Preparing for the apocalypse one more time with Paul Sheehan ...

Generally grumpy apocalyptic Chicken Little Paul Sheehan building up to the New Year yesterday under the header We cannot slow down and it is at our peril:

Then there is climate change, an encompassing process of accelerating change and disruption. The ideology of manic economic growth, driven by the false wisdom that technology can conquer problems caused by technology, is clearly having a global impact on the environment caused by the reality that 7 billion people now live on the planet and the average person is consuming far more than ever before in history. That this must significantly affect not just the environment but the global climate invokes the most basic and self-evident commonsense. 
The world's scientific community has presented a compelling case that the acceleration of global consumption is in turn accelerating the much deeper natural pattern of climate change. 

Generally grumpy apocalypse-denying, Ian Plimer and Heaven and Earth celebrating, Paul Sheehan back in April 2009 under the header Beware the climate of conformity:

Observations in nature differ markedly from the results generated by nearly two dozen computer-generated climate models. These climate models exaggerate the effects of human CO2 emissions into the atmosphere because few of the natural variables are considered. Natural systems are far more complex than computer models. 
The setting up by the UN of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 gave an opportunity to make global warming the main theme of environmental groups. "The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists." 
Ian Plimer is not some isolated gadfly. He is a prize-winning scientist and professor. The back cover of Heaven And Earth carries a glowing endorsement from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Numerous rigorous scientists have joined Plimer in dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy. 
Heaven And Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence. 

Amongst the tremendous scientific evidence led by Sheehan in that review?

The book's 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years' research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: "An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history."


Don't feel the science, just feel the size of the words, the footnotes and the doorstoppper pages and the sundry "ologies".

Generally grumpy apocalyptic Chicken Little Paul Sheehan listing all the A to Z faults of the Greens back in November 2010 under the header Green by name, flaky by nature, and coming to U (forced video at end of link):

U: Urban heat islands. Another complication for climate action alarmists is the general rise in temperatures measured in urban areas, reflecting the huge trends in global urbanisation.

Just another of many endless snipes and goadings and proddings about climate science, the carbon tax, the Greens, led by Sheehan over many rants.

Poor old Bob Brown felt the need to respond and point out his negativism and routine dyspepsia and the ranting nature of the tirade:

In the hottest year in recorded human history, we're cooling, Sheehan says. (here)

Yep, dyspepsia-laden Sheehan is much loved by the climate sceptics, and another of his columns, berating the Greens and the carbon tax and the climate science, caught the eye of Australian Climate Madness, which  celebrated the way his rant would have the latte-sipping urban-green elite spraying their organic muesli over the breakfast table (Paul Sheehan unloads on the Green government).

Uh huh. Guess that means the bark-chewing, eucalyptus-leaf munching hillbilly hicks will be spraying their bacon and eggs and field mushrooms and fried tomatoes all over the breakfast table this morning as they slowly repeat after Sheehan:

The world's scientific community has presented a compelling case that the acceleration of global consumption is in turn accelerating the much deeper natural pattern of climate change. 

Hang on, hang on, how come urban elites only get to eat organic muesli and never get to eat bacon and eggs, sunny side up if you please waiter, and with lashings of toast to soak up the goo? 

And remember field mushrooms only need a dash of butter and a hint of salt ... and the bacon must be crisp, like the bacon you could get before the war (come on down Goons fans, and clap hands with Prince Charlie, who must be someone's darling)

Sorry, bacon and eggs and mushies might be crucial for clear scientific thinking in the morning, but let's just go a little referential and remind readers of another Paul "Magic Water" Sheehan effort, this time in the matter of Lord Monckton and DDT - you can get the links at Deltoid, here.

So what are we to make of this Sheehan recantation, this sudden abject surrender to climate science, under the cover of New Year celebrations?

Should there be dancing in the streets?

Not really, because it's just another example of Sheehan having the scientific rigour and logic of a limp noodle, and of a man who can't be trusted for a nanosecond for insights deeper than a marshmallow.

The rest of the column, you see, features Sheehan borrowing from other writers, and dressing up in their finery, all so he can write yet another alarmist apocalyptic foretelling of a gloomy future, in matters of civilisation and economics and suchlike.

It's the Sheehan way, and the moment he sees another bauble, another piece of climate denialist costume jewellery, another squirrel, or perhaps white rabbit with fob watch, he'll be off at a canter down the hole, dragging his bemused readership with him. Savaging the Greens, celebrating Lord Monckton, and so on and so forth, like a dodo in search of ways to sound extinct.

Lord Monckton?

Oh yes, Sheehan was there and you can take a stroll down that memory lane by looking up Ten anti-anti-commandments and Lord Monckton's verbal bombs, which parades all the climate denialism you'll always wish you'd never bothered to read. Starting with polar bears and ending up with Kevin Rudd.

Put simply, and perhaps elegantly, Sheehan is a fool.

It's simply impossible to take anything he says seriously, and in his own funny way, he does enormous damage to the Fairfax brand, by making the rags that publish his clownish shallow tosh impossible to take seriously. 

One minute he's off with the pixies and the Moncktons and the Plimers and the next minute he's hailing the learned scientific community for their learned ways ...

Indeed reading Sheehan doing a quick turn around on climate science - as if he's never read anything he's scribbled so furiously in the past about this same scientific community and its then allegedly uncompelling case - has for the first time made the pond doubt climate science and its own sanity ...

What a way to start the New Year. 

And if the pond keeps reading the befuddled, bemusing, bewildering commentariat, it's only going to get worse, deeper and deeper in the mire of muddied ignorance and stupid prejudice.

Now that's an apocalyptic thought ...