Save the Humans

Phil Jones' Partial Redemption

What to make of this? Phil Jones, the man who a week ago was thinking about ending it all over the climategate scandal, has turned a corner, seen the light and now can understand where the sceptics are coming from.

He said he stood by the view that recent climate warming was most likely predominantly man-made.

But he agreed that two periods in recent times had experienced similar
warming. And he agreed that the debate had not been settled over
whether the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than the current period.

What a darling - makes you want to give him a hug, doesn't it? What a nice cuddling, understanding global warming scientist.

He strongly defended references in his emails to using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures.

These phrases had been deliberately taken out of context and "spun" by
sceptics keen to derail the Copenhagen climate conference, he said.

Well maybe, but if anything the context (as far as we understand it) makes these emails worse than they first appear. You can read about the context at Cilmate Audit:

Returning to the original issue: climate scientists say that the
“trick” is now being taken out of context. The Climategate Letters show
clearly that the relevant context is the IPCC Lead Authors’ meeting in
Tanzania in September 1999 at which the decline in the Briffa
reconstruction was perceived by IPCC as “diluting the message”, as a
“problem”, as a “potential distraction/detraction”. A stone in their shoe.

And what of the flat-earther / climate-change-denier claim that things are actually getting colder?

He said many people had been made sceptical about climate
change by the snow in the northern hemisphere - but they didn't realise
that the satellite record from the University of Alabama in Huntsville
showed it had been the warmest January since records began in 1979.

If only we had been told this a few months ago I'm sure everyone would have been convinced that global warming is true and the data don't matter. Huntville can be no more than 7000km from the north pole -for it to be warm is truly remarkable. I stand corrected and will take down this blog immediately.

Sadly the BBC did not ask Mr Jones about the claim that the sun might have more to do with the climate than CO2. Perhaps we can hope for that question next week? Still, given Mr Jones' fragile state, it might be better to leave the poor guy alone until he has recovered. There will be plenty of time to look back on the global warming scam and figure out what went wrong.

Celebrities as Environmental Campaigners

What is it about being famous (and sometimes rich) which turns people into environmental campaigners? I am thinking mostly of Prince Charles who is always going on about organic vegetables, forests and ugly buildings.

But he is not the only one. In fact when Prince Charles wanted to do a movie about the rainforests he called upon a long list of other celebrities to join in.You can see the movie here.

Helping him out are:

• James Bond
• Indiana Jones
• More Princes (William, Harry)
• Kermit the Frog
• The Dalai Lama
• Mrs Doubtfire
• And others too obscure to mention

Indiana Jones has even done a little flier for those lucky keen to support the environment by buying dead trees from Amazon (they sent it in the box your got for a few weeks earlier this year). My only comment is that the costume is a bit weak.

The back page of the brochure quotes Prince Charles saying that 'climate change' is the greatest threat facing mankind. Given that this scam has just completely unravelled, will he be thinking up a different reason to preserve the jungle?

(Perhaps he could just save up and buy it? What would it cost all these people to just get out their cheque books and purchase half of Brazil?)

To a large extent I think it is possible to campaign for jungles and still emit large amounts of CO2. After all, the jungle needs CO2 to survive and the higher the level in the atmosphere the happier the jungle is.

But when these celebs also go on about global warming, they become rank hypocrites, so ludicrously dishonest that most people are too gob-smacked by the audacity of it to even mention it.

Take Indiana, for example:

Harrison Ford, who is vice-chairman on the board of Conservation
International, voices public-service messages for an environmental
federation called EarthShare, and once shaved his chest hair to
illustrate the effects of deforestation, is another hobby pilot. He
once owned a Gulfstream but now makes do with a smaller Cessna Citation
Sovereign eight-seater jet, four propeller planes and a helicopter.

The Prince, who said earlier this year, in a moment of comic genius, that we have only 96 months to save the world, went to Copenhagen in style:

He may be the green prince, but Britain's heir to the throne has
been slammed for being a hypocrite after flying to the Copenhagen
climate change summit to deliver a keynote speech on an executive jet
with a large carbon footprint, UK media reports say.

Prince Charles attended the conference in Denmark on the $21,800 RAF Royal
Flight that emitted about 6.4 tons of carbon dioxide, the Daily Mail reported. It was 5.2 tons more than that of a commerical flight, Carbon Footprint Limited told the Mail.

The Prince and Prime Minister Gordon Brown were also criticised for taking separate flights to Copenhagen.

One could ask whether in fact the whole Copenhagen thing was a colossal waste of good CO2, but the Prince wasn't to know that.

He was previously accused of hypocrisy after a 25,000km ride around South America in his private jet.

The prince will travel to the region next month in a visit
costing an estimated £300,000 as part of his crusade against global
warming.

He will use a luxury airliner to transport himself,
the Duchess of Cornwall and a 14-strong entourage to Chile, Brazil and
Ecuador on a 16,400-mile round trip.

Of course, in the CO2 stakes it is hard to top John Travolta, who flies himself to London for breakfast in his 150-seat Boeing 707. Still, Mr Travolta is hardly a strident campaigner so his hypocrisy is limited. Barbra '120 towels' Streisand is much worse. Al Gore is in a league of his own, but that has been well publicised.

Do these celebrities really help their causes? Are people really stupid enough to take any notice of what a famous person thinks they should think? For me the answer is no. Except perhaps for Kermit the Frog. I've always respected him, and he dates from a happy time in children's television where environmental indoctrination was avoided.

Celebrities can learn a lot from the little green frog.

Climategate: World has Lucky Escape, Thanks to Despots

Well we have had a good result from Copenhagen. No deal has been agreed and there is still hope that major governments will pull back from this CO2 obsession that they have developed over the past few years.

How do I know it is a good result? Simply by look at the reactions. Here are some that I found amusing.

James Dilingpole at the London Telegraph is ecstatic at the sweet sound of exploding watermelons (people who are green on the outside and red on the inside):

I take it all back. Copenhagen was worth it, after all – if only for
the sphincter-bursting rage its supposed failure has caused among our
libtard watermelon chums.

CBC News has an article that made me laugh out loud:

As it turns out, the UN summit on climate change ended not with a
bang, nor with a whimper. And certainly not with a binding
international agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The two-week long, lumbering behemoth of a conference here staggered
to a close on the weekend with delegates agreeing to "take notice" of
what, on the surface, appears to be a weak, vague document now being
called the Copenhagen Accord.

What is "take notice," you ask? Here's the pained explanation of UN climate chief Yvo de Boer.

Take notice, he said "is a way of recognizing that something is
there but not going so far as to directly associate yourself with it."

How's that for a ringing endorsement?

It's hard to overstate the disappointment and discouragement that most environmentalists felt at the conclusion of this summit.

These NGOs (non-governmental organizations) spent years lobbying,
writing reports, compiling research and building the case for a strong
international agreement to pick up where the Kyoto treaty left off and
tackle global warming.

Copenhagen was supposed to be a turning point.

It turned into a bloated gabfest, one that produced a final document
less than three pages long with none of the enforceable targets to cut
greenhouse gas emissions that green activists were looking for.

We should also note that carbon prices in Europe have fallen to a 6-month low. Oh dear. Hopefully this means a drop in the price of pencils just in time for school to go back.

The London Mail asks for the heat to be turned down on global warming:

So, if governments believe carbon emissions do endanger the planet, how
about more quiet diplomacy and less posturing? Let's turn down the
rhetorical heat, the 'days left to save mankind' bluster. More
persuasion and less proselytising. Fewer bogus timetables. No circuses
like Copenhagen.

Gordon Brown has spent all week at the circus trying to get a deal together, and more importantly to be seen being useful and effective. I say more importantly, because Gordon Brown is doing a 'Helen Clark'. That is, he is inexcusably and cynically screwing over his country of 60m people in an effort to get himself a cushy UN or EU job next week, when he will be turfed out of office.

'Mr Broon' has accused a handful of countries of derailing the talked. No one by name, but it was China. He now wants to reform the UN! Good luck with that, but many would agree. Best to shut it down I feel.

The prime minister will say in his podcast: "Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down these talks.

"Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries."

From the same article, the Swedes are sad:

Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said some of
the countries at the talks had not been ready for an agreement that
would have satisfied Europe.

"The EU was ready, the world wasn't ready and that's the failure," he said.

Any failure for Mr Carlgren is a success for the world, in my book.

But who do we have to thank for the failure of a 'deal'? Let's take a look.

First up, we have President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe is perhaps the world's leading environmentalist. In less than a decade he has reduced his country's carbon emissions to approximately zero.

Mugabe annoyed everyone by blaming global warming on capitalism. Not that he would have any idea what that was...

Second, Hugo Chevez annoyed everyone by calling Obama the devil [his sulphur metaphor, I omit the least coherent bits].

Chávez said that “the Kyoto Protocol cannot be declared dead or
extinguished... If Obama,
Nobel War Prize, said here, by the way, it smells of sulfur here. It
smells of sulfur. It keeps smelling of sulfur in this world. The Nobel
War Prize has just said here that he came to act. Well, then show it,
sir, don't leave by the back door, eh? Do everything you need to do for
the US to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, and let's respect Kyoto, and
empower Kyoto, and respond to the world in a transparent fashion.”

Chevez, by the way jails his opponents in Venezuela if they speak this this.

Third, China said it would happily cut CO2 emissions but didn't want anyone checking whether it actually had. China, by the way, can't even cope with an uncensored Internet, so the idea of Al Gore roaming around China in his private jet sniffing the gases was beyond the pale.

Still China gets the blame.

Fourth, some lunatic from Sudan claimed that the deal in the offing "asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries". The Jews at least were presumably upset at this.




Fifth, surely a mention to all the environmentalists, anti-capitalism activists and assorted lunatics that plagued the conference, making it much more difficult to get anything done. Of these, the Greenpeace nut will be the one I remember, who twitted on Friday:

The city of Copenhagen is a climate crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport in shame.

We should stuff this guy and display him in a museum for future generations to marvel at his nuttiness.

It is sad to note that we have these five assorted nitwits to thank for the 'failure' of the Copenhagen Conference. Not one person in the photo below questioned the global warming edifice, despite climategate, Rajendra Pachauri's dodgy business setup (on p4 of the London Telegraph on Sunday) and the freezing cold in Copenhagen itself [God has a sense of of humour, surely you know that - see here if not]



How galling that the democracies failed us while the despots saved our bacon.

Climategate: Mann-made Global Warming is Real, Insists Mann

Michael Mann, the one behind the infamous hockey stick scam is still apparently a practising scientist. This is a remarkable fact when you consider the scientific crimes of which he is apparently guilty.
But the poor man is feeling victimised.

"I think it is unfortunate that some scientists out there are using this situation to settle personal scores, to settle a vendetta," Mann said...

But he is more worried that the whole scam holds together long enough to get him through Copenhagen.

"My main interest right now is to make sure that this manufactured controversy does not distract policy makers," said Mann.

I think it is in all our interests that it does.

Climategate: How to Solve Environmentalism

I read this at the bottom of an article by an environmental scientist:

It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.

But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. “The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.”

I certainly hope that this is the end of it, but I am not so stupid as to think that it is. After all, environmentalists want to ban plastic bags, limit power generation, restrict overseas holidays and make us all eat organic food. The mere fact that the evidence against CO2 may have been shown to be 'enhanced' is not going to stop them in their battle against us.

On the other hand, environmentalists gain power only when we (the public) give it to them. If you don't want to read about environmentalism in the paper, don't buy a paper with an environmentalist message on the front page. The editor will soon learn, unless he is the editor of the Guardian. If M&S hassle you over a plastic bag, leave half of your stuff behind and just buy the one or two items you can carry. If someone sends you an email exhorting you not to print it out unless absolutely necessary, print 50 copies and post them individually to the furthest ends of the earth (this only works if you tell the email sender what you have done).

The solution to environmentalism has always been to ignore it. We have successfully ignored it for decades, if not for centuries. The problem recently is that we have forgotten to ignore it. We need to remember.

Climategate: Prof. Andrew 'Arsehole!' Watson and Media Spin

The Times has published a short article by Andrew Watson, he of 'arsehole' fame.

The article is sadly revealing on so many levels.

We non-media-savvy scientists at the University of East Anglia have learnt a hard lesson this week — the truth is not enough in the face of a media-savvy enemy.

If this is what has been learnt at CRU, then they have learnt the wrong lesson. From what we understand about Mann's discredited hockey stick, temperature stations compromised by the urban heat island effect, the bogus temperature data, incomprehensible and/or dodgy models, not to mention the disingenuous 'peer review' defence, truth has no place in climate science.

But are warmists media-unsavvy? How anyone could claim that is beyond me. It is nearly impossible to buy a paper these days without something about global warming, and this terrible situation has been getting worse year by year. Every time a bit of ice slides into the sea it is printed in the paper and shown on TV (of course the refreezing in the winter is of less media interest). If a global warming scientist states that the sea is rising at twice the level we thought it was last week, the papers uncritically print this nonsense. Each week. Newspapers and TV stations employ hundreds of environmental reporters who scour the world for the latest lunatic pronouncement from Prof Watson and his ilk.

The BBC has even renamed its science news section in honour of environmentalism.

As for Al Gore? Once you take aware the media savvy I'm not sure there is anything left.

Character assassination is a purely diversionary tactic, but in the hacked e-mails affair it has been spectacularly successful.

A lot of the reason for the widespread alarm is that it shows a lot of truth what sceptics have been saying for years. It is the lightening rod for a lot of concern over what appears to be a bizarre intellectual fervour.

How many of us would emerge unscathed if all our private e-mails over 20 years were opened by someone determined to prove that we were up to no good? The hackers have picked choice phrases out of context — and context is all: without it, these statements look awful. In the one most quoted, the director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones, talks about using a “trick” to “hide the decline”. At first reading, this easily translates as “deceiving [politicians, other scientists, everyone] into believing the world is warming when it is actually cooling”.

It is odd how the emails have been put together. It is almost as if it was done for an official information request and then someone decided not to send it.

But it doesn’t mean that at all. Jones is talking about a line on a graph for the cover of a World Meteorological Organisation report, published in 2000, which shows the results of different attempts to reconstruct temperature over the past 1,000 years. The line represents one particular attempt, using tree-ring data for temperature. The method agrees with actual measurements before about 1960, but diverges from them after that — for reasons only partly understood, discussed in the literature.

The tree-ring measure declines, but the actual temperatures after 1960 go up. They draw the line to follow the tree-ring reconstruction up to 1960 and the measured temperature after that. The notes explain that the data are “reconstructions, along with historical and long instrumental records”. Not very clear perhaps, but not much of a “trick”.

It sounds like a clear fabrication to me. What sort of a scientist would do such a thing? If it is tree ring data it should be tree ring data. Otherwise the line should be labelled 'whatever I want it to be so that this silly lines points up'.

In another e-mail, Jones calls a sceptical research paper “garbage”, and says of this and another, that he “can’t see them being included” in the International Panel on Climate Change report that was being prepared. Such strong reactions are commonplace in academic research. What matters is what actually gets published. Were the papers excluded? No. Both are discussed appropriately in the report. If this was a conspiracy, it was singularly unsuccessful.

It matters because on the one hand Phil Jones works hard to get papers excluded which don't agree with his research. On another climate scientists argue that papers that have not passed the peer review process are bogus. It matters a lot.

Climate sceptics would have us believe that the CRU data is invalid, and that the 20th-century warming is a construct entirely in the minds of a few scientists. This point of view surely has difficulty explaining why Arctic sea ice is declining and glaciers are retreating so rapidly, and why spring arrives earlier and autumn later than 50 years ago.

The belief in warming, CO2 causing that warming and humans being responsible for the CO2 is certainly in their minds. It seems clear that for the past decade or more, this small group of scientists has worked hard to prove what they believe, hidden data and methods to avoid discovery of their little scam and pervert the peer review process to their own ends.

I hope Watson has better evidence than Artic sea ice:

Arctic sea ice extent averaged over November 2009 was 10.26 million square kilometers (3.96 million square miles). This was 1.05 million square kilometers (405,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average for November, but 420,000 square kilometers (160,000 square miles) above the record low for the month, which occurred in November 2006. In general, the ice edge is now at or slightly beyond its average location, with two notable exceptions: Hudson Bay and the Barents Sea.

It will be the last two that will be in the papers, I confidently predict.

Re glaciers some retreat and some extend and there is a long time delay between temperature and size, hundreds of years for large glaciers. It is a sureal experience to visit a glacier at ground level on a 28 degree (celsius!) day and wonder at how it exists at all.

But it seems clear that glaciers as a whole are on the retreat. Is this really due to the fraction of a degree of temperature rise? Is it due to us climbing out of the 'little ice age' which ended about 1850? Or is it due to the medieval warm period hundreds of years earlier (the one Michael Mann managed to obliterate with his statistical skill)? Who knows?

By the way, in New Zealand, I recall the sign in the 1980s at Franz Josef glacier (near where I lived) saying that glaciers all over the world at in retreat, including this one. Unfortunately it reversed and they had to change the sign. Wikipedia now says:

Having retreated several kilometres between the 1940s and 1980s, the glacier entered an advancing phase in 1984 and at times has advanced at the phenomenal (by glacial standards) rate of 70 cm a day. The flow rate is about 10 times that of typical glaciers. Over the longer term, the glacier has retreated since the last ice age, and it is believed that it extended into the sea some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.

...This is due to the highly variable conditions on the snowfield, which take around 5-6 years before they result in changes in the terminus location.

So when a glacier advances it is due to snowfall, but when it retreats it is due to global warming? This sort of thing is why warmists have no credibility.

Re the spring and autumn dates, who knows. The whole last paragraph to me is an example of the media spin that these scientists are very good at putting across, whatever they say.

Climategate: Results of Sir Muir Russell's Investigation

Those of you who thought that the investigation into the CRU's dodgy professor would take until Spring 2010 will be pleasantly surprised that the outcome is already known. In a world exclusive I can reveal the outcome. My Russian spies have provided me with an email which reveals all.

From: Sir Muir Russell KCB FRSE <[email protected]>
To: Phil Jones <[email protected]>
Date: 7 Dec 2009 11:30:23 GMT
Subject: Oh my head!

Dear Phil,

Investigation into the key allegations arising from e-mails hacked from CRU

Here are my notes so far. Shouldn't take a few days to knock this out. We can keep it in your cellar to 'mature' until the spring.

1. I have examined the emails in question....great night the other night though wasn't it. Was it really the Russians? If so I suppose that would explain all that grog that ended up in the university's cellar...henceforth vodka will not pass these lips...anyone who claims it doesn't hit you hard the next day is a bloody liar.

2. As to whether I can confirm or deny that global warming is a massive scam based on dodgy data and collusion between a small group of 43 climate scientists, I have no comment. [Does that sound too weak? Let me know either way please Phil. It's obviously absurd though isn't it Phil. I don't know about you but I don't even know 43 academics that I'm on speaking terms with]

3. Without the funding that Prof Phil Jones has managed to attract to this esteemed institution it is clear that the university would long ago have sunk beneath the fens. For this, Prof Jones has my hearty congratulations. [Do have a think about my idea of setting up in Glasgow though, won't you Phil. Not so flat, more nightlife, direct flights to Europe and I've a nice wee still in my basement if you fancy a dram]

4. I would like to take this opportunity to announce that Prof Jones has won another £5m grant from the UN to help pay for a new more secure computer system. [Do you actually have the folding, just that I don't want to look like an idiot if those morons in Saudi are holding up the process, etc.]

5. Re the question of whether the university broke Freedom of Information Act rules by refusing to delete [or did you say release?] data then it is clear that the answer is no. After all, the data was released, and the zip file had the name FOI.zip. What more proof could anyone ask for that all relevant UK law was followed. [Sorry my memory of that stage of the evening is a bit iffy, perhaps you could fix up this paragraph for me and send it back]

Anyway when you get this, let's get Mann-san on the phone late this afternoon as you suggested, and make sure he is happy. Do the timezones work getting Stefan from Potsdam on the call also? Hope he made his flight! Jumping the gun a bit but do you need my draft signed off by all 43 scientists, or are you three able to speak for the rest?

Good luck with the disguise at Copenhagen. You certainly had me fooled! You'll be fine.

Cheers,

Sir Muir

Climategate: In Pictures

I think this sums it up quite well, from Prodicus:

Maldives Tries Land Reclamation

The president, who made the headlines by holding an underwater meeting recently, has now announced a new land reclamation project.

During the function, the President spoke on the negative effects of global warming and climate change. He said that it was necessary to create land to protect the Maldives for future generations.

This doesn't make any sense. If your land is about to slip under the waves, you need to bolster the level of what you have, not create yet more regions barely above sea level.

Surely the President will have figured this out himself. He has probably also read the evidence that in fact the Maldives is not sinking, although given the global warming eco-cash that he hopes to extract from the likes of Gordon "flat-earther" Brown I suspect he has trouble remembering the evidence from one day to the next.

In fact I think it is fair to say that global warming could be the Maldives' meal ticket for decades to come, if it plays its cards right.

Expect a lot more underwater meetings, then. Perhaps we could flood Downing Street next time?

[photo from here]

Climategate: Did he Really Call him Arsehole?

What is the world of science coming to? On live TV too. Watch to the very end.

Climategate: Poor Harry

Take a read of this file, from the CRU set. Is this really the data upon which the world is about to rely on to justify trillions of dollars of spending on global warming projects?

Harry is trying to tell us something.

UPDATE: Analysis for you. Depressing reading if you thought that global warming was settled.

Climategate: Two Front Pages Today

Both the Times and the Telegraph have climategate on the front page today, the first time this has happened since the start of the scandal. The Times has a big lead on the Met Office's announcement that they will review all their climate data. This is 160 years worth, taking us back to a very cold time - 1850 was roughly the end of a cold patch lasting a few hundred years. The Thames last froze over in 1814. It is a shame that they have chosen such a cold starting point, but unfortunately that's all the data they have.

The Telegraph notes that Gordon Brown has resorted to name calling. Climate sceptics (deniers is I think the official government term) are 'flat-earthers'.

This is way over the top. Global warming relies on dodgy models, scientific frauds like Michael Mann (remember the hockey stick? here's an update), charlatans like Al Gore (watch the movie which is seriously embarrassing in the light of everything  we now know) and compromised government organisations like the UK Met Office (with their hilarious subtitle 'weather and climate change' - presumably they needed to branch out into the latter after their lack of success with the former).

There is lots of uncertainly left in the science beyond global warming, such as it is. The computer models were made-up garbage which proved nothing in the 90s. When the temperature data started to show a warming trend (which we now suspect to be bogus since the data were tampered with) the models were held up as true. But there are all sorts of problems with the models - as others have gone on about at length. Further, if the leaked code has anything to do with the climate models, they were written by a monkey during a banana shortage.

So for Gordon Brown to talk of flat earthers says nothing to me about global warming sceptics and everything about Gordon Brown. I think this remark will be remembered for some time to come. It is a remarkably statement from a Prime Minister of a country with 60m souls.

While the Times headline was that the Met Office we re-examining records (which will take 3 years by the way), the real headline should have been that the government is trying to stop them. Eh? The government apparently thinks it will give too much ammunition to sceptics? The Times missed a trick there.

Gordon Brown's is most famous for his tax increases. So far. Perhaps for Mr Brown this is all just about tax? After all, 80% of what you put into your car in the UK is tax, very little of it is actual petrol. Global warming is the latest justification for this (previous ones being air polution or congestion), and is a great new way to extract cash from gullible Britons.

Seen in that light, and knowing Mr Brown's somewhat strident views on those who oppose his tax wheeze of the moment, perhaps his comments are less surprising.

Meanwhile, Climategate now has 31m web pages according to google. Can that really be true? Why is it taking the MSM so long to get on top of this issue? Where is the daily serialisation, the interviews, the investigative reporting? We can't wait forever, MSM. Your credibility and relevance depends on your waking up soon.

Climategate: Guardian Compares Sceptics to Holocaust Deniers

It is hard to imagine how messed up your mind has to be to think that expressing doubt about global warming is like denying the holocaust.

But that appears to be the mind of a Padraig Reidy, a journalist at the Guardian so consumed by environmentalism that his mind and his moral compass have apparently melted in the heat. Here is the google news snap, taken a moment ago from the first page of news on 'climategate':

Lots of the comments on the page let rip about the comparison. Many have been deleted by the moderator. The title has now been changed to: Climate change: free speech for the sceptics?

This guy needs to read some history books. In the meantime, in the nicest possible way, he shouldn't be writing for a major daily.

See the google match here.

Climategate: The Thinnest of Evidence

I read the SPPI report last night. The page count put me off at first but it is pretty clear and to the point. The main thing that struck me was the thinness of the evidence. So I was going to mention that today, except this commenter has beaten me to it:

According to Lord Christopher Monckton – former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher, there are only 4 earth temperature data sets used in most climate models: 2 earth based and 2 satellite based.

The two earthbased sets are controlled by CRU and NASA - both key participants in the Climategate scandal.

The satellite data sets are callibrated against the earth data sets.

Suddenly, all of that Climate Science is coming down to a very small "controllable" sample of data.

Well there is a lot of other fluff, but there you have it.

Mann-made Global Warming is Real, Insists Mann

Michael Mann, the one behind the infamous hockey stick scam is still apparently a practising scientist. This is a remarkable fact when you consider the crimes against science crimes of which he is apparently guilty.

But the poor man is feeling victimised.

"I think it is unfortunate that some scientists out there are using this situation to settle personal scores, to settle a vendetta," Mann said...

However he is more worried that the whole scam holds together long enough to get him through Copenhagen.

"My main interest right now is to make sure that this manufactured controversy does not distract policy makers," said Mann.

I think it is in all our interests that it does.

Climategate: The Great Climate Change 'Fraud' Hits the Headlines

As I mentioned the Times and The Telegraph on the weekend covered Climategate in some way, both with full pages devoted to the topic. Of the two, The Times was certainly more hard-hitting.

Presumably the high priests of global warming had a word with the Times, because they have since had two front pages 'saying what they are told' on global warming. The latest is quite funny:

Sea levels will rise by twice as much as previously predicted as a result of
global warming, an
important international study has concluded.

SCAR, a partnership of 35 of the world’s leading climate research
institutions, made the prediction in the report Antarctic Climate Change
and Climate

It does sound bit like SPECTRE to me. Do you think Al Gore is the Dr No, or is it someone else? Unfortunate the Times couldn't resist asking for a second opinion, something of which its minders would surely have disapproved.

“It’s 50cm, 60cm, 100cm — 60m if you ask James Hansen from Nasa,” said Benny
Peiser, director of the Global
Warming Policy Foundation . “The predictions come in thick and fast, but
we take them all with a pinch of salt. We look out of the window and it’s
very cold, it doesn’t seem to be warming. We’re very concerned that 100-year
policies are being made on the basis of these predictions”

Indeed. It may be a while before we start seeing stories about the global warming hoax on the front page of the Times. We live in hope.

The comments on that article (250 of them) are quite funny. Take a read if you have time:

Dodgy data piled on top of more dodgy data. I know they are all trying
to get their bit of publicity ahead of Copenhagen but this is becoming
a joke.

Think of a number, any number, now write it on a piece of paper, place
it in an envelope .............. now apply for a grant to investigate
global warming and wait for the cheque to arrive ...... don't apply for
a grant to investigate global cooling, you won't get one.

Sorry
to be a bit of a party pooper,but if we find out that climate change
doesnt actualy happen and the world doesnt implode!Is there any chance
we will all get our Green Taxes refunded?

Climate Change is Mann made.

"Sea levels will rise by twice as much as previously predicted..."

Doesn't
that statement in itself prove a total lack of science involved to
date? 'Oops, we now think it's double the amount we wrongly thought in
the first place'. The gloom-and-doom scenarios keep hitting us hard and
fast, with random projections thrown in with seeming nonchalance. No
doubt this gem will be repeated, mantra-like, at the upcoming
conference.

I make a prediction with 100% certainty: these
flimsy, convenient, unverified, apocalyptic, fear-inducing, tax-raising
statements will never stop.

Meanwhile, other than having a moan on The Times, I'm going to carry on living my life like a human being, not like a bloody puppet riding on the meandering and misdirected Green bandwagon.

Oh, and by the way, if the Earth's climate has always changed in the past why do we humans think we can prevent it from changing in the future?

Sounds like religion to me. The less evidence you have the scarier the predicted consequences of not following the required behaviour have to be.

The evidence took a big hit from the leaked computer code so they are choosing a new scenario with larger predicted risks. In another couple of years they will have us burning for eternity if we don't pay their taxes.

But at last we seem to have a daily willing to stick it's neck out. The Daily Express (daily circulation 700k) leads today with a headline that reports a talk made by an Australian academic in London yesterday. Good on them. I was sick of the Times anyway.

Re the Telegraph, you should read James Dilngpole here.

And if you enjoy a good story, try this from Lond Monckton:

The unnamed hero of ‘Climategate’, after months of work gathering emails, computer code, and data, quietly sent a 61-megabyte compressed file from one of the university’s servers to an obscure public message-board on the internet, with a short covering note to the effect that the climate was too important to keep the material secret, and that the data from the University would be available for a short time only.

Tellingly:

He had caught the world’s politico-scientific establishment green-handed. Yet his first attempts to reveal the highly-profitable fraud and systematic corruption at the very heart of the UN’s climate panel and among the scientists most prominent in influencing it’s prejudiced and absurdly doom-laden reports had failed. He had made the mistake of sending the data-file to the mainstream news media, which had also profited for decades by fostering the “global warming” scare, and by generally denying anyone who disagreed with the official viewpoint any platform.

Climategate: Met Office Admits it is the Sun

If you want to see just how out to lunch some of these government-funded global warming outfits are, take a look at this, from the UK Met Office.

The UK is at the forefront of tackling dangerous climate change, underpinned by world-class scientific expertise and advice.

It is hardly dangerous, it isn't happening at all (at least not the last 10 years) and if it is happening, there is nothing much we can do about it except adjust.

Crucial decisions will be taken soon in Copenhagen about limiting and reducing the impacts of climate change, now and in the future.

Maybe or maybe not. I hope not. What is actually being decided in that cowpat of a city is how much cost to load on to the world economy to pursue technology which is not yet mature, impose taxes which are not required and make the life of each country's citizens more awful. Everything else is just supposition.

Climate scientists from the UK and across the world are in overwhelming agreement about the evidence of climate change, driven by the human input of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

To the extent that this is true (and it isn't) it is because their funding depends on it and they haven't considered the impact of the big bright thing in the picture on the same page as this statement. If the inclusion of this image on the Met Office's web page is the first step along the road of admitting that changing Sun emissions are behind global warming then I have this to say:

Out with it, Met Office! Enough hinting and just tell us.

Climategate: Phil Jones Steps Down at Last

Yesterday the BBC put the word 'Climategate' on its ludicrously named 'Science & Environment' section of its web site. Here it is in case you missed it halfway down the page in small print:

The article is a very dry discussion as to why scientists need to be open, engage the public and provide their data and methods for scrutiny. All good stuff, if a little late with the billions now being spent on this global warming farce. The BBC's implication is that global warming is real, just that the scientists behind it are a bit dodgy.

A better article would examine Phil Jones and the other climate priests in some detail, to determine their reliability as scientists supposedly studying these matters. It would look at their research grants, their prospects if the global warming funding were to dry up, their track record in following the ideals in the article above, etc. For example, the WSJ has managed this:

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s.

Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

There is enough material here for a month of headlines, much more than the politician expenses scandal. Still the BBC hardly lead from the front on that one either. Where is the media? They have the resources to investigate these things properly, their one advantage over bloggers and the like. They should press this advantage to the full.

This is the sort of comment [on BBC web site] that leaves me cold, from Bob Couttie in the Philippines. [In general the comments seem very kind to the scientists, particularly the top ones that people are most likely to read. Does the BBC fiddle with comments too?]

But the general public is largely neither scientifically educated nor
capable of critical thinking, as the majority belief in a wide swathe
of twaddle from creationism to astrology, fork-bending, the 9/11
conspiracy and the 2012 'cataclysm' demonstrates. It cannot 'follow and
argument' nor spot evasion.

Like a page out of '1984'. This great believer in democracy would have us all run by a bunch of clever scientists in a single world government.

Anyway the number of google hits on 'climategate' was 12m on Monday, 13m yesterday and 18m today. Tell me who isn't capable of critical thinking? It's the bloody scientists who got us into this mess. Those grant-seeking, dishonest, data-hiding, model-making self-important parasites who have no interest in science at all, only environmentalism.

Today the story is that Phil Jones has finally stepped down (reported also by the BBC). A week late, but at least he has done something.

Professor Jones said: "What is most important is that CRU continues its
world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as
possible.  After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the
best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director's role
during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the
University for agreeing to this.  The Review process will have my full 
support."

I agree with many people who say that serious criminal charges should be lade against anyone who has faked or manipulated data, conspired to avoid official information requests, etc.

Of course there is the question of how someone like Phil Jones (or Al Gore) could possibly step back from global warming. Could they ever admit they were wrong? Al Gore has seldom been right about anything, so perhaps it would be easier for him. But Phil Jones would find it hard to get $19m of grants from, say, studying swamp life in the Fens.

Unlike the BBC, CBS News appears to be reporting this matter with some interest. On their front page just now is a blog post about climategate which nicely summarises the situation so far. The question is whether the various guilty parties can survive in their bunker until this blows over. If they can, it probably means that the global warming religion is impervious to any outside influence.

Hide the Decline

You have to enjoy this!

Climategate Invisible

It's pretty hard to get me interested in conspiracy theories, but this one has me. I certainly don't believe in global warming, the whole thing has never run true and the ludicrous headlines like "Climate change 'could kill 400,000 children every year'" don't help.

It amazes me that the BBC has not picked this up, and that it can get away with not mentioning Climategate. Try this google search: - only 5 matches, no mention at all in a story, only in comments:

climategate site:news.bbc.co.uk

"After daring to mention climategate, I hope the thought police there at the Ministry of Truth are going to leave Michael's mind in tact for the next show."

Then see the BBC's 'science & environment' page (an Orwellian attempt to bring these two together). All they have is:

Inquiry into stolen climate e-mails
Past climate anomalies explained

The BBC has apparently told people to avoid giving sceptics any air time, according to a long time newsreader - also see this:

He said: "The Corporation's most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that "the science is settled", when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn't.

"But it is effectively BBC policy... that those views should not be heard."

In comparison the Sunday Times devoted a whole page and a bit to it, as did Sat Telegraph (see my previous entry).

Or try searching for 'climategate' at The Guardian:

George Monbiot, a long term global warming campaigner who writes the for Guardian, called for the resignation of Phil Jones.

But note the subbie line "Climate sceptics have lied, obscured and cheated for years. That's why we climate rationalists must uphold the highest standards of science". He also calls non-believers 'scumbags', accuses them of 'outright fabrication, fraud and deceit', and says that they have mounted a grotesque campaign of lies. He also wrote a book called "Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning"

I did a straw poll of people at my table at the pub other other night - all think global warming is rubbish, or at least wildly overdone. I make a point of asking people - I note that those who do believe in global warming get very upset at any indication that I might not be a believer. Reminds me of a few religions I know.

Google's top result under 'climategate' is currently this, a nice summary of the email issues: manipulation of evidence, private doubts about whether the world really is heating up, suppression of evidence, fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists, attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)

Meanwhile, in our 'Only in the UK' category, we have this story:

GPs 'should offer climate change advice to patients'

Their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.

The Council believes that climate change “threatens to radically undermine the health of all peoples”.

The only positive thing is that it is generally impossible to actually see your GP in the UK (since there is no charge), so the brainwashing effect of this will be minimal.

Bin City Blows $19m on Recycling in a Recession

What on earth is going on in the People's Republic? The council has purchased a company which processes recycling material that no one wants. The logic from the Deputy Mayor is very poor:

Christchurch Deputy Mayor Norm Withers said it was essential to bail out the company to avoid a "citywide disaster".

"If this were to cease, one could only imagine the chaos," he said. "There was a degree of urgency. We have a duty of care to the ratepayers of this city to maintain the collection of refuse."

There is a difference, supposedly, between refuse and recycling. But if no one wants the recycling material, why not just dump it? There is a perfectly good dump available at Kate Valley, which would last at least a decade. Then when prices improve, perhaps some other fool could be found to start the plant up again.

The company does not even collect the material! A quick re-route of the trucks and it would all be sorted.

The price for recycled newspaper had fallen from $210 a tonne last year to $80. Meta was unable to find a buyer for newspaper for the last three months of 2008.

Recycling as a business is dodgy. It seems that in a recession it is the first to go. Councils should respond to this by quietly dumping the material, not by putting up $19m of ratepayers money.

"Our cost of borrowing is less than Meta's, so we are confident that by restructuring the debt there are cost efficiencies we can make," he said. "We can operate it for three months with no cost to the ratepayer."

And no risk? Why can the state not understand the difference between a sure thing and a risky venture? If Meta cannot make money out of recycling, how can the council? A company cannot borrow incessantly to keep afloat, and neither can the council. Furthermore, the shareholders of Meta have taken a risk and should now be the ones taking a bath. A sensible approach would be to wait for someone else to buy the business, presumably offering less than $19m, and probably less than the $15m debt. That is capitalism. As a shareholder myself, well accustomed to baths, I can attest to the painful but refreshing experience.

The decision was made without consultation because the situation was urgent and commercially sensitive, he said.

Well the price of recycling actually started falling a year ago, so any urgency was at least predictable. But the point is that the wrong decision was made. It is clear from the remarks by Cr Norm Withers that he saw and investigated no alternative. If this is the quality of decision-making at the CCC then ratepayers are in for a prolonged bath.

The real reason for this decision is nothing to do with 'chaos' and everything to do with politics. The council has been berating the city's school children with 'reduce-reuse-recycle' for years now and it would be embarrassing to have a period, however short, where the recycled material is just dumped. That is the real reason why the council spent this money.

Why Earth hour is a colossal waste of time

Go here to find out! There is a mention of the Copenhagen Consensus also, which might offer a sense of perspective for those caught up in the empty-headed euphoria.

Earth Hour and Ratepayers: 6000 Hits, How Many $$$?

Isn't is disgraceful that the Christchurch City Council feels it has funds to splash around for this pointless exercise in environmentalist hand-wringing? The CCC is not the only culprit.

This comes from the idea that councils tell us what to do, instead of vice versa. Council's are captured by silly interest groups like the WWF, which now seems to do little else than bang on about global warming. Council staff no doubt spend hours if not days in meetings at ratepayers' expense, talking and planning all this rubbish.

Worse, a google search shows some 6000 hits for earth hour in the NZ government domain, which includes central government and councils.

Someone should answer to this. Even in good times this is a hopeless indulgence for publicly-funded bodies. At a time when people are losing their jobs, the economy is under stress and everyone is looking at savings, it is a disgrace.

Finally, what are we doing with a 'sustainability' web site. This is funded by the government! What is the definition of sustainability?

Living sustainably means living smarter. This site will help you reduce your impact on the environment and save money, without compromising your lifestyle. You'll find useful tips on how best to use energy and water, and what to do with your rubbish.

It's not like any other definition I have read. It is so vague as to encourage everyone to want it.

Of course, the sharp end of 'sustainability' is just lovely too. Forcing people out of cars and into public transport has no impact on your lifestyle. Neither does having to sort your rubbish and manage three separate, stinking, bins. Massive electricity price hikes due to lack of generation (another environmentalist cause) has no impact either. Living cheek-by-jowl in high density housing caused by green-belt restructions is just part of the fun.

It would a remarkable experience to think like an environmentalist for a day, if you can call it thinking. Really is it just mindlessly following along with what you are told. That is why the environmentalists focus so much attention on primary school. Get them while they are young.

Environmentalism has its place, just like Hinduism and Islam. But like other religions, the state should be very careful spending money on it.

Auckland Heralds' Environmentalist

Her name is Eloise Gibson and she has written articles with the following titles recently:

    * Tree lovers fight to keep rules in the community
    * Scenery priority on zig-zag bike track
    * Law change 'may spur housing gold rush'
    * Law changes could see open season on trees
    * Knights and Dames: Will they accept or decline? [Possible new Knights and Dames]
    * Drivers favour biofuel if it saves money
    * Cruise ships' waste firm faces probe
    * Sewage overflow closes Point England beach
    * $11m plan to seal off toxic tips below parks
    * 'Carbon cowboys' to face fines of up to $200k
    * TV chief under fire after attack on critic
    * Downturn hits waste industry
    * Rare whale visit at Auckland beach [The Gray's beaked whale at Whale Cove]
    * Medical mishaps blamed for 76 deaths
    * Queen Mary 2 docks in Auckland [Queen Mary 2 sails into Auckland] [Your photos of the Queen Mary in Auckland]
    * Recession prompts rethink on emissions
    * Rain set to get blown away
    * Environment budget cut will lead to job losses
    * Opposition over resource bill
    * In future show a grain of sense
    * Fuel spillage still not cleared
    * Door left ajar for 2018 Games
    * Auckland's bid to host Games in jeopardy
    * Poles apart but oceans have plenty in common
    * Eco-town is where happiness blossoms

There is a clear environmentalist bent here. Is it time that the Herald openly declared that Ms Gibson is an environmentalist? Perhaps a blog or an opinion column would be more appropriate than a reporters' job?

Having first had a crack at a tree story under the headline 'Law changes could see open season on trees', she now tries again with 'Tree lovers fight to keep rules in the community'.

The first headline is an exaggeration at best. The second headline is simply misleading.

People quoted in the latest article are:

• Tree Council chairwoman Sigrid Shayer
• Auckland City Councillor Doug Armstrong who says "If you don't like trees you don't have to buy the house." and has presumably never had trouble finding a buyer for his
• Green MP Keith Locke

There is no quote from anyone in favour of sorting out the current mess (although there was one in the previous article).

At this point I want to declare that I'm a great tree lover, and I remember the anguish when our neighbours attacked their trees over three days. I had to leave the house because I couldn't stand the agony of the chain saws, and when it was done my initial reaction was to put our house on the market.

But private property rights should extend to chopping down trees. If councils want trees to stay, they should stop trying to encourage high density living, which is the real cause of trees going. Trees are a wonderful thing, but they are a luxury when space is short.

Getting back to our dodgy reporter, she states:

The Government wants to ban councils from having rules protecting trees of a certain size or type.

More correctly this says that the government wants to stop councils from banning people from chopping trees down on their own land without first looking at the tree and deciding if it is worth it. The current ban against removal is enforced by the council, not the government. The government was to remove the blanket ban, not create another. Only an environmentalist would see it in terms of banning a ban.

But the quote of the day has to go to the environmentalist party:

Green MP Keith Locke said banning tree rules would only create more
bureaucracy because councils would have to add thousands of pages to
their district plans.

He said the Government was creating "a forest of red tape" by asking councils to list each tree they wanted to protect.

It is wonderful to see that Mr Locke has come out against red tape. No doubt his support of the Electoral Finance Act was purely an oversight on his part. But in reality councils create the red tape. If they choose to deprive someone's property rights by banning them from chopping down a tree, this should require some effort and consideration on their part. A blanket ban is simply unfair.

Perhaps Eloise Gibson should expand her little black book and try to get out there and talk to a wider section of New Zealand. Perhaps a few stories on a little guy being crushed by an arrogant council, or the IRD driving someone to dispair. Balance within the article seems to elude her, but perhaps trying some different topics would work.

Environmentalists Must Feel the Recession

Environmentalists hate our consumer society, the symbol of which is the plastic bag. They want to get rid of them, not because they constitute only 0.2% of landfill rubbish, but because they are a symbol of our freedom to shop, to carry things, to make an unplanned purchase and carry it home.

Environmentalists hate housing and want it more cramped. They support green belts and other restrictions which make it much more expensive to buy a first home. Environmentalists are a key factor in the 'unsustainable' housing boom in many countries, which is in turn a key factor in our current economic troubles.

Environmentalists hate transport and want it restricted to expensive and crowded trains. They have mounted a sustained campaign against family-sized cars which has helped to bring down the US car industry (although it has mostly itself to blame).

Environmentalists hate energy and want it taxed and restricted as much as possible. All current forms of electrical power generation (coal, oil, gas, hydro, nuclear and even wind) are discouraged either for CO2 emission, affect on land, disposal problems, affect on views or whatever by the environmentalists and their puppets the nymbys. Most countries have crippling petrol taxes as a direct result of environmentalists' efforts.

Environmentalists hate children and want them restricted to two per family, or less. Children are the symbol of the future pillaging of the planet by humans, and the fewer of them exist the better. So much of the economy revolves around children (schools, entertainment, transport, activities, food). Reducing the number of children is the key to reducing the world population.

Environmentalists dance around a word and that word is sustainability. What it means in practice is unclear, but in general anything that you do can offend the word. Our roads are unsustainable, our housing is unsustainable, so are our children. Our light bulbs are unsustainable and our supermarkets. Having a decent shower is unsustainable. In the end, of course, human life is 'unsustainable'. The whole sustainability debate has collapsed in on itself as we realise there is no actual end in this, just the means to restrict and control our lives.

Having spent so much effort trying to bring down the world economy and make our lives more difficult, many environmentalists are thrilled that it has now happened. They see it as 'inevitable', even if they don't see that they helped to bring it about.

As the environmentalists said in early 2008 of the coming recession:

The second principle would be to take the
opportunity to restructure our economy –growing our way out of
recession is no value if the growth is unsustainable or harms our
communities and environment.

No value at all. We might as well stay in recession forever if the recovery is 'unsustainable'.

But what is very unfair about all of this is that environmentalists seem to have hardly suffered at all. If anything, they are thriving in the environment that they helped to create. 'Cleantech' is the new growth area attracting lots of investment even in the recession. Environmentalists have been hired in their droves both by councils and private companies desperate to protect themselves from adverse press. Entire government departments have been created (or simply renamed, as in Environment Canterbury) to push their agenda. Staff are well looked after - I remember the MFE was the first to get a $5000 automatic coffee machine in Wellington when these were introduced some 8-10 years ago.

So it is with enormous satisfaction that I see the Ministry for the Environment is to cut staff, even if only a tiny number. I would argue that the entire ministry should go, except that these people would then pollute the private labour market with their poisonous anti-human ideas.

The MFE was established a little over 20 years ago to no great fanfare. Since then a number of additional acts have increased its power and scope, not least the dodgy Kyoto agreement. It now has its tentacles into the economy (and our lives) in many many ways. When you add in DOC, MAF and Fisheries which each contain legions of environmentalists, a clear picture emerges of environmentalists taking over our government.

The environmentalists are upset now:

“There’s more and more evidence of an anti-environmental agenda from the new Government,” Dr Norman said.  “The Ministry for the Environment is being clinically ham-strung by the National-led Government.”

[And as an aside, environmentalists do a world-beating line in hypocrisy:

“We are swimming against the tide claiming it’s about saving money when the Government’s actions will prove expensive in the long run,” said Dr Norman. “Since these decisions defy reason, the only conclusion left is that they are driven by belief instead.”

Environmentalists are of course never driven by belief. Plastic bags, decent sided back yards, moving about, using electricity and having children are all of course scientifically proven to be bad for us]

Well when environmentalists are upset, we humans should be pleased. Happy environmentalists generally means sad humans and vice versa.

As we try to work our way through the current recession, let's keep in mind the partial blame that environmentalists hold for the situation. Recessions have perhaps only one good side, and that is to weed out the weak companies and help to reallocate resources to more useful and important areas. For this reason they are sadly important, in fact essential, for continued growth to occur.

But for the good of humanity, and for the same reasons, let the environmentalists feel the recession too.