:  Mann vs Professor Timothy Ball (British Columbia Supreme Court): Case dismissed; Mann lost the case and was ordered to pay costs.

https://www.steynonline.com/documents/9740.pdf

Mark Steyn

In response to a blog post on The Corner by Mark Steyn in 2012 criticizing Mann’s work, Mann took the National Review to court when the National Review refused to remove the post.

The court disqualified all of Michael Mann’s proposed expert testimony, including: “one of the so-called experts who merely summarized Wikipedia.”

The National Review comments included the following:

“In effect, the court has prevented Michael Mann from going before a jury what he has been attempting to do before America all along: wave his hands, point to his credentials, and silence anyone with the temerity to disagree with him.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/michael-manns-lawsuit-stumbles-on/

See also: Mann vs National Review (District of Columbia Superior Court): Case dismissed; Mann loses:

https://www.steynonline.com/documents/11154.pdf

And:

Mann vs Competitive Enterprise Institute (DC Sup Ct): Case dismissed; Mann lost again:

https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2d5fd7ee-8e7b-4618-b76e-d199ce4a96f5.pdf

Rachel Carson

Mann said that Rachel Carson was attacked because her message was inconvenient.

Inconvenient?

If we are looking for a classic case of scientific deception, Carson would be a front runner for her publication “Silent Spring” in which she claimed, without any empirical evidence, that the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was a deadly hazard to life on Earth.

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/silent-spring-9780141184944

Although it is readily absorbed through the exoskeletons of insects, DDT is poorly absorbed through the skin of mammals. It kills insects by disrupting the transmission of electrical impulses between their nerve cells, causing them to fire spontaneously. Fortunately, DDT does not have the same impact on higher-order animals.

Green groups seized on the dire warnings from Carson and protested against the use of DDT, believing without question what she had written about the dangers from this particular insecticide that has already saved millions of lives and protected many food crops.

Dr. Gordon Edwards pointed out that:

“Many allegations have been made about the harmful effects of pesticides in general, and DDT in particular, on human health. Even statements about the amount actually ingested by human beings have been dramatically false.”

And:

“The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than any other in history, DDT, was banned by order of one man, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research.”

https://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf

Morris et al. (2012) in their book “Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson”, observed:

“A number of Carson’s major arguments rested on what can only be described as deliberate ignorance.”

And:

“Carson’s best-seller contained significant errors and sins of omission. Much of what was presented as certainty then was slanted, and today we know much of it is simply wrong.”

https://www.amazon.com/Silent-Spring-50-Crises-Rachel/dp/1937184994

Meiners (2012) noted:

“Carson made little effort to provide a balanced perspective and consistently ignored key evidence that would have contradicted her work.”

And:

“We assembled scholars from different disciplines and asked them to evaluate Carson’s work given the state of knowledge at the time she was writing. What information was available that she ignored? Where did she deviate from accepted science of the day?

Our findings are unsettling. Carson made little effort to provide a balanced perspective and consistently ignored key evidence that would have contradicted her work.” 

And:

“Carson vilified the use of DDT and other pest controls in agriculture but ignored their role in saving millions of lives worldwide from malaria, typhus, dysentery, among other diseases. Millions of deaths, and much greater human suffering, ultimately resulted from pesticide bans as part of disease-eradication campaigns. Carson knew of the beneficial effects of DDT, but never discussed it; her story was all negative.”

https://www.masterresource.org/silent-spring-at-50/silent-spring-at-50/

Entomologist Dr. Gordon Edwards commented:

“She (Carson) was carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad.”

And:

“I then took notice of her bibliography and realized that it was filled with references from very unscientific sources.”

And:

“In testifying and speaking in public, I frequently exposed the misleading references Rachel Carson had cited in her book, presenting her statements from Silent Spring and then reading the truth from the actual publications she was purporting to characterize. This revealed to the audiences just how untruthful and misleading the allegations of Silent Spring really were.”

http://21sci-tech.com/articles/summ02/Carson.html

Malcolm Turnbull

Mann backed yet another climate alarmist in the form of Australia’s former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who was invited to Pennsylvania State University where it was reported how “Australia has become a leader in fighting climate change.”

In another interview for Penn Today, Mann recounted his sabbatical in Australia a few years ago, which coincided with what he claimed was one of the most profound climate-driven extreme weather events in Australian history. He displayed his ignorance by saying:

“I first came face to face with the impacts of climate change in Sydney during what is now known as the Black Summer, the summer where Australia witnessed unprecedented heat and drought and wildfires that literally blanketed the continent.”

Unprecedented heat and drought and wildfires?

Mann failed to find out or mention about the past bushfire history of Australia.  Vic Jurskis is a former NSW Forestry Commission professional forester and he explained:

“When Europeans disrupted Aboriginal burning, woody thickening choked out biodiversity and created heavy three-dimensionally continuous fuels that inevitably explode in megafires during severe weather. In 1851, before any industrial impacts on our climate, 5 million hectares of Victoria were destroyed by the Black Thursday fires. Post-European fires produced unprecedented quantities of charcoal in the 70,000 year sedimentary record, indicating huge burning of biomass.” 

Jurskis went on to say:

“Green ideology has brought a reduction in mild burning since the late twentieth century, and caused an explosion of pestilence and megafires. Black Summer incinerated eight million hectares of native forest in southeastern Australia and killed countless millions of native animals. Thirty-three people were killed and 3,100 homes were destroyed.”

https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/12/real-climate-sceince/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FLAT%20%2020201207%20%20AL&utm_content=FLAT%20%2020201207%20%20AL+CID_2e04772b60f81959bcab0a4e0183b054&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Australia&utm_term=Vic%20Jurkis

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg agreed, pointing out that:

“Globally, wildfire burns less land than it used to. Surprisingly, this decrease is even true for Australia. And a new review of the available data suggests it’s not actually possible to detect a link between global warming and fire for Australia today.”

And:

“If we go back in history about 11 per cent of Australia’s surface used to burn every year in 1900” and “today that number is about 5.3 per cent.”

https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/less-of-australia-burning-despite-activists-claims/video/f74ebc34bcf55f3486d24432d1c98191

In Australia, bushfires are a fact of life. Our natural vegetation has evolved to regenerate through fire since eucalypts produce highly flammable compounds when a fire comes through. These volatile organic compounds (VOCS) help to propagate the fire via the tree canopy. Threats to life and property come from allowing people to build in the bush and the problem is compounded when “green” councils prevent prescribed burning of the understorey.

Roger Underwood is a former district and regional forester and now the chairman of The Bushfire Front, Australia. Underwood says:

“Of all the half-baked advice on bushfire science or operations, however, the most lamentable comes from the global warmists.”

And:

“The contemporary bushfire mess across southern Australia is not due to global warming. Nor is it simply a matter of bad government or the triumph of inhumanity. It is gutlessness. Our leaders have not had the courage to face down those who are prepared to see our community, our landscapes and our biodiversity suffer on the basis of a flawed ideology. I have nothing but contempt for those who push the idea that bushfire disasters are due to global warming and who oppose a sensible, effective bushfire management system. They are doing everyone a disservice.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/11/bushfires-global-warming/

Malcolm Turnbull claimed that nations around the globe already have the means and tools “to have abundant energy at affordable prices delivered in a reliable manner with zero emissions.” He pointed to wind and solar energy and batteries that can store it all but he said, climate change denial is standing in the way.

Dr. Michael Mann responded, saying of Turnbull and himself:

“I think what bonded us was our mutual dislike of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. and our willingness to call out bad actors in the media.”

And:

“As Malcolm explained, we have the technology to address the climate crisis. We can do it now with the energy technologies we have. The obstacles aren’t technological; they are political.”

https://web.sas.upenn.edu/pcssm/news/the-future-of-globalization-in-a-fracturing-world/

Tim Blair responded:

“We’re forever being told by Turnbull and his kind to alter our behaviour for the sake of climate change, but Turnbull never changes his own stance or tactics at all. In 2009, he was removed as Liberal leader after siding with Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In 2018, he was dumped as Liberal leader and Prime Minister after again proposing climate change policies that were rejected by the Liberal Party core.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/05/a-virus-that-leaves-even-less-trace-than-turnbull/

There is no doubt there is money to be made from climate alarmism and the message that we need to shift from high energy-density hydrocarbon fuels to inefficient, unreliable wind and solar sources of electricity.

Angela Macdonald-Smith wrote in the Australian Financial Review (1^st March 2016)

“The Turnbull government’s support for the goal of getting about 23.5 per cent of Australia’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020 has sparked a rise in the prices of renewable energy certificates and fresh M&A talk across the sector.”

Judith Sloan pointed out:

“But we are being told — by the rent-seekers — that there is a veritable gold rush going on in terms of large-scale solar (and wind) farms and nothing should stand in its way. (We all know who made money from the gold rush: not the miners but the merchants selling the equipment.)”

https://stopthesethings.com/2017/10/18/time-to-tear-up-australias-economic-suicide-note-renewable-energy-target-must-go-now/

Malcolm Turnbull continued to display his ignorance about climate science as demonstrated in his Speech to the House of Representatives Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bills 2010 (8 February 2010) when he said:

“We are already experiencing the symptoms of climate change, especially here in Australia with a hotter and drier climate in the southern part of our nation.”

Wrong Malcolm!

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show no trend in the proportion of the globe in drought since 1950 with the proportion of the world in drought, including Australia, being largely unchanged:

The Federation Drought from 1895 to 1903 was the worst in Australia’s history whilst historical accounts and scientific analysis indicate that South-Eastern Australia experienced 27 drought years between 1788 and 1860:   https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/federation-drought   The record for the longest heat wave was set at Australia’s Marble Bar. Between October 31st, 1923 and April 7^th,1924 the temperature broke the 37.8 °C (100.0 °F) benchmark and established the heat wave record of 160 days.   Incidentally, the atmospheric carbon dioxide level was a mere 305 ppm at that time.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/21/worlds-worst-heatwave-the-marble-bar-heatwave-1923-24/

Turnbull went on to say:

“The planet is warming because of the growing level of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.”

Wrong again Malcolm!

Human activity globally contributes a mere 3% of atmospheric carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide has never driven global temperature at any time over the last 500 million years:   Numerous studies show that, when they do track closely, it is global temperature that drives carbon dioxide levels. As the oceans warm, carbon dioxide is released:

Petit et al. (1999) analysed 420,000 years of Vostok ice core data and found that, as the world cools into an ice age, the delay before carbon dioxide levels begin to fall is several thousand years.

https://euanmearns.com/the-vostok-ice-core-temperature-co2-and-ch4/

Fischer et al. (1999) described a lag of 600 plus or minus 400 years as the world warmed, following a glacial maximum.

https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/downloads/carbon-dioxide-atmospheric-warming-kerkin-june-2015.pdf

Monnin et al. (2001) looked at Dome Concordia (also in Antarctica) and found a delay on the recent rise out of the last major ice age to be 800 ± 600 years.

https://cornwallalliance.org/2012/12/carbon-dioxide-and-air-temperature-who-leads-and-who-follows/

Mudelsee (2001) showed that over the full 420,000 year Vostok history carbon dioxide variations lag temperature by 1,300 ± 1000 years.

https://climatecite.com/wp-content/uploads/Mudelsee-M-The_phase_relations_among_atmospheric_CO2_content_temperature_and_global_ice_volume_over_the_past_420_ka.pdf

Caillon et al. (2003) analysed the Vostok data and found a lag (where carbon dioxide rises after temperature) of 800 ± 200 years.

https://co2coalition.org/news/the-temperature-co2-climate-connection-an-epistemological-reappraisal-of-ice-core-messages/

Turnbull continued to display his lack of knowledge, saying:

“That has been the view of political leaders for many years from both sides of politics, none more eloquently than Margaret Thatcher herself. Prudence demands that we act to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and do so in a way that is consistent with and promotes global action to do the same.”

Wrong again Malcolm!

Had Turnbull bothered to locate the facts, he would have found that Thatcher initially trusted the UN and the IPCC (like so many uninformed Australian politicians still do, to support party politics). She later looked closely at the science and the machinations of the political/ideological IPCC and completely changed her mind.

The coal miner strike of 1984-85 was the last straw for Margaret Thatcher. She was determined to subdue the power of the NUM which, at its peak, employed over 1 million workers.

Margaret Thatcher seized the opportunity to shut down the power of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) by demonizing carbon dioxide emissions saying they were the principal driver of global warming with dire consequences for the environment. She wanted to move away from the extensive use of coal and that certainly happened. One after the other, coal mines across the UK were closed down.

She looked at the lack of empirical evidence for anthropogenic global warming. She also looked closely at the modus operandi of the UN and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as noted in her book Statecraft published by Harper Perennial in 2003:

The late Nigel Lawson, when Secretary of State for Energy, indicated that while Margaret Thatcher promoted the carbon dioxide emissions-global warming link, her real motive was to subdue the coal-mining union and lend her support to the nuclear power industry that offered a clean energy replacement for coal. Lawson observed:

“She felt Britain should not be so dependent on coal. She was in favour of building up nuclear energy to break the dependence on coal and the main opposition to nuclear came from the environment movement. Mrs Thatcher thought she could trap them with the carbon emissions argument.”

http://www.thegwpf.com/david-cameron-climate-support-misplaced- says-nigel-lawson/

Turnbull went on to say:

“Nations of the world are making commitments to reduce their emissions and those commitments will form the basis of the negotiations that will continue at Mexico City this year.”

Wrong again Malcolm!

Do the following facts suggest that “Nations of the world are making commitments to reduce their emissions”  

The EU has 468 coal-fired power plants and is building 27 more.

Turkey has 56 coal-fired power plants and is building 93 more.

South Africa has 79 coal-fired power plants and is building 24 more.

India has 569 coal-fired power plants and is building 446 more.

The Philippines has 19 coal-fired power plants and is building 60 more.

South Korea has 58 coal-fired power plants and is building 26 more.

Japan has 90 coal-fired power plants and is building 45 more.

China has 2,363 coal-fired power plants and is building 1,171 more.

The Governments of Spain and Germany were also committed to taking action to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. It was tried in Spain with disastrous results for the Spanish economy and those promised green jobs that never materialised. It was also tried in Germany and the failure of unreliable, inefficient solar and wind sources have led to Germany having the highest electricity prices in Europe and their rapid shift back to coal-fired power.

Undeterred, Malcolm Turnbull continues with his dream of nations thriving on unreliable, inefficient green energy, with Snowy 2.0 being his scheme that will only ever deliver limited electricity but at a cost of $10 billion to consumers.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2023/04/energy-vandalism-and-impossible-dreams/

David Bidstrup adds:

“Snowy 2.0 is not a “new generator”; it is a nett user of power and it will cost around $112.00 per MWh to produce electricity. This will be passed on to consumers in the time-honoured fashion and it will garner RET subsidies along the way. It relies on intermittent power sources to fill the dam and history shows that there are many times when the performance of wind generators is abysmal to say the least. Pumped hydro was originally designed to make use of spare capacity from large, reliable and dispatchable thermal generators when demand was low. I wonder why our “leaders” do not understand that they just look stupid promoting these ridiculous ideas.”

http://catallaxyfiles.com/2018/03/14/david-bidstrup-snowy-2-0-the-madness-continues/

So how have all those climate conferences, involving thousands of crusading hypocrites flying to those talk-fests – many in private jets, addressed carbon dioxide emissions?

Not very well it seems:

Returning to Dr. Michael Mann’s thinking that Dr. Paul Ehrlich, and Rachel Carson, were scientists who were attacked because their message was inconvenient, Mann said:

“I consider myself privileged to be in this long lineage of scientists who have found themselves in that position.”

And:

“Honestly, if they had let me alone I probably would have remained in the lab, spending all my time analyzing data, building models, and crunching numbers. I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.”

What a pity that didn’t happen.

Dr. John Happs M.Sc.1st Class; D.Phil. John has an academic background in the geosciences with special interests in climate, and paleoclimate. He has been a science educator at several universities in Australia and overseas and was President of the Western Australian Skeptics for 25 years

Tagged: Climate Change Activists, Climate Change Scaremongering, Dr. John Happs, Michael Mann's Hockey Stick, Professor Michael Mann

Posted in: Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Leftists (In the USA a.k.a. as Liberals-Progressives-Socialists-Communists) Usually Democrats, Politics, Propaganda