Maurice Newman, the Australian Prime Minister's business adviser and favoured conspiracy nutter

Did you know that our Prime Minister gets his science advice from a science-denying cleric, and his business advice from a "black helicopter"-style conspiracy theorising nutter.

Denier Drumbeat: Eric Worrall on Democracy in Australia and the Climate Crisis

The tendency of Anthony Watts to conspiracy theories of the wacky kind increases week by week and year by year. What is harder to figure is whether he believes his nuttery or whether he just likes to sit back and watch his readers fall head over heels for his latest bit of paranoid thinking.

This week we saw Anthony Watts imply that John Kerry didn't condemn the barbaric group of thugs from ISIS, for murders and other atrocities, when he did. And in much stronger terms than Anthony Watts ever could (Anthony doesn't have the linguistic capability).

Anthony distorted a speech to get his audience fired up. To get the lynch mob going. Is it laziness, incompetence or deliberate deception on the part of Anthony that leads him to twist facts to suit his agenda?

Today he's done the same (archived here). He's published a couple of paragraphs written by one of his latest adopted strays, Eric Worrall. Eric is about as straight as a corkscrew, but he doesn't much like it when he's caught out. Not that there's much chance of that happening at WUWT.

Any notion more complex than "it's all a hoax" addles the brain of the average WUWT-er. Tell them black is white and they'll agree. Tell them up is down and they'll come back for more. Tell them hot is cold and an ice age cometh, and you'll have the denier hordes clamouring and swearing eternal allegiance to their heros.

Ask them to think about something as complex as the nature of democracy and they fall in a heap.

So when you combine a philosophical discussion about the nature of democracy with a misrepresentation of an article, you've won the dismal deniers for another day (or whatever brief span of time a WUWT reader can give their attention.)

Here is a summary of what Eric managed in his very short guest blog. It's probably approaching a record for the most things wrong and/or weird in the fewest words.

• He misrepresented the ABC itself
• He misrepresented the nature of The Drum on the ABC website
• He misrepresented an article in the Drum on the ABC website
• He is against any public discussion about democracy
• He is against any action to protect the environment
• He misrepresented the position held by the author of the article
• He misrepresented the argument of the author of the article.

Is Maurice Newman telling Tony Abbott he should fire him?

Maurice Newman is a "big nob" in Australia.  Or so I'm told.  He used to be Chair of the national broadcaster, the ABC.  The Prime Minister thinks so highly of our Maurice that he made him Chair of his Business Advisory Council.  I don't recommend anyone taking any advice from Maurice.

Maurice behaves like a fool, a clown, an ignorant nutter when it comes to climate science.  He's done it before.  Let me quote Maurice's own words back at him:

"...if I had financial advisers who were 98 per cent wrong I'd fire them." 

Emma Alberici interviewed him on ABC's Lateline this week for a comedy special and here are a few snippets.  See what you think.

Maurice Newman doesn't pay any attention to empirical evidence

EMMA ALBERICI: It's no secret that you don't agree that man-made CO2 is causing global warming. Given there is now consensus among 97 per cent or so of climate scientists across the world that the view - around the view that human activity is responsible for climate change, what would it take to convince you?

MAURICE NEWMAN: We know first of all that the survey which came out with the 97 per cent number was flawed in the first place. So we don't pay any attention to that. What we do look at...

EMMA ALBERICI: There have been roughly three that have come up with that.

MAURICE NEWMAN: They all come up with flawed methodologies. So we don't pay any attention to that....

Maurice Newman is a greenhouse effect denier

MAURICE NEWMAN: ...So the 97 per cent doesn't mean anything in any event because science is not a consensus issue. Science is whatever the science is and the fact remains there is no empirical evidence to show that man-made CO2, man-made emissions are adding to the temperature on earth. 

That's not what he facts show.  Maurice, keep up why don't you.  There has been empirical evidence for the greenhouse effect since Tyndall's experiment way back in the middle of the 1800s.  It even hit Australian newspapers at least as far back as 1884.

Maurice Newman says "it's the sun"

MAURICE NEWMAN: ...If you want a correlation between global climate, don't look to CO2, look to the sun's activity, there will you find a very close correlation.

Okay, let's look at the correlation between the sun and global surface temperatures:

Source: SkepticalScience.com

Oops-a-daisy.  Maurice's sun is going in the opposite direction to temperature. Will he change his tune? Unlikely. He's one of those "utter nutter" deniers who'll just say he won't "pay any attention to that... "

Maurice Newman tells a whopper of a lie

MAURICE NEWMAN: I just look at the evidence. There is no evidence. If people can show there is a correlation between increasing CO2 and global temperature, well then of course that's something which we would pay attention to.

Not true, Maurice.  There is a lot of evidence and you don't pay it any attention and don't appear to have ever done so.  In fact, it was only a minute or so back that you dismissed three separate pieces of evidence you didn't like and said "we don't pay any attention to that"!

Maurice Newman rejects scientific projections and opts for unsubstantiated "predictions"

MAURICE NEWMAN: ...And as I said, we look at the climate models, 98 per cent of them were wrong. In my old business, if I had financial advisers who were 98 per cent wrong I'd fire them. 

He's flat out wrong about the models, but he's correct that he himself should be fired.  Maurice says the sun is "highly correlated" but the scientific models are wrong?  We'll take a break and see just how "wrong" those models are and compare them to his sun:

If you were to pick between models and the sun, which would you pick?  Here they are as an animation - you decide:

If you're like Maurice and picked solar, do you realise there's been a sharp divergence since around 1980?  That's right - around 35 years ago!  If you complain the models don't fit observations you'll have notice they are pretty darn close - with only a small divergence since 2005.  (That's in part because the models weren't aware that this solar cycle would be so weak.)

So let's go back to Maurice who doesn't like "models". (Does he take a brolly when BoM forecasts 70% likelihood of rain?)

EMMA ALBERICI: That it's a pause. I guess that's what scientists say. It's a pause. They look back 800,000 years as I understand it, so 17 years in the scheme of things isn't an enormous amount of time.

MAURICE NEWMAN: I agree, but then you've got scientists, climate scientists now in Norway, in Germany, in Russia, in America, saying we're now going in for a period of 30 or 40 years of increasingly cool climate conditions.

Ha ha ha.  Maurice "clown" Newman doesn't agree with carefully constructed, physics-based scientific models that have been remarkably close to observations so far.  He dismisses the work of generations and thousands of climate scientists, but he's happy to take the solemn predictions from a handful of denier shysters from places like the Heartland Institute and EIKE!  What a nutter.

All the world is mad, but Maurice Newman

Emma takes another shot to see if Maurice will explain why he's decided that all the world is wrong but him:

EMMA ALBERICI: I'll only ask you one more questions on this because I do want to talk about other things, but both Marius Kloppers and his successor at BHP Billiton Andrew McKenzie agree that climate change is human induced. So what if those 97 per cent of climate scientists and all business people across the world, like the likes of Bill Gates and Richard Branson and the miners here in Australia, what if they're right and you and the scientists you quote are not right. Doesn't it make sense to have a policy that at least transitions Australia to cleaner fuel sources?

MAURICE NEWMAN: Emma, let's not confuse the issues. Cleaning the atmosphere, which is what carbon pollution is about, not CO2, CO2 is not a pollutant. But cleaning the atmosphere, being more efficient, all of that makes sense. That's got nothing to do with climate. That's to do with economics and being efficient. 

Oh? So carbon pollution is about cleaning the atmosphere, not about CO2!  That's definitely weird. [Late edit: Someone on another forum surmised Maurice Newman was talking about soot!  That could be it.  Maurice wants a chimney sweep! Is there no-one in his inner circle who's game enough to tell him he's nuts? Sou.]

MAURICE NEWMAN: But I would say to all of those people who are arguing that CO2 creates global warming and man is adding to the global warming to show the empirical evidence of where this is so. Because I'm saying to you that where this originates is from models. Computer models which are wrong. Now, if you can show me where there is some sort of correlation that proves beyond doubt that what we have is global warming as a consequence of CO2 and man's contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere, well then we can have a different conversation.

Hmmm, he wants empirical evidence.  He's not happy with all the empirical evidence he's been spoonfed with over the years.  Let's see if we can distil it down for him.

• CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it's what keeps Earth warm and allows species like ours to exist.  We wouldn't be here if not for CO2.
• Adding more CO2 makes the earth warmer.  It's like if you add more sugar to your cup of tea it makes it sweeter. Or adding more petrol to your car lets you drive further.  It's all about supply.

So that's the theory in a nutshell. Let's see what the evidence shows:

IPCC AR5 WG1

You can click the chart to enlarge it. What it shows is the Northern Hemisphere temperature went up when CO2 went up.  It also shows that when a volcano of any size erupted, temperature dropped. It also shows that when the sun wasn't as active then temperature dropped a teensy bit, but nothing like the reaction to adding more CO2.

Maurice Newman isn't just 98% wrong, it's virtually certain that he's 100% wrong! So will Tony Abbott follow Maurice's suggestion?

"...if I had financial advisers who were 98 per cent wrong I'd fire them." 


Maybe it's a bit unfair of Emma to take advantage of poor old Maurice Newman's failed intellect, letting him make a complete and utter idiot of himself on national television.  Lateline is meant to be for current affairs, not comedy.

If you want comedy, try Clarke and Dawe from seven years ago in 2007 (or it might have been from 2006). Back in the days when John Howard, Tony Abbott's patron, was Australia's Prime Minister. Just before he lost not just the election but his own seat.

Crikey - it's the sun (not really)

Too much time in the sun, poor things...

The deniers on HotCopper have worked themselves in a tizzy over someone posting an early draft of the IPCC report online.  They are under an illusion that the denialist blogger (who got the draft by registering himself as an 'expert reviewer', which anyone can do - even Monckton registered himself as such) has found the one sentence in that mammoth document that in his mind shows 'it's the sun' or 'it's cosmic rays' that's causing global warming.  (He ignores the surrounding sentences in true denier fashion.)

Suddenly deniers are touting the IPCC as the reliable source of information on climate science!

(Mind you, yesterday HotCopperites were saying the earth isn't warming, and some have been arguing that an ice age cometh!)

Ridiculous

However one of the lead authors of the chapter in question, Professor Steve Sherwood (who wrote the paper on heat stress), said the claims were 'ridiculous'.  From the ABC report:

Professor Steve Sherwood, the director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, was the lead author of the chapter in question. He says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is "ridiculous"....

..."Even the sentence doesn't say what they say and certainly if you look at the context, we're really saying the opposite."

Truly ridiculous

Not a single one of the HotCopper deniers has shown that they understand what the denialist blogger was talking about. Here's a link to the thread (subs req'd).  They've just made the usual cut and paste posts from denier blogs, or made comments like this one from one of the resident paranoid conspiracy junkies:

UN Agenda 21 plan for enslavement of us all? What has Ben been smoking?

And another for good measure, from poor little laddie Hanrahan who has a 'thing' for the shape of the global surface temperature record.  (Can some please tell him that making up stuff won't win him admiration from any quarter?)

Finally, an angry comment from Mr Misogynist himself, thalweg:

(HotCopper's share discussion board is really classy - Not!)

Denialist reading score - Fail!

For the back story, see John Byatt's post here, a report on ABC PM here, an article in the Guardian and an article from Graham Readfearn.  Graham's closing para says it all:

What this leak also shows is the tendency by some to dishonestly engage in an open process and to cherry-pick “facts” about climate change to suit their own arguments, while failing to consider the full body of evidence. Or in this case, failing to bother to read the very next paragraph.