john-ston, you are confusing “climate” with “weather”.

And science is about probability, not about certainty. It was failure to accept this that led a scientist as brilliant as Albert Einstein to waste the last decades of his life. He could not accept quantum physics, which, incidentally, is the science underpinning global warming, because it is based on probability. His ideological (in his case religious) position required certainty (an omnipotent God would have created an ordered universe), therefore there had to be a unified field theory that would supersede probability-based quantum physics.

The likes of Rodney Hide think similarly, except their God is the free market. Where they come from is that if global warming were happening, the free market would be able to address it. But because they cannot see a way the free market can address it, they conclude it therefore cannot be happening. It does not fit their ideology.

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Why do you need to manufacture uncertainty? What I see is enough to make me uncertain about global warming; what I see is that there has been plenty of unusual cold weather events over the last decade; snow in places that hadn’t seen it in over half a century; snow in places such as Los Angeles that had never seen it in record history. Snow coming early, snow staying late.

I would love to see the Green Party reaction the day that Auckland gets snowed in.

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We may be regressing to where the US was half a decade ago, when Inhofe was holding farcical hearings pitting a legitimate climate researcher against a couple of fossil fuel industry funded lackeys.

Hide: Do you agree that rising CO2 levels would have very few drawbacks, and great benefits like more barbecues and higher libidos?
witness #1: No, most likely it would have disastrous consequences.
witness #2: Yes, it’s definitely a great thing.
witness #3: Yes. Can I have my money now?

Manufacturing uncertainty in a way that would make the tobacco industry proud.

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XYY’s correct: “internationally respected climate scientists” is code for the cranks. Crops up all the time in NZ CSC and Heartland releases.

Which suggests a line of attack…

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Hey select committees means that you can go along and make a 5-minute submission or something. Let’s do find out when that is, and how to make a submission. Maybe get a group together armed with information from skepticalscience.com and Spencer & Weart, then after the “expert” has their say, go through and present the relevant scientific rebuttals of their position.

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It’s a pity for Act that National managed to get the words ‘internationally respected’ in the proposed terms of reference.

iI won’t help — David Bellamy is internationally respected, but unqualified to speak about climate science. They could have said “scientists actively publishing in peer-reviewed climate journals” but it looks like they want to let the deniers in.

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Labour worked on the issue for many years, but took their bloody time in actually getting legislation to parliament. They considered, and considered, and considered, for many long years. And with weeks left to go, they finally put something in place.

It was obvious that their last minute unentrenched legislation would be rolled back. I blame Labour for this one too.

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Thanks Bucolic Old Sir Henry. I had missed that the terms of reference were still draft. Not reading closely enough. I’m fascinated to know where Act intends to get internationally respected climate scientists to put the alternative view point to their committee. Maybe this delaying tactic /farce will be over faster than we think?

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Frog: those are ACT’s draft of the terms of reference. See here for more. If the final terms include that first “science” bullet point, then I would expect NZ’s science community to be rather upset. But given National’s attitude to R&D, perhaps they don’t care…

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>While our contributions to both the problem and the solution are small
>(except on a per capita basis) they are just as important as every other
>group of 4 million people.

If we were proposing to do just the same as most other groups of 4 million people are proposing to do, it would not be such an issue. The problem is that Labour and the Greens want to do much more than that, while everyone else sits on their arse laughing at us for effectively imposing tariffs on our own exports.

If everyone else does nothing, we are definitely better off doing nothing unless you buy into the fanciful theory that other countries will be so impressed by our leadership and will want to do the same.

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