Miranda Devine’s Annus Mirabilis: 2011 the year she overturned climate science in a single article

Say what you will about News Limited’s “War on Science”, there is one thing you can always count upon the would-be Nobel Laureates Andrew “They’ll never take our freeeedom” Bolt (HUN), Chris Mitchell (editor The Australian) and Ms Miranda Devine (HUN, Daily Telegraph) to do.

Ignore the scientific community and give national prominence to fringe theories.

Witness Ms Devine’s latest sojourn into the world of “science” and her peer-reviewed article on sea level rise.

Publishing in the august scientific journal  – The Herald Sun – Devine has just published a withering and devastating piece of original analysis that overturns the work of scientists around the globe:

Sea level predictions are a mess.

With wildly varying predictions of sea level rises as high as 75m coming from NASA, the IPCC and Australia’s home-grown experts such as Flannery, councils were opting for the extreme precautionary principle.

The federal and state governments each came up with different projections for sea level rises by 2100. The Federal Government has predicted a sea level rise of only 1m by 2100. Victoria predicted 0.8m.

– Drowning in a tide of fear, Herald Sun 8 December 2011

Ms Devine has clearly spotted the flaw in climate science. As can be noted the Federal Government had predicted a 1m sea level rise, while the Victorian government has predicted a 0.8m rise.

Oh the scandal!

Her acute observation of this absurd variable of 20 centimeters (good lord the hubris of science!) has just brought down the whole rotten edifice of this thing we call “science”.

Lets wave away how complex the science is and demand impossible standards!

If scientists cannot tell me exactly global sea levels on 22 March 2082, then it must be a load of bunk. Come on science, will it be 1.02m, or 0.9955m or .8445m? I mean that’s fair!

Come to think of it “science” – tell me the exact day and time when I’ll contract cancer.

Complexity?

Probability?

Statistics?

Modelling?

Don’t give me that nonsense!

Useless eggheads!

Miranda’s miracle year

Citing no references, studies or data, Devine manages the remarkable feat of destroying decades of patient scientific data collection and analysis.

Hence why I feel it necessary to claim Devine’s protean genius.

I declare 2011 Miranda’s “Miracle Year”

I can think of no other thinker since – well since humanity started thinking really – that had effected such a paradigm shift in our understanding of the natural sciences.

Ms Devine’s piece ranks with Einsteins equally revolutionary “Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper”.

Oh, and the fountainhead of her profound insights?

Well, let’s have a look.

News Ltd playbook: cite the crank

True to the News Ltd style of reporting on climate science, Ms Devine gives lots of column space to fringe views:

Yet when coastal engineer Doug Lord, who was in charge of implementing NSW’s planning policies for the coast, tried to measure sea levels and publish the results, he lost his job and had peer-reviewed scientific papers pulled from publication.

Lord’s data showed the state and federal governments had exaggerated predicted sea level rises by 1000 per cent, and that sea levels were rising 1mm a year or less, with no acceleration, which would give you at most a 90mm (0.09m) rise by the year 2100.

Nothing that a few sea walls wouldn’t fix.

Indeed, Mr Lord has been getting lots of column inches in News Ltd publications.

The Australian hints at dark conspiracies in a December 5 article:

A former senior researcher in the department, Doug Lord, said yesterday two papers he co-authored with colleagues and was due to present at conferences were suppressed because they suggested sea-levels on the east coast are rising at only one 10th of the rate estimated by the federal government, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Mr Lord said long-term data gleaned from gauges in Sydney Harbour suggested sea levels were rising at the rate of about 1mm per year. This would lead to a rise of about 90mm by 2100, not the 900mm rise predicted by the IPCC.

Of course the climate denial community laps it up, as our old friend Jo Nova jumps into the fray in a December 6 post:

The Daily Telegraph exposed the NSW state government protecting the world from some dangerous scientific analysis of sea-levels. The officials pulled papers and posters within days of when they were due to be released, late in September 2011. Doug Lord examined 120 years of tidal data from Sydney Harbour, and found a 1 mm year on year rise which didn’t fit with the 900 mm rise projected by the Wizards of Climate Change at the Department. He finds the official figures exaggerate ten fold.

The Daily Telegraph has exposed…

Wait a minute. 

Here’s the 2 December story that appeared in another one of News Ltd’s papers:

SENIOR bureaucrats in the state government’s environment department have routinely stopped publishing scientific papers which challenge the federal government’s claims of sea level rises threatening Australia’s coastline, a former senior public servant said yesterday. “The tidal data we found would mean sea levels would rise by about 100mm by the end of the century,” Mr Lord said yesterday.

Doug Lord helped prepare six scientific papers which examined 120 years of tidal data from a gauge at Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour. levels were rising at a rate of about 1mm a year or less – and the rise was not accelerating but was constant.

And of course, Andrew “They can’t take your freedom” Bolt has to have his say:

Allegations that sea level data is being censored by NSW Government climate change bureaucrats because they show the seas not rising as fast as predicted.

One of the hallmarks of pseudo-science is bypassing the scientific literature and making your absurd claims on the internet or in the general media.

Thankfully the blog Aussie Renewables has down the hard work at looking at the claims made by Mr Lord and his News Ltd backers:

The articles are based on the supposed supression of papers by Doulas Lord, past chair of Engineers Australia’s National Committee on Coastal and Ocean Engineering, by the Government. According to the newspapers, Doug Lord’s paper “revealed” that tide data from Fort Denison show much slower increase in sea level than IPCC projection.The Telegraph claims to have “exclusive reports” containing this data.

In reality, the data is hardly “exclusive” – it is freely available here.

And that:

Selective analysis can easily give a false impression like this. The Office of Environment and Heritage said the paper by Doug Lord and a colleague were withdrawn over “concerns raised by an independent statistician about the statistical analysis of tide gauge records”.  The Telegraph does not mention this.

Contrary to the Telegraph’s claim that the research contradicts evidence of climate change and rising sea levels, and that there is some sort of conspiracy between most climate scientists and governments, both P J Watson and Doug Lord are very clear that they are not denying sea level rise in general but merely pointing out a local anomaly.

Not quite the warmist conspiracy is it?

But don’t tell Miranda.

Its her miracle year.