Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. climate audit

It applies well outside the dubious world of “climate science”.

Steve Janke took a little looksee at CarbonZero’s business.

So how much additionality is Carbonzero helping Stephane Dion achieve? Here’s a comprehensive list of emission-reduction projects supported by Carbonzero:

* Cowley Wind Farm

*crickets chirping*

That’s it? Just one windfarm? Man, it’ll have to spinning like gangbusters to offset the carbon dioxide emissions from every single Carbonzero client, now including Stephane Dion election campaign and its carbon dioxide spewing 737.

I’ve always wondered how they calculate the reduction created by wind farms. What sort of plant is the wind farm assumed to be replacing? A zero-emission nuclear power plant, or a 1950s era Chinese coal-fired nightmare?

Anyway, building a wind farm is a good thing, right?

Well, actually, the Cowley Ridge North Wind Farm has been in operation since it was completed in 2001. angry in the great white north

Busted.

BC has fixed election dates, the next time the government faces the electorate is May 2009. I anticipate a complete defeat for Premier Campbell and his wrecking crew, combined with a swift repeal of the carbon tax. daily bayonet

I don’t think Campbell will lose the next election; but he might and if he does his loony embrace of green theology will be most of the reason.

I suspect that, as the planet cools and the science underpinning “global warming/climate change” unravels there will be a rush to the exits on the part of politicians who are discovering that climate hysteria was a mile wide and half an inch deep.

Now, not even M. Dion’s supporters really have a clue what he is prattling on about with his Green Shift and, if he has any wit, he will quietly shelve the program and run on some issue people actually care about.

As we know, this is just “weather” Has nothing to do with climate change. Nothing!

I certainly don’t believe that Steve is always right. But I do see an awful lot of CYA, stonewalling and bad faith on the part of the “climate science” community. If this sort of thing happened once it would be no big deal; but there is a pattern emerging and that pattern suggests, strongly in my view, that the “climate science” community knows that their data is not quite so straightforward as the St. Algores of the world would have us believe.

Now because the “climate science” community invested so heavily in the idea that “the science is settled, the debate is over” they cannot admit that there is a great deal more work to do before the “science” in in any shape to prescribe policy. Because, the second they do, the fact that Kyoto is a fraud and that the IPCC wears very few clothes indeed will begin to seep down to the guilty masses stuck making earth saving choices when they request a paper bag or turn up their furnace on a cold winter’s night or realize they actually prefer incandescent light. And when all those eco friendly soccer mums realize they have been hoodwinked by the climate scientists and the politicians who cater to them, they are going to be really, really angry.

“The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its
conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the
world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society
disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”

Lord Monckton is just the tiniest bit pissed - the paper had been scientifically reviewed and revised in accordance with the review by a referee of the APC’s choosing - and fires off a brilliant, and mockingly polite rejoinder. It you like elegant scientific debate, and, hey, who doesn’t, this is a brilliant piece.

Too bad the indications are towards global cooling; but if they are wrong, and they might be, good news on the heart attack front.

A number of bloggers have pointed out that at least Boshcoff is honest.

It is time for the West (and Newfoundland and Nova Scotia) to make it very clear to the Boshcoffs and the Dions that this sort of a revenue grab will have a single consequence: the end of Canada as a nation. I am old enough to have been around for NEP I and I saw the anger first hand in British Columbia and Alberta. Now Saskatchewan will join the party.

Think Bloc Quebecois in Parliament and an activist, separatist, movement at a regional level. Paint this revenue grab “Green” is not going to work simply because “Green” is not selling as it did when Dion was elected leader of the Liberal Party.

There will be a lot of industry solutions to this problem: reducing investment, reducing production, using carbon sequestration as a weapon (goofy as it is as science, its costs can be passed right along to the silly buggers in Ontario in the form of higher oil prices). But there will also be a final recognition that there is really very little Eastern Canada can do for the New West save sanctimoniously claim to be raping us in the name of Green rather than Greed.

Bye guys, best of luck; hope you can do something about that air pollution problem - you know the real one not the CO2 BS. But of course you are…you are losing manufacturing jobs. Fast. And you will, of course, lose more as investment in the oil patch decreases because (you morons) nearly 50% of that investment ends up in Ontario. So no body will be able to say that the Eastern Bastards are not doing their bit to be green: they are actually hollowing out their economy….Bravo, but excuse us if we are not willing to hollow out ours.

Bad news for the warmists I’m afraid. ‘Cause just as Europe’s skies have cleared so have North America’s. Which would tend to account for pretty much all of the effect that Jim Hansen and the team have claimed to observe without even considering the urban heat island effect which they have been trying to pretend does not exist or, if it does, has been fully accounted for in the model.

Frankly, given the lack of sunspot activity and the general decline of global temperature over the last ten years, I have to bet that things are going to get colder. And I note that the Swiss do not even mention CO2….Hmmm.

Big polluting oil companies would pay a hefty price for emissions, but the Liberal carbon tax plan projects any costs passed on to consumers at the pump would be minimal as global pressures would keep prices from Canadian companies competitive. the ottawa sun

Poor Dion, he really has not a clue. “Global pressures” are what drove oil to the $140 a barrel mark today; but gas, heating oil, natural gas and coal fired hydro are subject to exactly no “global” pressure because there is no “global” market for gas in your car or oil to keep you warm next winter.

If M. Dion is counting on “global pressure” he is simply being silly. Canada is a net exporter of oil and natural gas. We will certainly have to meet world price on those exports and the extractors will have to eat whatever the eventual cost of “Son of NEP” is. And they will be fine with that because both oil and natural gas prices are at historic levels. And they will sell downstream in Canada at the same price the world is paying.

However, the price of your liter of gas is only indirectly related to the world price of oil. Next week, having blown our $100.00 BC Government rebate on the traditional, Scott Reed approved, beer and popcorn, British Columbians will be paying about 2 cents a liter more at the pump. This will have nothing to do with the world price of oil; it will be entirely about the tax Campbell is imposing on carbon. No refinery or gas station is going to just “suck it up”, rather they are going to pass it through as they pass through the .10/liter federal excise tax and assorted provincial taxes.

The world market price determines the cost of the inputs; but the tax - any tax - is levied on the downstream outputs.

Strangely, my monthly bottle of Jameson without the tax would cost about $7.00 instead of near enough to $30.00. And, strangely, if the BC Government added another $2.00 per bottle “anti-fun” tax it would cost $32.00. The lads at Jameson are no more likely to absorb the tax than the Saudies will pay for Gordo’s gas tax.

However, Dion and the people advising him are, apparently, just dumb enough to think the average Canadian is simply too stupid to notice.