“Canadian Senate Testimony – Skeptic side now being heard in Canadian politics” (2012-01-01). Anthony Watts approves of Canada’s Conservative government. They’re allowing “skeptics” to speak! Intellectual freedom finally reigns and the Global Warming hoax will now wither away in the bright sunshine of public scrutiny! Or something like that.
Of course the “skeptic” position has never been repressed. They never shut up no matter how completely their arguments are refuted. In Canada conservative media and politicians have been pounding the denialist drum for years because it feeds into their political prejudices.
What’s really changed? In 2011 the Conservatives eked out a small majority government with less than 40% of the ballots because of a split in the progressive vote, and are now busy inflicting their agenda on Canadians, shutting down debate.
In climate policy the Conservatives are now dismantling Environment Canada to prevent awkward research, abandoning the Kyoto Protocol in spite of wide support among voters, and as seen here staging politically useful ‘expert testimony’.
What would you think of a group of experts (Timothy Patterson, Ross McKitrick, Jan Veizer, and Ian D. Clark) that by pure chance only contained denialists? Actually, I have to give the Conservatives some credit. It’s awfully hard to find that many denialists who won’t be immediately laughed out of the room and they put in the hard work gathering them together. It’s kind of like a singing dog: it’s not that the dog can’t sing well, it’s that it even tries.
But isn’t this the kind of repressive, undemocratic, secretive, manipulative government that Anthony claims to be fighting against? Apparently not.
Wott's Up With That? 
It’s sad that when a viewpoint different than your is finally being heard, it’s newsworthy.
If anything has been thoroughly refuted, it’s the so called “science” behind AGW. Get over it.
[I don’t know what’s funnier, “finally being heard” or “thoroughly refuted”. Wait, are you saying that with a straight face? – Ben]
Gwisajoke must get his disinformation from Fox News
Seven different surveys found that Fox News watchers are the most misinformed people in America.
One of them found that Fox viewers are more misinformed than those who watch no tv news.
Canadians oil interests are just as good at astroturfing as Americans.
Friends of Science(FOS), had money funneled to what they called the Science Education Fund. The money came from the Alberta oil and gas industry through the Calgary Foundation, who funneled it through the University of Calgary and ultimately ending up at FOS.
FOS has funded Fred Singer, Sherwood Idso, Robert Balling and Pat Michaels.
[And to think they accomplished so much in spite of active government suppression. Right? – Ben]
Tony is a hypocrite for speaking of repression of a view. His site is heavily censored and represses views with which he disagrees. I haven’t been able to get a comment posted on his site for some time now.
sceptical, I admire you anyway. The main reason I come here is because Ben, and people like you, make the sacrifice for those of us who just can’t stand it.
Canadian Senate Standing Commitee on Energy, the Environment, and Natural Resources, 15/Dec/2011, testimony…
In his introduction, Ian Clark mentions that his remarks are a short version of the palaeoclimatology class he teaches. He thereby brings up a consequence of academic climate denierdom that doens’t get much specific attention. That this stuff is also being taught to the students.
As before, the skepticalscience.com Skeptic Argument numbers are from the (non-changing) Fixed Number listings. And, most of the Basic level articles will also have an Intermediate level tab…
For a one-off look-up of a popular skeptic argument, click on “Argument” above the drop down box. These current listings (with their own numbers) are in order of declining frequency.
For repeated look-ups, the taxonomy outline listing quickly becomes the quicker one to use.
2:42…no warming for a decade, or since 1998
________# 7 “It hasn’t warmed since 1998”
________#106 “Global warming stopped in 1998, 1995, 2002,2007,2010????”
________#4 “It’s cooling”
3:13…Ian Clark’s MWP
________#18 “Hockey stick is broken”
________#56 “Medieval Warm Period was warmer”
________#168 “Ljungqvist broke the hockey stick”
His description of his MWP does not seem to extend beyond the lands around the North Atlantic. Which would explain why his graph is so unlike the more appropriate graph covering the northern hemisphere (Mann, 2008).
Ian Clark’s MWP graph is diplayed (@3:13) with his testimony and all of his other graphs, here.
5:31…during interglacial, CO2 lagging temperature
________#11 “CO2 lags temperature – what does it mean”
8:52…water vapor does 98% of the greenhouse work, not CO2
________#24 “Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas”
13:00…tropospheric hot spot
________#47 “There is no tropospheric hot spot”
________#38 “Satellites show no warming in the troposphere”
14:43…looking at solar activity proxies, sunspot numbers
________#1 “It’s the sun” (Intermediate level)
Also the SkS article, “Monckton Chronicles Part II – Here comes the Sun?”,
which quotes from the Solanki “…11,000 years” paper:
And from the Solanki “…since 1970” paper:
15:58…End
Richard Alley’s “The Biggest Control Knob: carbon dioxide in earth’s climate history” (2009) Video lecture has a broad look at CO2 and geologic history.
[Such a collection of whoppers! You’d almost think he contributed to the discredited denialist film “The Great Global Warming Swindle“. Wait, he did! So this is the selected impartial expert the Conservatives wanted to get on the record…
Regarding Richard Alley’s insights, the geological objections he has faced are clearly fading away. – Ben]