I was going to refute the Monckton "facts" parroted by Topher, an actor who conned tens of thousands of dollars out of readers of denier blogs, but there are no facts to refute. I can't believe anyone put their name to this 50 to 1 video. I can't even credit Jo Nova would - and she's as batty as they come. It's even worse than the typical Monckton diatribe.
For starters Monckton uses unusual units. The science is kaput and so divorced from reality you'd think he was talking about a planet in a far off universe. On the "economics" he assumes Australia is the only country to price carbon, which is a pile of nonsense. We were late to the party. For another thing he assumes no benefits. And then he makes up a pile of numbers out of thin air. None of it makes any sense at all. It's utter garbage. Full of wrong numbers. Full of fake references. I picked out a couple of quotes from the video in my previous article if you're interested.
Did I say it's a pile of codswallop? Topher will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Deniers are bloody barmy.
If anyone wants to read the Monckton diatribe it I've put the document up on google docs here, so neither Topher nor Watts will get any hits.
So far the response on WUWT has been underwhelming. Anthony posted his article about seven and a half hours ago and so far only 30 responses. There might be a few more as people in the USA wake up and start bashing away at their keyboards. There aren't too many tweets either. (An article bashing Professor Mann or John Cook gets a much more vigourous response and at no cost to deniers.) The youtube video has around 1700 hits FWIW.
The deniers who have written comments reckon they got their moneys worth. Goodness knows why. I guess they like coloured cartoons.
Sorry to disappoint you all. But truly. There is nothing to refute. It's a dogs breakfast.
Oh, there is a heap of very long one hour videos with the various interviewees, too. It would take someone of much sterner stuff than I'm made of to wade through those. I'll just list the deniers interviewed and if any are familiar to you then you can guess what they say.
- "Jo Nova" and her partner her partner David Evans.
- Anthony Watts - oops, sorry wrong one - it's this Anthony Watts
- Donna Laframboise
- Marc Morano
- Fred Singer
- Henry Ergas
Give me insects any day :)
PS A humorous note, the mods at WUWT weren't briefed on WUWT fund-raising for the Topher video atrocity. This from the tips on WUWT.
Tom in Texas says:
September 1, 2013 at 7:02 pmThe 50 : 1 website & video is now up at:
http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/
[You have not explained what the 50:1 project is, and why Anthony should spend his time researching your link. Mod]
The whole 50:1 calculation is also absurd. It's essentially based on the Australian carbon tax only reducing Australia's CO2 emissions by 5% (don't know if this is right or not). This is only a small fraction of the world's CO2 emissions. One can then determine how much this will reduce the surface warming based on an estimate for climate sensitivity. This gives an amount per degrees celsius. According to Monckton, one can then use this to determine how much this will cost to prevent some amount of future warming. It turns out to be 80% of world GDP. Then, magically, he claims that it will only cost 1.5% of world GDP to adapt and therefore it would cost 50 times more to mitigate than to adapt. There are so many issues with this calculation that it's hard to know where to begin. Essentially it's nonsense.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many issues with this calculation that it's hard to know where to begin.
DeleteYes. I took one look at saw that the whole thing is complete nonsense. There is no place to "begin".
The other denier meme throughout is the assumption that *any* reduction in emissions will lead to a reduction in temperature. It won't. The best we can hope for is to limit the *rise* in temperature - and ocean acidification etc etc.
The final idiocy is thinking that climate change will come to a full stop at midnight on 31 December 2100. Which is claptrap.
Topher goes on about something happening ten years from now, which is also really really dumb. What we're doing now is affecting the world for many millenia. You'd be hard pressed to attribute any feature of climate ten years out to anything we do now.
Deniers have no sense of scale or time. Going by the comments on WUWT they are all innumerate. The fact they love the cartoons speaks to their literacy too.
Most of the things being said in that video is material that I already talked about in my project "Climate Changes, But Facts Don't: Debunking Monckton".
ReplyDeleteThe way he calculated the costs, the calculations of the benefits, underestimating the climate sensitivity, underestimating the consequences, and again putting forward that argument that a single country can't make a difference so a country shouldn't do anything.
Most of it isn't anywhere near a valid and well argued argument. It ignores so much of what we known of the costs, benefits, and the science itself.
Thanks, Collin. I've linked to your excellent video towards the end of my later post on the topic.
Deletehttp://blog.hotwhopper.com/2013/09/my-advice-to-topher-field-take-money.html
Has anyone put together a serious review of the Australian "Carbon Trading Scheme" which seems to be the main target of the introductory video?
ReplyDeleteThat would be some cool information to have, but Australia is so far away from Colorado... help
~ ~ ~
Incidentally, regarding The Lord Monckton - here's a look at the way he plays the game:
AN UNAUTHORIZED SORTING OF LORD CHRIS MONCKTON’S (9/14/2009) POWER POINT PRESENTATION
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2010/08/unauthorized-sorting-of-lord-chris.html
There are the Garnaut reviews, the first one of which formed the basis of the approach ultimately taken. The second one has more info.
Deletehttp://www.garnautreview.org.au/
There is a heap of information on the Australian government websites. The carbon trading scheme hasn't started yet. That's the next stage, depending on what happens after the elections this coming Saturday. Here are a couple of links to get you started. The first one is a bit tricky to navigate but does have a lot of information. The second one is more about climate itself.
http://www.cleanenergyfuture.gov.au/
http://climatecommission.gov.au/
And a press release about emissions trading:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/reducing-carbon/news-article/moving-emissions-trading-1-july-2014