Hey, thanks guys. I’ve just taken time to check out these comments of yours pointing out Laking’s attack on us. Barry just drew my attention to it as well. I’m a bit miffed and I’m doing something about it. The oncologist is clearly taking less care over his religious beliefs than over his profession.

And no, “this is not a joke”.

I don’t know why the NZ Herald continues to print nonsensical opinions that have been repeatedly shown to be wrong. Please visit http:/www.skepticalscience.com/. This is not a joke

I love the way these guys just point you to Skeptical Science and expect you to suddenly see the light.

I fail to see how Laking’s suggestions of massive emissions reductions in NZ will not cause serious harm to the health of the public.

Sometimes, I like to use the analogy of weight loss. I may suggest to someone who is overweight that losing a bit of weight is healthy and achievable. However, if you are already scrawny, then losing 40% of your body weight will probably kill you.

NZ is that scrawny kid. We are already over 75% renewable energy, and our pasture management is amongst the best in the world.
If we reduce our emissions by 50% in less than 10 years, as Laking suggests, we will be like that anorexic teenager who fades out of existence.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20111127/durban-south-africa-slimate-conference-setup-111127/

George Laking: Doctor and Climate Science Ignoramus

I see George Laking has continued his anti-Act NZ Herald diatribe: Epsom and climate change at Hot Topic (Vidal’s voyage post):-

George November 29, 2011 at 6:22 pm

The Lancet has an editorial on Durban. Doctors understand what’s going on — being familiar with scientific method, and the abuse of science by vested interests, and standing far enough outside the mainstream to be able to see this.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961793-5/fulltext

The following was one of his later comments under his “Epsom and climate change” opinion piece:-

George Laking (Devonport)
10:25 AM Tuesday, 22 Nov 2011

Borealis you don’t have any effective rebuttal for the substance of the article, so you complain that there isn’t enough scientific notation. You describe my opinions as “unscientific” and you might have a point. Global Warming has gone way beyond science, we are now talking about morality. You and your kind have cynically and immorally abused science to further your short term interests.

There is a kernel of science that everyone can look up, it is NIWA’s “Report on the Review of NIWA’s Seven Station Series” available on NIWA’s website, and it shows how temperature has risen 0.9degC in this country over the last century.

If you take the raw temperature recordings alone (like ACT, or to be precise, Richard Treadgold did), you won’t see a temperature rise. But that is because the readings have to be corrected for changes in site location, exposure, and instrumentation. My own training in science has made me alert to and familiar with the need to prepare raw data for analysis. Treadgold overlooked this and so ACT constructed a whole court case on the most abysmal scientific howler.

If Laking is the Doctor I think I would rather have the disease. Given that he’s a medical oncologist: (treatment primarily with drugs, e.g. chemotherapy) not a radiation oncologist probably explains why he doesn’t know squat about AGW. Pity Laking didn’t pursue the radiation sub-specialty or he might have seen through the bogus backradiation heating notion.

And please Richard T (or NZCSC), acquaint this idiot with the facts of NZCSC v NIWA and the statistical audit of the NZ temperature series by NZCSC.

He is a bit light here!

The Units to be surrendered under the ETS in 2011-12 is forecast at 23.3MT. At $25 per Unit, that amounts to $582m.

But then the vendor of electricity, petrol, oil, gas, diesel, or whatever has to add a margin. And that cost passes through transport operators, wholesalers and retailers, etc, all of whom also need a margin. The Reserve Bank calculates the “first round effects” at consumer level will be 1.5 times the amount paid out at energy company level.

So, the total cost to end consumers this year will be $873m. And lets not forget GST – which consumers can’t draw back. That takes the after-tax cost to end consumers up to just over a billion dollars ($1,004m) in the current year.

That equates to $934 pa for a family of four.

These calculations follow Government practice of using the statutory option price of $25 per Unit, ignoring the recent crash in world carbon prices. But they also ignore the huge additional cost of the windfall profits which accrue to non-fossil-fuel electricity generators; and the cost to taxpayers of compensating beneficiaries and Working for Families recipients for the CPI increases driven by the ETS.

I’m not sure that is necessarily a good thing.