The Global Warming sceptic-o-sphere is alight with loud complaining again, from one calling herself Joanne Nova.
When I first encountered this name, I was convinced this wasn’t a real person. I now know that there is a real person behind the name, but I still think it’s a made-up one. A stage name. After all, this person was an employee in a travelling theatrical show, ostensibly about science, run by the Shell corporation.
https://joannenova.com.au/about/
https://sciencecircus.questacon.edu.au/
Shell, eh ? An oil and gas company, whose self-interest comes first for its shareholders. A company that has an interest in the status quo on global Fossil Fuel subsidies and maintaining a dominant position for Fossil Fuels regarding Energy supply. Does this explain why the “self-employed” JoNova is so anti- the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and several scientific organisations ? Possibly.
Anyway, onto the moaning.
In this remarkable piece of writing, Joanne Nova exposes her lack of knowledge :-
https://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Nova-Exile_for_non_believers.pdf
With these words she shows she really knows very little at all : “The incidents […] are a call for scientists everywhere to write to our associations for the sake of our profession. We need to ask them to provide empirical evidence for their positions [on Climate Change]. If the IPCC can’t do it with all its resources, how will The Australian Coral Reef Association, or the Polar Bear Specialists Group? What is left of science if there is no debate about the evidence?”
Let us refer Jo Nova to the IPCC Synthesis Report on the Fourth Assessment Report of 2007 :-
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf
“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level…”
In other words, there’s no debate to be had.
If that is not clear enough, I don’t know what else the IPCC can do to impress on us that the data validates the predictions of Climate Change theory.
If somehow Ms Nova has evidence, empirical evidence, that replaces the conclusions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, she should cite it, instead of taking an everyday story of academic difference between polar bear scientists and blowing it out of all proportion.
Her writing is aggrieved, whingeing. She feels she has the right to whip up negative sentiment amongst her readers in place of a rational, reasoned scientific argument.
As such, she fulfils her own description : “…behaving like a teenage school-girl: repeating baseless assumptions, and spurning colleagues who disagree.”
You can win round some of the people all of the time with attempts to stir up their righteous anger. But you can’t win round the majority of reasonable people, much of the time, anyway.
The core of die-hard Climate Change deniers is getting smaller and weaker all the time – probably explaining why Joanne Nova resorts to emotional arguments.
Come on, Jo. What was your science degree ? Do you know about black body radiation ? Do you know how heat differs from electromagnetic radiation ? Do you know about radiation budget balance ? Do you understand about heat convection in the atmosphere ? Can you explain overturn in the oceans ? Can you explain why the Earth heats up ? Do you know about the heat capacity of the oceans ? Do you understand the Greenhouse Effect in any way at all ? Have you read any of the data, the charts, the graphs and reports at all ?
You can’t really argue against Climate Change science if you don’t understand it.
Joanne Nova writes : “Science will surely lose its hard-won credibility with the public as many “Scientific Associations” get caught with their pants down: supporting an international unelected, unaudited committee, without any evidence.”
The reason why all democratic bodies appoint experts to the United Nations IPCC on such matters as Climate Change is because it is science. Doing Climate Change science is not like choosing the colour of the flag, or the words of a design award. It’s not entirely open-access because of the nature of its concerns. If the ordinary people elected the members of the IPCC it wouldn’t produce science but garbage.
2 replies on “Joanne Nova : Whiny Teenager”
Now Jo, if you’ve nothing nice to say, maybe you ought not say anything at all, particularly if Ms Nova is a mere petulant school girl and “the core of die-hard Climate Change deniers is getting smaller and weaker all the time…”.
Amongst your nit-picking I notice you offer no counter-argument to any of the points raised in the sceptic’s handbook (http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/sh1/the_skeptics_handbook_2-3_lq.pdf. in case you missed it).
Your chosen snippit from AR4 may demonstrate that the Earth’s climate is currently warming, but does nothing at all to persuade anyone open minded to believe that change has anything whatsoever to do with emission of carbon dioxide of anthropogenic origin.
There’s one Jo who sounds rather like a teenage schoolgirl whose split a nail though.
I have read her writing and find it reasonable and quite accurate. You guys are just riding a bubble and when the bubble burst your billions will no longer bev there to finance your propaganda. I have determined that the so-called “anthropogenic global warmiong” has never been observed. The temperature curves showing w3arminmg w3ithin the last thirty years are all faked. There was a warming surge from 1998 to 2002 that raised global temperature by 0.35 degrees but the trend before and after remained horizontal, not rising as you claim. But your worst nightmare surely must be that addition of carbon dioxide cannot influence global temperature. Ferenc Miskolczi has determined, using NOAAs weather ballon database that goes back to 1948 that th4eglobaql average atmospheric optical density in the infrared has not changed fot 61 years and has a value of 1.87. This means that constant addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere for 61 years straight has not changed its transparency to heat radiation from below one whit o0r the optical density would have incre4ased, and this did not happen. To put it another way: the greenhouse absorption signature of carbon deioxide simplyn isnt there.