Global Warming has now been revealed as a hoax. The question remains, is this perverse exploitation of young people by (Greenpeace, GetUp!, Australian Ethical, Greens, Amnesty International, AMWU, NSW Teacher's Federation et al) worse because Global warming has been disproved, or just abysmal even if the children were participating in something worthwhile? Note the notes were being handed out by well meaning yr 11 students at a public high school.
Thursday, 26 November 2009 Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun talks to Alan Jones about the ETS vote and emails exposing the dubious science behind climate change.
Joe Hockey has been a hard man to spot while the media pack has been urged to "leave Malcolm alone" - by Malcolm Turnbull himself. Follow the latest developments live @ The Punch
Hockey holds talks with Turnbull A DEFIANT Malcolm Turnbull is refusing to step aside, saying he will contest a leadership spill. - pity he didn't contest the ALP that way - ed.
Woman 'thrown on tracks' in rail nightmare A TEENAGER has been charged with throwing a 19-year-old woman on to tracks after an argument allegedly exploded on an inner-Sydney train platform.
Germany prepares to try suspected Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, in what is expected to be the last time the Holocaust will be played out so fully in a courtroom — and, the last time survivors will testify against a man accused of being one of their families' willing executioners.
Iran to Build 10 Nuke Plants Tehran reportedly approves plan for 10 uranium facilities in direct defiance of U.N. demands that it cut enrichment
Child murderers to avoid jail CHILDREN who kill will have their final sentence postponed, sometimes until they are adults, under a radical plan being considered by the State Government.
9,000 Marines to Afghanistan? Obama's Afghan war strategy to reportedly start with 9,000 Marines being deployed to southern Afghanistan
Tribute to the fire dead A MINUTE'S silence will be held for the 173 Black Saturday victims on next year's anniversary.
Egypt's Princess Ferial dead PRINCESS Ferial, the daughter of Egypt's last reigning monarch, has died after a long cancer fight. === Comments === TV OR NOT TV Tim Blair Following their success with light globes, environmeddlers launch a new assault:
Last week, after two years of debate and study, California became the first state to challenge America’s heretofore unquestioned love affair with its TV set. A state panel established the nation’s first energy-consumption limits for TVs up to 58 inches wide. Regulations for larger sets will be phased in later …
At least three other states (Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts) and two national governments (Canada and Australia) then said they, too, would consider energy limits.
Just as well that Australians are buying watchable TVs while they still can:
Retailers and manufacturers are reporting unprecedented demand for flat-screen TVs. There are also forecasts that 2.4 million new TVs will have been sold this year.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous,’’ says Lionel Lee, the chief executive at electronics retailer Bing Lee. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like this sort of action. Unit sales are up at least 20 per cent.”
Sales will spike even further once consumers learn of government plans for CFL TV. === DECLINE UNHIDDEN Tim Blair More data for climate shriekers to discard:
The percentage of Americans who believe global warming is happening has dipped from 80 to 72 percent in the past year …
Among Republicans, belief has plunged from 76 to just 54 per cent. This is in line with global doubting trends, which may be driven by concern over stupid green taxes:
Electricity prices in NSW will soar by a staggering 60 per cent over the next three years, adding more than $400 to the average household power bill.
And Kevin Rudd’s plan to cut greenhouse gases would account for 50 per cent of the increase, according to a secret report with the State Government.
A rational, non-suckish federal opposition might find something useful in this. === BETTERMENT OF NATURE Tim Blair Tim Flannery – already in Copenhagen; that jet-beating solar canoe of his is one rapid conveyance – offers his view on business:
Many business leaders seem to think it’s enough to look after your employees and make a profit. That describes perfectly well a criminal syndicate, but not a business.
According to Flannery, business folk should ask themselves: “In my daily work do I contribute to the betterment of mankind and nature?” Ask yourself, mate. You’re the one with the local record for frequent flyer points. Readers who themselves run businesses are invited to answer Judge Flannery’s question in comments. === ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO TREACH Tim Blair Jim Treacher enjoys a friendly chat with the global warming evangelist who lives in his head. That chatty skull-dweller sounds much like the warmy who bailed me up at Saturday night’s party. Also from Treacher, tweets worth repeating:
• In the ‘80s, Tipper Gore wanted to tell us which music to listen to. 25 years later, her husband wants to tell us how to do everything else.
• So Tiger Woods’ wife found out he was cheating on her & went after him with a golf club? Good thing he’s not a baseball player.
• Scientists really can work miracles. They turned a javelin into a hockey stick and Al Gore into a superstar.
• Climategate is a story about computer hacking in much the same way Watergate was a story about parking garages.
• Remember when reporters provided their audience with news, not the other way around?
=== SOLDIER DRONED Tim Blair Professional war protester Cindy Sheehan demonstrates her famous support for the troops. The fun kicks in at about 1.50. These days Sheehan is opposed to unmanned drones, which would describe most of her Code Pink associates. === Hockey prepares. I’d guess it’s on Andrew Bolt Samantha Maiden:
IN a strong sign he is about to throw his hat into the Liberal leadership ring Joe Hockey is holding talks at his Sydney home with Peter Dutton.
Mr Dutton is viewed as a potential candidate for the deputy Liberal leader’s spot. The pair arrived in separate cars today and made no comment as they entered the Hockey family home.
=== SLOW TIMES Tim Blair “What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?” asks Thomas Friedman. He’s a New York Times columnist, so he takes a while longer than most of us to work things out:
Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”
By “The Narrative”, Friedman means the general anti-Western, anti-democratic sentiment clung to throughout the Arab-Muslim world:
This narrative suits Arab governments. It allows them to deflect onto America all of their people’s grievances over why their countries are falling behind. And it suits Al Qaeda, which doesn’t need much organization anymore — just push out The Narrative over the Web and satellite TV, let it heat up humiliated, frustrated or socially alienated Muslim males, and one or two will open fire on their own. See: Major Hasan.
So much for the “pre-traumatic shock” theory and other Islam-dodging excuses offered in the wake of Hasan’s slaughter. At the NYT, it takes nearly an entire month for a fellow’s blindingly obvious motives to become clear. Fog lifted, Friedman ends with a request that Barack Obama deliver this speech to an Islamic audience:
Why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves.
The first of 688 reader responses to Friedman’s piece: “Pretty ironic that Tom Friedman would complain about The Narrative in a paper that is guilty as any other for promoting it.” === STARVED OF COVERAGE Tim Blair Fairfax environment writer Tom Arup reports:
On the lawns of Parliament house there has been a small tent where a man is fasting for climate change. I heard him on the radio early last week. He was described by the host as a 29-year old Melbourne University student. ‘‘29-year old student!’’ I proclaimed in my head at the time, following the thought up with something conservative about getting a job.
The faster’s marketing person has been hassling me about a story for two weeks. I am amazed that even fasters have media representation.
Paul Connor is putting the “star” into “starvation”. Our favourite Gaia zombie is now 23 days into his chompless protest:
Viewers may be concerned at Connor’s health, given how rambling and disjointed he seems (also, he’s reading Peter Singer). But he sounded exactly the same before he put the cutlery away. === Turnbull out by tomorrow Andrew Bolt Hockey will be the Opposition Leader tomorrow:
MALCOLM Turnbull has declared he will contest the Liberal leadership after Joe Hockey told him today he would seek the top job. === Swiss cut minarets down to size Andrew Bolt Europe is pushing back:
Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Sunday, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population....
The referendum by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party labeled minarets as symbols of rising Muslim political power that could one day transform Switzerland into an Islamic nation. The initiative was approved 57.5 to 42.5 per cent by some 2.67 million voters. Only four of the 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, granting the double approval that makes it part of the Swiss constitution.
Muslims comprise about six per cent of Switzerland’s 7.5 million people…
“The minaret is a sign of political power and demand, comparable with whole-body covering by the burqa, tolerance of forced marriage and genital mutilation of girls,” the sponsors said.
ELECTRICITY prices in NSW will soar by a staggering 60 per cent over the next three years, adding more than $400 to the average household power bill.
And Kevin Rudd’s plan to cut greenhouse gases would account for 50 per cent of the increase, according to a secret report with the State Government.
In alarming news for struggling families, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is recommending the hefty rise in power bills from next July… IPART is disputing Canberra’s forecast that an Emissions Trading Scheme will only add 7 per cent to electricity prices in 2011/12, rising to 12 per cent the following year. IPART expects the impact of the CPRS will be closer to 30 per cent by mid-2013.
Remember that this is just a downpayment on the true cost of this mad tax. You won’t just pay higher power prices. You will also pay more for everything that needed electricity, too - processed foods, clothes, cars, steel, concrete, train rides… You’ll need to pay more for the people who will lose their jobs because of this tax. You’ll pay more for the uneconomic “green” power we’ll be forced to use instead of cheap coal-fired power. You’ll pay for the gassy companies demanding compensation for going broke. You’ll pay for the billions Kevin Rudd is spending overseas to bribe pooer countries to cut gases, too.
You’ll pay. I suspect you’ll one day make Labor pay, too. And make the Liberals pay who said this great green tax on everything was a good idea - because they did not dare say no. === Climate Gate Corruption Andrew Bolt JR Dunn, in a brilliant anaylsis of Climategate and the corruption of the climate science, gives Hockey all the reasons he now desperately needs to change his mind on man-made global warming.
First Dunn lists just some of the incredible “mistakes” made the Climategate scientists and their allies that suggests not just atonishingly sloppy work, but an entire culture of exaggeration and evangelism that is utterly hostile to good science: === What’s burning is not the planet, but those eyes Andrew Bolt
Green activist and actor Ed Begley Jr just can’t cope with the revelations in the Climategate emails. Facts meet faith and ... well, stand back, or be splattered by exploding brain matter.
Wait until these guys read the Climategate emails. They’ll sure have something to cry over then:
=== Making Sweden warmer Andrew Bolt We’ve already seen serious questions raised about the way a warming rise was calculated in New Zealand. Willis Eschenbach now describes how the Climategate scientists misled Sweden’s Professor Wibjorn Karlen about the temperatures over Nordic countries, too, when he asked how the IPCC had produced graphics like these for northern Europe: What puzzled Karlen was that the data he was looking at for Nordic countries in fact showed no warming above what had been witnessed in the 1930s: Wrote Karlen to the Climategate scientists:
It is hard to find evidence of a drastic warming of the Arctic. It is also difficult to find evidence of a drastic warming outside urban areas in a large part of the world outside Europe. However the increase in temperature in Central Europe may be because the whole area is urbanized (see e.g. Bidwell, T., 2004: Scotobiology – the biology of darkness. Global change News Letter No. 58 June, 2004).
So, I find it necessary to object to the talk about a scaring temperature increase because of increased human release of CO2. In fact, the warming seems to be limited to densely populated areas.
Eschenbach then describes the snow job.
UPDATE
Remember this graph produced by Climategate scientist Michael Mann - reproduced in the IPCC report that he and other Climategate scientists also co-authored - which claimed to prove it had never been hotter? That, too, was a fake, first exposed not by peer review but by a retired mining executive, whose findings were confirned by an inquiry commissioned by a committee of the US Congress, as Bishop Hill describes in his brilliant history of the scandal.
But here is a fascinating interactive graph that summarises the overwhelming evidence that the world was hotter just 800 years ago. Click here for the mouseover interaction feature that calls up each graph: UPDATE 2
London Imperial College researcher Michael Schrage in the Financial Times sums up the meaning of the scandal:
Dubbed “climate-gate” by global warming sceptics, the most outrageous East Anglia email excerpts appear to suggest respected scientists misleadingly manipulated data and suppressed legitimate argument in peer-reviewed journals.
These claims are forcefully denied, but the correspondents do little to enhance confidence in either the integrity or the professionalism of the university’s climatologists. What is more, there are no denials around the researchers’ repeated efforts to avoid meaningful compliance with several requests under the UK Freedom of Information Act to gain access to their working methods. Indeed, researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails. Secrecy, not privacy, is at the rotten heart of this bad behavior by ostensibly good scientists.
Why should research funding institutions and taxpayers fund scientists who deliberately delay, obfuscate and deny open access to their research? Why should scientific journals publish peer-reviewed research where the submitting scientists have not made every reasonable effort to make their work – from raw data to sophisticated computer simulations – as transparent and accessible as possible? Why should responsible policymakers in America, Europe, Asia and Latin America make decisions affecting people’s health, wealth and future based on opaque and inaccessible science? === Flannery drowns in contradictions Andrew Bolt Professional warming alarmist Tim Flannery is now in Copenhagen, having yet again taken a jet that belches the gases he wants the rest of us to slash. And he’s furious about Climategate:
Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, said the timing of the theft was suspicious. ‘’It reveals the depth to which climate sceptics will go to influence the course of events.’’
Speaking of the depths to which some people sink to influence others, how about Flannery’s record of trying to scare people with the most apocalyptic claims about global warming:
The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.
So how has that scare panned out? Hmm. About as accurate as his predictions that Sydney and Brisbane could be out of water, too, and the Arctic out of ice. Why do people believe a single word this shameless scare-merchant says?
If he had any honor he might heed the implications of his admission on the ABC last week:
In the last few years, were there hasn’t been a continuation of that warming trend, we don’t understand all of the factors that create earth’s climate, so there are some things we don’t understand… These people (climate scientists) work with models, computer modelling, when the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem, that’s when science gets engaged. What Kevin Trenberth, one of the most respected climate scientist in the world, is saying is, “We have to get on our horses and find out what we don’t know about the system, we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn’t reflect it”.
UPDATE
Christopher Booker explains the three greatest scandals so far in Climategate, and concludes:
Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.
Tim Flannery, start backpedalling fast, because you will be one who will be held to account.
UPDATE 2
Dr David Evans matches the timing of the temperature rise - and then fall - against the timing of the rise in carbon dioxide emissions. The results immediately cast doubt, he says, on the theory that’s man’s gases cause global warming.
UPDATE 3
Remembering John Daly, the gifted and prescient Tasmanian sceptic whose death was such cheering news to Climategate ringleader Phil Jones. === Is all of her indigenous? Andrew Bolt Exactly what makes Cattermole “indigenous” and me not?
PERTH model Emily Cattermole is on the way to becoming Australia’s first indigenous supermodel after signing with elite American modelling agency Ford.
What makes all the difference is a grandparent:
A model since the age of 14, Cattermole is the granddaughter of former WA politician Ernie Bridge, who was the first Aboriginal political minister in Australia.
Here’s Ernie: Could we stop obsessing about racial differences almost invisible to the naked eye, and almost washed out by generations of mixed ancestry? It makes us look a little bit, well, racist.
Guards fired shots to end riot at prison PRISON wardens fired shots to quell a riot which was considered the "worst incident in 25 years". - what do you expect when the NSW Govt run jails like schools. - ed.
Mum elated to see Nigel Brennan THE mother of freed kidnap victim Nigel Brennan has had an emotional and euphoric reunion with her son which has left them both speechless with hugs.
Bomb killed 39 on Russian train A TERRORIST'S bomb derailed an elite passenger train speeding through the Russian forest. === Comments === Real grassroots fury putting heat on ETS Piers Akerman IT’S a matter of grave concern for stalwart rank-and-file Liberal Party members that Malcolm Turnbull’s number one supporter for his global-warming stance is now no less a figure than Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, while his number two supporter is the former union leader, Greg Combet. - I am very disappointed with Mr Turnbull for his support of the ETS. I want to hold him to his promise of not doing anything that is ineffective. I feel he should give the Australian economy a benefit of a doubt and reject the ETS. I get it that he is tethered to his constituents at Wentworth. Even so, leadership expresses itself, and Mr Turnbull is looking like Fraser or Hewson. I am very disappointed. - ed. === Reagan Still Points the Way for Republicans By James Pinkerton Today, conservatives and Republicans--not always one and the same, as we have seen recently in New York State--are feeling rightfully emboldened. Any notion that America had permanently shifted toward liberalism over the last few years was blown away on Election Day 2009. And yet it remains to be seen whether or not conservatives and Republicans (and also libertarians and independents) can work together, over the long haul, in the same partisan and ideological coalition. === A betrayal of science - and of you Andrew Bolt Frank J. Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, on the true significance of Climategate: The now non-secret data prove what many of us had only strongly suspected — that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up. That is, not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data upon which these models are built are also unreliable. As Lord Monckton has emphasized here at Pajamas Media, this deliberate destruction of data and the making up of data out of whole cloth is the real crime — the real story of Climategate.
It is an act of treason against science. It is also an act of treason against humanity, since it has been used to justify an attempt to destroy the world economy. === Beware a Tiger’s mate with club in hand Andrew Bolt It did seem odd to read that Tiger Wood’s wife rescued him from his crashed car by smashing in the window with a golf club. Seems the chain of events may have been the other way around. === The death of beauty Andrew Bolt How many more years of failure before we have a cultural awakening?
Although this year has been hailed as a strong one for Australian films, that $65 million cut of the box office is just 6.5 per cent of the roughly $1 billion Australians spend each year at the cinema.
That’s better than the 10-year average of 4.4 per cent, but it’s a long way from the 41 per cent audience share French films enjoy at home or the 31 per cent UK films have in their own market....
If Australia ($38 million) and Mao’s Last Dancer ($14 million to date) are excluded from the take, the figures look decidedly anaemic - at best, about $20 million between all the other Australian films released.Only Samson & Delilah has made a profit at the local box office...
Once again there’s talk of better marketing and financing and the rest. But here’s the giveaway:
And even at the producers conference, there was much derisive talk of the Australian industry’s preference for ‘’depressing films about junkies in Darlingurst’’.
The fact is, for a start, that the writing on so many scripts is just plain clunky and affected. The same is true of so many Australian novels. That’s not just a question of lack of technical skill, although that’s clearly a big factor. We’re also talking self indulgence here: too often the desire to express seems to overwhelm the imperative of the need to entertain.
But there is as well a great self-protective conceit and a culture of anti-beauty that affects almost every branch of the arts.
It is no coincidence that five of the world’s 10 ugliest buildings, as rated this year by Virtual Tourist, are cultural institutions such as theatres and galleries, or are home to them. It is no coincidence that opera as a living art form was virtually killed off by atonality. It is a crime that modern theatres have been stripped down into stark, no-glamor, determinedly egalitarian work-spaces, rather than the glorious chocalate boxes of the typically 19th century boxes and galleries kind of theatre you see throughout Europe. It is a tragedy that “gritty” and “confronting” are now seen as the ultimate accolade in black-skivvy circles, when you know that this is precisely what is sure to drive away the paying public. It was a dereliction of duty for the board of the Melbourne International Arts Festival to allow for four years its then director, Kirsty Edmunds, to stage the most anti-beauty, anti-charm, anti-canonical, anti-narrative shows she could find, and drive the box office to depths not seen since Jacques Cousteau went diving (and how refreshing to see the recovery this year under Brett Sheehy).
It is no surprise that a disdain for the public’s preferences - and a failure to satisfy them - should match so closely the rise in the grants from arts adminstrators who apparently see the arts as a social marker rather than a socialising event, and thus insulate artists from their failure to please the uninitiated masses. And how comforting is it to an artist and their clique in the stalls to console themselves with the idea that mass rejection only confirms the superior tastes of the few.
Bring back beauty. Provoke, yes, but not without pleasing, too. All may die in Hamlet, but not before delivering the loveliest of lines. === Spin, spin and spin again Andrew Bolt Another small example of an overwhelming characteristic of this most bizarre Prime Minister:
THE mother of freed hostage Nigel Brennan says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was clueless about her son’s case when she asked him for assistance in freeing her son from his Somali captors earlier this year....
Mr Rudd told the media afterwards that he had devoted more personal attention to Mr Brennan’s predicament than any other case involving an Australian in trouble overseas.
But the reality, according to Mrs Brennan, was very different: ”He didn’t know my name, nor Nigel’s,” she told The Sunday Mail later, speaking on the basis that nothing would be published until her son was free === Rudd starts giving our our billions Andrew Bolt I’ve already revealed that the United Nations’s draft treaty at Copenhagen next month required Australia to pay $7 billion a year to the UN as its “climate debt”. Kevin Rudd still refuses to say how much he’ll actually hand over, but has already agreed this week to give away hundreds of millions of your dollars to countries such as South Africa, Jamaica, Kenya and Uganda:
The Commonwealth plan for the so-called “Fast Start” fund calls for developed countries in the 53-nation group to spend $10 billion a year until at least 2012.
How much did you just spend at CHOGM, Mr Rudd, and how many billions will you spend in Copenhagen?
He decline(d) to put a figure on the funding, saying it was still to be determined.
Such deceit. Be honest with the taxpayers whose money this really is, Prime Minister. Tell us how much of our money you’re giving away on this mad green crusade? === Why is this megalomaniac in charge of the Liberals? Andrew Bolt Malcolm Turnbull is clear on Channel 9 today: any Liberal Party not led by him is not worth voting for:
Now, if (Senate Liberal leader) Nick Minchin wins, if he wins this battle (to delay Rudd’s great green tax), he condemns our party to irrelevance, because what he is saying on one of the greatest issues and challenges of our time, one that will affect the future of the planet and the future of our children and their children, Nick Minchin is saying ‘do nothing’. He wants us to be the ‘do nothing on climate change’ party and he has been, he’s on the record about that, and when he talks about a delay or a deferral, what that means is denial…
Laurie, I will win on Tuesday and I am not interested in becoming a mouth piece or a Patsy or a tool for people whose views are completely wrong and are contrary to the best interests of our nation, our planet and indeed the Liberal Party…
Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews for that matter, ,,,didn’t object (to John Howard’s emissions trading plan), they went along with it and now they say “We didn’t ever believe in it”. What does that say about their integrity…
Joe Hockey has told me as recently as last night that I have his complete support… Now, if Joe were to become leader but - so if he was the cuddly friendly face of the Liberal Party but spouting Nick Minchin’s lines, that would destroy him and the party…
Joe believes that if this bill is not passed nobody in our party, including him would have the capacity to present a credible alternative climate change policy. Because Rudd will say, look, you guys took an ETS to the last election with John Howard, we put up an ETS, you presented some amendments, we agreed to them in large part, you said that’s great, a deal is done, you had the support of your party room, it was confirmed within 24 hours by a second vote in the party room, he would say, now you’re ratting on it and you expect us to believe you’re fair dinkum with an alternative climate change policy when you have got people like Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott there saying that climate change is bunkum and we don’t have to do anything about it…
LO (Laurie Oakes): But this is not just about climate change, this is also about Turnbull, there are people in the party who loathe your style, they say you’re autocratic? You don’t …
MT: Compared to who? Compared to John (Howard),. John didn’t …
If we put the party, doesn’t matter if it’s Joe Hockey or Billy Bloggs as the leader, if we put the party back together, in accordance with Nick Minchin’s wishes, then we will end up becoming a fringe party of the far right…
LO: Final question, I suppose if you’re right and if you lose, are you saying that if Liberal Party is not worthy of winning the next election?
MT: Laurie, I’m not going to make a comment on that.
An utterly, utterly disgraceful performance by Turnbull. This prolongued rant cannot be dismissed as a mere slip of the tongue. Turnbull cannot even bring himself to endorse the Liberals if not led by him. He’d rather destroy the party than let it be led by anyone else.
The man always was more a creature of the Left than a genuine Liberal, and as leader suffers from an even more drastic flaw, that no stands starkly revealed.
He is a megalomaniac, who identifies his own interests with the party’s. As de Gaulle would has said: The party is me.
This interview alone should end what remnants of support Turnbull has left. This is a man who will never listen, and cannot lead. === Climate hype drowns in Tasmania’s rain Andrew Bolt I’m sorry, but I can’t keep up. Is too much rain in Tasmania - or too little - that’s proof of global warming?
Persistent rains have prompted the Weather Bureau to declare 2009 the 11th-wettest year on record in Tasmania.
I can’t say the Bureau predicted these past two months to be quite this wet:
The chances of exceeding the median rainfall for October to December are between 25 and 40% over northeast Queensland, parts of Victoria, southeast SA and Tasmania (see map).
Still, even though the Bureau can’t predict the weather three months ahead, we must believe it can predict the climate 100 years from now.
But back to the question: is the rain proof of global warming, or is a dry? After all, it wasn’t long ago that the Bureau thought it ominous that there was little rain:
Figures released today by the Bureau of Meteorology in its Tasmanian annual climate summary for 2006 show that many sites in northern, eastern and southeastern Tasmania have had their driest year on record. The summary gives many details for sites across the state, including summaries and extremes for the year.
But here’s what the CSIRO predicted Tasmania would get, thanks to global warming:
The research model predicted that annual rainfall in Tasmania will increase by seven to eleven percent in the west and central areas, and will decrease by around eight percent in the north-east. Increased rainfall is expected in all areas of Tasmania in winter and early spring.
That was three years ago. Yet the evidence until now is that Tasmania has been getting less rain, contrary to the CSIRO’s model - confirming a National Technical University of Athens study which concluded such models were in fact useless: === It’s not who you rape but who you know Andrew Bolt The President of France helps a child rapist on the reported grounds that his wife’s artistic friends liked him:
Polish director Roman Polanski’s family is thanking French President Nicolas Sarkozy for being “very effective” in helping to win his release from a Swiss prison.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is thanks to the President that Roman has been freed, but he has been super,” Polanski’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Seigner, told Le Parisien newspaper. “The President has been very effective.”
The London Times speculated that Sarkozy’s wife, ex-model Carla Bruni, may have pressured her husband to intervene because she used to hob nob with Paris’ artistic community, which includes Polanski and wife Emmanuelle Seigner.
After initially balking at his release, Swiss authorities agreed to let Polanski move from a cell to his luxurious Alpine chalet once he puts up $4.5 million bail.
How to tell the public that there’s one law for them, and another for the President’s mates. Even the ones that would drug, rape and sodomise a protesting 13 year old. === Powdering the moll’s face Andrew Bolt A shockingly amoral line in novellist Adrian McGinty’s review of the alleged autobiography of gangster’s moll Roberta Williams:
Williams sees herself as a victim persecuted by the media and the criminal justice system and she portrays Carl as a gun-toting, loveable rogue. She shows no sign of remorse that Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro were shot in their car in front of five young children, including Moran’s twins. Indeed, she mocks the family members who appeared shocked and grief-stricken that night on the TV news.
There’s no denying Williams’ charisma or toughness or love for her own children, but a kinder editor might have made her temper such sociopathic statements.
McGinty is criticising the publisher for not disguising the fact that the sociopath who wrote this self-serving defence of a criminal career career is in fact, well, a sociopath.
This is not only mistaking the difference between fiction and autobiography, which purports (so often falsely) to give the reader a true insight into the mind of the storyteller - an insight McGinty apparently suggests should have been obscured.
It is also to become culpable in the glamorising - or at least normalising - of a criminal and the despicable crimes of her husband. Roberta Williams is a nasty person, and it’s dishonest and anti-social to wish her to appear otherwise. It’s terrible enough that she profits from her book. === The pain is whole idea of Rudd’s great green tax Andrew Bolt Terry McCrann says analysing the details of the “compromise” the Rudd Government made on its great green tax on everything is missing the big picture:
Getting lost in the detail is utterly pointless. All the compensation in the world can’t avoid the ETS destination: which stripped to its essentials is to close some at least of our power stations. When in the context of surging population we should be building more.
Further, the greater the compensation—in the short run—to some sectors of the economy like the power industry and minerals exporters, the greater the burden that will have to be borne by the un-compensated.
This in turn has led, as detailed by Alan Wood on Thursday, to the return of the rent-seekers: the greatest sucking at the taxpayer teat since the dismantling of tariffs. This was a week that will live in infamy and insanity. === Climategate is what it’s called - and called too often to ignore Andrew Bolt The news that many Left-wing journalists refuse to cover is now exploding all over the Internet. “Climategate” now gets 10.6 million mentions on Google, even though Google won’t offer the term on its auto-suggest.
The public is not just learning of Climategate, but learning of media censorship as well.
UPDATE
Google now has “Climategate” on autosuggest - and it returns more hits even than “global warming”. Ask your local media outlet why this scandal is not getting the coverage it deserves.
UPDATE 2
Via Watts Up With That, this video of who’s-who in Climategate:
UPDATE 3
If governments around the world weren’t punting trillions of dollars on the reliability of these scientists’ work, you’d laugh:
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.
No sane Government can now commit themselves to spending their national wealth on science so shady.
is the most important line anyway... People who always remember all the lyrics are freaks. Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nata... Hope you all are well and enjoy your weekends. x n
Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for South East England, giving a speech in Strasbourg on 25 November 2009 on attempts to turn the climate change debate into a reason for greater global governance, ever more distant from national democracies.
Crowds have welcomed two new Panda bears to Australia who are here as part of a new joint research program, with Wang Wang and Funi even receiving a police escort to their new home
Rudd hoses down early election talk PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has hosed down speculation he will call an early federal election. - Rudd is used to lying. He might wish to see the fallout of the discovery that global warming is a con, but probably he wanted an election yesterday. ALP leaders are unanimous in being clever by calling surprise early elections - ed.
Watch the new chant dominating schoolies week (warning: adult content), plus hear what some schoolies think of the celebrations.
Too many drunks at hospitals DRUNKS are overburdening the state's hospital emergency rooms, researchers have found. Each year about 3000 people die because of alcohol abuse.
Polanski to stay in jail ROMAN Polanski will spend one more weekend in jail, because no bond had been received.
Philippine massacre suspect charged A PHILIPPINE politician was charged with mass murder today after authorities accused him of ordering soldiers, police and other gunmen to kill at least 57 defenceless people in an organised slaughter.
Minister quits over Afghan air strike GERMAN Labour Minister Franz Josef Jung has resigned over a deadly air strike in Afghanistan in September, when he was defence minister.
Transcripts show air traffic controllers asked Northwest pilots who overflew Minneapolis what happened — the response: 'cockpit distractions' were the issue.
Stocks Slump on Dubai Debt News U.S. markets, after being closed for Thanksgiving, fall on fears that problems will affect wider financial system
Lawyer: White House Cleared Crashers White House denies attorney's claim that socialites who crashed state dinner were 'cleared' to attend - Obama understands how difficult it is for posers and social climbers. -ed. === Comments === AL’S RIDE Tim Blair A “peace and justice movement” apparently sworn to every cause on earth – the group includes 9/11 Truthers, new world order theorists, eugenics freakers and anti-warmers – confronts Al Gore at a Chicago book signing, leading to this caption: Protester from the We Are Change group shout after chasing Al Gore’s SUV down State Street in the Chicago Loop on Tuesday. Where are those sky bears when we need them? === BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET Tim Blair Dense urban electorates remain in Malcolm Turnbull’s carbon corner:
Newspoll shows that 63 per cent of Coalition voters in the cities believe the government’s bill should be passed, while only 28 per cent think it should be opposed.
If one in 10 of those voters changed sides because of a Coalition decision to block action on climate change, it would cost the Liberal Party the 20 metropolitan seats that it holds with margins of less than 6.5 per cent.
Just a theory, but perhaps the fault for this lies with Liberal reluctance to attack emissions policies and expose the costs involved. Tony Abbott admitted yesterday:
On Wednesday, for instance, the opposition felt constrained not to question the government over newspaper headlines about the estimated $1100 a year extra costs for families because that was now its policy. It’s almost impossible to hold a government to account if you’ve just negotiated with it line-by-line to create the policy in contention.
Good point. Back to the poll story:
These findings are consistent with the Liberal Party’s internal research in marginal seats, which shows that between 75 and 80 per cent of swinging voters favour action on climate change.
Senior party officials say the research shows a triumph by climate change sceptics would be “the death of the party”.
Instead, the Liberal party is covering for the government and helping guide families towards a pointless $1100-per-year existence tax. As it stands, the party is already dead. === SNACK TIME Tim Blair There’s a whole hulk of tenderloin hidden inside Bingley’s intricate bacon weave: Click for cooking instructions. As Bingley emails, this RareCowPig dish is “the perfect companion to your oyster steak.” Indeed, it’s possibly even better than a carpetbag. I’m currently working on a new steak design myself, featuring a three-beast accompaniment I call climate justice salad. Stay tuned. === CONCERNS HEEDED Tim Blair Connie turns against Turnbull and his ETS-lovin’ ways:
NSW senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells quit as parliamentary secretary for immigration, saying she was breaking ranks to vote against an ETS.
“This has been a very difficult time for the Liberal Party,” she said in a statement.
“I acknowledge the avalanche of correspondence and feedback conveyed to me from a wide cross-section of the community, most especially after the decision of the Joint Party Room to amend and support the legislation.
“It is also especially clear from the Liberal base in NSW that the mood is strongly against that decision. In all my years of involvement in the Party, I have never seen such an extraordinary reaction.
“As a person who owes much to the Liberal Party and to that grassroots base, as well as to the people of NSW who elected me, I feel compelled to heed their concerns.”
Australia’s anti-Copenhagenists will not be denied. As was mentioned several weeks ago: “Privately, a lot of people in the Liberal Party are a lot more sceptical than Mr Hockey would let on.” Now we’re discovering just how many – and also the potential electoral force of conservative opposition to emissions trading. === The Svengali of the Liberal revolt speaks Andrew Bolt The ABC’s PM, a player in the global warming debate, accuses me of being a player. We then start arguing when the interviewer shows no interest in the central fact which best explains this revolt by the Liberal sceptics - the failure of the world to actually warm. Listen here. Transcript here.
Actually, I kind of think Mark Colvin is blaming you, dear readers, for Turnbull’s fall. I think he feels you’ve caused this panic.
PS: Some other ABC broadcasters are players, too, of course, but their kind of playing is perfectly legitimate, for some reason..
Example: Jon Faine refuses to even discuss leaked emails revealing how leading global warming scientists conspired to rig results, censor sceptics and destroy data on the grounds that “it suits the conspiracy theorists beautifully”.
In fact, which ABC player endorsed and actually recorded TV ads for a political party?
UPDATE
Actually, which two ABC personalities recorded ads for a political party - and which even ran as a candidate:
=== SIGN OF THE TIMES Tim Blair Canada’s national broadcaster receives some viewer input:
=== ETERNAL MELTING Tim Blair From the New York Times, 128 years of looming polar doom:
• 1881: “This past Winter, both inside and outside the Arctic circle, appears to have been unusually mild. The ice is very light and rapidly melting …”
• 1932: “NEXT GREAT DELUGE FORECAST BY SCIENCE; Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents”
• 1934: “New Evidence Supports Geology’s View That the Arctic Is Growing Warmer”
• 1937: “Continued warm weather at the Pole, melting snow and ice.”
• 1954: “The particular point of inquiry concerns whether the ice is melting at such a rate as to imperil low-lying coastal areas through raising the level of the sea in the near future.”
• 1957: “U.S. Arctic Station Melting”
• 1958: “At present, the Arctic ice pack is melting away fast. Some estimates say that it is 40 per cent thinner and 12 per cent smaller than it was fifteen years [ago].”
• 1959: “Will the Arctic Ocean soon be free of ice?”
• 1971: “STUDY SAYS MAN ALTERS CLIMATE; U.N. Report Links Melting of Polar Ice to His Activities”
• 1979: “A puzzling haze over the Arctic ice packs has been identified as a byproduct of air pollution, a finding that may support predictions of a disastrous melting of the earth’s ice caps.”
• 1982: “Because of global heating attributed to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fuel burning, about 20,000 cubic miles of polar ice has melted in the past 40 years, apparently contributing to a rise in sea levels …”
• 1999: “Evidence continues to accumulate that the frozen world of the Arctic and sub-Arctic is thawing.”
• 2000: “The North Pole is melting. The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday.”
• 2002: “The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades, scientists reported today.”
• 2004: “There is an awful lot of Arctic and glacial ice melting.”
• 2005: “Another melancholy gathering of climate scientists presented evidence this month that the Antarctic ice shelf is melting - a prospect difficult to imagine a decade ago.” === THICK ATMOSPHERE Tim Blair Climate researcher and IPCC co-author Eduardo Zorita calls for Warmergate plumbers Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf to be barred from the IPCC process and muses on the “very troubling professional behavior” evident in those leaked emails:
I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files …
I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere – and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now – editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’.
Zorita is prepared for the consequences:
By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication.
If so, he’ll be a victim of climate tribalism, as identified by the University of East Anglia’s Professor Mike Hulme:
It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.
Iowahawk has more on that “social organization”.
UPDATE. Ahead of a possible congressional investigation, Senator James Inhofe warns scientists to “retain [related] documents.” === IPCC too “politicised” to survive Andrew Bolt Green journalists may ignore them, but scientists cannot. In fact, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself is threatened by the Climategate emails.
Professor Mike Hulme is of the University of East Anglia from which the emails were leaked, and is named by ScienceWatch as “the 10th most cited author in the world in the field of climate change, between 1999 and 2009”. The leaked emails of IPCC authors show an organisation corrupted by a clique of warmist evangelists, and even Hume now says the IPCC may have run its course:
(The UN’s Copenhagen summit) is about raw politics, not about the politics of science… It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.
It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 (fifth report) but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.
UPDATE
Climate researcher and IPCC co-author Eduardo Zorita calls for Climategate scientists Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf to be barred from the IPCC processes:
I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files …
I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere – and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now – editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’.
And what does it say about the disgraceful politicisation of climate science that Zorita warns:
By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication.
The first, three weeks ago, castigated the alleged denialism of sceptics:
There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere which cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.
The second, just three days ago, castigated the alleged denialism of Monbiot’s fellow warmists:
I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.
So which of those two columns do you think the Sydney Morning Herald chose to run today - the dated one attacking sceptics (again) or the new one attacking the warmists now refusing to confront the greatest scientific scandal of their faith?
This is not just denial but deceit. Monbiot is made to seem as if he’s reacting to the revolt of the Liberal sceptics against their warmist leader, when in fact that revolt was driven in (small) part by the very scandal that he accepts is genuine.
UPDATE
The mainstream media - with a handful of (conservative) exceptions - do not know what terrible damage they are doing to their credibility by ignoring or drastically downplaying the Climategate scandal. The story is out, a couple of million times over, on the Internet.
What do you think the people reading of this scandal there conclude when they then turn to, say, The Age or the ABC, and find there barely a word of coverage?
I’ll tell you: they’ll conclude that the media cannot be trusted to tell even the news, let alone the truth, when it conflicts with their agenda. Hear that from the ABC’s Melbourne talkback host Jon Faine himself when he explained why he would not even discuss the emails:
That was my assessment of whether this was actually of any significance or not, and I decided that it wasn’t and we wouldn’t spend time on it. It suits the conspiracy theorists beautifully…
The other thing these readers will conclude is that for news involving certain ideologies, they must of necessity turn to the Internet, and in particular to certain blogs they trust to speak freely. For all those in the ABC and Age who deplore the influence of my blog, my sincere thanks for your part this week in making it more essential reading than ever.
Fools. You cut your own throats.
(A PS for media monitoring services and self-Googlers who most need to read and reflect on the above: attention Mark Scott, Paul Ramadge, Angelo Frangopoulos, Jeremy Millar and David Koch.) === David Jones runs both hot and cold Andrew Bolt David Jones is the warmist preacher who heads the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Is all his work riddled with such contradictions?
Anthony - due to professional reasons - I am unable to comment on Bolt’s column. But as with most of his material it is rubbish. === New Zealand’s man-made warming Andrew Bolt New Zealand sceptics this week asked how New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research fiddled the data to create this iconic warming graph: When in fact the raw data showed no such warming spike: The spike was produced by adjustments made by an IPCC co-author who once worked with the Climatic Research Unit now at the centre of the Climategate scandal.
NIWA has responded saying those adjustments were made to account for changes in the siting of the measuring stations, but has released the reasoning for only one of those station adjustments.
Even that one defence (release the rest!) is now being picked apart in Investigate:
(NIWA’s) David Wratt told Investigate earlier there was international agreement on how to make temperature adjustments, and in the news release tonight he elaborates on that:
“Thus, if one measurement station is closed (or data missing for a period), it is acceptable to replace it with another nearby site provided an adjustment is made to the average temperature difference between the sites.” Except, except, it all hinges on the quality of the reasoning that goes into making that adjustment. If it were me, I would have slung up a temperature station in the disused location (at Thorndon, where temperatures for Wellington were calculated until 1927) again and worked out over a year the average offset between Thorndon and Kelburn (a higher location from where they’ve been calculated since). It’s not perfect, after all we are talking about a switch in 1928, but it would be something. But NIWA didn’t do that.
Instead, as their news release records, they simply guessed that the readings taken at Wellington Airport would be similar to Thorndon, simply because both sites are only a few metres above sea level.
Airport records temps about 0.79C above Kelburn on average, so NIWA simply said to themselves, “that’ll do” and made the Airport/Kelburn offset the official offset for Thorndon/Kelburn as well, even though no comparison study of the latter scenario has ever been done....
What’s interesting is that if you leave Kelburn out of the equation, Thorndon in 1910 is not far below Airport 2010. Perhaps that gave NIWA some confidence that the two locations were equivalent, but I’m betting Thorndon a hundred years ago was very different from an international airport now…
Now, it may be that there was a good and obvious reason to adjust Wellington temps. My question remains, however: is applying a temperature example from 15km away in a different climate zone a valid way of rearranging historical data?
But Anthony Watts, who has uncovered the astonishing siting of many US weather stations, wonders how much reliance can be placed on a warming trend detected by a station mounted next to air conditioners on the roof of the NIWA headquarters: UPDATE
Sceptic Willis Eschenbach tells the extraordinary tale of how the CRU blocked all his attempts to check its data - even before he’d asked for it. === Turnbull’s scientists Andrew Bolt Thre times I’ve heard Malcolm Turnbull cite three authorities - and just these three - for his belief that global warming is a threat that we must fight with a great green tax.
Those authorites are the famous climate scientists Margaret Thatcher, John Howard and Rupert Murdoch. === Boat people praise Rudd Andrew Bolt Yet another asylum seeker in Indonesia says Kevin Rudd has inspired him to try his luck:
‘’We heard that Australia recognised Hazara,’’ he said. ‘’The government has changed now. It’s good for refugees there.’’
Add him to the others:
An Iraqi told the ABC: “Kevin Rudd - he’s changed everything about refugee. If I go to Australia now, different.”
An Afghan told The Australian: “I know Kevin Rudd is the new PM ... he has tried to get more immigrants. I have heard that if someone arrives it is easy.”
Red marks the spot on the Immigration Department graph when Rudd last weakened our boat people laws: === Not a warming world, but warming friendships Andrew Bolt Tom Arup was The Age’s national political reporter and is now the environment correspondent for both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Do you get the idea from his latest column that he’s a whole lot too close to one side of the debate?
The call comes early in the morning this time. ‘‘I’ve got something that will solve the climate change problem,’’ an excited voice says.
I prop myself up in bed.... my clock says its is 7.36 AM.... ‘‘How did you get my number,’’ I shoot back. But feeling bad, I ask what the miracle solution is…
I tell the press secretary for Greens Senator Christine Milne, a thin good humoured fellow name Tim, about (another “miracle solution")…
On the lawns of Parliament house there has been a small tent where a man is fasting for climate change… The faster’s marketing person has been hassling me about a story for two weeks....
I have decided to ignore the whole thing… But there is no escape. My housemate has a friend staying at my place who has come to Canberra to ‘‘show solidarity’’ with the faster… ‘‘What you need to understand...’’ he says, setting off on to an indescribable rant as I open a beer which promises to be 100 per cent carbon offset…
A group running for climate change is also in town. They want to meet. We do...
Sadly, in all this dealing with green cranks, drinking of green beer, joshing with Greens, and sifting through Green dreams, Arup has simply run out of any time to write about the greatest green scandal in his lifetime.
WHICH again for me raises the question: do personal loyalities make it difficult to be as dispassionate about such a morally loaded topic? An important example:
Janet Rice, the Greens candidate for Steve Bracks’ seat of Williamstown..., is married to CSIRO climate change researcher, Dr Penelope Whetton...
Whetton is not just some “climate change reseacher”, but CSIRO’s Climate Change Impact and Risk group leader and a lead author of the 2007 IPCC report.
How dispassionate is she? Well, she endorsed the science in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth:
I was really quite moved, and given that this film was about a topic I deal with every day, this says something about how powerfully it communicates its message. Its scientific basis is very sound.” 4.75 out of 5
That, when, as a British judge later found, the film had at least nine severe scientific flaws and exaggerations, and also featured the discredited “hockey stick” of Michael Mann, falsely claiming the world hadn’t been hotter in thousands of years.
How could Whetton have endorsed anything so error-riddled? Is she as gullible in her work?
UPDATE
Reader soldier in comments today warns Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of an intimate connection she has, too:
Did you know that Penny Wong is 18% carbon? More importantly does Penny Wong know that she is 18% carbon and therefore she is loaded with what she insists is a pollutant?
UPDATE 2
Reader Ivory Tickler says The Age’s state political correspondent and former environment writer Melissa Fyfe also has more important journalistic work to be getting on with:
Fyfe is jogging in (Run For A Safe Climate) group and sending dispatches as she goes. Of course, while she was off running, Climeategate broke and she hasn’t written a word about it.
UPDATE 3
Green journalists, including the ABC’s Jon Faine, refuse to even discuss the emails which have prompted an official inquiry into what they say about the Climatic Research Unit and the warmist science:
Phil Willis MP said the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee - of which he is chair - had written to UEA asking for copies of the e-mails and an explanation. Depending on the response, the committee will decide whether to proceed further....
Details of a university inquiry ... are likely to be made public next week… One senior climate scientist told me that the chair would have to be a person accepted by both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics as a highly respected figure without strong connections to either group.
=== Hiding the European decline Andrew Bolt Did the Climatic Research Unit also “hide the decline” in Europe?
Phil Jones explains:
The global average temperature is calculated by climatologists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The temperature graph the CRU produces from its monthly averages is the main indicator of global temperature change used by the International Panel on Climate Change, and it shows a steady increase in global lower atmospheric temperature over the 20th century. Similar graphs for regions of the world, such as Europe and North America, show the same trend. This is consistent with increasing industrialization, growing use of fossil fuels, and rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide....
(C)ase closed: The Earth is warming. Except for one problem. CRU’s average temperature data doesn’t jive with that of Vincent Courtillot, a French geo-magneticist, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and a former scientific advisor to the French Cabinet. Last year he and three colleagues plotted an average temperature chart for Europe that shows a surprisingly different trend. Aside from a very cold spell in 1940, temperatures were flat for most of the 20th century, showing no warming while fossil fuel use grew. Then in 1987 they shot up by about 1 C and have not shown any warming since. This pattern cannot be explained by rising carbon dioxide concentrations, unless some critical threshold was reached in 1987; nor can it be explained by climate models.
Why the difference?
CRU, in contrast, calculates average temperatures by month — rather than daily — over individual grid boxes on the Earth’s surface that are 5 degrees of latitude by 5 degrees of longitude, from 1850 to the present. First it makes hundreds of adjustments to the raw data, which sometimes require educated guesses, to try to correct for such things as changes in the type and location of thermometers. It also combines air temperatures and water temperatures from the sea. It uses fancy statistical techniques to fill in gaps of missing data in grid boxes with few or no temperature measurements. CRU then adjusts the averages to show changes in temperature since 1961-1990.
CRU calls the 1961-1990 the “normal” period and the average temperature of this period it calls the “normal.” It subtracts the normal from each monthly average and calls these the monthly “anomalies.” A positive anomaly means a temperature was warmer than CRU’s normal period. Finally CRU averages the grid box anomalies over regions such as Europe or over the entire surface of the globe for each month to get the European or global monthly average anomaly. You see the result in the IPCC graph nearby, which shows rising temperatures.
The decision to consider the 1961-1990 period as ‘normal’ was CRUs. Had CRU chosen a different period under consideration, the IPCC graph would have shown less warming, as discussed in one of the Climategate emails, from David Parker of the UK meteorological office. In it, Parker advised Jones not to select a different period, saying “anomalies will seem less positive than before if we change to newer normals, so the impression of global warming will be muted.” That’s hardly a compelling scientific justification!
