freediver wrote on Mar 29
th, 2011 at 8:27pm:
It is a bit of a worry when someone can become leader of the coalition and not be able to understand something so basic.
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1301345341http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1301093956What Flannery said:
"If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow, the average temperature of the planet's not going to drop for several hundred years, perhaps over 1000 years."
What Abbott thought he heard heard:
"It will not make a difference for 1000 years," the Opposition Leader told parliament."
It does not take a genius to figure out that the point at which it 'makes a difference' is not the same as the point at which temperatures stop climbing and begin to drop.
There are vastly different scenarious that could involve anything from a very gradual rise over the next few centuries to a runaway heating effect.
Even more troubling is the number of people leaping at this with glee thinking they are suddenly onto something, even after it has been explained to them how Abbott misunderstood a rather simple statement. The media liason people always tell scientists to stop and think about how any statement to the media could be misinterpretted, but there is a limit to how idiot proof we can expect our scientists to make their public statements.
It is laughable to say what Flannery said. It is gobsmacking to see a grown man with facial hair, no less, to speak so earnestly about such a ridiculous thing. One minute it's holding temperature increases to within 2 degrees, the next it's possibly no change for centuries.
And what is the basis of these stupid pronouncements? Some computer modelling with the assumptions built into them, but which still come with the standard disclaimer:
This report relates to climate simulations based on computer modelling. Models involve simplifications of real physical processes that are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted by CSIRO or the clients (the Northern Territory Department of Lands, Planning and Environment; Queensland Department of Primary Industries; Department of Natural Resources; and the Western Australian Department of Environmental Protection) for the accuracy of forecasts or predictions inferred from this report or for any person's interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in reliance of this report. Yet the likes of Flannery will utter
millenial predictions relying on little else than the authority of his greying beard in support of $30 tax on coal. Astonishing.
Of course people jump on the opportunity to ridicule and disparage them all.
Your kind of defence, FD, of pressing your nose close up against the distiction between no change or no increase in temperature in the next milleniaum is just hairsplitting and is probably calculated to make you completely blind to the enormous bluff that Flannery's trying to get away with.i