Monday 17 August 2009

Gluckman versus science [update 2]

Professor Peter Gluckman, a world-ranked paediatrics researcher, has hit out at scientists in another field, calling them the equivalent of AIDS-deniers.

As a non-active non-climate researcher himself, and on the back of just one month of being schooled up by warmist zealots on the science of “climate change,” he told an audience over the weekend that “there are some scientists, although few of these are active climate researchers, who dispute the generally held [warmist] conclusions" – suggesting that if they’re not active climate researchers they should shut themselves up or be tarred with the brush of AIDS-denial.

I suggest that as a non-climate researcher himself he should either listen to his own advice, lest he be tarred as someone who’s been captured by zealots in the cause of warmistry.

Or perhaps he could complete his short semester of climate change education by giving active New Zealand climate scientists like Professor Bob Carter and Chris de Freitas a call to hear the science he obviously hasn’t about.  I’m sure they’d take his call, even if he didn’t apologise for the insult.

UPDATE 1: If the warming of the late 20th Century had not come to an end, what kind of catastrophe were we headed for? asks the Objectivist Individualist. Answer, says “Australia's best-known academic geologist” Ian Plimer in his best-selling book Heaven and Earth, is apparently one similar to the Medieval and Roman Warmings. And exactly how “catastrophic” was that?

    The Medieval Warming period from 900 to 1300 was a period of great human advances in Europe, China, and Angkor Wat in southeast Asia. Humans generally prospered and were able to more easily feed and cloth themselves. As a result, they had enough time and resources to be able to undertake the building of cities, great cathedrals, and the start of universities throughout Europe. Europe started importing goods from China and the East Indies via the Orient. The Orient itself prospered with renewed agriculture, trade, and the establishment of institutions of learning. This period was warmer than the late 20th Century period. . .
    There was a great expansion in trade. People could produce more than was needed for subsistence and were able to trade the excess. The warm period was accompanied by fewer storms and intense winds were less common than during the Dark Ages. Note that this is contrary to the claims of many Global Warming Alarmists today. . .

Read the whole extract from Plimer’s book here.

UPDATE 2: New observations of Jupiter’s moon Titan (similar to Earth but with a methane cycle instead of a water cycle) find that the weather on the planet isn’t acting anywhere like the way computer models say it should be. From the Egoist Blog:

"The models predicted that the equatorial region should be very dry and should not support cloud formation," said astronomer Henry Roe of Lowell Observatory in Arizona. "But this episode created clouds over both the equator and the south pole. We don't know what set off that sequence, but something gave a pretty good kick to the atmosphere."
Reality does not slavishly obey the computer "models"?? Who'd a thunk?
Here's some words of wisdom more scientists need to grasp:
"We really need to keep observing Titan in detail for many more years in order to get a true understanding of how its seasons change," Roe said.
On earth as it is in heaven, forever and ever, amen.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

you mean the heavily discredited chris de freitas?

Anonymous said...

Do you have any links or other info about Chris being discredited?

WWallace said...

There's a new anti-GlobalWarming letter from 100 physicists, including a Nobel winner, urging the Council of the American Physical Society to change its official stance to say that climate changes are neither exceptional nor persistent and questioning the need for alarm.

PotKettle said...

What about your good self, Peter?

Climate Scientist or just another big loud mouth? In other words, are you more qualified to have opinions on Climate change than Gluckman?

Anonymous said...

Observations obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based instruments reveal that Neptune's largest moon, Triton, seems to have heated up significantly since the Voyager spacecraft visited it in 1989.

"Since 1989, at least, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming percentage-wise, it’s a very large increase," said James L. Elliot, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA. The warming trend is causing part of Triton’s frozen nitrogen surface to turn into gas, thus making its thin atmosphere denser. Dr. Elliot and his colleagues from MIT, Lowell Observatory, and Williams College published their findings in the June 25 issue of the journal Nature.

Since 1989 Triton's temperature has risen from about 37 on the absolute (Kelvin) temperature scale (-392 degrees Fahrenheit) to about 39 Kelvin (-389 degrees Fahrenheit)

Maksimovich

gregster said...

Climate Scientist or just another big loud mouth? In other words, are you more qualified to have opinions on Climate change than Gluckman?

Mrs PotKettle.

The climate propaganda is flawed, illogical and the central plank in the theory, that of CO2 being a climate driver, is nonsense, as we have read from geologists, who deal in timeframes not of 50 years or even 100, but millions.

I take it you would rather trust the words of UN socialists, rather than concerned freedom fighters like PC, those who would rather redistribute Westerners' money, channelled through backhander accounts, in the name of protecting the planet.

These scum, and that's being generous, will do untold damage to the planet, if not resisted.

You are either stupid, or wilfully ignorant, probably both.

Do the planet a favour..

Peter Cresswell said...

PotKettle: Me? Oh, I'm just another big loudmouth still awaiting the evidence that's supposed to require shackling my production by up to forty percent on 1990 levels.

How about you, sir?

Sally O'Brien said...

As for AIDS denial, some items that give pause for thought that the third world "AIDS epidemic" maybe another case of alarmism not unlike AGW.

Over 2,000 scientists, medical professionals, authors and academics are on record that the “Hiv-Aids” theories, routinely reported to the public as if they were facts, are dubious to say the least.
http://www.rethinkingaids.com/quotes/aidsquotes.htm

http://www.duesberg.com/about/index.html

http://www.duesberg.com/subject/africa2.html

http://www.theperthgroup.com/SCIPAPERS/africafactandfiction.html

"The claim that only established “peers” have the knowledge to decide on AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc. is not consistent with their failures to explain or cure these diseases."
http://www.smart-publications.com/articles/MOM-duesberg.php

From Stephen Hicks:
Two cautionary tales about cholera, the plague, and politics
The plague hit London again in the hot summer of 1665. Panic struck and rumors abounded about its cause. The Lord Mayor of London was convinced of one theory: the plague was spread by cats and dogs. So he ordered all the city’s cats and dogs killed, and an estimated 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were exterminated.
The truth is that the plague’s germs were carried by fleas that lived on rats.
http://www.stephenhicks.org/2009/07/27/two-cautionary-tales/

LGM said...

Fleas that live on rats....

also an apt description of collectivists sneaking in on the back of the climate change pushers.

LGM

James said...

As an aside....can anyone tell me where swine flu went?I haven't seen him about in the media lately....is he on holiday with his mates Y2k,SARS and Global Warming?

gregster said...

James,

no he's on holiday with Peak Oil, World starvation, God & Armageddon.

James said...

Ahh, hope he's having a nice time then.

;-)

Owen McShane said...

If natural gas is a fossil fuel where did all that methane on the Moons of Jupiter and Saturn come from?

PotKettle said...

Owen, are you suggesting that natural gas is not a fossil fuel?