The Naomi Oreskes witchhunt comes to Australia

Jo Nova comments below on the professional slanderer and her Australian apostle, Nick Stekete, writing in The Australian. In good Warmist form, Stekete mentions not one scientific fact in support of Warmism. The way Warmists worship authority is positively North Korean

Some people just can’t think. Naomi Oreskes “reasons” by Remarkable Parallels, which is as bogus a way of thinking as any tea-leaf-incantation that we thought we left behind in the caves.

She thinks that because she can find parallels between Tobacco and Climate Skeptics, therefore skeptics are wrong about climate sensitivity due to a trace gas. Go figure why anyone struggles to analyze ice cores when they could have just done a Google search?

I can find remarkable parallels between Lysenko and modern climate science, but I don’t bother writing a book on it. If I want answers about the climate I look at the data from the planet, not data about personalities.

Mike Steketee (Some sceptics make it a habit to be wrong) has learnt a new way to throw names from Oreskes. Nick Minchin (recently retired Senator from the conservative opposition) is just the latest target of this effusion of confusion. Now anyone who raises points against a policy can be called a “doubt-monger” and the Orwellian destruction of our language advances one more notch.

Naomi Oreskes IS the Merchant of Doubt

Ponder the irony of what Oreskes herself is doing. Is she not profiteering from being a doubt-monger about scientist’s reputations? Is she not a conspiracy theorist about webs of vested interests among conservative speakers? Could it be that her entire reasoning dies by its own sword and her claims turn out to be as hypocritical as they are mindless?

Is there any possibility that governments can become too big, too powerful? Not according to Oreskes. Now anyone who even questions the growth of government power can be spat into the box called “conspiracy theorist” or “ideologue”. The mindless vacuity of Oreskes’ reasoning sucks sensible discussion into the black hole of tribal name-calling. Mike Steketee applauds from the sidelines.

Redefining “extreme”

Can governments become too large? Just ask one of the hundred million victims of states where state-power crushed individual rights to speak. Except you won’t get many answers because those victims not only lost their right to speak, they lost their right to breathe. (Think Soviet Russia, Communist China, Communist Cambodia, Nazi Germany,…)

Nothing made by man has killed more people than overbearing government. Yet now, anyone who even questions the creeping growth of government power is dismissed as an “extremist”. There is no balance allowed in this debate.

Attacking reputations to silence a scientific debate

Ad hominem attacks are always a fallacy in science. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz held esteemed positions for decades of public service, and yet because they were ever involved with anything to do with a program or study that had the words “tobacco” in it (even if it was just a statistical test on the dangers of passive smoke), their views on global warming are therefore wrong. Thus is the great catastrophe “proved” by Oreskes and her ilk.

Nick Minchin has, of course, committed the unforgiveable sin of declaring that smokers have the right to do what they want, and not to be bossed around by the overbearing domineers who want to meddle with other people’s lives. Thus, he’s uttered the word “tobacco” and didn’t chant the right line, comrade!

What Orsekes and Steketee have discovered is merely that people who don’t want to be sock puppet citizens have principles. They don’t want to foist their own non-smoking habit on anyone else, just as they don’t want to foist an unnecessary carbon scheme on the masses. Some people are not gullible.

Why does The Australian think this transparent failure of reasoning is worth publishing in the first place? Every other newspaper in the country has soaked up the smear campaign as if it was science, but we hope The Australian might be the last hold out bastion of reason, where people don’t self-satirize themselves, and journalists don’t mistake a kindergarten name-calling program for an unbiased historical analysis.

The Questions no one can answer

Oreskes is selling doubt mongering, and the skeptics like Nick Minchin are merely asking questions no one in the western climate establishment can answer. Questions like this:

Where are the global records of raw temperature data used to calculate the global warming graphs? No one can find them.

Where are the latest global results from the ARGO oceanic temperature network, and why aren’t they published monthly on a public website?

Where is the empirical evidence for warming greater than 1.2 degrees? No one can name and explain a single paper that shows long term positive feedback that amplifies the warming, as the climate alarmists assert.

Because those who want to alarm us and control us have not got scientific evidence, they resort to the smear campaign to try to diminish the influence of the great independent minds who seek answers we ought to have.

Mankind faces the “greatest threat ever known” — supposedly. So why are the raw data, adjustments, and methods used to study this threat so difficult to find?

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Labor party facing disaster in three states

And that's not mentioning the huge unpopularity of Anna Bligh in Queensland

LABOR is in crisis across three states and faces a political disaster nationally as its dismal standing with voters puts Prime Minister Julia Gillard's health reform agenda in serious doubt.

As a shellshocked Labor copped a surprise electoral routing in Victoria, the national health plan is now likely to be a casualty, with both the NSW and Victorian Coalitions confirming they would refuse to sign up to the deal in its current form.

Adding to the party's woes was a near union-led leadership coup against South Australian Premier Mike Rann and NSW Premier Kristina Keneally facing her own union-related crisis.

Ms Keneally yesterday demanded the head of NSW Labor Party boss Bernie Riordan after his union told members to consider backing parties other than Labor at the March election.

She telephoned Mr Riordan just after 6am to tell him his position was "untenable" and "unacceptable", after it was revealed the Electrical Trades Union magazine suggested a vote for other parties.

On the way to Mass, she issued a statement that she had lost confidence in Mr Riordan and then called him back to say: "You'll hear it from me directly - you've lost my confidence as party president."

Mr Riordan is tipped to resign. "He's in absolute f ... ing shock," one Labor source said. "He's in the Riordan compound now thinking about his options. He didn't think she'd stand up to him."

In South Australia, Mr Rann escaped a move by union leaders to remove him as leader at the party's annual state conference on Saturday. He was escorted by police into the meeting before the Australian Workers Union put a motion for him to resign, which he survived by 118 votes to 61.

But it is the threat to federal Labor's health reforms that is emerging as the party's biggest concern. With the Victorian Coalition on the brink of forming government and the NSW Coalition likely to win in March, Ms Gillard will have to radically alter her health reforms. The Liberal West Australian Government is also refusing to agree to the reforms.

A spokesman for Victorian Coalition leader Ted Baillieu yesterday said he would seek an urgent briefing on the reforms if he became the next premier. "We have grave concerns about it," the spokesman said.

NSW Coalition leader Barry O'Farrell said he would not be signing up to the deal in its current form if he wins office in March, as he is expected to do.

The health reforms are a key plank of what Ms Gillard claimed was a reform agenda for the new year. Under the deal, which would see the Commonwealth take over more funding responsibility for the state-run hospital systems, the states have to agree to surrender more than a third of their GST revenue.

Yesterday Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd added to Labor's internal problems, for the first time attacking the faceless men who orchestrated his dumping from the top job and who he claims are now undermining the party and the Government.

In a direct swipe at union boss Paul Howes, Mr Rudd said: "I think it is time people grew up. "We are always in better shape when the troops are singing from the same hymn sheet."

Mr Howes' name was being bandied about yesterday as a replacement as NSW Labor president, along with Treasurer Eric Roozendaal, but Labor sources denied this.

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Qld.: Overworked ambulance drivers falling asleep on the job

AMBULANCE officers are falling asleep at the wheel, putting patients and their own lives at extreme risk because of excessive workloads. Paramedics are regularly being forced to work 16-hour shifts, contrary to occupational health and safety guidelines, to combat growing demand exacerbated by hospital ramping and lack of resources.

While paramedics struggle with the workload, ambulance management is boasting over salary savings.

"If you work more than 16 hours, experts say it is the equivalent of having two or more standard drinks and a blood alcohol limit of .05," Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (which represents paramedics) state organiser Kroy Day said. "Is this what we want for our paramedics? Driving patients around intoxicated, that is not to mention the safety concerns of having to make quick medical decisions and administer drugs."

There were almost 600 occasions (598) where paramedics worked a 12-hour shift or more in June, July and August this year, figures obtained by The Sunday Mail show. In the same three months there were almost 400 (398) rostered shifts not filled. Currently, 14 per cent of overtime in the ambulance service is due to shift extensions. In a 2005 review of work practices, workload and health for the Queensland Ambulance Service, Professor Tony Parker recommended shift duration should not exceed 12 hours including overtime.

There are about 3000 paramedics in the state's ambulance services, but Mr Day said about 250 paramedics were needed to cover the increasing workload.

Assistant Commissioner Rodney Waldz was quoted in minutes of a regional consultative committee meeting earlier this year that he expected to be "up to $600,000 in the black as a result of savings in wages and salaries due to vacancies". This amount would hire about eight paramedics.

Acting Commissioner Russell Bowles said QAS had the "best response times in the nation" and the move to 12-hour shifts was taken in full consultation with the union.

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Boats full of illegals are still flooding into Australia

No mystery about how to stop them: Just reinstate the policies of the previous conservative government -- but the present Leftist government clearly does not WANT to stop the illegals coming -- despite fighting an election on a promise of cutting the arrivals back

More than 100 suspected asylum seekers are being transferred to Christmas Island after three boats were intercepted in two days near Ashmore Island off north-west Australia.

The opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said the arrivals brought to almost 200 the number of boats intercepted since Labor was elected. "Three years ago you could count the number of people being detained who had arrived illegally by boat on one hand. There were just four," Mr Morrison said. "The Coalition's policies stopped the boats."

"Riots, brawling, gruesome protests and self-harm have all returned to our detention network after three years of Labor's failed policies," Mr Morrison said.

A spokesman for the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, acknowledged "pressures on our detention accommodation network". "Yet you have the Coalition running around the country opposing new detention accommodation," he said.

"Last week it outlined a refugee visa cap measure that would have the effect of putting asylum seekers … into arbitrary, indefinite detention."

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