Time’s Up

Back in 2012 my father and I attended a “conversation” on climate change which was held in Hobart.  The four main speakers spouting the pseudo-scientific bullshit that night were Prof. Tim Flannery, Prof. Will Steffen, Prof. Lesley Hughes and some slow, boring economist, Mr. Roger Beale.

After the forum had concluded, I managed to approach Prof. Flannery; I asked him when Brisbane would run out of water, and Flannery kindly professed:  “Within the next couple of years.”

Now, “a couple of years”, surely, means “two years” and it has now been two years since our colloquy.  Has Brisbane run out of water?   I checked the figures here and here; it appears that Brisbane’s dams average over 89% capacity, with several over 96%.

It seems to me, if dams average an 89% capacity, with none at all anywhere near empty, that Brisbane will not run out of water even within the next couple of years.

A Submission to the DPP

I sent this submission today to Mr. Tim Ellis SC, the Tasmanian Director of Public Prosecutions:

I write to suggest respectfully that you give serious consideration to investigating Prof. Tim Flannery (the Australian Climate Commissioner) and, should you find sufficient evidence—as I’m sure you will—I advocate that you prosecute him for conspiracy to defraud the people of Tasmania, for fraud, for acquiring a financial advantage, and for numerous other crimes.
I was present in the audience recently (at the Hobart Town Hall, on Wednesday, 22 February) when Prof. Flannery and several other malfeasant accomplices presented false, manufactured, deceitful, specious arguments in favour of the fraudulent, pseudo-scientific conjecture of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).  It is obvious wherefore Prof. Flannery promotes the silly, unfalsifiable (and therefore unscientific) conjecture of CAGW: he makes a great deal of money therefrom and clearly expects to make much more; he already receives a handsome salary (plus, I imagine, other benefits) extracted from taxpayers (by way of incompetent governments); he also stands to extort more funding for his self-interested proposals for the development of geothermal energy.

I shall gladly provide contact details of real scientists who can explain how greatly mistaken Prof. Flannery’s predictions, analyses and explanations are.  It is my contention, of course, that Prof. Flannery is more than mistaken: he must know by now that CAGW is a scam, but he relentlessly continues to spread alarmist, nonsensical claims of likely doom for all mankind from slightly rising seas and insignificantly increased average temperatures because of his egregious greed.
Prof. Flannery and his fellow conspirators need to be prosecuted for their willfully criminal attempts to defraud, and for their related, alarmist scaremongering, so I beg you to investigate this mendacious, mercenary, lucripetous, alleged scientist (and to acknowledge this request) as soon as possible.

From the Tasmanian Criminal Code Act 1924:

252A.  Acquiring a financial advantage

—(1)  Any person who by any deception dishonestly acquires for himself or for any other person any financial advantage is guilty of a crime.

297.  Conspiracy

—(1)  Any person who conspires with another [...]

(c)  to commit any crime;
(d)  to cheat or defraud the public, or any particular person, or class of persons;
(e)  to extort, by any means, any property whatever from any person;
(f)  to inflict by any unlawful means any injury or harm upon the public, or any particular person or class of persons;
(h)  to do any act involving, and known to be likely to involve, public mischief; [...]

is guilty of a crime.

UPDATE I (3 March):  I sent today a request to Mr. Chris Craigie SC, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, recommending that he too investigate and prosecute Prof. Flannery (under provisions of the Criminal Code Act 1995) “for obtaining a financial advantage by deception, for general dishonesty, for conspiracy to defraud, and for numerous other crimes.”

UPDATE II (5 March):  I received this message from Cathy Granger, Executive Assistant to the DPP:

Mr Ellis SC has read your letter and has asked me to advise you that he has no investigative function or power.

UPDATE III (5 March):  I sent today a request to Tasmania Police recommending that the police investigate and prosecute Prof. Flannery.

Climate Commission “Conversation”

On Wednesday, 22 February, a “conversation” on climate change was held in Hobart to discuss the associated impacts and opportunities for Tasmania.  Well, we were told we’d have a conversation; instead, a high school lecture was given on how we are corrupting the planet and how we need a magical tax on “carbon” to save us (even though without carbon dioxide we wouldn’t breathe) and that the planet would thank us therefor.

The four main speakers who were spouting this pseudo-scientific bullshit were Prof. Tim Flannery, Prof. Will Steffen, Prof. Lesley Hughes and some slow, boring economist, Mr. Roger Beale.

After the presenter, Kim Millar, had finished licking everyone’s arse clean, Tim Flannery started by pointing out that they were completely independent and were not under any political influence.  He then went on to say just how bad it would be if the temperature rose half a degree over the next decade.

When Flannery had had his fill he introduced Will Steffen, who continued the scare story, saying that the polar caps will melt and cause the sea-level around Tasmania to rise 3mm each year; he seemed to think that the rise would continue at a rate of 3mm a year, for a century, with no fluctuation at all.

After Steffen, the egg-looking man, Beale, presented a school-level power-point display which, like the other offerings, depicted nasty buildings letting out steam from their chimneys, and went on to claim—incorrectly—that CO₂ is the leading, most important greenhouse gas, and that “the planet knows how to release heat” and that it has been doing it since the beginning and seems to know what it is doing.

The last contribution of the introductory speeches was given by Lesley Hughes who said that, as the temperature increases, we will have less salmon; as she said this, she referred to the movie “Finding Nemo”, and claimed that the salmon would be unable to live in 1% warmer water.  She then displayed another, cute card, saying that the broad-toothed mouse (a species which survived previous warm periods and the last Ice Age, and is still around today) would be unable to cope with another 0.5% increase in temperature, and die out.  She added that more extreme weather would occur, and that people wouldn’t be able to survive a 45ºC maximum temperature nearly every day; in effect, she was saying that cities of Arabia are already uninhabitable.

The presenter then announced question time and joked about killing people by way of ejector seats if they did not comply with the rules that questions be brief and non-political; nonetheless, all the questions, except two, were either long, about politics, or just complete Dorothy Dixers about how Greens are such great people, that we must save the planet, and that we would all be happy to pay a high “carbon” tax.
The presenter failed to call on me to ask a question, though I raised my arm for over half a weary hour, but I managed to approach Prof. Flannery after the forum had concluded.  I asked, “What if you’re wrong about AGW?”
Flannery responded, “What’s AGW?”
I said, “Anthropogenic global warming; you know, man-made.”
He replied, “Oh, yeah.  If we’re wrong, at the very least, we’ll have cleaner air because carbon dioxide and burning coal is bad, and we’ll have better energy.  If we’re right we’ll have all the other benefits.”
I asked when Brisbane would run out of water and Flannery stated, “Within the next couple of years.”
A conversation (coming from the Latin for “back and forth”), refers to an exchange of ideas, but the Climate Commission’s “conversation” consisted of our listening to lectures and lengthy, unnecessary answers and grandstanding questions from pious believers.

On Wednesday, 22 February, I survived an hour and a half of complete pseudo-scientific bullshit with only a few decent biscuits at the end as a slight compensation.

(Also posted on Alfred’s Review.)

Tasmania’s Littoral Doom

The Climate Commission, the Government’s mystagogic office for the propagation of the faith in Global Warmism, has released its latest mendaciously misleading, and ill written report, The Critical Decade: Tasmanian Impacts and Opportunities:

Tasmania is particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise because most Tasmanians live close to the coast.  For instance, in some places a 50 cm sea-level rise could [could!] result in a present 1-in-100 year event becoming an annual or more frequent event by the end of the century. [p. 2]

Global average sea level has risen by about 20 cm since the late 1800s, and at an increasing rate since the early 1990s.  Sea levels have also risen around Tasmania, although at a slightly slower rate than the global average.  Over the next century, global sea levels are projected to increase by at least 0.5 m and perhaps [perhaps!] by as much as 1.1 m.
Tasmanian communities are vulnerable to the impacts of sea-level rise because 75% of the population lives in coastal areas (DCC, 2009).  An estimated 8,700–11,600 houses, with a value of up to $3.3 billion, may be at risk of flooding towards the end of this century [...], assuming a sea level rise of 1.1 m which is at the higher end of projections (DCC, 2009).
The impacts of sea-level rise are felt most acutely during severe storm events.  Even small rises in sea-level lead to very large increases in the frequency of coastal flooding when combined with a storm surge and high tide [what, just the one surge and high tide?].  In some locations in Tasmania, a half metre sea-level rise would [would?] result in a present 1-in-100 year event becoming an annual or more frequent event by the end of the century (Church, 2008; Hunter 2011).  [p. 4]

The cover’s image: giant whirligigs obliterate all of Tasmania’s islands.

It is true that many Tasmanians “live close to the coast”, and I am one of them—the beach, for me, is only a stone’s throw away, littorally—; but my dwelling is several metres above sea-level so, though I am part of the “75% of the population [which] lives in coastal areas”, I will surely be quite safe.  In fact, even if the oceans did rise by half a metre, and even if governments neglected to undertake simple, prudent measures such as building seawalls, the majority of Tasmanians would be safe because, though the commission avoids mentioning the fact, most Tasmanians who live near the sea also live well above sea-level.

The projections of any rise of sea-level are based on an incorrect assumption—from either incompetent or willful ignorance of the latest research—that the slight, modern rise of sea-levels will continue; however, as Stuart Rintoul revealed last year, despite our Government’s hyperbolic claims, such rises are decelerating:

Mr [Phil] Watson’s analysis of the four longest continuous Australian and New Zealand records is consistent with the findings of US researchers Robert Dean and James Houston, who analysed monthly averaged records for 57 tide gauges, covering periods of 60 to 156 years.

The US research concluded there was “no evidence to support positive acceleration over the 20th century as suggested by the IPCC, global climate change models and some researchers”. 

Houston and Dean demonstrate that “the current sea-level trend of about 1.7 mm/y will produce a rise of about [19 cm] over 110 years from 1990 to 2100.”  For aught we know, of course, sea-levels may yet descend just as average global temperatures may decline in future decades.

The commissioner of the Climate Commission, the very silly Prof. Tim Flannery foresaw that currently flooded areas would never again see rain but our Earth would soon be revealed to be a living, physical manifestation of Gaia, an earth-mother goddess of the Ancient Greeks.  The inept Climate Commission’s ridiculously contrived, pseudo-scientific report on the conjectured effect of supposed global warming on Tasmania has even less value than its fatheaded commissioner’s far-fetched and hysterical prognostications. 

What Flannery Thinks