Caution To The Wind
*
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=616122
60 Minutes presents a live interview with mathematician and scientist, Dr David Evans. David is here to talk to us tonight about global warming.
Interviewer: Dr Evans, thank you for joining us tonight.
Dr David Evans: Thanks for listening to me, the sceptical case has been ignored by the press till now and I think you'll find it very strong. People are finally coming to terms with it now.
BruceV asks:
David, we are about to have a terrible new tax imposed on us, surely if this government is interested in the truth they will listen to you? Thank you for speaking out and for having the courage to speak the truth.
Dr David Evans: Thank you, the reason I spoke out now is because it seemed the situation got beyond stupid and our decision makers need to be reminded than the science has changed since the last 10 years. Unfortunately, the public are also unaware of the science in the last few years and I think if they were aware there would be a public outcry that these taxes do not go ahead.
finallysomesense asks: Is the IPCC still a relevant body, or have the political considerations become such that the science is lost in the fallout for these 'scientists'?
Dr David Evans: The IPCC is a UN bureaucracy. Less than half of the 2500 involved are scientists, most are bureaucrats. The IPCC is reluctant to consider causes of global warming other than human ones. The fact that temperatures haven't risen since 2001 means that their politics are becoming untenable.
Hochie asks: Dr Evans, do you know of any alternative theory for the changing global average temperatures over the past millennium, or over past ages? E.g. I heard something about solar output fluctuating over time and I wondered if there is any data on that.
Dr David Evans: The sun affects the earth's temperature in two ways. Firstly, there can be changes in solar eradiation, meaning the amount of heat pumped out by the sun. People have observed slight variation over the decades. Secondly and probably more significantly, the sun effects cloud formation on earth through solar magnetic effects. High energy cosmic rays strike the earth and help create clouds. And those clouds had a cooling effect on the earth. But the sun's magnetic shields us from some of those high energy cosmic rays. So when the sun is active, the earth gets less high energy cosmic rays so there are fewer clouds and it gets warmer. The sun has been pretty active in the last few decades. This theory still hasn't been proven and is just at the stage of correlations. There are probably half a dozen likely influences on the global temperature and at this stage I don't know of any good evidence to know, which are the important ones except to say that because the signature is missing, we can pretty much rule out carbon emissions.
listener asks: Here is a question that concerns me in relation to the doom and gloom prediction. Given there is evidence that our earth has gone through this cycle over trillions of years, is it possible the observation is just that, observation, and there are no solutions?
Dr David Evans: Yes, it's quite possible that we humans have no effect on temperature. And all we're seeing is natural variation. Bear in mind that it was warmer in the medieval times 800 years ago and it was a couple of degrees cooler in the 17 hundreds when they had a mini ice age. Humanity generally flourish when it is hotter, so personally I regard a little bit of heating as a good thing.
mainst asks: David....... Thank you for speaking out. The voices of reason have been swamped by Hansen, Gore & the IPCC et al recently. What are your thoughts on the current solar minimum & have you heard of any research being done on intergravitational waves and their potential effects on the forces that drive the core of our planet?
Dr David Evans: No I haven't heard anything about intergravitational waves, thank you for your kind comments. It's encouraging to see that journalists are finally paying attention to this fine issue.
true asks: I to have been wondering the truths or smoke and mirrors that governments often use to create taxes, but being a layperson and taught that our planet has had ice ages and warmed up many times what makes so different this time?
Dr David Evans: We don't know that it is any different this time. The alarmist want us to believe that our emission of CO are warming the planet and while that seems a reasonable proposition two decades ago, the evidence has changed in the last decade to indicate that is certainly not the case. We don't know what caused the recent global warming, but chances are the causes are natural...
Dr David Evans: CO2 is good for plants. We humans have been digging CO2 out from under the desert in Saudi Arabia and efficiently distributing it across the planet. Plants need carbon to grow, in fact they need it more than water. Satellite data shows that over the last 2 decades the amount of plant biomass on the planet has increased by 6 percent. So increasing the CO2 levels is helping feed the planet. Not only is CO2 not pollution, but it is beneficial to all plants and most animals on the planet.
Dr David Evans: We don't know what causes global warming, except that we now are pretty sure that carbon emissions do not cause it. Therefore taking measures to decrease our carbon emissions won't have any significant effect.
pete asks: Dr Evans, our Prime Minister, who states that he, is no scientist, stated in the report that humans were to blame for increases in global temperature, which is wrong; as if we follow his point of view; we are only adding to a natural cycle, therefore we are not solely to blame (way to go Kevin). Do you get disheartened with peoples natural tendencies to follow what is being stated in popular press? Rather than looking at data which shows that the Earth’s temperature has differentiated over its’ biographic life, at periods being above modern temperatures.
Dr David Evans: Many of the crucial issues in global warming are pretty simple. Well within the grasp of any educated citizen such as the Prime Minister. You only need a high school education to be able to read a temperature graph, and to see that the temperatures have been flat since 2001. You only have to be vaguely aware of the debate to notice that the alarmist are offering no actually evidence, only results from computer models. These are things that any political or journalist should feel confident in doing. I urge our Prime Minister to spend a little more time investigating the issue himself instead of just relying on the advice of people's whose jobs depend on the belief that carbon emission cause global warming.
Dr David Evans: Yes, it's important to get our response right. If the alarmist are correct, then we should cut down our carbon emissions of the planet with overheat. If the alarmist are wrong, it's important not to cut back our carbon emissions or we'll create wide spread poverty unnecessary. There is no real substitute, except the get the real science right.
Dr David Evans: Thanks for your attention, this issue will get sorted out because it’s an issue of science. No amount of human arguing and can affect the actual effects of global warming and it will be another 2-3 decades of research before we will probably have a definitive answer as to what causes global warming. Stay Tuned ... Dr Evan's website: www.sciencespeak.com
Interviewer: This concludes our chat with Dr David Evans, Sunday August 17, 2008.
This city is going backwards, bled dry by government parasites, over-regulated, over-spun, a sad shadow of what it could have been. He had a bad tooth ache in the middle of the night and went searching for an all night chemist. There aren't any, in a city heading on to five million people. It was bucketing down rain, almost cyclonic, as we all shiver through one of the coldest winters for years. Yesterday the temperatures in Sydney went from 10 overnight to 14 during the day, which is almost unheard of here, the coldest winter day for 12 years. So much for global warming. We are being inundated with millions of dollars worth of advertising designed to scare the bejesus out of us on global warming, and it's absolutely freezing. All our electricity bills will be up this winter.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made an absolute fool of himself on Sixty Minutes; which has finally woken up to the fact that many many scientists don't buy global warming alarmism and that in fact many people think it's a crock. The Labor government has been criminally irresponsible in spreading absolute garbage on the subject, claiming there will be a drop in agricultural production when at the very worst there might be a slowing in growth, but even that's unlikely. They've whipped up fear in the community, and the more they do it the stupider they look.
Now Rudd couldn't even get the name of the IPCC right, calling it International not Intergovernmental, nor could he get right the number of scientists it supposedly has supporting its views, saying there were 4,000 when there are only 2500, and even that figure is hotly disputed as nothing but a scam. Last night, waking up in pain and knowing the Cepecal had run out, I drove through the belting rain in the freezing cold to what used to be a 24 hour chemist in Rozelle, about 20 minutes away. It was nothing but a boarded shop front. He tried the cops, he tried everything, trying to find where one was.
Eventually he parked in the back alleys around Taylor Square, not too worried about parking cops in the drenching rain at 2am, but none of the chemists around there were open either. Two slim young men kissed outside a club. The Bodyline sauna lowered dark in a back lane. It was a long time since he had been brave enough to venture there. How many people caught how many diseases in that place? Despite the weather, crowds spilled out of the clubs, drunken young things, packs of boys from the western suburbs, young queens grinding their teeth wide eyed and fabulous. They spilled out of the Stonewall Bar on to the street, the videos flashing inside.
He might as well have been a different species for all the connection he felt to these places, these descendents of their pioneering efforts. Capriccios in the 70s was the first of the gay bars on Oxford Street; and now at 2am the streets were crowded and queues outside most of the clubs. But there was nothing else. Certainly not a chemist. He asked the man in the paper shop; there aren't any, he said decisively, authoritatively, of an age and sensibility where he was most probably right.
So he thought he'd try Kings Cross, that place where he had sacrificed his youth and which was still the city's only real red light district. Maybe the Piccolo Bar would be open and he could sip hot milk amongst the aging trannies, the old stars of Les Girls who have lived out there days in the apartment buildings surrounding the once infamous club, their aging, their health and their sexuality the subject of raucous 3am humour. But the Piccolo wasn't open, the old chap who ran it and had known him since he was a drunken teenager who used to stumble in their for black coffee and icecream to sober himself up had either closed and gone home early, or was sick.
The rain kept thumping down. An infinitely desolate ice addict stood on the corner, waiting for something to come his way. A girl emerged from a hotel, promptly dumping the John she was with and running through the crowds, no doubt desperate to score while she could, cashed up, catching the dealer before he went home. "I'm too young for you," a handsome enough chap told one of the old workers. She snorted derisively. They were never too young for what she had to offer. He bought a drink in a store to swallow the nurofen he had bought; and an intense conversation broke out between two young men as to where or which bar they should go to keep on partying, their eyes wide and their cheeks twitching from amphetamine. You said you wanted to throw caution to the wind, his companion said. And the conversation continued until he brushed past them, hearing those final words: "Well it's your place then." Your place, where we'll stay up all night smoking ice and satiate ourselves in each other's bodies; your place, where I can lick you all over and you'll never feel the same again. The wind rattled, dumping another gust of rain on to the people queuing outside the clubs. Your place.... He pulled out his car keys and went home alone.
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THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.openforum.com.au/content/global-warming-science-moves
On global warming, public policy is where the science was in 1998. Due to new evidence, science has since moved off in a different direction.
The UN science body on this matter, the IPCC, is a political body composed mainly of bureaucrats. So far it has resisted acknowledging the new evidence. But as Lord Keynes famously asked, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
Four things have changed since 1998.
First, the new ice cores shows that in the six global warmings over the past half a million years, temperature rises and falls occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rises and falls in atmospheric carbon. The carbon rises could not have either started or ended the temperature rises. So there must be natural influences on global temperatures that are more powerful than atmospheric carbon levels.
This 800 year lag became known and past dispute by 2003, which is significant. The old ice core data, collected from 1985 to 1998, was low resolution: the data points were more than a thousand years apart. It showed carbon and temperature moving in lockstep, and it was the only supporting evidence we ever had for the notion that carbon caused temperature. It seemed too good to be true-it appeared we could control the temperature of the plant just by adjusting the levels of a minor gas!
Watch Al Gore's movie carefully. The old ice core data is the only evidence he presents for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. But by 2003 we had found the 800 year lag, so then we knew that temperature caused carbon, not the other way around as previously assumed. Al Gore's movie was made in 2005 so it was misleading of him not to mention the new ice core data. Would anyone have believed his pitch if he had mentioned that the alleged cause (rising and falling carbon levels) happened 800 years after the effect (rising and falling temperatures)?
Secondly, with the reversal of the ice core evidence, there is now no evidence that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.
Evidence is a set of observations by people of events. The scientific method demands evidence-theory, politics, and vested interests are all trumped by evidence. The scientific method evolved as our best method for obtaining reliable information, precisely because it was immune from forces such as power and superstition.
It is important to realize what is not evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. There is ample evidence that global warming has occurred, but it says nothing about the causes of that warming. Serious theoretical calculations for the amount of warming by 2100 range from an inconsequential 0.24°C to a catastrophic 6.2°C, but theory (including computer models) is not evidence. Comparison of model outputs to observed results is not evidence, because it cannot prove that the model is always right, only that it was right in that instance. Existing computer models treat clouds simplistically and unrealistically, and omit the effects of cosmic rays on clouds, so we cannot begin to be confident that they might approximate reality.
Western governments have spent $50b on global warming since 1990, yet have found no evidence. We are constantly bombarded with evidence that the world has warmed. Don't you think we would have heard all about any evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming, if there was any?
Thirdly, the warming trend that started in 1975 ended in 2001. The global temperature has been flat since 2001, and has dipped sharply in the last few months. The warmest recent year was 1998. This is a very different picture from that presented by the IPCC in 2001, of overpowering warming due to carbon emissions for the foreseeable future. Obviously there is some other influence on global temperatures at work, more powerful than our carbon emissions. The IPCC are silent on what those causes might be (hint: probably something to do with clouds).
So why do some people say temperatures are still rising, apart form being out of date? Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. The satellites go around 24/7, measuring the temperature across broad swathes of the world, everywhere except the poles. Three of the four world temperature records use satellite data partly or exclusively, and they all say that the world stopped warming in 2001 and that temperatures have recently dipped.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudd_feels_the_heat_on_60_minutes/
A turning point in the debate: 60 Minutes is suddenly not so sure man is heating the world to hell, after all. And it won’t have been reassured by Kevin Rudd’s shaky grasp of the evidence in spruiking his carbon tax:
PM KEVIN RUDD: But economic cost (sic) of not acting is massive, it’s through the roof. Think about food production, the Murray, think about the impact on tourism in QLD, no more Barrier Reef, Kakadu, no more Kakadu. Think about the impact on jobs, it’s huge.
Actually, even if Rudd really thinks warming will wipe out the Barrier Reef and Kakadu (neither of which show any sign of going anywhere), he is deceiving viewers by suggesting his carbon tax would make the slightest difference to the climate. Indeed, the only impact will be on jobs - as in costing them, and not, as he claims, saving them.
TARA BROWN: How certain are you that mankind is the cause behind global warming?
PM KEVIN RUDD: Well, I just look at what the scientists say. There’s a group of scientists called the International Panel on Climate Change - 4000 of them.
No, it’s actually called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And no, there are not 4000 IPCC scientists. Try 2500, instead. Rudd is lucky that this exaggeration wasn’t picked up by Brown. What’s more, a number of those 2500 don’t stand by the IPCC conclusion on man’s effect on the climate. Many others were not even consulted over the report’s bottom-line finding.
PM KEVIN RUDD: ... And what they (IPCC scientists) say to us is it’s happening and it’s caused by human activity.....
But back to Rudd, who can’t have counted on being corrected mid-scare by Brown:
PM KEVIN RUDD: Here’s a measurement which people should just sit back and pay a bit of attention to - the 12 hottest years in human history have occurred in the last 13 years. That’s a fact.
TARA BROWN: It’s not my position to correct you Prime Minister but Ive been told that in fact during the middle ages the global temperatures were two to three degrees warmer than now. Certainly we’ve had the hottest 12 years in recent history but the planet’s been a lot hotter.
PM KEVIN RUDD: Well, I stand by what the International Panel of Climate Change Scientists have had to say. There will always be argy-bargy about elements of the detail.
Where the world has been hotter in human history is now just “elements of the detail” to Rudd?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24203848-2702,00.html
The Australian
19 August 2008
Tougher dole rules for over-55s
By Patricia Karvelas, Political correspondent
The unemployed aged over 55 will be treated the same as young people on the dole and be forced to look for full-time work in order to receive their benefits under reforms being considered by the Rudd Government.
The changes, outlined in a confidential draft report commissioned by the Government, would apply much harsher rules to older jobseekers who are able to meet their dole obligations by doing part-time work or volunteering for 30 hours a fortnight.
"Generally, age-based participation requirements should no longer apply. Mature-age jobseekers should have standard job-search requirements as long as they are receiving an activity-test payment," the report says.
But the review of the welfare-to-work system introduced by the Howard government calls for a significant softening in the rules applied to single mothers.
The report, prepared by the Participation Taskforce, says single parents should be allowed more time to study and be given a break from looking for work at Christmas-New Year to be with their children, and recommends relaxing the number of times they must report to Centrelink.
Some exceptions are allowed for those aged 55 and over with no recent work experience, who may be allowed to meet their activity test through voluntary work or other approved activities, at the discretion of their employment services provider.
Under the Howard government welfare-to-work reforms, single parents are forced off the pension and on to the dole to look for work when their youngest child turns eight. They are required to accept any job offered, but the report of the taskforce - chaired by Australian Social Inclusion Board chair Patricia Faulkner - believes that this should be changed so parents can get into better jobs.
This is the Metro Theatre in Kings Cross. This place had a profound impact on me when someone - Harry Godolphin, long dead - picked me up from a youth service in the late 1960s and took me to see Hair, providing me with a sliver of acid which had quite an impact on my naive 16-year-old self. Hair, too, was the counter-cultural anthem of the era, and provided some of the musical backdrop to our increasingly crazy lives.
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=616122
60 Minutes presents a live interview with mathematician and scientist, Dr David Evans. David is here to talk to us tonight about global warming.
Interviewer: Dr Evans, thank you for joining us tonight.
Dr David Evans: Thanks for listening to me, the sceptical case has been ignored by the press till now and I think you'll find it very strong. People are finally coming to terms with it now.
BruceV asks:
David, we are about to have a terrible new tax imposed on us, surely if this government is interested in the truth they will listen to you? Thank you for speaking out and for having the courage to speak the truth.
Dr David Evans: Thank you, the reason I spoke out now is because it seemed the situation got beyond stupid and our decision makers need to be reminded than the science has changed since the last 10 years. Unfortunately, the public are also unaware of the science in the last few years and I think if they were aware there would be a public outcry that these taxes do not go ahead.
finallysomesense asks: Is the IPCC still a relevant body, or have the political considerations become such that the science is lost in the fallout for these 'scientists'?
Dr David Evans: The IPCC is a UN bureaucracy. Less than half of the 2500 involved are scientists, most are bureaucrats. The IPCC is reluctant to consider causes of global warming other than human ones. The fact that temperatures haven't risen since 2001 means that their politics are becoming untenable.
Hochie asks: Dr Evans, do you know of any alternative theory for the changing global average temperatures over the past millennium, or over past ages? E.g. I heard something about solar output fluctuating over time and I wondered if there is any data on that.
Dr David Evans: The sun affects the earth's temperature in two ways. Firstly, there can be changes in solar eradiation, meaning the amount of heat pumped out by the sun. People have observed slight variation over the decades. Secondly and probably more significantly, the sun effects cloud formation on earth through solar magnetic effects. High energy cosmic rays strike the earth and help create clouds. And those clouds had a cooling effect on the earth. But the sun's magnetic shields us from some of those high energy cosmic rays. So when the sun is active, the earth gets less high energy cosmic rays so there are fewer clouds and it gets warmer. The sun has been pretty active in the last few decades. This theory still hasn't been proven and is just at the stage of correlations. There are probably half a dozen likely influences on the global temperature and at this stage I don't know of any good evidence to know, which are the important ones except to say that because the signature is missing, we can pretty much rule out carbon emissions.
listener asks: Here is a question that concerns me in relation to the doom and gloom prediction. Given there is evidence that our earth has gone through this cycle over trillions of years, is it possible the observation is just that, observation, and there are no solutions?
Dr David Evans: Yes, it's quite possible that we humans have no effect on temperature. And all we're seeing is natural variation. Bear in mind that it was warmer in the medieval times 800 years ago and it was a couple of degrees cooler in the 17 hundreds when they had a mini ice age. Humanity generally flourish when it is hotter, so personally I regard a little bit of heating as a good thing.
mainst asks: David....... Thank you for speaking out. The voices of reason have been swamped by Hansen, Gore & the IPCC et al recently. What are your thoughts on the current solar minimum & have you heard of any research being done on intergravitational waves and their potential effects on the forces that drive the core of our planet?
Dr David Evans: No I haven't heard anything about intergravitational waves, thank you for your kind comments. It's encouraging to see that journalists are finally paying attention to this fine issue.
true asks: I to have been wondering the truths or smoke and mirrors that governments often use to create taxes, but being a layperson and taught that our planet has had ice ages and warmed up many times what makes so different this time?
Dr David Evans: We don't know that it is any different this time. The alarmist want us to believe that our emission of CO are warming the planet and while that seems a reasonable proposition two decades ago, the evidence has changed in the last decade to indicate that is certainly not the case. We don't know what caused the recent global warming, but chances are the causes are natural...
Dr David Evans: CO2 is good for plants. We humans have been digging CO2 out from under the desert in Saudi Arabia and efficiently distributing it across the planet. Plants need carbon to grow, in fact they need it more than water. Satellite data shows that over the last 2 decades the amount of plant biomass on the planet has increased by 6 percent. So increasing the CO2 levels is helping feed the planet. Not only is CO2 not pollution, but it is beneficial to all plants and most animals on the planet.
Dr David Evans: We don't know what causes global warming, except that we now are pretty sure that carbon emissions do not cause it. Therefore taking measures to decrease our carbon emissions won't have any significant effect.
pete asks: Dr Evans, our Prime Minister, who states that he, is no scientist, stated in the report that humans were to blame for increases in global temperature, which is wrong; as if we follow his point of view; we are only adding to a natural cycle, therefore we are not solely to blame (way to go Kevin). Do you get disheartened with peoples natural tendencies to follow what is being stated in popular press? Rather than looking at data which shows that the Earth’s temperature has differentiated over its’ biographic life, at periods being above modern temperatures.
Dr David Evans: Many of the crucial issues in global warming are pretty simple. Well within the grasp of any educated citizen such as the Prime Minister. You only need a high school education to be able to read a temperature graph, and to see that the temperatures have been flat since 2001. You only have to be vaguely aware of the debate to notice that the alarmist are offering no actually evidence, only results from computer models. These are things that any political or journalist should feel confident in doing. I urge our Prime Minister to spend a little more time investigating the issue himself instead of just relying on the advice of people's whose jobs depend on the belief that carbon emission cause global warming.
Dr David Evans: Yes, it's important to get our response right. If the alarmist are correct, then we should cut down our carbon emissions of the planet with overheat. If the alarmist are wrong, it's important not to cut back our carbon emissions or we'll create wide spread poverty unnecessary. There is no real substitute, except the get the real science right.
Dr David Evans: Thanks for your attention, this issue will get sorted out because it’s an issue of science. No amount of human arguing and can affect the actual effects of global warming and it will be another 2-3 decades of research before we will probably have a definitive answer as to what causes global warming. Stay Tuned ... Dr Evan's website: www.sciencespeak.com
Interviewer: This concludes our chat with Dr David Evans, Sunday August 17, 2008.
This city is going backwards, bled dry by government parasites, over-regulated, over-spun, a sad shadow of what it could have been. He had a bad tooth ache in the middle of the night and went searching for an all night chemist. There aren't any, in a city heading on to five million people. It was bucketing down rain, almost cyclonic, as we all shiver through one of the coldest winters for years. Yesterday the temperatures in Sydney went from 10 overnight to 14 during the day, which is almost unheard of here, the coldest winter day for 12 years. So much for global warming. We are being inundated with millions of dollars worth of advertising designed to scare the bejesus out of us on global warming, and it's absolutely freezing. All our electricity bills will be up this winter.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made an absolute fool of himself on Sixty Minutes; which has finally woken up to the fact that many many scientists don't buy global warming alarmism and that in fact many people think it's a crock. The Labor government has been criminally irresponsible in spreading absolute garbage on the subject, claiming there will be a drop in agricultural production when at the very worst there might be a slowing in growth, but even that's unlikely. They've whipped up fear in the community, and the more they do it the stupider they look.
Now Rudd couldn't even get the name of the IPCC right, calling it International not Intergovernmental, nor could he get right the number of scientists it supposedly has supporting its views, saying there were 4,000 when there are only 2500, and even that figure is hotly disputed as nothing but a scam. Last night, waking up in pain and knowing the Cepecal had run out, I drove through the belting rain in the freezing cold to what used to be a 24 hour chemist in Rozelle, about 20 minutes away. It was nothing but a boarded shop front. He tried the cops, he tried everything, trying to find where one was.
Eventually he parked in the back alleys around Taylor Square, not too worried about parking cops in the drenching rain at 2am, but none of the chemists around there were open either. Two slim young men kissed outside a club. The Bodyline sauna lowered dark in a back lane. It was a long time since he had been brave enough to venture there. How many people caught how many diseases in that place? Despite the weather, crowds spilled out of the clubs, drunken young things, packs of boys from the western suburbs, young queens grinding their teeth wide eyed and fabulous. They spilled out of the Stonewall Bar on to the street, the videos flashing inside.
He might as well have been a different species for all the connection he felt to these places, these descendents of their pioneering efforts. Capriccios in the 70s was the first of the gay bars on Oxford Street; and now at 2am the streets were crowded and queues outside most of the clubs. But there was nothing else. Certainly not a chemist. He asked the man in the paper shop; there aren't any, he said decisively, authoritatively, of an age and sensibility where he was most probably right.
So he thought he'd try Kings Cross, that place where he had sacrificed his youth and which was still the city's only real red light district. Maybe the Piccolo Bar would be open and he could sip hot milk amongst the aging trannies, the old stars of Les Girls who have lived out there days in the apartment buildings surrounding the once infamous club, their aging, their health and their sexuality the subject of raucous 3am humour. But the Piccolo wasn't open, the old chap who ran it and had known him since he was a drunken teenager who used to stumble in their for black coffee and icecream to sober himself up had either closed and gone home early, or was sick.
The rain kept thumping down. An infinitely desolate ice addict stood on the corner, waiting for something to come his way. A girl emerged from a hotel, promptly dumping the John she was with and running through the crowds, no doubt desperate to score while she could, cashed up, catching the dealer before he went home. "I'm too young for you," a handsome enough chap told one of the old workers. She snorted derisively. They were never too young for what she had to offer. He bought a drink in a store to swallow the nurofen he had bought; and an intense conversation broke out between two young men as to where or which bar they should go to keep on partying, their eyes wide and their cheeks twitching from amphetamine. You said you wanted to throw caution to the wind, his companion said. And the conversation continued until he brushed past them, hearing those final words: "Well it's your place then." Your place, where we'll stay up all night smoking ice and satiate ourselves in each other's bodies; your place, where I can lick you all over and you'll never feel the same again. The wind rattled, dumping another gust of rain on to the people queuing outside the clubs. Your place.... He pulled out his car keys and went home alone.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.openforum.com.au/content/global-warming-science-moves
On global warming, public policy is where the science was in 1998. Due to new evidence, science has since moved off in a different direction.
The UN science body on this matter, the IPCC, is a political body composed mainly of bureaucrats. So far it has resisted acknowledging the new evidence. But as Lord Keynes famously asked, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
Four things have changed since 1998.
First, the new ice cores shows that in the six global warmings over the past half a million years, temperature rises and falls occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rises and falls in atmospheric carbon. The carbon rises could not have either started or ended the temperature rises. So there must be natural influences on global temperatures that are more powerful than atmospheric carbon levels.
This 800 year lag became known and past dispute by 2003, which is significant. The old ice core data, collected from 1985 to 1998, was low resolution: the data points were more than a thousand years apart. It showed carbon and temperature moving in lockstep, and it was the only supporting evidence we ever had for the notion that carbon caused temperature. It seemed too good to be true-it appeared we could control the temperature of the plant just by adjusting the levels of a minor gas!
Watch Al Gore's movie carefully. The old ice core data is the only evidence he presents for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. But by 2003 we had found the 800 year lag, so then we knew that temperature caused carbon, not the other way around as previously assumed. Al Gore's movie was made in 2005 so it was misleading of him not to mention the new ice core data. Would anyone have believed his pitch if he had mentioned that the alleged cause (rising and falling carbon levels) happened 800 years after the effect (rising and falling temperatures)?
Secondly, with the reversal of the ice core evidence, there is now no evidence that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.
Evidence is a set of observations by people of events. The scientific method demands evidence-theory, politics, and vested interests are all trumped by evidence. The scientific method evolved as our best method for obtaining reliable information, precisely because it was immune from forces such as power and superstition.
It is important to realize what is not evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. There is ample evidence that global warming has occurred, but it says nothing about the causes of that warming. Serious theoretical calculations for the amount of warming by 2100 range from an inconsequential 0.24°C to a catastrophic 6.2°C, but theory (including computer models) is not evidence. Comparison of model outputs to observed results is not evidence, because it cannot prove that the model is always right, only that it was right in that instance. Existing computer models treat clouds simplistically and unrealistically, and omit the effects of cosmic rays on clouds, so we cannot begin to be confident that they might approximate reality.
Western governments have spent $50b on global warming since 1990, yet have found no evidence. We are constantly bombarded with evidence that the world has warmed. Don't you think we would have heard all about any evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming, if there was any?
Thirdly, the warming trend that started in 1975 ended in 2001. The global temperature has been flat since 2001, and has dipped sharply in the last few months. The warmest recent year was 1998. This is a very different picture from that presented by the IPCC in 2001, of overpowering warming due to carbon emissions for the foreseeable future. Obviously there is some other influence on global temperatures at work, more powerful than our carbon emissions. The IPCC are silent on what those causes might be (hint: probably something to do with clouds).
So why do some people say temperatures are still rising, apart form being out of date? Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. The satellites go around 24/7, measuring the temperature across broad swathes of the world, everywhere except the poles. Three of the four world temperature records use satellite data partly or exclusively, and they all say that the world stopped warming in 2001 and that temperatures have recently dipped.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudd_feels_the_heat_on_60_minutes/
A turning point in the debate: 60 Minutes is suddenly not so sure man is heating the world to hell, after all. And it won’t have been reassured by Kevin Rudd’s shaky grasp of the evidence in spruiking his carbon tax:
PM KEVIN RUDD: But economic cost (sic) of not acting is massive, it’s through the roof. Think about food production, the Murray, think about the impact on tourism in QLD, no more Barrier Reef, Kakadu, no more Kakadu. Think about the impact on jobs, it’s huge.
Actually, even if Rudd really thinks warming will wipe out the Barrier Reef and Kakadu (neither of which show any sign of going anywhere), he is deceiving viewers by suggesting his carbon tax would make the slightest difference to the climate. Indeed, the only impact will be on jobs - as in costing them, and not, as he claims, saving them.
TARA BROWN: How certain are you that mankind is the cause behind global warming?
PM KEVIN RUDD: Well, I just look at what the scientists say. There’s a group of scientists called the International Panel on Climate Change - 4000 of them.
No, it’s actually called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And no, there are not 4000 IPCC scientists. Try 2500, instead. Rudd is lucky that this exaggeration wasn’t picked up by Brown. What’s more, a number of those 2500 don’t stand by the IPCC conclusion on man’s effect on the climate. Many others were not even consulted over the report’s bottom-line finding.
PM KEVIN RUDD: ... And what they (IPCC scientists) say to us is it’s happening and it’s caused by human activity.....
But back to Rudd, who can’t have counted on being corrected mid-scare by Brown:
PM KEVIN RUDD: Here’s a measurement which people should just sit back and pay a bit of attention to - the 12 hottest years in human history have occurred in the last 13 years. That’s a fact.
TARA BROWN: It’s not my position to correct you Prime Minister but Ive been told that in fact during the middle ages the global temperatures were two to three degrees warmer than now. Certainly we’ve had the hottest 12 years in recent history but the planet’s been a lot hotter.
PM KEVIN RUDD: Well, I stand by what the International Panel of Climate Change Scientists have had to say. There will always be argy-bargy about elements of the detail.
Where the world has been hotter in human history is now just “elements of the detail” to Rudd?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24203848-2702,00.html
The Australian
19 August 2008
Tougher dole rules for over-55s
By Patricia Karvelas, Political correspondent
The unemployed aged over 55 will be treated the same as young people on the dole and be forced to look for full-time work in order to receive their benefits under reforms being considered by the Rudd Government.
The changes, outlined in a confidential draft report commissioned by the Government, would apply much harsher rules to older jobseekers who are able to meet their dole obligations by doing part-time work or volunteering for 30 hours a fortnight.
"Generally, age-based participation requirements should no longer apply. Mature-age jobseekers should have standard job-search requirements as long as they are receiving an activity-test payment," the report says.
But the review of the welfare-to-work system introduced by the Howard government calls for a significant softening in the rules applied to single mothers.
The report, prepared by the Participation Taskforce, says single parents should be allowed more time to study and be given a break from looking for work at Christmas-New Year to be with their children, and recommends relaxing the number of times they must report to Centrelink.
Some exceptions are allowed for those aged 55 and over with no recent work experience, who may be allowed to meet their activity test through voluntary work or other approved activities, at the discretion of their employment services provider.
Under the Howard government welfare-to-work reforms, single parents are forced off the pension and on to the dole to look for work when their youngest child turns eight. They are required to accept any job offered, but the report of the taskforce - chaired by Australian Social Inclusion Board chair Patricia Faulkner - believes that this should be changed so parents can get into better jobs.
This is the Metro Theatre in Kings Cross. This place had a profound impact on me when someone - Harry Godolphin, long dead - picked me up from a youth service in the late 1960s and took me to see Hair, providing me with a sliver of acid which had quite an impact on my naive 16-year-old self. Hair, too, was the counter-cultural anthem of the era, and provided some of the musical backdrop to our increasingly crazy lives.
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