Derek Sorensen

This was originally posted in September, 2012 on ecademy.com, a site which no longer exists. I’m posting it again here because the topic has become current again.

I believe that in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon and Michael Collins remained in Lunar Orbit. These three men were my childhood heroes, along with the Russian Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

I believe that smoking causes cancer. That knowledge doesn’t prevent me from smoking, even though I know it should. I believe that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus.

I believe Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK, although I admit I don’t know enough about it to know why I believe that. Nor do I know enough about the assassination of Martin Luther King to really form an opinion.

I believe the Illuminati are a fictional construct and there is no New World Order, although I also believe that people in power would like more power, and some will do practically anything to get it.

I believe that the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 was a cock-up of the grandest scale on the part of the US Navy. In particular I do not believe any government would purposely permit their people and particularly their materiel to be wasted in this way.

I believe that Area 51 is a US Air Force base. I don’t believe there are any aliens there, either living or dead (although I did thoroughly enjoy the recent Pegg/Frost film, Paul).

I believe that the attacks of September 11th 2001 were the work of Muslim terrorists.

I don’t know enough about SARS to form an opinion.

I don’t believe a Flying Saucer crashed at Roswell in 1947.

I believe Princess Diana’s death was a tragic accident, caused by pursuit by Papparazzi and her driver being under the influence of alcohol.

I don’t know anything about the Oklahoma City bombings and I’m not sufficiently interested to want to find out.

I believe Coca Cola is quite tasty, although I prefer lemonade. I hadn’t heard until recently that Coca Cola might have done some clever marketing related to changing the formula. If they did, then fair play to them.

I don’t know enough about CFCs to be certain one way or the other about whether they have a serious impact on the Ozone Layer. I have come across some bits and pieces in the past about CFCs and patents, and the timing of the discovery of the Ozone Layer, but I’ve not done enough research subsequently to form a definite opinion. I’m content that not using CFCs is, on balance, a good thing.

I believe that protection of the environment trumps financial concerns. The caveat is that I feel the Precautionary Principle as commonly stated goes too far and is harmful both to the economy and to the environment.

I believe that global average temperatures have increased during the past century. I believe that human activities have contributed to that increase. 97% of carefully selected Climate Scientists also believe this, as do most climate sceptics. I don’t believe that this is catastrophic, and I don’t believe it will become a catastrophe. I think that overall, warmer is better. I also believe that the climate has always changed.

I believe that Stephan Lewandowsky is a sincere CAGW activist, who believes that a gerrymandered survey aimed to paint anyone who doubts the CAGW thesis as a swivel-eyed loon will help his cause. I also believe his paper will be retracted.

I believe this will be my last blog on the CAGW meme. Mother Earth has decided not to play along any more, and the whole thing will come crashing down in a handful of years, to be replaced by another scare story as justification for emptying your wallet, and the whole thing has gone so far beyond ridicule no longer even holds any entertainment value. I believe I might comment on other people’s blogs on the subject, and I’ll continue to whinge about inefficient methods of energy production such as Wind and Solar.

Evil Oil-funded Climate Change Deniers have kidnapped the BBC’s Richard Black and replaced him with a climate-change sceptical clone.

It’s the only way I can account for this BBC environment article.

Here’s the end of the piece, which is about modelling the climate of the UK - one of the best understood climates in the world. The phrase “these figures” in the quote refers to the wildly difffering predictions of various different climate models on such things as floods and heatwaves:

When quizzed about these figures, one of the Met Office scientists said that many other projections were based on single computer models.

Putting the range of uncertainty in the public domain from this large suite of models was, she said, “intellectually honest”.

Fair enough. But the exercise also surely gives you an insight into the limits of current modelling when the various models, each of them supposed to be “state-of-the-art”, reach such divergent conclusions.

As a policymaker, as a business leader, as a citizen, would you make decisions on the basis of these models?

Something should be done! We want the old Richard Black back - this one isn’t nearly as funny - but he doies appear to be more “intellectually honest”.

Seriously, though, it’s quite an interesting thing to see Black, formerly so cosy with UAE’s CRU, etc. suddenly writing something that you would not be at all surprised to see on a sceptical site: that models can’t be relied upon. And whatever else he is, Black is no fool. He knows that the entire fabric of Man-made Global Warming is based on computer models. To declare no faith in them is to declare disbelief in Man-made Global Warming.

I never thought I’d see the day. First Monboit falling in love with Nuclear energy, then Mark Lynas declares his mistrust of the IPCC, and now Richard Black, quite possibly the most visible of the Climate Change Alarmists at the BBC, admits that Man-made global warming is a crock. Who knows, he might even start reporting real science, as opposed to Team “science”, one day soon.

They say that rats leave a sinking ship. Is that what we’re seeing here? Or could there be a more charitable explanation? I honestly hope so; I don’t believe anyone is ever totally beyond redemption. Hate the sin, not the sinner, and all that.

Steve Jones appears to be rather cross at the reception his report into the BBC’s science reporting received.

The first four paragraphs of his diatribe are about Flat Earth theory, and at least part of it appears to be a debunking, which rather baffles me - why bother? But paragraph 4 begins with this wonderful non-sequitur:

Flat Earthism goes back a long way and is alive today, for one English primary-school child in five believes in it.

Well, yes, Steve; and many five year olds believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. That says nothing about the prevalence of adults who believe in those things. To a child, looking around him, the earth looks flat. They have to be taught that it is a sphere.
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Dr. Tim Ball is a Candian Climate Scientist who is sceptical about Anthropogenic Global Warming. Recently, following the revelations in what have become known as the Climategate emails, and some excellent detective work by Steve McIntyre uncovering precisely what “tricks” were used in the creation of the 1998 “Hockey Stick” graph, Ball made an off-the-cuff remark, in writing, that Professor Michael Mann “should be in the State Pen, not Penn State” for his role in the affair.
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