The dam is cracking
The bloggers are all over the UN IPCC 2007 report, the bible of global warming, which predicted all manner of dire outcomes for our planet unless we got a grip on rising temperatures -- and it seems to be crumbling in some pretty significant areas.
The dam began to crack towards the end of last year when leaked e-mails from one of the temples of global warming, the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, suggested that a few sleights of hand were being deployed to hide facts inconvenient to the global warming case. An official investigation into these e-mails is on-going.
But the flood gates really opened after the IPCC had to withdraw its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would likely all have melted by 2035, maybe even sooner.
This turned out to have no basis in scientific fact, even though everything the IPCC produces is meant to be rigorously peer-reviewed, but simply an error recycled by the WWF, which the IPCC swallowed whole.
The truth, as seen by India's leading expert in glaciers, is that "Himalayan glaciers have not in anyway exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat."
So the 40% of the world's population that relies on the seven major river systems supplied by these glaciers can sleep a little more soundly in the knowledge that their water won't run out in 25 years after all.
Then at the weekend another howler was exposed. The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny -- indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it.
The author, who didn't actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work.
His conclusion: "There is insufficient evidence to claim a statistical link between global warming and catastrophe loss."Yet it was because of this -- now unproved -- link that the British government signed up to a $100 billion transfer from rich to poor countries to help them cope with a supposed increase in floods and hurricanes.
It was also central to many of the calculations in Britain's Stern Report, which might now need to be substantially revised.
Now after Climate-gate, Glacier-gate and Hurricane-gate -- how many "gates" can one report contain? -- comes Amazon-gate. The IPCC claimed that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests were risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by "tropical savannas" if temperatures continued to rise.
This claim is backed up by a scientific-looking reference but on closer investigation turns out to be yet another non-peer reviewed piece of work from the WWF. Indeed the two authors are not even scientists or specialists on the Amazon: one is an Australian policy analyst, the other a freelance journalist for the Guardian and a green activist.
The WWF has yet to provide any scientific evidence that 40% of the Amazon is threatened by climate change -- as opposed to the relentless work of loggers and expansion of farms.
Every time I have questioned our politicians about global warming they have fallen back on the mantra that "2,500 scientists can't be wrong", referring to the vast numbers supposedly behind the IPCC consensus.
But it is now clear that the majority of those involved in the IPCC process are not scientists at all but politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs and green activists.
They may -- or may not -- still be right or wrong but what has become clear in the past couple of months is that, contrary to what many leaders have claimed, the science as promulgated by the IPCC is very far from "settled" and that there are important questions still to ask. The mainstream media has been slow to do this.
The bloggers, too easily dismissed in the past, have set the pace with some real scoops -- and some of the mainstream media is now rushing to catch up.
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The sceptics may be about to get their first scalp. Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman often wrongly described in the media as the world's leading climate scientist (he's actually a railway engineer), at first attacked those who questioned the IPCC's alarming glacier prediction as "arrogant" and believers in "voodoo science".
He's since had to retract the prediction but can't quite manage an apology -- and is now under mounting pressure in his Indian homeland to resign.
UPDATE: The part of this blog which deals with the link between global warming and extreme weather should have made it clearer that I was referring to that part of the IPCC 2007 report which tried to establish a link between global warming and the cost of extreme weather. It is that part of the IPCC's evidence which has now been brought into doubt and why I mentioned the Stern Report, since extreme weather was a key part of its cost benefit analysis of the costs of global warming and the costs of doing something about it. Other parts of the IPCC deal with the scientific evidence of the link between global warming and extreme weather. It is clear the IPCC thinks there is a link, though that has always been widely disputed. Incidentally, Stern has already revised downwards some of its original estimates of the costs of global warming. When it was first published in October 2006 it stated that the cost of hurricanes in the US would rise from 0.6% of GDP to 1.3%, which is a huge and costly increase. But when the report was republished by Cambridge University Press in January 2007 it said the increase was from 0.06% to 0.13%, which is of a rather lower order.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~40~RS~)
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Good Morning Andrew
send in the dam busters. What is interesting is that 'experts' are now coming forward without being asked. Sometimes it would appear to me that some people had been kow-towed into silence. Not to rock the boat. However, it would seem that there are some people who have not been bought off by research grants, or some other form government support, maybe even a knighthood!
It is so important that people do not stay silent, that they do sometimes compromise their careers. In the long run people will have to follow their conscientious. If you know something then speak out, the time for silence is over. You seriously do not have to follow orders from above!
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Ed Miliband must surely be invited onto the DP to discuss the points raised in today's blog. And maybe he could throw more light on phrases such as 'the science is settled', 'flat earthers', and 'supported by a majority of reputable scientists'.
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Andrew,
are we seriously saying that like the beefed up dossier in respect of the Iraq illegal war that we should really never ever say, or use the term 'no doubt'.
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It is interesting that this news story and other related IPCC "errors" have been reported by the Times and Telegraph for weeks but the BBC has remained curiously silent on this until today. Any chance you could tell us why?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
We know that a-neill is a climate change denier head in the sand fool. Why does he engourage all the cranks though?
All the evidence is that the world is warmer. He claims that it is natural and that we shouldn't do anything about it.
But the effects on humanity are the same regardless of whether humans are responsible for climate change or not.
Interesting how much people must really hate their grandchildren to want to rick leave them a broken planet.
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Excellent balanced blog as always. How long will it take for the sheep-like politicians to admit they are wrong, whilst they have been arrogantly calling the questioners re global-warming idiots. Wrong, sorry, of course not, not in their vocabulary. But can they at least stop wasting our money on pointless global warming brain washing campaigns, and sending money abroad for global warming. Invest in new technology and alternative energy sources yes, but doing it under the banner of global warming it will be wasted.
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Andrew,
this is amazing stuff coming from Chilcot timed at 10:58. The declassified documents from the senior legal adviser, 'dogmatic', I mean I note your advice but do not accept it. Straw must be recalled to the inquiry. This is imploding before Blair gets to give his 'evidence'.
There must a trial just as with global warming people are taking drastic action based on 'evidence' then the same with international law, with all the evidence based on real evidence. This is not a game!
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Thanks again for keeping your teeth in this, Andrew. You may have heard Harrabin still doing his best for the IPCC at 0650 today, but you could tell his heart wasn't in it. The dam is indeed cracking.
Please keep up the good work.
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Andrew,
at Chilcot the dam is bursting. In fact it shows that some people must give their evidence, or advice, even if it is not asked for.
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I suppose any fule can see that a major change of climate is taking place around the World.
The con is the politicians, supportive by institutions like the BBC etc, who jump on the Carbon-is-responsible band wagon as a way of sounding statesmanlike and important and sensitive and concerned but mainly use it to find new ways of stealing our money in order to waste it. The lie is propagated that reducing carbon emissions will reverse or even stop climate change. Poppycock!
This ties in with the renewable energy scam much lauded by the greens (as in naive) and again the politicians. As Jim Royle would presumably say - '... wind farms my ass...'
Perhaps then we can hear some sensible debate of how to mitigate the effect of the Change on those parts of the World which will be most adversely affected.
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Thank you Mr Neil for such a balanced blog. You might remember about two years ago you mentioned to Ben Bradshaw that some people were claimng global temperatures had not increased this century. His reply. "Well, they are wrong." It would be intersting to make the same statement now.
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The UEA CRU is clearly a non-functioning wing of the Cult of Warmism and the IPCC has been shown to be the prmotional wing of assorted undustrial interests. Even MASA has been exposed as being led more by dogma that science.
It even expounded the melting glacier theory itself, leading to the notion that if NASA says it, it must be so
"Note not only did they cite the now famous false glacier melting alarm from IPCC AR4, they moved it up five years to 2030."
Their only addition to the argument was to over exaggerate the mythological phenomenon.
I have just seen one report that shows just how insane the Cult of Warmism has become. I cannot confirm its veracity, so I won't mention names, but if true, then I think that the time for thinking of 'warmists' as amusing fools is over - they are seriously demented.
".......has urged trials for 'climate criminals' - energy executives who disagree with his hypothesis and policy prescription"
Yeah - concentration camps as well, and let's have the Warmist Police too. It's the only alternative now that everyone's laughing - implementation by force.
Whilst I'm it, I must have a dig at Gordon - our Glorious Leader who leads the vanguard of any Barmy Army of Crackpot Scientists and Martini Swilling Bonus Feeders who fawn over him. Gordon's record of disaster only qualifies him to lead our Light Brigade if we should ever have another Crimean War, otherwise he should stop trying to imitate Mussolini, and not lead anything beyond his dull capabilities.
I may be a little biased, but surely the Labour Party should be able to find a Socialist, feom somewhere within their ranks, to lead them.
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Andrew,
A breath of fresh air amongst the foetid exhalings from your BBC colleagues Black, Harrabin and that creepy Ethical Man!
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Andrew,
slight change of topic but Andrew Murray, the Brit Andrew Murray, has just defeated because Nadal has had to withdraw. My serious point though is that Murray still has the logo RBS on his kit. Why are we the taxpayer sponsoring a player, a well remunerated player when the taxpayer holds such a large holding in the company. Bit like Newcastle United and Northern Rock. What is going on. These questions must be asked, just like you and global warming, and the Met Office. Questions must be asked!
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#12
with regard to Bradshaw I have said before, and I paraphrase, that he wanted the model from Afghanistan to be adopted in Iraq.
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Graves 2002 at 1048 shows the typical arrogance of armchair pseudo scientists. The EVIDENCE is not only flawed on anthropogenic warming, it is downright dangerous to the least fortunate of this planet. Humankind pollute and unlike most other creatures, they foul their own nests, ergo, huge conurbations of underclass poverty.
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If railway engineers are as good at railways as they are on climate change does this explain why our railways cant cope with weather ?
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Well said Andrew. You are a breath of fresh air at the BBC (together with Paul Hudson) compared to the alarmist claptrap spouted by Harrabin, Black, Shukman etc etc.
Keep it up, you are much appreciated.
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Describing Rajendra Pauchuri as a "Railway Engineer" is to exagerate his technical qualifications. He did work for the Indian Railways but his degree was in Industrial Engineering; what used to be called "time and motion studies".
Great work Andrew. The debate needed someone of your gravitas.
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Retain the terrier style of unearthing the real truth, Andrew.
That is what real journalism is about, as we all know.
I need say no more because when the green religion is touted, I become a denying agnostic to such an extent that I already have 3 complaints lodged with the 'impartial and transparent and tolerant' BBC Editorial Complaints Unit.
I wonder if the BBC will ever redress the balance by letting you loose on their Ethical Man who was at it once again on BBC Radio 4 @ 20.30 pm last night in an 'Analysis' format of faintly disguised broadcasting of the green religious deception.
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20 britononthemitten
I stand corrected in good company with Andrew.
So Mr Pauchuri is superbly quaified to lead the planets most influential body on climate change then ?
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XTunbridge 22
If I needed to know which platform I'd need to go to to catch the 19.47 to Bangalore Mr Pachauri would be the first person I'd call.
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Mike Hulme was on the Today program this morning, along with Tony Juniper (well balanced guests for an interview then), and although I have a lot of time for John Hunphries I thought that he let them off quite lightly considering recent revelations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8480000/8480314.stm
Maybe you could invite Mr Hulme back to the show Andrew as he is currently more than willing to express an opinion.
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I was interested to hear on Today this morning that this report is 3,000 pages long. How can anyone be expected to read a report 3,000 page long, let alone write one.
Surely a report this big might cause considerable deforestation as well.
Sorry, but the environmental lobby should not have got into bed with governments. The entire thing is now raddled with bad attitudes and greedy opportunists. This is not to say that there may not be man-made climate change but it certainly ensures that we are not likely to find out if there is.
I recall a tale written by Aesop involving a boy, a wolf and some villagers. I am with the villagers.
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2. At 10:18am on 26 Jan 2010, mike-jay wrote:
Ed Miliband must surely be invited onto the DP ... maybe he could throw more light on phrases such as 'the science is settled', 'flat earthers', and 'supported by a majority of reputable scientists'.
Along with others, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/03/ed-miliband-attack-tory-climate-saboteurs
Cheered on by such as our 'Joseph McCarthy had a point' PM.
Just to clarify, everything this world-saving saint does that does looks good gets shunted out without challenge no matter what, but if shown to be pants in actually delivery will get forgotten or buried, right?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8382014.stm
At least some journalistic integrity and rigour can still bubble through the tribal affiliations, if not often or everywhere.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/25/climate-aid-uk-funding
But, boy, do you have to look long and hard to find it.
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Dear Andrew,
Thanks so much for being the _only_ area of the BBC that tells the real story. The "Today" programme this morning _finally_ reported in its usual biased way about the Glaciergate, but of course trotted out the "only 1 item in a large report" excuse LONG after the business about the hurricanes and the Amazon had been reported on the blogs.
I suggest you have a look at this:
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-dodgy-citations-in-nobel-winning.html
for many more peer-reviewed, oops - no, sorry, grey literature references from the WWF that found their way into the Nobel-prize winning report.
Incidentally, who awards these prizes? Did they actually _read_ anything other than the executive summary? I would have thought to win a Nobel, the examiners should have been as thorough as the Devil's Advocate in a canonisation inquiry...
Brian Williams
PS have the heavy mob (B & H ) tried to strong-arm you into toeing the party line yet?
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"An Inconvenient Lie" ?
http://alanindyfed.blogspot.com/
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It's enough to turn one to drinking Blue Nun or was it Liebfraumilch. Without ice of course?
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Thank you Andrew, a fine article.
The WWF connection has ramifications concerning the EPA judgement in the states.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/01/25/the-wwf-and-the-epa-endangerment-finding/
The much vaunted 'peer-review' that IPCC stand behind constantly is exposed with the above link. Publishing articles from a wildlife comic without checking the content is NOT peer review !
The Endangerment Finding by the EPA is now on shaky ground as they require
the peer-review process to be impeccable - clearly it is not.
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@Graves2002
"But the effects on humanity are the same regardless of whether humans are responsible for climate change or not."
The difference is the cause! If it is natural, as was the MWP and other warm periods, then bankrupting the western world by carbon trading won't stop it warming, and we will lose the ability to use that money to adapt!
I am agnostic about it, but I can sure smell a rat. If we want real science, we don't freeze out papers by sceptical scientists and we don't hijack peer review.
We need a fiercely independent peer-review process managed by a committe of scientists balanced with sceptics and non-sceptics. If in doubt papers should be printed. All data must be made available.
This isn't like a study into whether too much fat is bad for your arteries. This is a highly politicised debate, coloured by the fact that both industry AND politicians have a vested financial interest in the outcome.
We all have heard that fossil fuel industries have funded research against AGW, but they have enough money to speculate in carbon trading so they won't really lose out.
Look at TATA who are related by less than six degrees of freedom from Pachauri. They get a large number of carbon credits from the EU FOR NOTHING then shut down Corus. Meanwhile they ramp up production in India (lots of carbon credits there) and get to sell the EU credits for billions!
Meanwhile how has that slowed CO2 production?
CCX is 10% owned by Goldman Sachs (GS) and 10% owned by Generation Investment Management (GIM), an investment firm founded & chaired by Al Gore. Pachauri is lined up to make a pretty penny out of the India Climate Exchange when it comes on line.
There is too much scope for corruption for any of this to be believable, even if it is true. We need to step back, perform the necessary purification rituals to get the science free from political interference.
We are being pressured that we don't have enough time to do this, but the world is not heating up any where near as fast as predicted, so this again looks suspiciously like an attempt for a fait accomplit.
If I were cynical I would also mention that there is nothing a politician likes better than the ability to tax on environmental grounds.
And if I were really cynical and a conspiracy theorist, I would say that this gross movement of wealth from West to East looks like global Marxism dressed up as environmentalism.
So let's get the science clean before we do something that will change the world out of all recognition. (Which is probably what you want, isn't it Graves2002?)
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Thank you Andrew, please keep it up.
There's still a long way to go to redress balance regarding MMGW at the BBC, despite what Mary Hockaday claims http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00pxqz3
Hehe, we're all deniers now!
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Andrew,
I would like to thank you for being one of the very few people in the BBC to follow the story of the IPCC's corruption of science. I don't know why there is such a deafening silence from the other BBC journalists!
I consider myself fairly green, and the current obsession with global warming (assuming, as it would seem, that it has been greatly exaggerated) is tragic. Imagine if Copenhagen had concentrated on a real problem - such as rain forest destruction, overpopulation, resource depletion, over fishing, instead of a scare story generated out of bad science.
Is it possible to determine exactly how many of the famous 2500 scientists are actually qualified and active researchers?
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Andrew, thank you for this article but I think it would have been helpful for your readers to know the IPCC had to ignore some valuable peer-reviewed research to promote their alarmist agenda. The paper I refer to is "Amazon rainforests green-up with sunlight in dry season" by Huete et and published in GRL in time to meet the deadline for AR4. Why did the IPCC lead authors of this chapter ignore this paper? Because it did not support the conclusions they reached.
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Hi Andrew,
I kinda stopped watching your shows as I thought you (& your mate Mr Portillo)had gone too 'establishment' on us. But that article is the first time I've read something balanced on the BBC for ages. I normaly just end up shouting at Ethical Man, heh!
I'll start to tune back in.
Thanks, I thought the BBC was too far gone, maybe there is hope for it after all.
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Andrew, I want to repeat what I've just written at Climate Audit, when this article was mentioned there
Among highly paid BBC TV presenters, Andrew Neil deserves a medal. He’s been asking intelligent, pointed questions about all aspects of the climate change story longer than anyone that I’ve seen. He’s never lost his cool or professionalism. He’s shown it can be done. If this [is deleted for being off topic] I’ve no complaints. I’m glad to pay tribute to the guy, even for a moment. There were many others who were completely silent when it really counted.
Folks like Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit have done amazing work in exposing the IPCC and climate change chicanery but you have done your part. You've earned my lifetime respect.
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Thank you for yet another refreshingly trenchant and balanced analysis on this whole vexed subject. Perhaps there is yet hope for the BBC (or "Pravda" as I think we should call it). But I hope you have a good contract so they cant get rid of you!!
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The flooding in cumbria and the heavy snow. Are signs of global warming. The sudden interest in peer review by sceptics of all people is very amusing.
If I was a journalist and someone on the internet congratulated me on my 'Balanced journalism'. I would be worried.
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Andrew.
I'm getting a bit concerned for you. If you keep up this open and enquiring attitude at the BBC things could go two ways.
Either you could find yourself on a Green hit list for challenging their fashionable orthodoxy and end up under a Clapham omnibus or, if the dam bursts completely and the warmist fantasy evaporates this year as I'm sure it will, you could end up as Director General.
Have you made plans? Written a will? Bought a new broom for a clean sweep? If it comes to it you could always get a job on the Indian railways.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
A PS to my earlier post. I have yet to see any reference on the BBC website to the forthcoming Select Committee investigation into the shennanigans at the University of East Anglia - Climategate. Going by the Terms of Reference it looks at though it might even be impartial.
And can Parliament be poked into action to look again at the Stern Review which looks holed below the water line, its cost analysis depending as it does on the now discredited IPCC contentions about melting glaciers and the link between weather disasters and global warming. How about also revisiting the Climate Change Act whose cost-benefit justification(which produces a negative outcome anyway) is so closely dependent on both IPCC and Stern's conclusions?
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The spewing of billions of tons of indstrial chemicals and by-products of fossil fuels into the atmosphere every year with the assertion that it does no harm is disconcerting. Cimate Change or not, something must be done about the degradation of the environment. It the rivers do not dry up but rather are full of polluants that endanger public health and well-being than that must be addressed. The pro's and con's on this matter have failed to address the primary concern of world-wide pollution and the chemicals that impact public health on a daily basis. You may remember things like lead in gasoline, DDT on crops, etc...these types issues remain. We should not be presenting that because there is a debate about data that there is no problem.
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Thanks Andrew for keeping the focus on this topic.
Good to see the BBC has started being a bit more balanced in it's coverage:
BBC: Environmentalists/Bad For Planet? 25 Jan 10
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/analysis
Excellent synopsis of the 'Green Agenda' - although a worthy agenda, has elements that are a bit scary (totalitarianism scary!).
I think most people are now seeing that there is a whiff of a parallel between this climate debate and the Iraq debate / inquiry. Esp. in regard to the IPCC.
Nice to get away from wholesale fear-mongering climate news to a more rational (responsible) reporting. Even if it is still not a wholesale 'rosy' outlook for our environment....
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Andrew,
Keep up the good work!! Maybe some of your "colleagues" at the BBC will finally realize they have been "had" !!
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Andrew
Good article, I'm gald to see someone is not afraid to break free from the party line and come out in favour of a controversial position. Better still when the evidence to support you is increasing on a daily basis.
One point I would make about the scandals surrounding Dr Pachauri is that the scientific ones (Amazon, glaciers etc) although important are not the ones that should see him sacked. The real issue that is only now rising to the surface is his deep involvement in the IPPC process, which ought to be objective and science based, while at the same time he's intimately involved in a number of commercial organisations where he benefits directly from decisions he's making or influencing in the IPPC. In any other area this would be cause for immediate dismissal.
Imagine if the head of NICE was also a senior player in one of the Big Pharma companies? That's the scale of the problem. He has to go, if only so that the IPCC can begin the long process of restoring its honour and credibility before it attempts to publish AR5.
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That's better, sticky fingerrs at fault.
I am very impressed Mr Neil with your recent ahndling of the Met Office head & this work here.
What people must realise is that all this Greenism is another form of Marxist Socialism. That's where the leftists went at the end of the Cold War, straight into groups like Greenpeace, or as Prof John Brignell calls them "Red War"! That is why Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore quit the organisation because it was too left-wing. What the green movement wants to solve AGW is pretty much the same as what the left have always wanted, global government by them, removing what they see as that useless system called democracy. Incidebtally, the same Patrick Moore signed a declaration a few years ago to the point that of the 12½% of Amazon rainforest cut down, between a third & a half were in regrowth.
The Arctc sea-ice is back to average levels,global sea-ice is at near record levels, global temperatures are going down, the Northern Hemisphere has had at least two hard winters, China at least 3 since 2008. Solar magnetic flux is at an all time low since records began in the 1960s. This guy R.K.Pachauri has Phds in industrial engineering & economics, how does that qualify him more than anyone with a technical degree to be a climate scientist. This is a left-wing scam to force a global Marxist Socialist government, with various disparate groups jumping on the bandwaggon to make millions at the taxpayers' expence.
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ghostofsichuan wrote: "The spewing of billions of tons of indstrial chemicals and by-products of fossil fuels into the atmosphere every year with the assertion that it does no harm is disconcerting. Cimate Change or not, something must be done about the degradation of the environment."
I agree pollution (but not by CO2) is a serious problem, but the world will not solve real problems by concentrating on a bogus problem! For example, some people suggest using fossil fuels but burying the resultant CO2. This would actually use up more fossil fuel because the capture of the CO2 would obviously consume energy itself (if indeed the idea is viable at all).
I have had my doubts about global warming for some time, but I used to think if it made us consume less and waste less, some good would come of the theory even if it were not true! However, with the advent of carbon trading, CO2 burying, and other absurdities, if the science does not stand up, it is vital that the problems exposed.
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To clear up any confusion - there are 2 organisations called WWF.
One WWF is the World Wildlife Foundation and the other is World Wrestling Federation.
One of these is a blatantly commercial organisation - making money by staging over-hyped unbalanced events containing plenty of ad-libbing but a pre-arranged conclusion. The other WWF runs wrestling tournaments.
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38. DHWilko
"The flooding in Cumbria and the heavy snow. Are signs of global warming."
You and poor Bianca Jagger are in the same boat. I've commented about Cumbria before.
The written history of flooding there goes back to the Middle Ages and the archeological record further back still. The rivers are shallow and the bridges narrow arched and easily blocked by debris so water from the occasional heavy rain piles up-stream and breaks the side walls.
All suggestions for dredging the rivers deeper have been rejected because it would damage the fishing which is an important part of the tourist trade. Nothing to do with global warming.
Snow in winter a sign of global warming! Too daft to comment on except to say that you must have missed out on the early '60s.
"The sudden interest in peer review by sceptics of all people is very amusing."
As a scientist I have generally trusted the peer review process because the reviewers that I personally know have always tried to be objective and to agree for publication articles that they personally disagreed with if the work had been properly done. One and all they have been shocked by the cynicism so graphically revealed by the UEA e-mails.
I find it strange that you are amused by people asking for the proper protection that peer-review should be providing against partiality and bigotry in science, particularly as this perverted science is being used as the motive for spending vast amounts of money in what is looking more and more as the atonement of white Western guilt.
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Andrew
Terrific work! It's almost like reading the Sunday Times of yesteryear. Is this perhaps a renaissance of investigative journalism that was a feature of that paper during your tenure?
Old Rupert will be apoplectic!
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@Alan the Brit #46
Just in case people aren't aware which "Patrick Moore" you are referring to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore_(disambiguation)
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42. ghostofsichuan
"The pro's and con's on this matter have failed to address the primary concern of world-wide pollution and the chemicals that impact public health on a daily basis."
There are plenty of environmental issues that deserve money being spent on them but not the fantasy of man-made climate change. One of the problems about "climategate" is that after the fantasy vanishes nobody will ever believe scientists again.
"You may remember things like lead in gasoline, DDT on crops, etc...these types issues remain."
Unfortunately you've picked a couple of poor examples. There is no scientific evidence that lead in petrol did anybody any harm and certainly none that IQ levels or school standards have risen since it was banned.
DDT is non-poisonous and people have even eaten it. Its world-wide ban following the publication of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" has led to a massive problem with Malaria and certainly to millions of deaths.
Lots needs to be done to improve the world so we should place our resources where they will do the most good, not on CO2 fantasies.
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Unusual to see such a well balanced article!
I think that the basic problem with the IPCC, UEA-CRU, GISS and other "warmist" organisations is a lack of balance. They are so sure that they are right that they tend to accept uncritically evidence that agrees with their position and be over-critical of evidence that contradicts it.
Indeed, not only do they appear to be certain that they are right scientifically, they also seem to think that they are morally right - saving the planet and so on. This seems to them to be justifcation for belittling the contrarians - and maybe, to some extent, stretching the facts.
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Mr Neil,
Thank you for bringing this scam to the attention of your listeners!
How are you going to get our gullable politicians to understand that they've been had as well?
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@myself #51
OK, accidental truncation of URL
At least two famous Patrick Moores
Patrick Moore the co-founder of Greenpeace, born 1947
Patrick Moore the astronomer, born 1923
Alan the Brit is referring to the former.
Mods please remove my misleading #51
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html#P91540937
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DrBrians
"Snow in winter a sign of global warming! Too daft to comment on except to say that you must have missed out on the early '60s.".
Yes I did miss that. I said the heavy snow didn't say it caused snow. if it wasn't snow it would have been heavy rain. You must know that being a scientist. So if it causes heavy rain then it can also cause heavy snow. First time in ages we've had any proper snow though. Global warming I would say, definitely causes lack of snow.
As for the sudden interest of deniers in peer review. How many crackpot denier theories from denier pressure groups are peer reviewed?
Cumbrian floods were because of Lack of Dredging? Did lack of dredging destroy all of those bridges? I still disagree with you there.
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48 jack hughes
Your 'joke' is a little out of date as the wrestling has changed its name to WWE.
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Andrew,
I'd like to thank you so much for putting into words what I was thinking. I'd like to thank the bbc for moving its editorial line with the growing weight of evidence, and I would especially like to thank the small number of high quality bloggers for maintaining the highest scientific and ethical standards - despite sustained attack over many years. This may turn out to be the scoop of the decade for journalist brave enough to just follow the story.
DavidS
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Congratulations to Andrew Neil. It's good to see there is someone at the BBC who is able to think logically for himself rather than follow the rest of the 'politically correct' herd. Your article shows such a perfect understanding of the situation that I have nothing to add.
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Please keep it up Andrew - a lone voice amongst the BBC governement spokesmen.
Why don't you try and get a prime time programme commissioned to discuss the issues including scientists and politicians from both camps so that we can hear what they have to say about each others science face to face.
If you could get Pachauri that would be even better!
PS no fee is required by me for the idea.
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Andrew,
Well done.
You will have to be careful though or you may be instructed to attend one of those de-edumacational classes that some prospective M.P.'s are being sent on.
Keep up the good work.
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Thank god for Andrew Neil.
Fair, inquistive, balanced, reasoned.
This is journalism.
Something many of the wet-behind-the-ears-brainwashed-liberals in the journalism ranks at the BBC could do well to learn from.
Andrew, thank you for your thoughtful contributions on this subject, they are refreshingly grounded and free from the sensatationalist propaganda we normally see from the BBC on this topic.
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Don't despair DHWilko - a strange phenomenon has been detected - it's known as the Climate Scientist Data Uplift Convection Current.
It appears that any time a Climate Scientist handles raw data, it goes through a process not fully understood by science, though a correlation between it and carbon trading is suspected, but it appears to be something in the earth's electro-magnetic field, in much the same way that bankers manage to migrate their way into the back pockets of politicians.
Now don't let me down DHWilko, I think we can run with this.
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Andrew, as you correctly say about the glacier information presented as facts -- "This turned out to have no basis in scientific fact, even though everything the IPCC produces is meant to be rigorously peer-reviewed, but simply an error recycled by the WWF, which the IPCC swallowed whole"
Unfortuantely for the IPCC there are any number of examples of misinformation or conjecture masquerading as "fact" in the report, with many elements sourced from WWF reports (which have not peer-reviewed) as this list can shows - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/24/the-scandal-deepens-ipcc-ar4-riddled-with-non-peer-reviewed-wwf-papers/
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Andrew
Great post and great to see at least someone from the BBC with journalistic morality on this topic - ie not the nodding donkey style of reporting from the likes of Shukman et al.
Is this new found editorial freedom anything to do with the BBC Trust investigation into biased global warming coverage from the BBC?
I think we should be told.
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No surprises at all, anyone who actually goes to the bother of checking the raw data will see the IPCC for what it is. I'm afraid this is a case of, begin with a theory then try and prove it. Thank god someone within the unflinchingly pro MMGW bbc is actually doing a bit of journalism. Keep it up!
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Excellent! You stand well above most other journalists, who have little professional integrity and have misplaced their ethical code.
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I won't stand for any of you taking a pop at the WWF.
The co-Chairman is one of my favouritest people (and I got the info from their website)
Co-Chairman
Lawrence H. Linden
Advisory Director
Goldman Sachs
New York, NY
... and he's not alone.
Cuddling a banker makes a polar bear happy.
You deniers never learn. We have polar bears and the bankers on our side.
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As I've said before on this blog, the whole question of climate change/global warming has been distorted and corrupted by politicians hijacking it for their own ends - namely power and money raising. It should have been left as a topic for pure scientific investigation, research, and, if necessary, recommended corrective actions. Instead, the interference of politicians has not only contaminated the topic, but also the scientists involved, it appears.
Scepticism is clearly growing, quite rightly in view of the errors that are being exposed. This antagonism seems to be mainly directed at the claim that any global warming is man-made, together with the associated political drive to bully whole populations into changing their lifestyles.
Maybe there is a detectable trend towards global warming - it shouldn't be too difficult to produce reliable data to prove or disprove it. But the major mistake - again largely down to politicians - is to instantly link possible warming to CO2 emissions and allow this connection to dominate their policies. What if there is warming, but not due to man-made emissions? What is the policy to cater for this possibility? It doesn't exist, as far as I can see.
Logically, possible global warming and atmospheric pollution should be investigated and dealt with as separate topics. Most people agree that it is sensible to reduce pollution, improve energy efficiency, and generally develop 'green' policies - but as steady, ongoing projects, not as panic-driven planet-saving imperatives. And if evidence suggests that defensive actions should be taken to live with worldwide temperature rises, scientists, engineers,and technologists are the experts who might solve that problems.
By this route, if there is man-made global warming, a solution will automatically emerge in a properly balanced, scientific manner. But first the politicians need to be removed from the equation - except in terms of providing funds for sound research free from their interference.
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Much appreciated piece to read, a sane person is hard to find amonst the armagedon BBC writers these days.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Good article Andrew. I didn't think BBC types were allowed to write stuff like this. Are you at risk?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
It seems like the Stern report has already been altered (no note, no acknowledgment, nothing) to distance themselves.
-- The Purge Continues ---
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/24/the-purge-continues/
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Any "mistakes" in parts 2 or 3 of the IPCC report are almost irrelevant as they are predicated upon temp. rise of 3-7 C with a doubling of CO2.(about 100yrs time).
The crux of the argument is the climate sensitivity to CO2. Both alarmists and sceptics are in total agreement that a doubling of CO2 results in a 1C temp rise with no other factors involved.Alarmists believe that there is a strong positive feedback from increased water vapour which exacerbates the warming by 3-7 times, resulting in 3-7C rise.They believe that CO2 is the main driver of global warming,with limited effects from "nature".The computer models from which forecasts are made are ALL programmed with high CO2 sensitivity. Even using the somewhat tainted IPPC temp. record this hypothesis seems unlikely.
Sceptics argue, based on past and present temp. and CO2 records,satellite obs., solar activity, ocean currents and cloud formation, that in fact there are negative feedbacks in the climate system and that the sensitivity of temp to CO2 is 0.5. Please have a sceptical expert on This Week. You know you can do it.
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46 Alan the brit
Dubious scientific reporting should not be used as a justification for doing nothing, it is perfectly legitimate to have balanced view of the effects of pollution on our planet without being a "global Marxist Socialist ".
There are compelling arguments that we are affecting both our environment and climate, which should not be ignored because of a few rogue activists have over egged their case.
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Thank you Mr. Neil, you have proved that there are still some journalists employed at the BBC , without any disrepect intended at all, it would appear that they are few , and more "experienced" than the majority.
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Sorry, ran out of room! I am not a "denier" nor a "flat-earther" nor a conspiracy theorist; I'm a retired anaesthetist who reads science (James Lovelock is one of my heroes). I recycle, have funny looking bulbs and love David attenborough ever since Zoo Quest. The many eminent scientists who have been locked out of this settled science (Richard Lindzen, John Chrusty, Roy Spencer and many others) need a high profile brave, secure, influential media person to give the sceptical scientists a voice or better a debate, which has been consistently denied them.
A competent researcher (unbiased) will amaze you with 2 days work. And yes, I still enjoy Blue Nun.
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Hi Andrew,
Great blog post. I'm really heartened by the changing Zeitgeist on this issue. When people like me were commenting on articles promoting this rubbish, we used to be a small minority and generally considered cranks or crackpots. I've regularly been accused of being a creationist, or a follower of David Icke (or some other such stupidity), purely for my belief that the science behind the claims made by Warmists leaves much to be desired.
Over the years I've watched this issue inflate like a balloon, with scarcely any criticism or raising of eyebrows in the press or in the television news rooms. I'm frequently incredulous that the absurd claims made by supporters of this hypothesis and the way they are allowed to get away with them in public debate.
The problem here, in my humble opinion, is the deference shown to anyone with a Ph.D next to their name, or the title "Professor". Of course in general interviewers are more versed in politics than they are in Climate Science and so I imagine it must be difficult to formulate penetrating questions off the cuff, but the root of this issue is the science, so interviewers and journalists should make an effort to become acquainted with both sides of the debate.
Anyway, keep up the good work.
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Keep up the pressure, Andrew..!
Who is it said: 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself'..?
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meninwhitecoats, @77;
Do not confabulate pollution and CO2. They are not related, except incidentally. CO2 is a scarce resource; the Earth is in a CO2 famine, geo-historically speaking, due to the over-efficient sequestering by ocean organisms (primarily). Up to 5X current levels would be very desireable, and have negligible effects on climate.
If only we were efficient enough CO2-makers to achieve this! Agriculture and plant life in general would benefit immensely.
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Robinson, @80;
Good image! The bigger the balloon, the louder the "POP!", of course ...
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Please speak up if you can.
There are people living in China who are suffering. Their government has dictated that they may Not Use Coal to keep warm.
This is very, very serious.
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The real scandal in the Nobel-winning IPCC report is what they purport to be "science" behind anthropogenic global warming(AGW),. The evidence expressed in the IPCC report is in itself a logical fallacy. The claim of evidence is the fact that computer models that use natural factors alone cannot explain the 0.6 C observed warming; therefore it must be caused by mankind. This is the fallacious argument from ignorance and is repeated again and again in the IPCC report and by AGW advocates. The structure of the purported “science” is pictured at http://socratesparadox.com/?p=139.
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DrBrianS wrote '...you could end up as Director General.....'
I do hope so because I feel confident I would get some straight, common sense answers from you unlike Mark Thompson who has ducked and dived from my enquiries for over 3 years!
Keep up the good work, Andrew.
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Thank you so much Mr. Neil and thank you for the article -- it makes me quite happy reading it. Truth is all we are asking for -- I don't think that is too much.
My view on global warming is similar to Brian's (31).
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Alan The Brit @ 46
"What people must realise is that all this Greenism is another form of Marxist Socialism"
Mmm. Goldman Sachs, Al Gore, Carbon Trading ... truly madly deeply Marxist.
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Andrew - please keep this up.
I am not a 'denier' or a warmist, I just want the truth.
It is shocking that this seems to be buried at the bottom of the ocean, so to speak, with all our wonderful politicians simply taking what they read - by highly uninformed sources it seems - as read. No one's going after the truth - except you...
What's at stake here is mind-numbingly important, to poor nations and richer nations' taxpayers - both of whom have so much to lose.
I hate conspiracy theories but frankly the international political fix that are these climate summits really makes one wonder. It's not just about the money, it's about politicians' need to justify themselves to their electorates, for a good cause (i.e. saving the world, as The Great Leader so sweetly put it).
"We'll save the world, by spending your money for you; look at us, aren't we great? A vote for us is a vote for saving the world", they crow...
I just wish we could take all the politics out of environmental issues; but they seem to have been hi-jacked b activists. I just want to know what's true and what's false in the Climate Change debate, and so far this has proved virtually impossible due to the abysmal coverage of it in the British mass media (your good self excepted!)...
I think you should win a Nobel prize for journalism, for what you're doing. Please keep the pressure on until the truth comes flooding out!
A brilliant show by the way; long may you run!
David
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Article in the Times online, I'm amazed.
"The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser." John Beddington
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7003622.ece
Andrew strike while the iron is hot John Beddington needs publicity, and scrutiny.
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...just wanted to add that Mike-Jay - post 69 - has got things spot on; he lists practical, sensible, atheistic responses to the issues. Couldn't have put it better!
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Gomer Pyle"64
Something to do with Carbon Credits? I Don't understand them. The pollution saved is just passed on to someone else. If everyone or most people manage to save credits who is going to buy them? That's capitalism for you. Can't do anything unless there's a profit in it.
Doesn't mean I think Man Made Global Warming is a government/scientific conspiracy though. Its definitely happening how else do you explain the A 37degree nighttime in austriala, forest fires(more co2 therefore a feedback) and not forgetting severe weather events here like the Cumbria floods and the heavy snow?
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This is the best blog since the MP's expenses kerfuffle.
I am no scientist but have a deep suspicion of anything that big business and politicans
jump on as not just gospel but the way forward and to which we all must pay.
Reading this blog and the posts to it shows how corrupt the climate change lobby is.
I can accept that pouring pollutants into the atmosphere is not a good idea but when the alleged effects are exagerated and based on unproven research I smell a big rat.
I trust the anthropologists who will tell you the world blows hot and cold all the time.
Much hotter than it is now and much colder than it is now. In hot periods man survived. In cold periods man disappeared. That somehow makes the discredited global warming seem better, but not on a business /tax platform thank you.
Yes Andrew keep up the good work
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Excuse me, but I only get my news from the BBC and the Times. What's all this about "leaked emails" from the Climate Research Unit? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.
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94 Jim Watson
Sir, you are either a hoaxer or have been on a very long holiday. Only someone in such circs could not know about the emails and manipulation of data plus the destruction of data to avoid FOI requests.
If you are a hoaxer the point is made. If you have been on holiday just search UEA emails. The suggesteds box will fill for you to choose.
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95 xTunbridge:
It was a hoax, my friend. A satire, if you please.
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In parallel with HuricaneGate is the story that has emerged of how Dr Roger Pielke Jr, a scientist that also publishes in the area of climate related catastrophe or not, found out that expert reviewers for that section had suggested that he be asked regarding some aspects and it would appear that the editors decided to speak for him.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-does-pielke-think-about-this.html
Here is is looking closer and tracking down the origins of what turns out to be non peer reviewed graphs etc.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/hot-on-trail-of-ipcc-mystery-graph.html
Coming soon is an article that is said to question much about the IPCC, also includes a contribution by Tol, an economist that effortlessly destroyed the Stern Report when published.
Something else that I found of related interest and maybe another Gate in its own right. We are repeatedly told of impending Mosquito borne disease and the like due to AGW, this presentation to the UK parliament endeavours (but based on the coverage probably ignored) to put some historical balance into that particular piece of alarmism.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm
Mick.
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sojean @87, re Brian @31;
an agnostic contends it's impossible to know. That's a bridge too far! ;)
As for other causes, the IPCC founding mandate is SPECIFICALLY to find and highlight man-made influences, for the purpose of providing a base to regulate them. No need for conspiracy theorizing; read its Charter!
Further, it prepares the political summary paper, then sends back to the authors their contributed sections of the main report to make "consistent" with the summary -- they actually admit this, as though it was a virtue! This is a pure form of the logical fallacy of "begging the question".
DHWilco @92;
The ideal scene for 'Carbon Credits' is that the circulating total available to buy and sell is gradually ratchetted down, so overall the emissions are reduced, and the cost of adding new sources goes up to discourage CO2 production, etc. In practice, there are so many ways to fiddle and fudge the numbers that traders can make out like bandits (e.g. AlGore). Also, the "issuing governments" get to sell the created / invented credits as a form of global tax on virtually every energy producing and using activity. Which is just about everything.
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"...rushing to catch up." you say -- yeah, right (/sarcasm)!
Unfortunate for the BBC -- it can't ignore what is happening, but will whitewash it as much as possible; then continue with its ridiculous AGW propaganda as normal.
Scientists will also continue to prostitute themselves on the unhealthily well funded AGW gravy train. Their meagre understanding of climate will scarcely improve -- 'wrong' observations being heavily discouraged.
Politicians will continue their nonsensical, treacherous policies -- which are beyond incompetent -- including interfering with, and attempting to micromanage people's lives. A political agenda being what this is really all about.
The elite will continue to increase and consolidate its power.
Prove me wrong.
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Well done Andrew. It’s refreshing to see the BBC finally, if even only in a blog, starting to turn the corner on the ridiculous AGW hoax. After pouring incredible amounts of time, effort, and hard earned money towards this silly new-age religion, it’s about time to get back to the real problems facing society and the environment.
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Space_1999 #89:
"I think you should win a Nobel prize for journalism, for what you're doing." I agree, but it would have to be shared with many others, as Neil is not alone. Christopher Booker, James Delingpole and many others have been involved for a long time.
And let's not forget that the journalists rely on the work of scientists and many others who also deserve medals; Philip Stott, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Joanne Nova, Andrew Montford, John Costella, the CRU whistle-blower; the list is too long to continue, but there are thousands of others (including me and many friends and colleagues who attempt to make small contributions) who all have played, and continue to play their part.
The fight-back continues until the war is won. And make no mistake, truth will win in the end. The time may be coming for the last rats to jump ship.
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Good Morning Andrew,
so the Northern Ireland situation is so seious that the wonderful great I solved the banking crisis, I saved the world Prime Minister, will stick at it. For the safety of our country, to save the situation, the dramatic situation with politics in Northern Ireland, I will stay until the problem is solved.
I know he failed at Copenhagen, global warming and climate change is very important, but not as important as Northern Ireland. So, I am going to stay here. I know it means that he can't attend an Holocaust Memorial day ceremnonies, but hey you all know how deferential he is at this sort of stuff, not bowing at the Cenotaph, as an example.
You would have thought that with the country blazing its way out of the recession he would have enjoyed PMQs today. Only a couple of names to read out. I'm sure Harman will do a great job whilst Brown is away. But it is dosgraceful that Brown will not be taking PMQs today. This parliament is just so, useless.
Brown is gutless, no election, no denial about Ainsworth, I take questions for a press conference, but parliament, oh no, as for weekly meetings with the Queen. The man is an absolute disgrace. Can't wait for him to give his evidence to Chilcot.
By the way the previous government was the one that ended in 2005. So when they tell you the previous government was responsible, well sadly that's the labour government of Tony Blair, which ended in 2005. Well that's what I think. Brown should have been asked if we must not risk the recovery why are you putting taxes up with effect from 5th April, we are all in this together.
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Good Grief Andrew,
I have said before that some of my comments are mistyped because of my anger It would appear that this is not anger, it is frustation. Frustation at the 'government' which after Chilcot can never be seen as a government again. I have now gone to the Number 10 site. What with the report on poverty being released today. An important report, which you would have thought that this most fantastic PM, who used to be Chancellor, sorting inequality with massive taxation, and all that stuff. Well this is just an example of the article by Brown on the Number 10 site, it is just so worth reading:-
'Yet even then, in my own childhood, I saw how close friends of mine who might have gone to college or taken an apprenticeship were denied their chance. This frustration - this anger - that opportunities were not there for them drives my passion for a new wave of social mobility'.
As many civil servants, and many labour ministers, have disclosed at Chilcot, they were not so angry that they would pay the ultimate price, by resigning. No they have things to do, save the world from global warming, and climate change. That's my job, I have a job to do, a mortgage to pay, wife to support, get a pension. Brown has a job to do, Harman has a job to do. We must get on with ruining the country. Sorry another mistype, it is of course running. These typos I seem to make 'hindreds' of them.
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Andrew,
just listening to the Today programme with regard to the 'problems' with the HMRC.
What many pensioners do not realise is the seriousness of the problem. The state pension is paid without deduction of tax. You receive an employers pension. This may be more than one. You might actually be below the tax threshold with the employers pension but then you receive your state pension, which puts you over the tax threshold. But many do not declare to the authorities their total income. Now I receive a pension from a previous employer, but not the state pension. I pay tax on my employers pension, but when I start to hopefully receive my state pension, it will all be subject to tax. The system is a complete and utter mess.
I have referred to this previously and at last somebody seems to have listened.
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56. DHWilko
"As for the sudden interest of deniers in peer review. How many crackpot denier theories from denier pressure groups are peer reviewed?"
The interest is not in peer review; it is in honesty. That is, the IPCC claim everything in their report is peer reviewed - they lie.
How many crackpot denier theories (I haven't come across any) have gained access to trillions of taxpayers money?
When anyone gets my tax dollars I have a right to know it is properly checked for veracity.
Crackpot theories do no harm until some moron in politics decides to run with one.
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Good morning each & Andrew.
I am so glad that all doubt as to global warming has at long last been laid to rest.
NOW Let us get back to the real world.
I hear, via the Daily Show (US), that a law has been passed in the USA to enable any and all corporations to spend any amount on Political Campaigns.
This is yet another clear signal that our next election is a most crucial one. Should we elect Blue or Red to Government Democracy will be no more.
I could delight each and all with tales of derring-do over the centuries that have afforded us the miniscule democracy we enjoy today. But, no. The dead are no help to the living. What help are we, the living, to the yet unborn?
We seem set to bequeath our progeny; a world of war, a world of want, immense debt and a concrete Plutocracy!
The rivers may dry-up. The ice caps may thaw to nothing. The Sun may explode and swallow all. So what!
2010 IS ours to do with as WE see fit.
The last opportunity to rescue hope from despair is the next election.
The election of ANY Party or individual already immured in the ways of politicking "as she is done" ~thus far and along the same lines~ is to condemn those yet unborn to The New Dark Age.
For any who take comfort from the exploits of Joan D'Arc, Richard the Lion Heart or King Arthur. Awake! Their job is your job.
The age of heroes is now.
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If there is one fundamental character trait of Gordon that stands out above all others, it's the fact that he couldn;t give a stuff about the opinion of the electorate. Forgive me for putting it so bluntly.
The EU referendum was forsaken for the simple reason that he knew he wouldn't get the result he wanted. The more grateful we should be then that he hasn't cancelled the election. I guarantee that the idea has crossed his mind, as he has the character of a man driven by resolute dogmatic principle.
Gordon will resolutely stick by his Global Warming mantra in spite of his two major ideological platforms having sunk under the waves, not by rising water, but in acts of self destruction. The UEA CU, the UK centre of Climate Science, is 'persona non grata' at any conference or in any scientific process and Dr Rajendra Pachauri has reduced the IPCC to the same status with his wild attacks on respected scientists who don't agree with his flawed science.
Even the Governor of the Bank of England states that he must perform the radical banking reform that Obama proposes, and yet Gordon trots out the smae blinkered view that he's right and that the world is following his lead. That same old line makes me seriously consider that he has a major character flaw hiding a mania that makes him positively dangerous.
Personally, I find him laughable as a politician but his unwillingness to see any view but his own, and then to unerringly stick to it against any opposition, whether the democratic process or scientific fact, makes him a dictator in all but name.
I'm not voting for any party that hasn't rejected the Global Warming drivel, so that counts out the three main parties, but I'll even drop UKIP if they show signs of being so stupid. If I have to vote BNP because our democracy doesn't provide a party that hasn't been tainted by the warmist bug, then I'll do that. I won't be voting for the BNP, I'll be voting against the major parties who no longer provide a choice.
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Dear Andrew,
Why do you hardly ever blog anymore? Once maybe twice a week. We used to get a blog every day well in time for the programme, with Friday the only exception, due to the excesses of Thursday night no doubt.
Here we are, PMQs in a little while and no blog entry to set the scene. Why?
Nick's blog is sparse too. Is this evidence of the BBC's disapproval of the way it's blogs are often used to vent criticism against this inept government? Opposition is pretty sub-standard too. The whole of politics needs a good kicking until fundamental change is achieved. Fewer blogs is most definitely not the answer.
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#107 GomerPyle.
'Blunt' is just fine and dandy. The trouble comes when any attempt is made to rhyme with it.
#108 Alistair Thomas
Worry ye not. At least with Andrew one is given scope to speak of matters very much up to the moment.
There would be little point in forewarning DP guests as to what questions are to be asked.
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Andrew,
I hope I am not accused of carping but this really is the last straw. So few MPs attending PMQs, the PM not even in attendance, this is a pathetic excuse of a parliament.
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I enjoyed this report from a Dutch commentator
"Diederik Samsom (p), erstwhile spokesperson for Greenpeace and MP for the PvdA (Labour), has said Rajendra Pachauri should go (NL)"
I disagree entirely. Pachauri represents everything that the IPCC stands for perfectly and his removal will do nothing to rectify the bogus science and corrupted structure that he has overseen.
It does make it much harder for 'warmists' to sensibly maintain that there isn't something fundamentally wrong with their cause now that they're turning their guns on each other. It now means that two of the principal script writers are fatally wounded and unable to perform as High Priests any more. Two more, Al Gore and Mr 'Hockey Stick', are kept out of the limelight nowadays as both have been reduced to nothing more than comedy turns.
NASA, who've also had their climate data records and computer models challenged, are now changing tack and accepting that there are natural warming and cooling periods in the earth's climate (it's on their website), and this way they hope to explain the phenomnenon of the data confounding their hypotheses. The only problem then, is that their new position makes all their previous computer models worthless - hockey sticks et al - and leaves open the possibility that all climate change is down to a phenomenon they are ignorant of (ipso facto) and which they can't predict.
Possessing a mountain of historic data doesn't make me any better able to beat the Las Vegas casinos, and though we understand some of the mechanics of climate and weather change, we still remain largely ignorant of how all the forces act together, let alone what they all are. Trying to change something you don't understand, without any knowledge as to whether or not you'll make any meaningful difference, is plain daft, and has nothing to do with science.
The education of the masses may be a concern, but the lack of intelligence of our politicians is what concerns me most. Restricting pollution and managing a switch away from fossil fuels is a no-brainer, and the fundamental logic to that appeals far more than the over hyped alarmism favoured by warmists.
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Andrew,
what I find interesting is the 'evidence' this morning at Chilcot. It would seem that the dam is seriously bursting. The attorney general has revealed something about the French. Could not possibly include them, I mean the French.
I would ask readers to involve themselves in the situation relating to Oil for Food corruption.
As for McShane then all you have to do is to listen to his interview on the One o'clock news on Radio 4. I mean wow, listen to his comments about the others on the top table with the exclusion of the United Kingdom, and the United States. Can I seriously believe that he was a foreign office minister.
By the way brilliant Daily Politics today, it is very difficult to keep a straight face whilst interviewing 'Andy' Woolas, the man who I thought gave the reason, and I paraphrase, that we were in Afghanistan to stop asylum seekers from that country.
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The dam continues to break,
the full details of the death of David Kelly must be released, and accordingly made available to the general public. I have attended an inquest into the death of a British soldier and there was no consideration for thew feelings of the general public. The excuse is spurious. There must be no cover up, because I think that there is one.
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...you bang your head upon a wall for a while...and then some 'friend' comes along and places a pillow where it will do most good.
I recieved this link a little while ago and I took a look at the highlights.
This will go a little way to make up for my breaking the global warming train of thought...
http://fora.tv/2010/01/12/Obamanomics_Is_Obama_Bankrupting_America
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Ref 112 Catch22
You are correct to remind readers about the Oil for food SCAM Taggy and just why did it die a death.
Who was the biggest embargo buster for Iraq Oil ?, yep, you guessed it,my namesake.
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When politicans run away from a problem it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist, it just means they are not up to dealing with it. Politicans are cowards by nature.....kids that went to the teacher after class to tell on who misbehaved in hope of gaining some personal advantage..first out of the room for fire drills...just in case...the rest are just party machine puppets...whimps..but often loud.
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You quote India's leading expert on glaciology as saying "Himalayan glaciers have not in anyway exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat." It is my understanding that this comment is based on the non-peer reviewed science that you are so critical of. In fact a glaciology PhD student friend of mine described that white paper as unfit for journal publication in its present form. Appearing in the news section of Science is nothing like appearing in the peer reviewed section.
I think the safest thing we can say about the Himalayan glaciers at the moment is that there is insufficient research to say what they are doing. Which is possibly even more worrying than the misrepresented research we've seen in the media.
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Well said.
Carbon Tax is Theft - Plain and Simple.
Google it, JD.
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finally someon at the bbc doing some decent reporting in AGW. fancy telling Richard black about this andrew? he seems to have selective blindness/hearing...
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Climate gate scandal is more than a few emails - as I hope Andrew has taken a little time to investigate for himself:
A little quote that might explain the mindset/group think of those that choose to go into climate science?
The relevance is this is the Tim that wrote the CRU code........
"...Although I have yet to see any evidence that climate change is a sign of Christ's imminent return, human pollution is clearly another of the birth pangs of creation, as it eagerly awaits being delivered from the bondage of corruption (Romans. 19-22)."
Tim Mitchell works at the Climactic Research Unit, UEA, Norwich, and is a member of South Park Evangelical Church."
Yes, this is the guy harry (Ian (Harry) Harris, research staff, Climate Reasearch Unit )is referring to in that Harry_Read_Me.txt file,
from this full article:
http://www.e-n.org.uk/1129-Climate-change-and-the-christian.htm
Go on Andrew, spend half an hour reading the (whistleblown) Harry_Read_me.txt for yourself.
A layman will get the gist of it.. A readme file/notes of the guy working on someone elses code. All over the internet, programmers/scientists have seen the state of code and data handling of the primary earth temp dataset.
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But Andy,Roger Harrabin wrote "But governments will be loath to kill off the IPCC, which comprises hundreds of experts reviewing the work of thousands of experts, all supervised by government representatives"
"In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire: THE A-TEAM."
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Dear Andrew,
As an expat who remembers your stint as a thundering newspaper editor and, previous to that, performing a similar role to your current position, I just have to say "Thank the Heavens" that someone on the BBC has finally decided to do some fair and square investigative journalism, free from this incredible quasi-religious disease which seems to have stunned the venerable Beeb into meek acquiescence (nay advocay perhaps) on this subject.
It's a real shame that Auntie seems to have lost her unique place in the TV Universe by losing it's always frisky political disinterest (God bless Sir Robin Day) and slightly risque anti-establishment humour (Monty P, Not the Nine O'clock News etc). I fear her international reputation may have evaporated along with the death of "Big Ears" (from Noddy) and that ludicrous "Climate Change" story from Africa that tried to pretend that the fish were disappearing from a lake not through population growth and over-fishing but, suddenly (drum roll), through the greenhouse gas emissions of the wicked west.
Finally, at last, some real, no nonsense, investigation into an emerging scandal......Actually, I don't think we've seen it's like in my lifetime - the sheer effort to subjugate debate by whatever means, to recite the mantra of AGW as if it were some absolutist creed, the credulous "torch bearing" of the media, the breathless worship of the IPCC.....thank goodness the British media of the 1930's never fell for fascism with quite the same fervour!
Anyway, I digress.....please stay the same questioning, awkward, unaffected, belligerent protagonist I remember so fondly. Perhaps you can give a few of the younger guys a bit of a kick up the backside and remind them that there's more to journalism than copying and pasting press releases.
Now, finally, the debate that was "over" is now raging for real across our major channels of communication.
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Andrew, a thank-you from the bottom of my heart.
When I grew up, the BBC was rightly respected for fair reporting - and Science was about testability of hypotheses by examining evidence available to all. Science is still about Truth and many still value Truth. Today many are grieving that we no longer could find the pursuit of Truth wherever it leads, at the BBC re. climate science.
When I began to suspect unbelievable widespread corruption in both Climate Science and the reporting of it, I taught myself by following all leads until I was certain of the real truth (took about 6 weeks 18 hours/day) and wrote a "Sceptics Climate Science Primer" that has approval from scientists and has helped many to understand this many-headed monster, this Hydra, that has developed over decades for both innocent and corrupt reasons. Times Higher Ed. readers liked it too. Perhaps it might help readers here?
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
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Awesome. I've been waiting for this global warming nonsense to fall apart for over 15 years.
Thank you Mr. Neil, please continue to keep us updated!
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I must say the it is not surprising that believers like Graves2002 completely miss the point. It does matter what is causing climate change, and the fact that if it is happening, it is not manmade. We are wasting trillions of his/her grandchildren’s money trying to stop something that we have no power or chance of changing. They also miss the point that there is still no proof that A) the world is actually getting warmer, the so called scientists have manipulated the figures so much even they do not know where they are. B) the temperature data is questionable in the first place because of the increase in buildings around collection points and the reduction in the number of measuring stations, so they just effectively make up the missing numbers. C) That as you can see from the emerging evidence, there is no consensus of scientist's that are experts in the field that are commenting on or pier reviewing evidence. Instead there are second hand stories heard in the pub, embellished, and reviewed by the cleaner. These are then spouted by the world’s politicians and the likes of Rajendra Pachauri as the truth, they are worse than lies. Why, because they purport to be the truth, and that people like Pachauri and Milliband arrogantly tell non believers they have no right to nor believe them. Governments and Mr Milliband are making life changing decisions on our behalf on little more than a bad science fiction novel. In fact if it were a novel we would all be slating it for it unbelievable poor research. The BBC still fail to give what is the biggest scandal in the world the air time it deserves. If we spent the money being wasted now and over the next 20 years on helping the 28million people estimated to be significantly affected by climate change we could make a real difference instead of a fat profit for Al Gore and all the other global warming leaches. It is organisation like the BBC and the greens who are the real deniers of the truth with their heads in the sand.
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It's true, it is good to see someone of Andrew Neil's profile speak about one of the biggest stories of our generation, & I personally am interested in his opinion, but I don't think this can be described as investigative journalism!
He's only summarised what has been on the blogs like wattsupwiththat & bishopshill for weeks & it would have been possible to write this blog after 15 minutes of reading these sites.
Real journalism is being done at sites like infowars & propaganda matrix & countless video bloggers on youtube (despite facing repeated account deletion!)
The BBC is editorially controlled by powerful people to spread disinfo, lies & continue to manufacture a false 'left-right' paradigm which deflects people from the real 'terrorists' in our society.
That's not to say that good people don't work at the BBC & I agree with Catch 22 that we must support them when they speak truth & risk their jobs for the sake of integrity & truth.
This year we are already seeing further exposure of a corrupt corporate criminal cabal which sees itself as 'elite' & humanity as 'useless eaters' who deserve to be kept in ignorance & taxed into enslavement.
Well, the big story is the useless eaters are waking up & they're gatecrashing the New World Order & stealing it back from these fascists.
Power To The People & to everyone reading this who gets what I'm talking about, THANK YOU & KEEP RESISTING! WITHDRAW YOUR OBEDIENCE & SEE YOU AT THE PARTY WHEN WE TAKE BACK OUR POWER & OUR COUNTRY!
Love to ALL!
Now, I wonder if this will get published? Over to the BBC...
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Ian “Harry” Harris, a programmer at the Climate Research Unit, kept extensive notes of the defects he had found in the data and computer programs that the CRU uses in the compilation of its global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset. These notes, some 15,000 lines in length, were stored in the text file labeled “Harry_Read_Me.txt”, which was among the data released by the whistleblower with the Climategate emails.
This is just one of his comments –
“[The] hopeless state of their (CRU) database. No uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found...I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that’s the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight.
“This whole project is SUCH A MESS. No wonder I needed therapy!!
“I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can’t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the updateprog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections - to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more. So what the hell can I do about all these duplicate stations?"
---
Look at the original for yourself (just google harry_read_me.txt - easy to find)
Nice summary of stuff here for some bbc researchers..
Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception?
(downloadable pdf doc at this location)
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/policy_driven_deception.html
A fact is a fact (wherever it is published - it can't just be dismissed beacuse it is a sceptical website - Even Andrew writing this blog, has turned him into a deniar for many of those pro AGW advocates)
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On the 24th November the British Met office issued a joint press statement on Climate Science. I can only assume this is in the wake of the CRU e-mail hack and was an attempt to assure the public on the veracity and openness of Climate Science
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091124a.html
Authors were those of the highest reputation:-
Prof. Julia Slingo, Chief Scientist, Met Office
Prof. Alan Thorpe, Chief Executive, Natural Environment Research Council
Lord Rees, President, the Royal Society
This statement included the following passage:-
"Year-on-year the evidence is growing that damaging climate and weather events — potentially intensified by global warming — are already happening and beginning to affect society and ecosystems. This includes:
In the UK, heavier daily rainfall leading to local flooding such as in the summer of 2007."
Anybody reading this passage is left with the strong impression that Scientific Evidence existed that proved the floods of 2007 were caused by Climate Change or were part of likely climate change scenarios for the UK. I am further confused because the next line down says that the summer drought and heat wave of 2003 was also part of likely climate change scenarios. So according to the statement a cool wet summer in UK and a hot dry summer are both indicators of trends caused by CO2 induced climate change !!!!!!!
I was unlucky enough to be directly involved in the 2007 Avon/Severn flooding, I got my feet wet! so I did, out of interest, keep up to date with any science reporting of the likely cause of these floods.
An excellent scientific analysis was produced on the 2007 floods by CEH a part of Prof. Alan Thorpe's Natural Environment Research Council.
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/2008_news_item_05.html
And I quote from the press release for this report:
Lead author, Terry Marsh, comments: “The river floods of summer 2007 were a very singular episode, which does not form part of any clear historical trend or show consistency with currently favoured climate change scenarios.”
Mr Marsh adds: “The exceptional river flooding last summer fuelled speculation that flood risk is increasing due to global warming. Due to the inherent variability of the UK climate, any extreme hydrological event cannot readily be linked directly to climate change.”
Are these 3 eminent scientists reassuring me on the validity of climate science by choosing to illustrate their statement with events that their own peer reviewed science says are not part of likely Climate Change scenarios.Or perhaps you can point me to the scientific studies that this passage in the statement were based on.
So what do I make of all of that? It diminishes the credibility of the whole Climate Science statement. I find little wrong with the rest of the statement.
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Well I am also a great fan of our venerable host but getting back to the subject, a few suspect reports do not absolve us of the responsibility of minimising our emmisons [of any variety] and monitoring our environment.
Why are so many people willing to disregard these theories so the status quo may be maintained?
By any economic argument surely it is better to develop cleaner, leaner energy?
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Andrew
Fantastic post. Thanks for daring to tell the truth about the cruel and cynical deception that is MMGW.
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The recently proclaimed financial consensus that our Great Leader, Gordon the Grumpy, told us all he was leading is going well I see
“President Obama is right when he says that banks must be dissuaded from engaging in proprietary speculation or financing speculative funds, Sarkozy said in his opening address on the first day of the forum."
Seems like it's the same consensus as he has in the Labour Party over who they want as leader. I presume that Sarkozy has Merkel signed up, so maybe he can enlist some heavyweights like Bulgaria into his little army.
Two financial heavyweights by the names of Roubini and Soros even say that Obama isn't going far enough.
“If financial institutions are too big to fail, they are just too big and should be split up.”
It's like having a pit bull terrier in your midst that's already attacked someone. If you do nothing, the chances of it happening again are increased exponentially, not diminished, and no transaction tax is going to be of any worth. If banks won't accept the medecine then they must be nationalised, as the implicit guarantee they now enjoy means they are effectively government backed now anyway.
No one can rewind the clock, no matter how much banks wish they could. They triggered the banking equivalent of a nuclear meltdown and it's a new world.
It's tempting for banks to devise more weird and wonderful derivative markets that aren't based on economic activity. After all economic activity is rather sluggish after what they've done, so if they can establish ever bigger and more complex securities, then they can manage their profits in a separate bubble, but they need a connection into our real money and deposits or the fantasy doesn't fly.
If banks need our money to cover the risks they're taking, then the risks they're taking are too great. Don't ever fall for the line that bankers or their regulators are especially clever, otherwise they'd have never allowed the likes of Madoff to last more than five minutes, and he's far from unique. It didn't require special skills to see that the rates he was offering were unsupportable.
It's going to be fun watching Gordon trying to persuade us he's leading this financial expedition from his current position lagging way back on a different track, but he'll catch up sooner or later and claim the credit as well.
Love him or loathe him, the former is just not possible.
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Everyone i know has been sceptical about Global warming except the poiticians. Now that it is falling apart you really have to question just how much common sence our politicians have. They are jusr so out of touch.
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gp @ 131
"If banks won't accept the medicine then they must be nationalised"
That has a lot going for it, in my opinion. At least as regards retail and mortgages.
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Andrew
You have a tiger on a lead please continue your brilliant expose.
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GomerPyle 111
'NASA, who've also had their climate data records and computer models challenged, are now changing tack and accepting that there are natural warming and cooling periods in the earth's climate (it's on their website), and this way they hope to explain the phenomnenon of the data confounding their hypotheses. The only problem then, is that their new position makes all their previous computer models worthless...'
When I started posting on the climate research scam (I refuse now to call a gigantic guessing game climate 'science') some years ago, I came across a report posted on the NASA web site that unambiguously stated that their research had shown that the warming effects of one El Nino season had more effect on the global climate then several years of anthropogenic effects. I can assure you that I did not imagine this - it existed and I even quoted from it around the time of the Channel 4 documentary 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. That report seems to have been expunged from the NASA records - I certainly cannot find it now. Just goes to show how far the politicisation of climate research has gone. Remember the old adage of following the money trail. A lot of these trails seem to end up with a politician or his cronies.
By the way, Andrew, while you're on the subject of climate research, perhaps you'd cast an eye over the DEFRA grant to Southampton University of £12million to research the acidification of the the world's oceans.
On the "Today" programme this week, a BBC reporter told us, in hushed and reverential tones, that the grant was to research the '30% increase' in the acidification of the world's oceans, with the implication that this is due again to the activities of mankind. I'd certainly be interested to see the scientific basis for that particular claim which at first glance seems as preposterous as the glaciers melting by 2035.
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111 gomer
"NASA, who've also had their climate data records and computer models challenged, are now changing tack and accepting that there are natural warming and cooling periods in the earth's climate (it's on their website)"
Here's the link to the NASA climate change site.
http://climate.nasa.gov
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The sceptics have already got their first scalp.
It was reported in the Nation Post in Canada that "Andrew Weaver, probably Canada’s leading climate scientist" is getting out while the getting is good. He is Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria" and one of the lead authors of the 2007 IPC report. He is calling for the resignation of the IPCC leadership and institutional reform
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Rather than trying to find the errors in AR4 I suggest that we take a different tack, that is let us try to find anything in the report that is actually true. Since climate is has always changed and always will, simply attributing something to climate change is disingenuous and insufficient. What must be done, for an assertion to be true in my context, is to state, with supporting and verifiable data, that events are or will happen because of a change in climate and, most importantly, that the underlying climate change is a direct result of human activity and not of natural variation.
I doubt that any true scientist within the ICPP can prove an anthropogenic component of climate change or attribute anything of any significance to that component.
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# 136
DHWilko - it appears that you've provided a link to a redundant site.
"Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa."
How can I say it ? Polar bears are doing fine. It's Global Warmists who are facing extinction.
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More news about Climategate at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8484385.stm
The investigative journalism of the Times is much more revealing than the bland coverage of the beeb. The beeb retains its bias.
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Andrew: You are right that many of the IPCC panel are not scientists. They are civil servants, bureaucrats and deep green zealots. But what is less well known is that many of the real scientists on the panel profoundly disagree with the IPCC line, and are angry and frustrated that their comments are ingnored. One, Paul Reiter, an expert on tropical diseases, had to threaten legal action to get his name removed from an IPCC report, because he was so angry at the nonsense they were publishing.
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How long has such fraud at the Word Bank been going on?http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=52&contentid=231
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Andrew,
today we have the Afghanistan Conference, tomorrow Blair gives his 'evidence' to Chilcot. Last week to stop us all being afraid it was announced that the level of the terrorist threat has been raised a notch.
What I would like the BBC and the various reporters in the media to find out is how many 'raids' have there been based on concerns about secirity. The early morning knock on the door, just checking Sir, noticed you've been looking at some web sites, or you were seen at a meeting where somebody we have our eye on attended. You know like it was in East Germany with the Stazi.
There must be records of such 'visits' and I think that it just might be an area to investigate! What a horrible place Nulabout has made of this once free country, only trouble is I am beginning to realise after all this time that we are not 'free' at all.
Dare to think that the experts are wrong, then a knock on the door. The dam is bursting alright Andrew, trouble is we are all being swept away.
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Andrew,
just watching the tennis with the RBS Ambassador Andrew 'The Brit' Murray on the BBC. Wonderful thing the independent BBC, with all of its sports journalists at the Australian Open Tennis Championship.
My point is that the BBC with its climate change agenda will fly their journalists all over the world. They fly them to disaster zones, to report on the situation of course, and the journalists also have to go to the Arcric, to see the damage being done, of course.
However, what is most annoying is that the BBC give free publicity to so many companies. Take the tennis where the RBS Ambassador Andrew 'The Brit' Murray is currently playing. Bit like Zara Philips, and Jackie Stewart who received money from RBS, to act as Ambassadors of course, and Newcastle United who are sponsored by the nationalised Northern Rock, where Alastair Darling had a mortgage.
The BBC are allowing adverts, freely on their programme. Rolex, Kia, IBM, Jacob's Creek, those are just the obvious ones. The same with horse riding, the same with Motor Racing, I think that the BBC are seriously in danger of being seen as nothing other than commercial TV, which is not there remit. As for the pay of the senior BBC people, well you can't make it up.
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The world has become full of Experts in search of attention and the celebrity spotlight.
There is scientific fact(to be believed or otherwise), then there is opinion(to be agreed with or not). We are in the unfortunate position of often confusing the two. Often the two are mixed together by our Experts to create the desired effect and enhance their personal position.
Data relating to global warming can be read as facts, however the views on what that means for the future are nothing but opinion. In some cases, as we have seen recently, opinions are being relayed as facts.
The Experts, the media and the general public are all guilty of creating this confusion.
Learn to separate the two and we can all carry on creating our own opinions based on our own point of view.
I have my own opinion of what will happen, I hope everyone can create their own
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The times has the article today....
BUT only after MONTHS of pressure.
I read the climategate email, data, code over 2 MONTHS ago...
As for the BBC, they are complicit in this cover up.
The emails indicatind freedom of information abuse, asking for stuff to be deleted, and saying they would rather delete the data than provide it. (merely to those people that think that there may be problems with it)
Soon after it was established thatthe raw data (ie everything that you would need to reproduce their homgensied dat, or to reproduce their work (a fundamental part of science) is either lost or deleted.
This is driving the whole worlds economy!!!!
So, whilst the news blackout seems to be lifting.
I know, a large proprtion of the public know, that this information was being ignored and buried for the last 2 months.
It is only the internet, and one or 2 journalists, Delingpole, booker, warner, north - inthe UK)no thanks to their editors - who bury it) that have kept the story alive at all
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This posting by Andrew Neil contains inaccurate and misleading statements that breach the BBC's rules and charter. It seems that the BBC does not enforce it's own rules when it comes to its blogs.
Mr Neil's posting states: "The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny -- indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it." This is factually inaccurate. The IPCC report includes a section on pages 300-316 of volume I on the physical science basis which outlines the evidence for changes in variability and extremes, referring to a large number of published scientific papers. The summary states: “Even though the archived data sets are not yet sufficient for determining long-term trends in extremes, there are new findings on observed changes for different types of extremes.”
In fact, Mr Neil appears to be referring to a report in ‘The Sunday Times’ about the link to date between losses from natural disasters and climate change, which is discussed in volume II of the IPCC report. Mr Neil gives the impression that the IPCC report claimed a proven link between losses and climate change – in fact it stated: “Global losses reveal rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s. One study found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposures at risk, once losses are normalized for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.” The study to which the IPCC report referred was by Robert Muir-Wood and co-authors in 2006, which concluded: “After 1970 when the global record becomes more comprehensive we find evidence of an annual upward trend for normalized losses of 2% per year that corresponds with a period of rising global temperatures.”
Mr Neil also alleged that “The author, who didn't actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has [as] its misuse of his work.” This is also untrue. Dr Muir-Wood’s published paper in 2008 concluded: “In sum, we found limited statistical evidence of an upward trend in normalized losses from 1970 through 2005 and insufficient evidence to claim a firm link between global warming and disaster losses.”
These, and many other errors, in this posting appear to indicate that Mr Neil did not check his facts. I trust he will be posting a correction promptly.
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Andrew,
whilst attention is on climate change and global warming the Afghan conference is taking place in London, with Gordon Brown.
Excuse me but does Quizling Karzai not understand that maybe some modesty may be necessary. I mean he sits there in his cape, then stands at a podium to talk, taking off ohis cape, but putting on his hat. Then he seems to be telling us, rather than understand that he is just a puppet leader, collaborating with the occupying forces.
I think that he is actually signing his own death warrant. This is a disaster, both for Karzai and the host, namely Brown, who just thinks that by writing off debt, by giving ever more aid, he can solve the disaster which Afghanistan has become. I remind readers of my earlier comment from Ben Bradshaw, that he wanted the Afghan model to be copied in Iraq.
Peace and security in the world is linked to peace and stability in Afghanistan. Excuse me are our young, sorry brave, courageous, heroes, seriously putting their lives at risk for these people.
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Andrew,
Brown tells us that the badlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan are a crucible for terror. Yet this morning he refers to Moslems, that is whilst he actually had Quizling Karzai sat almost next to him, but not so that pictures could be taken with them togather.
My point is that if we are to believe Brown about the crucible for terror then why not tell Karzai to his face, forget diplomacy, do it. As for Brown why did he not start the conference by reading out the names of all our dead, I mean we have to put up with it every wednesday, except of course when he doesn't attend PMQs because of holidays, or being somewhere else. He alaways seems to find a way of absenting himself, shame about Copenhagen meaning he couldn't take PMQs.
I wonder what job Brown will take when he is thrown from office, as seems more likely, I mean surely Nulabout can't go on like this.
Nice to see that chilcot and his crew are having a day out to prepare for Blair tomorrow! Hope they aren't having a pre meeting with Blair to discuss what they might or might not ask him. What they should do is to give him a bowl of water and towel so that he can wash the blood of the hundreds of thousands who have lost their lives because of his decisions.
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Andrew,
there is a very misleading reference to holocaust memorial day on the Number 10 website:
“What I have seen this afternoon is a harrowing testament to the murder of so many who suffered here the extremes of terror. What happened here is a shared human story - a perpetual reminder of all the darkness of which the world is capable, but also a story of what the world can endure and survive".
Now I know that the date above the visit to the concentration is shown as 29th April 2009, but even so one is left with the distinct impression that Brown could possibly be in two places at the same time, namely sorting out Northern Ireland, whilst at the same time being in Poland for a visit to a concentration camp.
In the meantime I don't know how he can keep a straight face, the man who paid for the invasion and occupation, and final retreat from Iraq, and who has continued to get his mired in Afghanistan. We must defeat terror whenever we see it, in the meantime our soldiers kick in doors, detain people, and 'do bad things to bad people' only they aren't bad, we've invaded their country. How would you like it if Germany had occupied England, the French didn't seem to mind too much at the time, and we know what some of our politicians think of the French don't we!
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Bob Ward, why don't you just accept the fact that the AGW game is up?
The new age alchemists, aka Climate Scientists have been caught out. They are liars, cheats, and scoundrels.
Proper scientists, like astrophysicists, have been saying for years that these new kids on the block are ignoring solar influences on climate. Proper meteorologists like Lorentz stated that modelling climate change would be impossible and his work was ignored.
Don’t try to defend the indefensible, you’ll just get dirt on your ...
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Thank you Andrew - a well belanced & thoughtful piece. It joins the ranks of many other commentators who are now daring to question the veracity of the claims that the emporer has new clothes.
Graves2002
Ah, here we go.
Threats & bullying from the eco-taliban.
Stop trying to shut down the debate & engage with the facts as laid out here.
I do not hate my grandchildren - but I will not sign up to a bunch of recycled marxists who have merely swapped their red flag for a green one.
And if you call Andrew a "Global Warming Denier" I suggest he calls you a "Global Cooling Denier" - as the vast majority of real historical & imperical evidence points in exactly the other direction for your "religion".
PS: The earth has been in a permanent state of flux since its inception - are you denying that? Are you really confident that by stopping capitalism you can freeze dry the earth at this particular juncture & epoc?
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At yesterday's show you stated that the Iraq War was not legal, that the Attorney General had folded to pressure, and that the FCO legal team proved it was legal. Following the Attorney General's appearance at the Inquiry, you should at best apologise and state the facts, at worse apologise and state there are different opinions but it is the Attorney General, not this subordinates, and he alone who decides the legality issue.
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139 gomerpyle
DHWilko - it appears that you've provided a link to a redundant site.
"Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa."
You mean this site?
http://climate.nasa.gov/
Its the site you pointed to at 111.
The Himalaya glacier error involves a typo somewhere along the line. the report showed 2035 as a date for the glacier disappearing but somehow the '0' ended up in the wrong place it should've been 2350. The Himalayas are still melting though.
______________________________________
This site is good.
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
This is excellent material that will counter all the points made by sceptics here. Most people here won't watch it though as they like to cherry pick news that agrees with their prejudices.
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Andrew,
a brilliant performance on Daily Politics Today with your female guest from Afghanistan. All Hutton could do was to make the pathetic comment about you and your cynicism. This from a man who is deserting a sinking ship, who used to be responsible for our defence, and who will walk away with his head held high.
I would rather listen to the truth as spoken by the young lady than any politician who justifies our action in Afghanistan. The problem is that the Talibhan walked away, they went home, in 2001. Look at the deaths of British soldiers since then. How many in the initial two to years three years. Then Iraq, and then look what happened when we took our eye off the ball.
This is all about our attitude to the country, and not only ours but the Americans. This is seriously about Harry and his stupid cap of 'doing bad things to bad people'. The Americans think that because of 9/11 all Afghans are 'bad', they are not.
There was reference during the Afghan conference about another conference which will be taking place, under the auspices of Saudi arabia. Bin Laden is Saudi, it is Saudi Arabia where the problem lies, and yet which family was flown out of America in the immediate period after 9/11, why the Saudi family Bin Laden!
Finally, Hutton is a disgrace, I'm sorry but he really is.
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it is the Attorney General, not this subordinates, and he alone who decides the legality issue
Here's a thought, why not leave that judgement to the ICC?
IF the AG decided killing the firstborn was legal, would it make it so?
Good article Neil - keep it up; sceptics are winning each and every argument. AGW is hokum.
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Andrew; is it wise to post something like this on the BBC? You might be looking for a job soon......
;-)
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153. Malcolm Knight
"At yesterday's show you stated that the Iraq War was not legal, that the Attorney General had folded to pressure, and that the FCO legal team proved it was legal. Following the Attorney General's appearance at the Inquiry, you should at best apologise and state the facts, at worse apologise and state there are different opinions but it is the Attorney General, not this subordinates, and he alone who decides the legality issue."
At best the AG's testimony makes it a case of interpretation. His versus most signatories of res 1441.
Certainly no clear cut case for legality.
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The proposal to pay members of the Taleban to give up their fight and join the democratic process (such as it is in Afghanistan) is a crackpot idea. Whoever suggested it should be banned from the vicinity of anyone of influence who might be foolish enough to listen.
Ms Frogh highlighted the stupidity of the idea when she said, totally understandably, that she would claim to be a repenting member if it would mean getting some cash - such is the poverty of many in that country. And why wouldn't any sane Afghan fighter return to the battle once they'd been paid? They might even be able to repeat the exercise.
I wonder if it was Gordon who thought of it? It would fit.
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Amazing! I got a response from the deluded fanatics.
So the glaciers in the Himalaya are going to take longer to melt than first thought. This means that global warming is a myth.
Funny that. Why are they melting then? Unless the ndeniers are going to deny that they are melting?
You are called deniers not sceptics for a reason. A sceptic would be persuaded by evidence. You are blind to all the evidence and deserve to be treated with contempt.
When there hasn't been a winter worth the name for 25 years, and the snow patches on the Cairngorms that had only melted twice in the previous 80 years now vanish every summer.it would be a strange creature indeed who claimed that it is getting colder.
Being both more intelligent than the deniers and better educated. I do know what Milankovitch cycles are and what happened during the Maunder minimum. Unlike most who throw these ideas around as though just using the name means anything.
It was indeed warmer during the dark ages when the vikings settled Greenland. The difference is that there are now 8,000,000,000 more people on the planet all using more resources, particularly fossil fuels. There has been massive deforestation thus reducing carbon sinks, with the replacement of Amazon forest with methane producing cattle a major disaster.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased leading increased warming. Unless you think that it has no effect?
Curiously I read of deniers claiming that global warming (whih they claim isn't happening) is caused by an increase in water vapour in the atmosphere and not CO2. Odd because you only get an increased amount of water vapour if there is global warming. It's called a feedback loop and could lead to a runaway greenhouse effect like on Venus.
Please mr Denier Deny that lot.
Oh dear you can't.
The question does require an answer from the deniers.
Why does the idea of using less energy,costing you less money and leaving your grandchildren a better world cause you so much pain?
I suspect that the deniers are all the kind of humancentric fascists who believe that all other life on the planet exists for your benefit. The kind of people who look at a forest and despise it. You make me sick.
Not only causing me to vomit your actions put MY planet in danger. And for what? Idiocy, humano-fascism, despite. Some people relly do not deserve the life they've been given.
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If the wall street journal knew about his.... (November 29th 2009)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574564291187747578.html
"...Other emails include one in which Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit told Mr. Mann that "I tried hard to balance the needs of the science and the IPCC, which were not always the same," and in which Mr. Jones said he had employed Mr. Mann's "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures. A May 2008 email from Mr. Jones with the subject line "IPCC & FOI" asked recipients to "delete any emails you may have had" about data submitted for an IPCC report. The British Freedom of Information Act makes it a crime to delete material subject to an FOI request; such a request had been made earlier that month."
Why did the bbc after 3 weeks of a virtual news blackout on climategate scandal last year... (just prior to copenhagen conference)
Just run a report about the 'hide the decline' email.
Using a scientists involved in agw theory to explain away the 'trick'.?
All over the internet (16th -20thNov 2009)
the FOI deletion emails were a hot topic..
Yet only today are they talked about in the press, appeared briefly on the bbc's main page, then disapeared to science/environment?
Maybe it is BBCgate as well?
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The Ipcc 'glaciergate' story has been big news the last few days....
The BBC copenhagen time had journalist/reports running around the himalayas, pointing at glaciers...
Yet they knew about the 'mistake' and buried it in the south east asia section of the website. Pretty much as the IPCC tried to, dismissing the indian glaciologists, as arrogant, voodoo, to quote the head of the ipcc..
Decemeber 5th 2009
Himalayan glaciers melting deadline 'a mistake'
Pallava Bagla in Delhi
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8387737.stm
An incovenient truth? Just days prior to Copenhagen?
All that scare and doom propogated by the BBC, any retraction, to the same level?
Just like we are all going to drown, tidal wave engulfing a small child clip (from copenhagen opening video) shown repeatadly and uncritically by the BBC..
An example of the ridulousness of the IPCC.
and the partiality of the BBC. this clip was everywhere on the media.
Surely the BBC have a duty to analyse and inform debate, not just repeat press releases and propoganda?
Even a 2.0m rise in sea level in the next 90 years (used to be 59 cm - had to up the scare just before copenhagen, though I thought thethe 'science had been settled', so why the change) - IPCC). Hardly justifies the copehagen opening video.
Have the scientists explained what % might be natural, what % is man made, how they came about those results/predictions - No
Have they released raw data/assumptions/methodology.
So sea level experts agree - No
or have the sea levels, that have varied (quite dramtically naturally - been explained)- or stopped changing naturally
When I told my 5 year old daughter (who was very worried/scared for the child/us),actually, even IF this is true.
The rate of Tidal wave.
is:
0.02222222 m a year
0.0000608 m a day
0.0000025 m a hour
or:
0.000000025 km/h
plenty of time to get out of the way.
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Greetings Andrew. I flagged up the climate rubbish in 2008. No one was interested. A new 'gate' for you - New Zealand's National Climate Database - complete rubbish. To learn more hit my climate blog.
Kind regards
Godfrey
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160 @Graves2002
Why does the idea of using less energy,costing you less money and leaving your grandchildren a better world cause you so much pain?
This line I wholeheartedly agree with.
- the rest is a bit too rich for me, intolerance on either side does not move the discussion forward.
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Any person who uses the phrase "the science is settled" doesn't have the faintest idea, either practically or philosophically, how science works.
Ed Milliband — any further degree level science qualifications? No?
Thought not.
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"And if all others accepted the lie which the Climate Research Unit imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the data' ran the climatologists' slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the data controls the present.'"
With apologies to George Orwell. 1984
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Andrew,
I have to say that I used to like the film Spartacus, and the story behind it, especially where they all start shouting I'm Spartucus, and they all end being crucified.
Well if the governments are going to start throwing money around then 'I'm Talibhan', in fact I will go so far as to say that 'I'm Terry Talibhan', which means I think I get a bonus.
I thought that the comment by Quizling Karzai about private contractors was good, Brown refers to mercenaries, well what should we call 'our boys' who leave the army and then go off to 'work' for the private security firms who will be paid by DIFID to protect the civilians who will need protecting, from the remaining Talibhan, but not by the military.
I wonder if anybody knows what job Geeneral Sir Mike Jackson does since his retirement from the Army. Surely he doesn't work for any firm that supplies former military personnel to the various civilian agencies who will need protecting!
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Andrew,
I could not fail to notice your piece on gold yesterday. Please note that one of the main causes of the Great Depression in this country was the decision of the then Chancellor, Winston Churchill, to restore the link of the pound to a fixed price gold, and that the exchange rate was unsustainable, and put massive strains on our economy.
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#164 menin
Well said. No scientist would resort to intolerant or intemperate language in putting forward a case.
And most of the 'sceptics' on this blog seem to support generally 'green' policies and developments in the interests of everyone - but not driven by the global warming/CO2 emissions argument.
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Andrew,
if I was Talibhan in Afghanistan then I would never switch my allegiance. Consider the Drone attacks on Pakistan. What I see as possibly happening is that these Talibhan 'surrender' are in one place, and are then 'executed'. That may be cynical but history will show that people need to be very wary about western promises. Funny how most of the problem with Afghanistan has been shunted off yet again until after the election, which will be in May, thanks to Boh Ainsworth. How can we trust a government where the Minister of Defence can't keep a secret. Tell us Bob, when are we going to 'surge', might as well tell the enemy so they can disappear again.
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Andrew,
the breaking news about Dr Andrew Wakefield is worrying. I know let us be told by Brown and Blair that ther children have had the MMR jabs. This is another situation where the science is a 'given'. The current and former PMs are under an obligation to confirm whether or not their children have had 'the jab' or whether they were immunised using an alternative method.
As for Brown he must also explain in full his comments in respect of Jack Jones, where there are very serious allegations about his involvement with communist Russia.
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Maybe something for all to consider tomorrow when Bliar appears at Chilcot and mocks our intelligence
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/normantebbit/100024183/the-invasion-of-iraq-was-legal-instead-chilcot-should-be-investigating-the-criminal-bungling-that-followed/
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5737243/blairs-real-crime.thtml
I hope that some enterprising individual has managed to get a court order to indite him to the Hague, in much the same way that a trap had been prepared for the Israeli. At least then we could save the money that the taxpayer pays for his "security"
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At last we are beginning to see some (albeit minor) coverage of this serious issue on the BBC. Why have I had to find other sources such as Finnish TV (with subtitles) and Climate Audit to obtain a balanced perspective on this issue? As a university educated scientist and engineer I feel that the BBC has seriously let the scientific community down. Having had the official complaint I made in December about the BBC's pro-warming bias rejected by some jobsworth, I now feel vindicated.
Many thanks for redressing the balance Andrew!!
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DHWilko - I was poking gloriously evil fun at you, and it's so much more satisfying that you didn't notice.
The scriptures of the Cult of warmism are sacred texts and difficult for Cultists to amend (not that Wikipedia wasn't revised overnight several times, but heck, what else is to be expected when you have mania beyond crdibility ?), because the whole rotting mess starts sliding - much like a melting glacier I imagine.
I'm glad to see an MEP coming out in the open to show the flag of common sense, and maybe that's why the 'nasty mob' are showing themselves in this thread.
If BarryW wants to move the issue of all the duff data and wobbly climate models into the relms of a formal investigation, nothing would please us more, and legal challenges have already been made in France, the US and the UK. This whole firago had more hype than a Bay City Roller concert and significantly less sophistication.
Have you read harry.readme Barry ? If you can recover from the fits of hysterial laughter, then try looking at the code. I may believe you hold your beliefs sincerely, but I can't respect you for doing so when it is based on such comical evidence. The two major proponents of Global Warming have their reputations in tatters, and a few others never show their faces in public nowadays.
If you have any questions please feel free to ask them, but don't mention polar bears, Himalayan glaciers or that you reproduced Global Warming in your kitchen sink.
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Humble apologies Barry W - I meant to refer to Bob W, of course.
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160 Graves2002
Gosh what a rant. I'm worried about tackling any of it in case you burst a blood vessel.
So just a few points. The denial of the medieval warm period (Greenland etc) and for that matter the 18th Century Little Ice Age (frost fairs on the Thames) is exactly what the warmists have been trying to do because it is off-message.
This is precisely what first made many people suspicious of the now discredited "hockey-stick" graph that was the defining emblem of the IPCC report and Al Gore's ravings.
Fiddling the facts to fit the pre-desired result.
"Why does the idea of using less energy,costing you less money and leaving your grandchildren a better world cause you so much pain?"
You are confusing legitimate scepticism about man-made climate change with disbelief in the need for sustainability, which nobody argues.
"I suspect that the deniers are all the kind of humancentric fascists who believe that all other life on the planet exists for your benefit. The kind of people who look at a forest and despise it. You make me sick.
Not only causing me to vomit your actions put MY planet in danger. And for what? Idiocy, humano-fascism, despite. Some people really do not deserve the life they've been given."
I'm afraid that most of what you wrote is drivel but you have introduced one interesting concept-"humancentric-fascism".
Perhaps you might explain what purpose mankind has on Earth if it is not to multiply and fill it, use its resources wisely and improve the lot of our descendants.
What would be our interest in a world without people? Why should we care about a world populated only by animals, say the cockroaches and worms that might survive a nuclear holocaust?
Should we be cockroach-fascists? Would that be more morally righteous?
I'm interested in your attitude to this.
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Oh dear Bob.
May I refer you to Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog. I think he has an answer there ready and waiting for you.
I won't repeat the details of the spat here but it seems to deal with your problem, and anyone who wants to look into it, I suggest they go and have a look.
He does say.
"Bob Ward is at it again"
Is that you Bob ?
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"DHWilko - I was poking gloriously evil fun at you, and it's so much more satisfying that you didn't notice."
I used you to repeat the link. In case anyone missed it. Obviously the effects of climate vary depending on our complex climate system but the basic principle of Co2 trapping heat in the atmosphere, amplified by the feedback effects of increased water vapour. Is correct in my view. I know you have a petrol station job to protect, so I understand your point of view.
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160 Graves2002
Well it seems you have been well indoctrinated a " true believer " praise be to IPCC.
Perhaps you could explain about the feedback loop and what the tipping point is that will lead to the runaway global warming because I would argue that there is no scientist currently active in climate science that would predict that figure and put their name to it. There may be some political bodies that prior to the last week would have thought about it but now, I doubt it.
Are you trying to deny that the world has been a lot warmer than this in its past or that CO2 levels have never been higher than today?
So the glaciers are melting, not by a contrived rate that would have them disappear by 2035, but at a rate that is more normal for a planet that is warming naturally and gradually from an ice age. That is unless you can provide evidence to the contrary, and be careful of your sources, even the IPCC say they have been fooled.
Perhaps we should publicly ask the World Wildlife Fund to provide all the evidence that they have provided to the IPCC AR4 report concerning the Amazon rain forest because it must have been peer reviewed in order to pass the IPCC's impeccable standards. As have all the temperature data provided by the "true climate scientists" beavering away for the last twenty years under pressure from "bad scientists" who dared to question their gospel.
Pray tell what the latest figure is for the rise in sea levels that will drown our grand children. As the seas warm they expand, no question it is basic physics. Now that we know that the rise in predicted temperature is grossly over exagerated we can relate that directly to the rise in sea levels. So stop wasting money on advertising campaigns for something that is never going to happen and start thinking about solving some of the worlds problems today so that our grand kids don't need to.
And as for polar bears dying out, they are more likely to choke on rubbish left behind by so called green reporters trying to seize an opportunity to make their name in the world press. The bears have never had it so good the population is exploding, there will have to be a cull soon.
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# 178
DHWilko - I challenge you to a game of ping pong. I'm undefeated.
Allow me to quote from the highest authority in the land (creep - creep).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8483722.stm?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
"The most alarming forecasts of natural systems amplifying the human-induced greenhouse effect may be too high, according to a new report.
The study in Nature confirms that as the planet warms, oceans and forests will absorb proportionally less CO2."
I admit that they go back on to the warmist mantra, but once your mind is bent, it usually stays bent. The fact is that the myth of feedback setting up some exponential chain reaction was more hype and hysteria, as many proper scientists had concluded years ago.
In their attempt to cover for the bogus science they then go on to make hypothetical predictions, as if that is another branch of reliable science. Climate science has gone from alchemy to astrology without pausing for breath. I'm impressed. Not bad for people who can't predict the weather, and I use the term 'weather' as defined by the Cult of Warmism.
When you pedal your bike on to my garage forecourt DHWilko, I can assure you of the best of service, especially if you road there in the fast lane of the M25.
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gomerpyle
Interesting article thanks. You're probably right about the exponential chain reaction but some amplification happens. The Co2 warms the oceans creates water vapour which also acts as a greenhouse gas. As so many of the sceptics have said. I think you're right, the air becomes saturated and so becomes condensed into cloud which can reflect the sunlight and fall somewhere as rain. Heavy rain or Heavy snow. Which because of more heat giving us more evaporation we'll have a lot more of less rain but really heavy when we get it.
I'm off to watch Bellamy's people then maybe listen to Down the line on Radio 7
Don't ride a bicycle on the motorway Gomer.
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A little though entered my fevered brain and so I did a Google search, which is how many of my problems begin. Try it yourself.
"Irregular carbon credits cause upheaval in Papua New Guinea"
You'd have thought that preserving Papua's fast disappearing ranforest would be an admirable pursuit, and it is alleged that the market is up and running in the reported amount of 1m tonnes of carbon, and carbon credits (in this instance known as REDD's) are being traded, it is alleged.
Everything fine and dandy so far.
"Yet no government is able to issue any legal REDD credit, as no framework exists for doing so."
Oh whoops, so there is a market for something which doesn't exist and isn't saving even a dandelion ? I wonder who's paying for that ?
Anyone see a flaw in pumping cash into a project that doesn't even represent a carbon benefit ? These make collateralized debt obligations look gilt edged. It's a beautiful high risk investment, as long as you get out before it crashes, so the financial world will love it, but it doesn't do what it says on the can.
It's further allegeded that 39 more such REDD “credits”, which apparently each denote 1m tonnes, are in existence.
I suppose if you're a country that's pumped all its money into banks, we probably won't notice if we're saving trees that don't exist either. It appears that the economics of Global Warming is in an even bigger mess than the science, would you believe ?
The ethics are rather dubious too. If buying some carbon credits were to make you feel a warm glow of social responsibilty, maybe you should think again
"Abelie Wape, an Indigenous leader from Kamula Doso in Papua New Guinea, was forced at gunpoint to sign away the carbon rights to the forest. Kamula Doso is one of the most controversial of the REDD projects currently being set up anywhere in the world. These accusations of violence make any pretense of free, prior and informed consent farcical."
I doubt a photo of this incident will apeear on the front of the brochure for the Cancun Climate Conference - maybe it should.
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What's happening between Ed Milliband and Hillary Clinton or is it just my imagination they are happy to see each other??!!
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# 101 - you really don't get it, do you DHWilko ?
If Global Warming only works by inventing perpetual motion models, then it's clear that no scientists have been involved in its development. This stuff is laughable and makes a mockery of the alarmist drivel. It's only surprising they haven't thrown in alien invasion, the Bermuda Triangle and asteroid collision as well.
The flaw in the feedback assertion is known by students the world over. The government's new scientific adviser isn't helping the cause by giving blanket affirmation without daring to mention which bits of global warming dogma he thinks may represent proper scientific endeavour. If, in any way, he supports the efforts of the UEA CRU, which you might think should be his concern, then he's joining a group of scientists who don't possess much credibility.
As a scientists, perhaps he'd like to expand on his claim, because that's what scientists should do. The importatnt question that should be answered is how all this thoroughly debunked science managed to get peer reviewed.
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Ref 171 Catch 22
Jack Jones a former KGB agent, I can't believe itTaggy, because he was such a great singer and all the ladies loved him?!
If true, this is HUGE embarassement to the BOTH parties because I can't believe that neither party knew or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.
What about Jack Dash and a few more union activists, what about the Special Branch being employed by several leading construction companies.
As you say Taggy, you can't make it up mate.
This latest DEBACLE in paying those POOR Taliban people not to kill our troops is a JOKE. I think we should not only pay them MORE money, why don't we let ALL the Taliban and their Cousins come and live here in the UK and give them a job,house,pickup truck,etc, why not, we do it do for the rest of the world.
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Andrew,
so today we will have the final crack in the dam.
This is not about the war, this is about the aftermath, about extra-ordinary rendition, about enhanced interrogation techniques, it is about the events like the death of Baha Mousa, and it is about people, in particular soldiers, having to follow orders.
How many names did Blair read out in the commons, as the list grew longer. How many people turned out in the appalling Wooton Basset, as the bodies of our soldiers were brought home. Where were these people then.
This is not about the war, its what did Brown pay for, why did he underfund the operation. But with the conference yesterday on Afghanistan, its why did he allow the situation to develope where resources were transferred so that a vacuum was created, and we know how many have died since.
There must be a full publication of Blairs letters to the president. My son was in Iraq, working with the Americans, he signed up to serve, to defend his Queen and country, not to do stuff on behalf of American Foreign Policy. He was given an honourable discharge for his beliefs, he was not courts martialled, he did not go to jail, and he was not dishonourably discharged. He did not stay silent, that is until this government had an injunction placed on him by the High Colurt preventing him from speaking in public.
So when the appalling Ian McShane says nobody said anything at the time, then he wrong, only those who spoke out have been silenced.
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Did anyone see the wonderful programme on BBC4 "The Secret Life of Chaos".
This showed that we absolutely cannot predict anything complex, let alone weather (and climate). As I was watching it I was wondering. As the Met office have shown with their attempts at long-term weather forecasting, buying bigger and faster computers, it just doesn't work. Fractals, anyone? And they're not the first. I think many have heard of the "butterfly effect" (butterfly in Mexico, storms in Texas etc.)The man who introduced this was a meteorologist who tried and failed to predict long-term weather, then worked out why he couldn't.
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Taggy, why don't me and you take Blair to the Hague forWar Crimes, I am game for another battle.
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#186
Of course I meant to say Dennis McShane and not Ian McShane, one is an actor the other is not.
As for the Blair 'evidence' so far I think that already others have picked up on the Fern Britten interview. Blair now seems to be completely in denial. What should be known is that Britten denied using some sort of weight loss regime, although she did. So when Blair says what he did in the interview was he lying, or was he confused. If he was confused then was our country being run by somebody who really was very confused, rather than lied.
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Andrew,
if I was to say that Blair should be removed as a result of a bloodless coup organised by Brown, then of course I would never say that removing Blair would be regime change. When you listen to Blair remember Dr David Kelly, Mr de Menezes, and all the soldiers who lost their lives, and the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died, then just think that have not been killed, they have been 'removed'. Angry you bet I am.
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News just in! Fascinating Stuff.
Guardian (29/01/10): Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals
"Experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, but call for 'closer examination' of the way computer models consider water vapour"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/29/water-vapour-climate-change
Stratospheric Water Vapor is a Global Warming Wild Card
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100128_watervapor.html
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Andrew,
just a very quick point. When talking about WMD please think of the Sarin attack in Tokyo, Japan. That was the first time chemical weapons had been used by a terrorist group.
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Andrew,
the BBC reporters are quite correct about reference to 9/11 and Iraq. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, if anywhere it was Saudi Arabia. In the meantime bin Laden is still free, despite a massive price on his head.
The American forces when occupying Iraq put pictures of 9/11 on the walls of the palaces which they occupied. They were duped just as the Cjhinese soldiers in Beijing were duped. There will be revolution if they don't watch out.
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Global Warming ? - what a joke.
"Considered the climate Bible by governments around the world, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is meant to be a scientific analysis of the most authoritative research.
Instead, it references literature generated by Greenpeace – an organization known more for headline-grabbing publicity stunts than sober-minded analysis."
There are at least eight examples discovered so far.
Instead of peer reviewed science, it's riddled with the unfounded contentions of an eco pressure group. Perhaps the Druids should decide the fate of the proposed new runway at Heathrow airport. They've invented a fancy pseudo-scientific body (the IPCC), and then rinsed eco-twaddle through it, and hey presto, it's now supposed to be scientific fact. Pull the other one.
Like the UEA CRU, anything the IPCC say now is going to considered nothing more than junk. This is where the attempt to manipulate the media is flipping back on itself, and the desperation to halt the slide is just plain embarrassing.
I particularly enjoyed this comment.
"In 5th grade my daughter did a report on the rain forest. I’m wondering now if it’s also cited by the IPCC."
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Andrew,
I hope that Blair is asked what were you saying to Gordon Brown at the time. What meetings did he attend, was he asked about could we afford both Afghanistan and Iraq. I do not want Brown to be asked the question and then just say that you should ask Blair on that. What meetings were held whilst Brown was elsewhere, or had to go the toilet at the time they were talking about this, that, or the other.
As for the number of soldiers, I think you will find is that all the Americans really wanted was our elite Special Forces.
By the way were the British and Americans not supporting Iraq in the war against Iran. Did we not previously arm and support the Talibhan. We are after all shoulder to shoulder with America, except for Vietnam that is! I mean even the Australians were in Vietnam, or maybe some of our Sopecial Forces were quietly working in Vietnam as well?
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Will all the deniers please try and answer the question.
All the measures needed to counter Global Warming are in and of themselves of benefit to humanity regardless of the presence or absence of Global warming itself.
Population reduction, renewableenergy, cleancoal, tidal power, better insulation, more efficient engines, less pollution. The list is almost endless.
Why do you still want to poison the planet?
No answer apart from a genuine loonie conspiracy theory that every scientist in the world is lying to you.
Do you deny that the Greenhouse effect is real and proven to exist?
Do you deny that the massive increase in human population and consumption of resources has increased the proportion of Co2 in the atmosphere?
Do you deny that your actions are endangering the future of life on this planet?
You can't because you are arguing against the truth. And people who do that deserve nothing.
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Andrew,
Blair has just been asked about military planning. It is like the days before WWI, as I have said before, once the troops are on the move then it is inevitable that the war will start. If the troops on the border had been withdrawn without going to war then Sadam would have 'won'. Once removed they would never be sent again. We would have been humiliated, but even worse so would America. So the dye was cast, it was war. But it is what happened afterwards.
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Graves 2002
'All the measures needed to counter Global Warming are in and of themselves of benefit to humanity regardless of the presence or absence of Global warming itself.'
Population reduction is of benefit? Maybe population stabalisation but I would not advocate genocide for any theory.
'Why do you still want to poison the planet?'
I don't, CO2 is not a pollutant it is essential for the growth of plant life.
'Do you deny that the Greenhouse effect is real and proven to exist?'
The greenhouse effect may well be real but its greatest contributor is water vapour not CO2.
'Do you deny that the massive increase in human population and consumption of resources has increased the proportion of Co2 in the atmosphere?'
No, totally agree with that statement. Although the amount that has been added is too insignificant to cause concern.
'Do you deny that your actions are endangering the future of life on this planet?'
Yes and no. Lets talk scales, if you are trying to say that I am responsible for the future death of the planet then definitely yes, I deny that.
If you are saying that I am responsible for the death of a cow that is killed for my steak this evening then no, I do not deny it I am responsible for the death of that animal, along with the erradiction of a few carrots, peas and potoes. Guilty as charged your honour pass the honey and pepper sauce please.
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Ukpahonta – well said!!!!!!!!!
Well said - thank god someone on here is talking sense – if the world has not been warming since the last Ice Age and was still not gently warming we would be looking at the onset of the next Ice Age and that would be a SERIOUS threat to mankind.
CO2 and water vapour are not pollutants and are essential to life on the planet, they are not the cause of the warming – the warming at its current rate is a benefit to mankind and is totally natural – it can not be stopped by man and to imagine it can is massively conceited – nothing we can ever do will change the climate and cool it
Wind and solar power can not replace the need for either nuclear or conventional power stations, they are too inefficient – that’s why Denmark has stopped building wind farms – when there is no sun or no wind they have to turn on more conventional power plants to keep their country running
The Government is just hell bent on taxing us and feathering the nests of their friends who have invested in so called “Green” industries – man made AGW is the biggest con ever perpetrated on the world
Even now the discredited so called Government adviser was trotted out by the corrupt media arm of the government – the BBC – last night to repeat the lies
What will it take to make these crooks back down?
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# 196
Oh dear Graves2002 you've gone off message and will lose your Cult of Warmism perks for your comments.
It's a fundamental and undeniable fact - that doesn't need a scientist to work out, just someone with a functional brain - that the most polluting thing any human can do, is reproduce. Do I need to explain how that works ? This issue is avoided by the Cult of Warmism and I haven't read any comment from the UEA CRU or IPCC about this apart from some incoherent mumbling.
The simple fact about this issue is that there's no money in population control, and though the West is not generally the seat of major population growth, it is the major centre responsible for consuming resources, and we've got the money. However, newly developing countries are undoubtedly going to be the new wave in consumerism whilst at the same time only slowly limiting population growth. Indeed, their new found wealth may well accelerate the situation.
We already have a market to limit over consumption of natural resources, it's called 'supply and demand', and inventing fake markets that do nothing to limit the consumption of or protect natural resources are just inventions of financiers to deal in more toxic securities, this time disguised as ethical investments.
Please direct me to an IPCC report that makes any recommendation about population issues, but I haven't found any. Let me know urgently because under such a scheme I'm in the money. The carbon credits will come hurtling through my letter box and I'll be able to outsmug Greenpeace.
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Excellent post, Andrew. At last the mainstream media is sitting up and taking notice of the sheer nonsense of man-made global warming. All along it's been clear that MMGW is a huge scam designed to make carbon traders rich; keep huge grants from taxpayers flowing to so-called climate scientists; and governments which want to find another scare so they can tax us. Well done again!
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Way O/T
but after today's DP I must add that you seemed to set the right kind of sceptical tone to the whole thing
I actually enjoyed the debate, and I found myself agreeing with the line of questioning. It followed on quite nicely from the This Week item last night
It might be nice if the Chilcot enquiry actually leads to the rehabilitation of Mr Gilligan
I hope that you are going to blog about this soon
I found it interesting too that John Pienaar spoke obliquely about the poll on politicshome without naming the source. Is that al jebeeba policy?
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196 Graves2002
"All the measures needed to counter Global Warming are in and of themselves of benefit to humanity regardless of the presence or absence of Global warming itself".
"Population reduction" What on earth do you have in mind?
"renewable energy" Have you even looked at the windmill figures?
"clean coal" Unproven technology but worth pursuing.
"tidal power" Swampy will be out to save the seabirds.
"better insulation" Nobody is arguing.
"more efficient engines" Ditto.
"less pollution" Ditto.
"Why do you still want to poison the planet?" Nobody does. CO2 isn't a poison.
"loony conspiracy theory that every scientist in the world is lying to you" Only some are. Vast numbers are anti-warmist.
"Greenhouse effect is real and proven to exist?" Everybody agrees this. But humans haven't affected it.
"increase in human population and consumption of resources has increased the proportion of Co2 in the atmosphere?" Maybe but CO2% is tiny anyway and an increase in tiny is even tinier.
"Do you deny that your actions are endangering the future of life on this planet?" Absolutely.
Some of your points are straw men in that you accuse others of adopting positions that they don't. Some are arguable in that the numbers don't add up. Some are overheated and you need to cool it.
You haven't answered my direct question to you in 176 about your words "humancentric fascists", yet you have the chutzpa to accuse others of not answering questions. I await your grovelling apology.
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Yup - cracks appearing everywhere.
The CSIRO (Australia's top govt funded scientific research centre) has a couple of days ago cracked and flatly contradicted a report they did end of last year.
http://joannenova.com.au/?s=CSIRO
Up until now they have sung from the government hym book.
I don't think all scientists are cowards or natural liars but I will certainly never trust another pronouncement from the CSIRO.
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Andrew,
the talks in Ireland are very, very important, and Brown must come up with a solution to this most difficult issue. Therefore, he must attend talks to resolve the issue. This may well involve him in missing POMQs again on wednesday but the issue is so very, very, no look it is, listen, please this is very important and I am glad that you have raised this point. Oh, you haven't well let me tell you anyway that it is and here are the reasons why it is very, very important...fifteen thousand pages later...so you can see why it is important, so I am very sorry but I will miss PMQs and my able understudy will take questions which I would not answer anyway.
With regard to Saddam, then immediately he was overthrown why exactly didn't we leave, if it is about regime change then the regime was changed, where did extra-ordinary rendition come in, why enhnaced inetrrogation techniques, why Baha Mousa! Why did we stay so long afterwards, and why did Blair not insist that we should go in by the northern route.
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Usama bin Laden issues statement that US goods should be boycotted to curb global warming.
If we can get him to do a talk at the CRU we could figuratively speaking kill two birds with one stone. Look at the money we would save.
Gordon I need a grant to go over to Pakistan how are you fixed?
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@Graves 202, #196:
"No answer apart from a genuine loonie conspiracy theory that every scientist in the world is lying to you."
Well, that's a new one on me.
Tell me, Graves 202, how long have you believed in this conspiracy theory?
And do you really see yourself as a "genuine loonie"?
Seems a bit harsh to me.
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The BBC see researcher need to get out, be a bit more thorough, and more suspicious. We are confidently still told told, warmest decade (if you belive the 'adjusted' sat figures..) Not told even by their own figures temps have plateaued, yet CO2 has risen, so should have temps according to their theory.
Yet privately?
Climate gate email, missed by all the 'hide the decline' and explaining the 'trick'. And the criminal activity surrounding the FOI requests, and deletions.
Email and comments on from:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/deep-black-hide-the-decline/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I wonder how Mick Kelly escaped the reality of the media investigation of climate science.
From: Mick Kelly xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: PJonesxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Global temperature
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:02:00 +1300
Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer – 10 year – period of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc.
Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also.
Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years.
Enjoy Iceland and pass on my best wishes to Astrid.
Mick
Didn’t the associated press just do a big “exhaustive study” on these emails? This must not have been in their download. Oh yeah, I’ve got the original, they should have called me….
Do you know what this is saying about the nature of climate science. It’s not ONE PERSON, we know that already but isn’t this proof? Isn’t the person “Kelly”, in writing this email, extraordinarily comfortable that he’s writing to friendly ears, despite committing fraudulent science?
I haven’t seen this covered anywhere but here yet and it’s frustrating. Still if it takes 10 years of striped clothing for Dr. Climategate to convince the boys who publish fish/sheep/pig shrinkage papers that we’re not putting up with this obvious fraud, so be it.
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Graves 2002
I have some sympathy with some of your more temperate points but your presentation detracts from the argument - you are coming across as a zealot, although you actually raise some valid points.
There is a clear suspicion between opposing lobbies - distorting the evidence to support the argument is unacceptable on either side.
The sceptics [I dislike the denier label] whose instinct is to protect the status quo will jump on anything that allows them to disparage the MMGW theory but if the MMGW lobby cannot present their case without distorting the issues it just bolsters the sceptic's opposition.
I remain open minded about the possibility of MMGW but would not know who to believe at this juncture. The pragmatic option is to adopt good practice in case MMGW is a reality.
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"...MMGW lobby cannot present their case without distorting the issues it just bolsters the sceptic's opposition."
"The sceptics [I dislike the denier label]"
Denier is often a more appropriate word. As someone who unthinkingly sticks to one position and cherry picks and distorts information to suit that position. The Nazi Conotations are completely false. it is based on this.
http://newsbusters.org/node/10730
It has nothing to do with Nazi's unless it is used with the word 'Holocaust'.
"...MMGW lobby cannot present their case without distorting the issues it just bolsters the sceptic's opposition."
This youtube site is a good source of information.
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
They're all good but I recommend the ones about the CRU emails.
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It is so widely reported DHWilko I think you're trying to stamp out a raging inferno with your bare feet, and Pachauri is in trouble for a similar intemperate attack on an Indian scientist that's put him in hot water with the Indian government.
This is amusing in a childish sort of way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b-6U5MwyDM
(Note to DHWilko - it probably isn't real)
Global warming has the best comedians, of that there can be no doubt, and it'll be a shame when it's all over. Few things have made me laugh so much.
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211 Gomerpyle
That clip looks awful. Its like an account telling an in-joke about an accountancy trick. It also breaks Godwins law. That is every discussion on the internet will end out of desperation with a comparison to Hitler, Nazis or maybe some other organisation like Zanu PF(Not sure about that though). . When it happens that person who made it has lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
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211 Gomer
It is an obvious fake as he throws a pencil in anger not a mobile phone.
The clever subtitles make it very close to home dont they ?
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I know there is a lot of stuff going on with the Chilcot inquiry, environmental problems etc but don't forget we have a number of UK contractors that have been conniving with the Special Branch officers in compiling a large BLACKLIST of construction workers.
Please see the attached site.http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/06/03/236244/ICO-closes-down-illegal-blacklist-database.htm
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So Tone has been to Chilcott.
Did we learn anything new? No except than he began to make the case for was with Iran.
One has to ask why he wasnt reminded that it was the Iraq inquiry. Or are we really beginning to see the establishment preparing the public for yet another war?
After all Bob Ainsworth the other day said England could look forward to "decades of war"
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Heads up information for Andrew Neil.
The dam is very much broken - In China
A very small article in the Telegraph a few days ago...
blink and you would have missed it..
I would dearly love to see Andrew Neil, interview EITHER of the Millibands...Ask them if the science is settled, and what the implications are.
China Clearly thinks AGW theory is discredited (afterall the climategate leak, emails, CODE, DATA Manipulation, evidence has been in their hands for over 2 months.....
China has 'open mind' about cause of climate change
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7067505/China-has-open-mind-about-cause-of-climate-change.html
"China's most senior climate change official surprised a summit in India when he questioned whether global warming is caused by carbon gas emissions and said Beijing is keeping an "open mind"
But Mr Xie, China's vice-chairman of national development and reforms commission, later said although mainstream scientific opinion blames emissions from industrial development for climate change, China is not convinced.
"There are disputes in the scientific community. We have to have an open attitude to the scientific research. There's an alternative view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself. We have to keep an open attitude," he said.
"It is already a solid fact that climate is warming. The major reasons for this climate change is the unconstrained emissions produced by the developed countries in the process of industrialisation. That's the mainstream view [but] there are other views. Our attitude is an open attitude".
India and South Africa's environment ministers appeared to be baffled by his comments.The Indian delegrate, Jairam Ramesh, said he did not believe his Chinese counterpart had meant what he said, while South Africa's minister Buyelwa Sonjica said she could not "second guess" what Mr Xie had meant by his comments."
I'm sure Andrew Neil is aware of the poltical (global ) implications:
I'm sure Andrew Neil is aware of how diplomats/negotiators speak:
(usaully very cagely, no strong statements)
My translation of the above is:
The chinese know AGW theory is rubbish. Especially in light of climategate. We were quite happy to watch western economies destroy themselves in some post religion guilt for the human condition, etc. and allow the UN to milk tax, and control the west for all they were worth..
But as we were blamed for copenhagen, and we are not going to change our ways at all. We can claim the moral (scientific) highground, by apearing reasonable and enlightened on the sceptical side of things. Especially easy to do after all the recent IPCC, greenpeace/wwf relevations and total fictions.
We will look like a responsible government in the long term, and will spin this out a bit longer, to make obama, the EU, gordon brown, etc appear like total fools chasing the 21st century carbon (tulip bubble) bubble.
As I said my translation!!
China will NEVER sign up to anything that damages thier economy!
Especially now thta the science has been revealed as 'poltical science'
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Saudi new about climategate and said so before Copenhagen, media covered it up slightly.
And 'buried the bad' (for AGW theory ) news...
SAUDI ARABIA:
Climate e-mail hack 'will impact on Copenhagen summit'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8392611.stm
"....Climate "sceptics" have claimed that the e-mails undermine the scientific case for climate change being caused by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions, dubbing the issue "ClimateGate".
But it has not until now materialised as an issue likely to influence the Copenhagen negotiations, which are supposed to agree a new global deal on combating climate change to supplant the Kyoto Protocol.
Saudi Arabia is an influential member of the G77/China bloc which leads the "developing world" side in many elements of the UN negotiations.
Mr Al-Sabban made clear that he expects it to derail the single biggest objective of the summit - to agree limitations on greenhouse gas emissions.
"....It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," he told BBC News.
"Climate is changing for thousands of years, but for natural and not human-induced reasons.
"So, whatever the international community does to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have no effect on the climate's natural variability."
Some other countries shared this view, he said; and as a result, governments would not be prepared to countenance agreeing anything that would affect economic growth for many years, until "new evidence" settled the scientific picture."
It appears that Saudi have decide to play the long game on this..
No doubt to wring as many concessions and billions out of the west.
As they have the option:And then they can then just change their minds and state it was all rubbish thos 'WESTERN' scientists misled us!!
Later, they said this (which is diplo speak for saying//commiting nothing) and emphasising/making Saudi looking Good.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8440181.stm
"But Mr Al-Sabban said Saudi Arabia was content.
"I would like to express our satisfaction with the outcome," he wrote in an e-mail to BBC News.
"We were among the 25 or so countries who positively negotiated the accord along with the world leaders, and we had succeeded in including the interest of OPEC countries in the Copenhagen Accord."
However, a number of politicians from industrialised nations have since blamed the developing world for blocking progress; and this, he said, would exacerbate mistrust between rich and poor.
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Let me run this piece of 'so called' scientific logic by you.
It's staggering how Global Warming scientists (who are unworthy of the term) maintain that burning fossil fuels, based on carbon, produces CO2. At school I learned to read and write and understand some basics of chemistry.
I hope that you're following carefully, because Global Warming depends on the bending of some very basic scientific laws that most junior school children would recognise as phoney.
Apparently (and don't laugh) burning bio-fuel doesn't produce CO2. I've jut read a glowing report about a jumbo jet that saved a claimed sixty per cent of carbon emissions flying on a bio-diesel plane fuel mix. The problem is they didn't measure the carbon emission to work this out. This impressive piece of trickery was achieved by ignoring any CO2 emission produced by bio fuel. Thus, if I called my old socks a bio fuel, all of a sudden the laws of chemistry become unhinged and they no longer give off CO2 when burned. This is magic, not science.
This is of greater significance because we are about to contribute fifty million pounds to Indonesia to encourage them to re-use their palm oil plantations instead of burning down virgin forest. What are the chances of that happening you may ask ?
Not a lot - as a venerable magician used to say.
Apparently there is an EC directive which sets a
"....target of ensuring 10% of petrol and diesel comes from renewable sources by 2020..."
which has led to
"Palm oil is like green gold now”, said Sukanto Tanoto, Indonesia’s richest individual and owner of palm-oil, forestry and energy corporation RGM International"
and
"US$5.5 billion, eight year project to develop crude palm oil-based biodiesel, and sugarcane- or cassava-based bioethanol on around one million hectares of land in Papua and Kalimantan, Indonesia"
and
"Builiding a 250,000 tonne per year biodiesel plant in Kuala Tanjung, North Sumatra called...."
and
"....has been steadily expanding and integrating its palm-oil operations to take advantage of the surge in demand for the commodity. The company operates two refineries in Malaysia and a crushing plant in Indonesia. It has also recently boosted the capacity of its Rotterdam plant to refine tropical oils – an additional 200,000 tonnes per year of coconut oil and 300,000 tonnes per year of palm oil."
and on and on.
By some strange perversion of science, chopping down rainforests and planting palm oil trees in their place has been made environmentally desirable - and no matter what anyone says, burning carbon in air produces CO2. I can actually write out the formula for any Climate Scientists who are having difficulties at this point.
How could such a thing happen you may ask ?
Let me introduce the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC)
"Following the complaint, an internal audit was conducted which revealed that the IFC had allowed commercial interests to override its social and environmental standards in making major loans to the palm oil sector in Indonesia."
"Oil palm has become synonymous with widespread clearance of forests and peatlands, massive CO2 emissions and the theft of indigenous peoples' lands."
It seems that our money will be used to mitigate the effects of the World Bank rather than CO2 emissions, but if Climate Scientists keep re-writing the fundamentals of science, their recommendations will merely put more CO2 into the atmosphere - not less.
How daft is that ? Alchemy is the science of chemistry practised by Global warming proponents and I won't even mention all the nasty chemical fertilisers they use, which turn into a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
If the EC supports bio-fuels, it supports CO2 emissions.
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Ref my 214.
I am amazed that the BBC published the link which I am grateful. Over 40 UK TOP Construction Companies were paying money for "illegal data" including my old company,whom, I have an Industrial Tribunal in the spring.
What is amazing about this BLACKLISTING activity is is went on for SO long, so why wasn't it picked up by internal audits. Could such blaclisting be going on in other industry? I for one wouldn't be surprised.
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Ref 216 Barry Woods
Barry,you are correct in your article ref China’s reluctance to observe environmental protection but when they see so many blatant non-compliances by the West, can you blame them?
Let me give you a perfect example of the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline which has been operating for 7 years in a legal void because of environmental protections failures. Chad have since given China huge oil concessions to drill for oil and export via the CCP. China were instructed by the Chad government to ensure the original environmental management protection plans were used for further developments of the Chad Oil fields,the Chinees aren’t stupid you know, and they saw that the CCP had been designed,constructed and operated WITHOUT any environmental protection plans,hence, they continued to develop the Chad Oil Fields WITHOUT any environmental protection plans whatsoever.
What s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander??!! And the World Bank,IMF,DFID,EXIM Uncle Tom Cobbly and all don’t give a damn
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January 30, 2010
Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009081.ece
It does take a while for the media to get off a 30 year old bandwagon...
Even the BBC knew this: before copenhagen.
Buried away in their website....
Not possibly because it might have damage copenhagen..?
DECEMBER 5th 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8387737.stm
Himalayan glaciers melting deadline 'a mistake'
"When asked how this "error" could have happened, RK Pachauri, the Indian scientist who heads the IPCC, said: "I don't have anything to add on glaciers."
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Good Morning Andrew,
so Saddam has been 'removed'. Let us see what that means. He ran away, hid in a hole, was betrayed for silver, was handed over by the Americans to the locals, was tried, found guilty, and executed, by hanging.
Could we therefore, using the new Blair creed, say that, Saddam, like a famous christian before him was 'removed', and that it was not regime change. After all he was betrayed for silver, was tried, and executed. Blair is definitely a Catholic alright, I wonder what he does say to his priest in the confessional.
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218 GomerPyle
I can see your concern on the science of producing CO2 and I agree that it is just shenaneegans to make money but it is really a time issue.
The theory goes, and this is my take on it please correct me if I'm wrong, that when we burn oil/gas/petrol we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere that has been stored underground for a long time thus adding to the current CO2 levels.
When we grow crops for biofuel we remove CO2 from the atmosphere to make the fuel and then release the CO2 back into the atmosphere when we burn the fuel giving a zero net increase in current levels.
Now if the CO2 had any serious affect on climate you can see how the theory is sound.
You also have to take into account though that a long time ago when the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was greater than today that the amount of plant life was also greater. So if the levels of CO2 in the current atmosphere increase there will also be an increase in plant life which if channeled into usefull food production could help to feed the starving millions in the world.
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Andrew,
I have a problem with regard to the legal advice in respect of the invasion of, and subsequent occupation of Iraq, and the Ministry of Defence and the push for war.
We know from his book that General Sir Mike Jackson took his own legal advice before he accepted the orders in respect of his involvement in Iraq. Chilcot must invite Jackson to the inquiry, where he can give his 'evidence' in public. Why were the military pressing for orders, pressing to get in there, all that was really needed was the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, and some of our superb Special Forces. That is all that the Americans really wanted. Yet the military seem to be pressing for a large contingency.
Now could it be that it comes down to a problem with the regard to the lack of a startegic defence review. That what we are really talking about is a 'fight' between the leaders of the armed forces. Why was Ben Griffin, of Special Forces, given an honourable discharge, whilst Kendall--Smith , of the RAF, was dishonourably discharged, and thrown into jail foir six months.
Why was the Royal Navy humiliated with the capture, but subsequent release of them, and then allowed to give a press conference which increased the humiliation. Why were those tried for the murder of Baha Mousa found 'innocent' except for one who pleaded guilty. Why is there so little interest in the Baha Mousa Inquiry, where the activities of the army are brought into question.
Why has there been so little coverage even at Chilcot into enhanced interrogation techniques, and extra-ordinary rendition, a publicity coup for our enemies, and one of the major reasons for our failures during the occupation, and subsequent defeat and retreat.
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Good morning each & Andrew.
War with Iran.
As with potentates past and present this Blair fellow and his ideas are presaged by his court.
Thus the path to conflict was eased into our consciousness by Nick Robinson on yesterday's Today programme when he averred that all in Iraq was tickety-boo. With talk of all those who are alive today that would not have been if Sadaam had been left in charge.
To think globalisation, think like a goldfish.
What worth do any of us represent to those in power?
What was it that Robin Day said...
"Here today and gone tomorrow population"?
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...I read earlier in the week on the letters page of the Telegraph an arguement I have used myself.
Namely. How was it that with so many so sure that there were battlefield/WMD chemical or biological weapons in Iraq's arsenal that our army [our neighbours, our neighbour's children] was sent forth to perish, for they had no protection against such weapons.
There was, I recall, the threat of our nuclear response. Response, that would have been after the mass deaths of our soldiery.
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Andrew
what must be asked is how many people in the MoD are simply paid to read the newspapers, and the blogs, and to refute any negative publicity about the Army in particular. Consider we have the Royal Navy, and the Royal Air Force, but not at all a Royal Army. We have royals in the army who where American caps with 'we do bad things to bad people' we have the charade of Charles and Camilla going to Wooton Basset to receive back the bodies of our dead soldiers. If they started saying this is wrong, and stop these 'receptions' then the war in Afghanistan might actually end. Stop the parades through WB, send the bodies to other air bases.
I mean we will soon have the obscenity of our politicians paying the Talhiban to stop killing 'our boys'. The very same people who have killed the soldiers who we have 'welcomed' back. The idea that we are in Afghanistan/Pakistan to keep terror off the streets of Britain, is the same spurious argument as put forward by Blair about where we would be in 2010 if Saddam had not been 'removed'. I mean we are occupying their country! Even if it is not and will never be a nation state as we in the west think that we know as a country. There are no borders, as Blair acknowledged in 'his 'evidence' when he referred to Arabs against Israel.
In the middle east we seriously need to get our heads around the concept that there are no countries, there are no states, there are tribes.
There must start another movement, 'Don't attack Iran' because as I have said before the drums of war are beating again. How do we ask the question, because there would appear to be no plans, but where and when have we heard that one.
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Andrew,
I may be wrong, but I don't think I am, that you have many people from the military and the defence industry who read you blog, as well as politicians, from humble MPs to what, after Chilcot, must be seen as simple supine ministers, and civil servants who will do and say anything to follow orders, or take early retirement to avoid the big issues.
Now my point is this; this is I believe the oath of allegiance whci soldiers have to take when enlisting:
'I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully defend Her Majesty, her heirs and successors in person, crown and dignity against all enemies and will observe and obey all orders of Her Majesty, her heirs and successors and of the generals and officers set over me'.
Now the orders from above in respect of Iraq I regard as being illegal, also the oath is to the Queen etc... not George Bush or the American President. That it what Blair totally seems to not understand!
Am I right, is that the oath our soldiers took, or is it not?
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...me #106
I am pleased to say that the issue at the heart of my above plaint was pointed-up by BO in his State of the Union Address.
Walls have ears?
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# 223
The supposed logic behind assigning a zero CO2 emission value to bio fuels is that it assumes that it is coming from a renewable source, but I must point out that many environmental groups vehemently denounce this assertion. In fact many contend that it is a much more negative carbon based fuel as regards CO2 emissions than coal or petroleum.
The assumption that it is coming from a renewable source is supposedly what our fifty millions pounds is meant to be addressing. You'd think that such an admirable sum would save a lot of virgin rain forest and orang utans - but (forgive the pun) China couldn't give a monkey's
From 2006 a report on a proposed Chinese project in Indonesia
"Some Indonesian officials claim the new project, covering 1.8 million hectares (about two-thirds the size of Belgium), could eventually produce more than 10 million tonnes of crude palm oil a year worth about US$4.6 billion ($7 billion)."
China is such a massive industrial and economic force in global terms that what we, or even Europe, do is largely irrelevant. I read before Copenhagen that they had plans to build in excess of 90 new airports and must snigger at our worries over building a new runway for Heathrow. No matter what efforts we make to reduce CO2, the effect on the atmosphere compared with China's input is negligible. Anyone thinking that we can buy off China, considering how bust we are, and how wealthy they are, is deluded.
You only have to see that China's impact is global and not limited to its own borders. In effect, no matter what Gordon or other world leaders pontificate about emissions and the environment, China controls it all. We can no longer even afford to pay the bribes that might make China change its behaviour.
They'll nod their heads and smile but why should they participte in some grossly mismanaged Carbon Casino operated to finance our banks ? If we put it in the hands of their banks maybe they'd be interested, but in any event we are of little significance to them.
China has had many years of being plundered and exploited by the West, so I don't foresee it being receptive to our preaching no matter what they may say publically.
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218 gomer_pyle
Biofuels release CO2 but they are made from plants that take out CO2 from the atmosphere. So in theory, they are carbon neutral. I take your point on the rain forest and the impact on food production. I think case that what you call 'warmists' are trying to make. Is that we should use less oil therefore releasing CO2 at a rate the planet can cope with. Conserving the oil left until better technologies are available. The value of oil would go down if we did that though. That's why the fossil fuel companies fund campaigns to confuse people about the science. Some of the people involved were involved in trying to convince us that smoking isn't bad for you. Not accusing you or anyone specific but some of the comments here look suspicious. Those genuine comments seem to be quoting suspicious websites and media.
more details of fossil fuel lobby's attempt to confuse the public in the You tube channel posted here
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Re. Bribing the Taliban.
There is a clear precedent for bribing off terrorists. Northern Ireland.
Of course once you start there is no end to it and the ante keeps going up. But, if we can watch the Afghan equivalent of our home-grown murderers posturing in government, and swallow it without vomiting, then we might get relative peace in the area.
We are going to need strong stomachs.
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# 231
You saved yourself by including 'in theory' to your comment about bio fuels being carbon neutral.
The United Nations says
"The report, from the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, suggests that before we start patting ourselves on the back for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by using biofuels, we really need to examine more closely the environmental effects of producing ethanol and other renewable transportation fuels."
I hate to quote from the IPCC, and I add the caveat that whatever they say must be treated with great caution, but as it suits my argument, I'll quote it nonetheless
"In 2007 a study was published by scientists from Britain, the USA, Germany and Austria which reported the burning of rapeseed or corn can contribute as much to nitrous oxide emissions than cooling through fossil fuel savings. [by the way, nitrous oxide is a massively more potent greenhouse gas than CO2]
Many first generation biofuels are not sustainable. It is necessary to create sustainable biofuel production that does not effect food production, and that doesn’t cause environmental problems.
The production of non-sustainable biofuels has been criticised in reports by the UN, the IPCC and many other environmental and social groups. As a result many governments have switched their support towards sustainable biofuels, and alternatives such as hydrogen and compressed air"
An argument that suggests that CO2 from the exhaust pipe of a car or the rear end of a cow is somehow worse than CO2 produced by other means is palpably daft. It's even dafter then to promote a policy that encourages Indonesia to produce palm oil by destroying its rain forests when we're tring to save them. We're throwing our money away on a problem we are creating by other means. Until someone tapped the World Bank on the shoulder, we were even financing it.
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# 232
There is a more ancient example DrBrianS - Danegeld.
It was interesting to note that a commentator pointed out that such a programme had been in existence since 2005. I wonder why that one scheme failed, and how this new one is set up to achieve a better result.
I own up to being a cynical soul, but I caught a part of Karzai's speech and was slightly bemused that one major problem, in his view, was that eighty per cent of Afghan aid isn't routed through his government. It's strange that only he sees this as a problem.
Clearly it's rather blinkered to try to smear Afghans as fundamentally corrupt when so many Western companies are making a mint out of the situation. The Afghans just don't possess the sophisticated infrastructure to syphon money off the way that Western interests can.
Adding piles of extra cash to the equation is certainly going to attract a lot of interest. The likelihood that it becomes an extra income to the Taliban is inevitable by simple logical deduction, and as it represents an admission of failure, it will only encourage those behind the insurgency.
I saw some calculations of the future military and economic costs, and when added to those incurred in Pakistan, the UK will have to pull out simply through being unable to afford it.
This situation won't make it easier when we hold a future defence review, as the only certainty is that we'll never get involved in a similar confict.
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Re your IPCC quote
Yes I agree question everything you read. Not just what the Newspapers and internet tell you to.
The Nitrous oxide emissions are from the fertilisers used to grow the fuel. rather than actual emissions from the vehicle. That is another area that needs looking into. Not just for bio-fuels but for food and domestic gardening. Maybe look into using complementary planting using vegetables and flowers from the pea family which produce there own fertilizer using nitrogen fixation. Manure, Or in the case of biofuels maybe use a product based on treated sewage.
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It is clear from the Chilcot Enquiry, so far, that no disgrace or dishonour will stick to Blair unless he can be shown clearly to have lied. His appearance yesterday was as expected - he dominated the panel and smoothly explained all of the steps that led him to the decision to join the USA in invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein. His stance is that, in the end, it came down to making a decision based on the best available intelligence and legal advice. Who can argue with that?
It seems to me that there are three areas where his honesty should be probed more thoroughly, namely:
1. The precise agreement, and its timing, that he came to with Bush about regime change. The notes that he wrote to Bush might throw some light on that.
2. Exactly what went on between him and the Attorney General concerning legality. In particular, why was the AG, at a very late stage, sent to the USA to be persuaded that the invasion was legal when it appears that US law on this matter differs from British, UN, and international law?
3. Did he deliberately mislead his cabinet and Parliament in various ways, such as military planning before a vote, excluding dissenting voices, exaggerating certain aspects of the situation, etc. Difficult to prove, but worth looking at overall balance.
If lying cannot be demonstrated, Chilcot will have no option but to to clear Blair of any blame.
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Andrew
The Spectator has a comment on how the MSM is shifting on the global warming debate, from being pro warmist at Copenhagen to writing about the bogus story of Himalayan glaciers meting by 2035.
What strikes me is the herd mentality of the`MSM. If we live in a free society we should also expect independent journalistic endeavour, someting that we appear to have lost in the last decade. Deep hitting investigative reports are rare, and yet the tools (internet) avail journalists far more data at their finger tips than ever before.
Time for the journalistic profession to get a grip!
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236. At 1:31pm on 30 Jan 2010, mike-jay wrote:
-----------------------------------------------
I think that you miss the point of the inquiry
It was not a court of law, in fact there are no lawyers on the panel who might be able to dissemble some of the semantics being used
It is an inquiry so that the state can learn lessons
By not actually fulfilling those requirements to the state, it could mean that we would be poised to make the same mistakes again if ever presented with the same kind of situation
I think what Chilcot has exposed is that Bliar did not choose the path of high moral authority, and because of the evidence already uncovered it demonstrates to those who wish to take advantage in the future that we can't tell them to "do as I say" whilst we do the opposite. He reduced the standing of the UK on the international stage, even though he now takes advantage and pockets the cash.
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The climate change debate has tied itself in knots. The central focus sjould be on creating a cleaner, more energy-efficient world, where everyone can be adequately fed, clothed and sheltered. These aims are in everyone's interests.
By this means, if atmospheric pollution of some sort is contributing to climate change, the problem will be automatically solved.
If there is no relationship between what's in the atmosphere and global warming, the blushes of the dedicated 'warmists' will be saved.
But if there may be global warming, beyond our control, governments and scientists and engineers should be thinking about that instead of involving themselves in barren arguments.
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234. GomerPyle
"There is a more ancient example DrBrianS - Danegeld.
Absolutely GomerPyle and even further back the Romans tended to buy off the Germanic tribes with bribes, some of which have been found, and the same thing happened with the Ancient Egyptians and the Assyrians at various timesand also with the Raj on the NW Frontier.
In each case the arrangement eventually broke down which doesn't bode well.
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mike @ 236
"he dominated the panel and smoothly explained all of the steps that led him to the decision to join the USA in invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein."
I saw a twitching zealot. Were you watching another channel?
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241. At 2:37pm on 30 Jan 2010, sagamix wrote:
I saw a twitching zealot.
=======================================
Classic! My only surprise when I watched the footage, was that Blair was not dressed as Richard the Lionheart off to start a Crusade against Iran! A very dangerous person to have around that still has far too much influence in the corridors of power globally. The drums of war are beating a bit too loud - what happened to diplomacy?
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#238 strong...
"It is an inquiry so that the state can learn lessons"
Are there no lessons to be learned if there is a possibility that a PM misled Parliament and the country for his own ends? Can such a situation be classed simply as a mistake?
#241 saga
It does appear that we were watching different channels...or the same channel from different perspectives.
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241/243
Blair was much more convincing on the radio - what I saw later on TV was indeed the twitching zealot.
That said he probably held it together better than any other politician of his era would - his acting skills came to the fore.
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Like him or loathe him Tony Blair is a master of the Iraq subject and as a communicator stands head and shoulders above Brown and other politicians.
However he is the wrong person to be making statements about Iran. Rightly or wrongly the public believe that he misled the country about Iraq and therefore his comments can only contaminate the argument.
Nothing that I have heard so far at the inquiry has convinced me one way or the other though Wilmhursts evidence was compelling and inclined me more to believe that there seem to have been serious flaws in how the whole process of the build up to war was conducted.
The more interesting question is have these flaws always existed or were they a product of the way Tony Blair's government operated. I hope that the Chilcott inquiry will answer that question particularly for the future.
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:-)
Perhaps a touch OTT but sometimes I get these phrases in my head and I simply have to get them out at the first half decent opportunity.
I'm actually a Tony Blair fan in many respects, but I do feel (and have always felt) that his arrogance and messaniac zeal got the better of him in this matter of the Iraq invasion. Watching him at Chilcot only reinforced that for me.
One sees anew what one already sees, kind of thing.
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#245 sa
I think the lessons that might (with luck) be learned from Chilcot break down into two parts:
Were Iraq's defiance and potential threat tackled in a rational, acceptable way?
Did Blair behave appropriately - in the interests of Britain and middle-east stability?
The answer to the first may be that a sound approach would have been to throw in our lot with the UN, but that leaves the other question of how far should we go in support of the USA when they go it alone? How is the final judgement made? By Parliament?
The second question hinges partly on Blair's honesty and partly on the final outcome of the invasion. Only history will decide the latter; Chilcot ought to try to sort out the former. But an obvious lesson is that PMs should be held closely accountable to the cabinet, Parliament, and the people in future.
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247 MJ
The UN however is a flawed institution at times, whilst member's of the security council retain their veto we will always have this sort of problem.
Maybe an alternative system needs to be adopted where a nominal 2/3rds majority would suffice?
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248. meninwhitecoats
The UN is certainly flawed and has been corrupt since early on. In the early years the USA would bribe votes by supplying military and financial aid and in the 60's and 70's the USSR did the same.
Votes were also gained by the USSR adopting an anti-Israel stance to which it didn't agree whilst being quiet about its own racist attitude to the Arabs.
The Security Council was designed to get round the problem of impotence that bedeviled the League of Nations. The veto system meant that decisions could be pushed through on a collective basis when they conformed to the interests of the 1945 victorious powers (USA, Britain, France, China (Nationalist then Communist) and the USSR (later Russia)) but couldn't be passed when one of the powers felt threatened.
The decision to go to war in Korea was taken when the USSR was boycotting the Council. The vote to condemn Argentina after the Falklands invasion still hasn't been fully explained in view of the anti-imperialist attitude of the UN but there was certainly considerable arm twisting involved.
Other systems have been suggested but these would put for example Zimbabwe on an even basis to the USA and Russia. This might lead America to withdraw as it could not constitutionally accept a higher authority than the votes of the American people.
We would probably knuckle under as our governments have generally lacked balls.
With all the UN's faults we're still probably better off as we are.
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Andrew,
I am surprised that more people are not asking the question as to who exactly was breaking the sanctions on Iraq. It would not surely be Russia, Germany, and France! The very countries which seemed to control the vote at the UN. It was surely not their own self interest which dictated that they should never vote in favour of any UN 'invasion'. How much money have these countries lost as a result of the events subsequent to the the invasion, and 'removal' of Saddam.
What I would have asked Blair is to go through what he thought happened to Saddam after his 'removal'. Whether or not he thought that execution was allowed, taking into account that apparently Britain will never return anybody to any country which allows the death penalty.
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#248 menin
If only a perfect system could be devised!
Removing the veto might lead to decisions equally as undesirable as those made with the veto. There are hints of this, for EU countries, in the Lisbon Treaty.
How can unanimity on a course of action be reached except by debate allied with a framework of international law? If there are vested interests or similarities of ideologies or religions involved, you're always on to a loser. The alternative is the USA way.
Anyone with a solution deserves a DP mug!
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Proof that the Chinese have a mischievous sense of irony
"The Chinese government, never known for endorsing open communication, has called on the UN’s IPCC to show more tolerance for dissent."
Ouch !
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252 Gomer
Methinks the giant has awakened with a sardonic smile on his face.
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Andrew,
I am amazed that Brown is not in Melbourne to watch the 'Brit' Andrew Murray, and his wonderful mum, win the Australian Open, after 150,000 years of pain.
I hope that if Murray is victorious he does not come on to our screens and other media with a 'this is a great win for our country' because he really won't mention Britain, England, but he will Scotland. Whenever he he refers to his country, he really does mean Scotland, definitely not England.
I also hope that with the events unfolding in Northern Ireland he does not feel it necessary to go yet again to give the final push to the negotiations. I wonder if he will find another excuse to miss PMQs, but then with a Murray win he will no doubt have hundreds of Scottish MPs praising the Murray effort, and then maybe Dunblane will be remembered for something other than the horrible murders committed in a school.
The dam has indeed broken with now Miliband declaring war on the climate sceptics, well I mean I am going to take lessons from any Miliband, least of all the most gutless of them all, who is another one who just wants it handed to him an a plate, I could go on, and on, and on and on but it would appear from one Sunday newspaper, I could be accused of plagiarism.
Brown will not go on, he is toast, he is just as deluded as Blair.
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Andrew,
I do have a problem. Andrew Murray, the British tennis player, seems to continue to wear the RBS logo on his shirt. I hope that the bank which is mostly in the ownership of the British taxpayer, not the Scottish ones, even if it is the Royal Bank of Scotland. By the the way the Royal Bank of Scotland, is not like the Royal Navy, nor the Royal Air Force, in fact it is nothing but a failed bank.
There is another one, because Northern Rock, a nationalised bank, still seem to have their logo on the shirts of Newcastle United. Now Darling had a mortgage with Northern Rock, and if I can believe the BBC there are allegations tonight that some of the shirts for sale to fans of Newcastle United are in fact manufactured in sweat shops in a foreign country. What is about labour that they just can't see it, I know I go on and on but honestly can anybody trust labour politicians, who seem to speak with forked tongues.
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Andrew,
I have raised the issue of the BBC carrying adverts before but I have done a dis-service to Andrew Murray. Looking at the shots from the live transmission he is actually carrying adverts for RBS on one arm, but Highland Water on the other. However, he wears the RBS logo on his service arm, so it is not too visible from the far court, interestingly! Well I find it interesting anyway.
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"The British High Commission has temporarily suspended acceptance of new visa applications of students with effect from February 1 in north India after a suspicious 650 per cent increase in student visa applications in three months."
It's enough to make you wonder what universities have been complaining about with all these people swelling their buildings to capacity. The torrent of money coming into their coffers will mean they won't need any extra funding.
The government will feebly try to suggest that this shows how well their measures work, but it's admitted that they don't have time to srutinise applications properly and this has merely invited gross abuse that can't be ignored any longer. Clearly it's been a leaking bucket for years.
"...the number of student visa applications in northern India jumped to 13,500, compared to 1,800 in 2008 and 1000 in 2007 for the same period."
At that level, it would create chaos.
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Andrew,
whilst the BBC has switched the Andrew marr Show to BBC2, and Murray takes centre stage there has been a brilliant paper review by Clare Short.
Brown seriously is toast over his role in Iraq. Many of the legal advisers have said at Chilcot how they gave advice which was not well received, nor was it asked for. Now Clare said that Brown was marginalised, should he have been stronger, should he have beaten some people up to get access, should he have shouted and screamed, you bet he should. Only what did he do, I would say that he sulked, afaid to raise his head above the parapit and let Blair take us into what I regard as an illegal war.
In the meantime we learn that Blair wanted to be the great war leader, and that there moves to transfer Brown from the Treasury to the Foreign Office, only both were gutless. Once the argument was made about the French then Brown came behind Blair, if true then it was worse than anybody could believe. What sort of country have we become. Shameful, and I can't wait for Clare to give her 'evidence' and when exactly will Brown give his side of the story, it must be soon. We need a date, get Brown in now.
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Milliband say today:
(do you think he'd call Andrew a deniar/sceptic to his face)
Ed Miliband declares war on climate change sceptics
Climate secretary Ed Miliband warns against listening to 'siren voices', in an interview with the Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/31/...
I would dearly love to Here Andrew Neil as Milliband a few more questions about MAN MADE climate change.
Considering this comment found in a bbc blog
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/12/bbc_news_coverage_of_copenhage.html
Comment 8:
Did anyone hear Milliband on Simon Mayo yesterday (Radio 5Live)?
First caller, first question, "As a percentage, how much greenhouse gas is man made?"
Milliband: "Well, er... um... the science is in".
Caller: "You must've discussed it, as a percentage, how much greenhouse gas is man made?"
Milliband: "Well... um... All of the C02, all of the CO2 is man made."
The guy knows nothing, think about that for a while...
I do hope a bbc researcher can track down a transcript of this interview.
After all he is the minister of ENERGY and CLIMATE.
He should at least attempt to understand the basics...
Ie total Natural plus man made co2 in atmosphere
360-380 PARTS PER MILLION
0.00036 % of atmosphere
MAN contribution (3% of this natural total)
0.000015% of atmosphere.
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Andrew,
interesting that Jack Straw will be giving more of his 'evidence', or should we say recollections, to Chilcot on the 8th February. When can we be told when Brown can fit in an appearance, will Campbell be called again, and when will there be an inquiry into the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.
What many are missing the point is that the soldiers seem to being picked off one or two at a time, conveniently, so that Brown can give his weekly eulogies at PMQs. I will start to believe that we are not putting our soldiers at risk needlessly when we can go for a month without any deaths to report. I mean we are going onto a new offensive, just as we announce that we will be talking to Terry Talibhan.
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Andrew,
I do not think that I am advertising because if it is alright for the technology side of the BBC to report on the iPad then I feel that I too have permission but my point on this is the old chestnut about metrification:
'One of the first things you’ll notice about the iPad is how thin and light it is. The screen is 9.7 inches measured diagonally. So overall it’s slightly smaller than a magazine. And at just 0.68 kg (1.5 lbs) and 13.4 mm (0.5 inches) thin,1 it’s easy to carry and use anywhere. There’s also a slight curve to the back. Which makes it easy to pick up and comfortable to hold'.
Notice (0.5 inches) or half an inch in old money, also 1.5 pounds, or, 1 1/2 pounds in weight, whereas does anybody seriously think that the BBC will say that it weighs 0.68 kg, and is 13.4 mm thin! I mean metric is just so yesterday! As for horse racing when will the metric fanatics decide that a furlong and a head are not acceptable, we must have metres, and centimetres. I have noticed that the football commentators now refer to missing by centimteres, unbelievable! Yet an inch is as good as a mile, so centre forwards miss by miles, not kilometres.
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Has anyone seen the latest sackcloth and ashes edictfrom the Environment Agency about shops having to turn their lights out at night ?
The magic of going down town at night taken away.
Lets bring back the wardens shouting put that light out. Lets all use candles.
Anyone remember shivering during some crisis or other when a legal limit of heating offices to 61 degrees was introduced. Which bosses grabbed like a free lunch as it was a way to make them more profit with an excuse.
Anyone who watches the 5 USA channel will have seen the fantastic promo footage they use going over New York at night. Dont see the yanks turning the bright lights off.
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# 359
Barry Woods - it's incredible that politicians don't comprehend that their repressive attitude is both repellant and indication enough that, with their 'so called' proof falling apart at the seams, they are driven by dogma rather than any scientific purpose.
Some believe it's based on some fundamental drive to globally redistribute wealth by socialists, others that this is just another medium to provide a money machine for financial institutions, but frankly the reason is irrelevant if the underlying science is hopelessly flawed, as it appears. Even some major contributors to the IPCC are jumping ship now.
Trying to mend a busted theory by a demonstration of Milliband stamping his feet and appealing for us not to reject the fallen idol that is Global Warming is pathetic. His two high priests have been exposed - three if you count Mr Hockey Stick - so what's his role ? Pharaoh - the Sun God ?
It would be more appropriate to know what's happening with Jones and Pachauri, but his role of Pharaoh makes him unable to renounce them, otherwise he can no longer be the Sun God. This never was a scientific issue, or Milliband might show some concern that he's built his Great Pyramid on something much less stable than sand - perhaps a mythical melting glacier.
When the Chinese start taking the Mickey - that adds up to a whole lotta laughs.
I wonder what they'll be doing in Cancun ? - building another pyramid maybe.
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262
61 degrees would probably kill you. You mean 16 degrees surely?
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252. At 10:40pm on 30 Jan 2010, GomerPyle wrote:
Proof that the Chinese have a mischievous sense of irony
"The Chinese government, never known for endorsing open communication, has called on the UN’s IPCC to show more tolerance for dissent."
In light of subsequent linked posts, they might be tapping a certain Foreign Sec. on the shoulder about his brother's 'interesting' notions on rounding up any who don't follow the party line and shunting 'em off to Gordon's 'Sceptics under the bed' Gulags.
Not having a single clue about science ( 259. At 09:50am on 31 Jan 2010, Barry Woods - a confirmatory transcript would be nice, and if as stated, used to ensure he never gets to utter on topics he has zero competence to comment upon again) does not seem to have given pause to being able to claim that it is settled.
Next we'll be hearing Gordon was offering posts on, say Health, based on TV celeb ratings rather than an ability to weigh the issues sensibly, much less objectively. Truly, a GOAT herder of rare talent himself. Just the kind of guys to let loose with the keys to the sweetie shop.
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Andrew,
I am listening to the Politicsshow on BBC, delayed because of the Federer victory. I know I am not being patriotic, because the good Lord Mandelson will think that I am running down my country, I am not backing Britain, but I have to say Lord Mandelson that to pull the patriot card is the last sanctuary of the scoundrel. I wonder if Lord Mandelson could tell us how many times he has had to resign from the government.
I see that Cameron has also picked up on my point that really no obligations should be made until after the election which is going to be held in early May, at the same time as the council elections. It should, no must be earlier, but Brown will go on and on and on and...
As for the complete mess which the HMRC seems to have got themselves into, who is running this country. Remember, that all the companies and self employed have to eventually pay their debts, they have an obligation which must be met, and I would not expect the banks to lend people money so that they can pay the money which they owe.
As for pensioners, I hope that they are meeting their full obligations, and that they are declaring all their income.
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Andrew,
I have said before that we live in a means tested society. Tax credits, working family tax credits, pensioners credit, are these not means tested benefits, some pensioners are amazingly wealthy, consider the retired bankers, surely they are not 'entitled' to free bus passes, and winter fuel payments, as for the state pension! Gordon Brown will eventually be air brushed out of labour history, as will Blair, as was Ramsey McDonald.
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Andrew loves the high life and the young ladies love him. Anything grand theories that come along and may get in the way of this sumptuous lifestyle should be resisted at all costs if only for the sake of the young ladies.
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264 DHWilko
I forgot to say I was talking in old money , Farenheit, you know 32 freezing, 212 boiling and 98.4 blood.
I'm with Catch 22 at 261 on all this metrication malarkey. I was taught both at school. Metric for science and Imperial and Farenheit for real life. Some time in the seventies they started teaching the kids Metric only despite the fact that we still use many imperial measures. I mean a cricket pitches batting area is a chain, never 20.1168 metres. Horses still run furlongs not 201.164 metres. And I drink pints not .5679 litres.
Monetary conversions are gobsmacking. An evening newsapaper or a postage stamp cost over 8 shillings now, 40p. Both cost 1d each when I was a little un, ie less than half of a current 1p. My first petrol three and tenpence a gallon, 19p a gallon or 4p a litre.
Enough of the rose tints. My thrust is that not only am I not letting this bunch of crooks use dubious science to tax me more I aint having them turn the clock back to the austerity period on the same more discredited by the day excuse.
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Milliband is an idiot
I'm sorry, but to think that the headline
'Milliband declares war on climate change sceptics'
does anything but show him up for what he is, then I despair that he is a worse politician than he is a scientist - and he isn't a scientist at all.
I don't recall Darwin declaring war on anyone, or Galileo, or Archimedes, or Pythagoras. I was never taught about the 100 year right angled triangle war. Scientists don't declare war. Politicians frequently do - when others won't accept their ideologies.
War is the last resort of politicians who've lost the argument.
We've had coercion, jigged facts, dodgey climate models. intemperate language, dodgey facts and dubious e-mails, and this is supposed to be indicative of some respectable scientific research. It's more like a bar brawl over a pub quiz. though I doubt Pachauri could handle anything so respctable.
Global Warming - don't make me laugh, or please do. With the mess our economy's in, we may need some amusement and anything that can make the whole nation of China laugh, must be hilarious.
My headline
'Milliband seeks top billing at the upcoming Cancun Comedy Festival - but is likely to be upstaged by Pachauri'
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I enjoy having a Google, and I found myself on R K Pachauri's blog unexpectedly (entry dated 12 Jan 2009), not a place I'd normally look for information, but I thought it might provide some help and guidance for Ed Milliband
"Cases of corporate misdemeanor and fraudulent and unethical acts by top management appear to have become widespread in recent years, and this at a time when the social, environmental and governance challenges facing human society require a high sense of corporate social responsibility and ethics in corporate organizations"
So true it borders on a premonition.
"It would be useful to explore the roots of the current trend. While there is obviously a multiplicity of factors involved, perhaps a major driver of unethical behaviour at the corporate level is the decline in moral standards and ethics in society in general. Whether this is the result of nuclear families, a growing obsession with material wealth or perhaps even the failure of governance and concern on the part of the public is hard to identify, but clearly the world would lose a great deal if corrective action is not taken early, which would necessarily have to be in the nature of some fundamental changes and not merely first aid solutions."
Whatever Pachauri lacks as a climatologist, he does at least propose firm corrective action which seems beyond Ed Milliband.
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270 Gomer
Great post.
Headline is a story tho, they have to be punchy. Hows about; Chinese make a meal of Milliband and Pachauri - we pay the Bill.
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xtunbridge@269
"I forgot to say I was talking in old money , Farenheit, you know 32 freezing, 212 boiling and 98.4 blood."
I know sorry about that. I think 61degrees Farenheit actually is 16 degrees Centigrade?. I think Centigrade is better. Being based on the boiling and freezing/melting point of water. Its something we can easily relate to. 0=freezing,100=boiling and 37 blood.
Pre-decimalisation money was much too complicated. 12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound, 240 pence to the pound? Why?
Metric is easier and better being based on units of 10 and more accurate. but we can't seem to shake off Miles,Gallons, pints and Feet even though many of us haven't been taught them. A pint is almost Half a litre(0.88 of a pint). Perhaps new adjusted to fit in with metric versions could be used with slightly different spellings.
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dhw @ 264
It's all imperial on here, DH - feet & inches - pounds & ounces - things priced up in guineas. Sturdy chestnuts pulling sturdy carts around town. Ladies with parasols passing daintily by - whiskered gents doffing their hats - smiling & nodding at the elegant sights - some of them clean (the gents, that is) and some of them servicing a major league snuff habit. This is the offbeat charm of the place. This is why I come here. Why I visit from time to time.
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#273 DHW
I finally retired about 8 years ago, but I imagine not too much has changed in that time. Working in the aircraft industry, it was common to find yourself working in either metric or imperial units - or even combinations in some strange circumstances. Imperial were just as widely used in the USA and Canada as metric. On one project involving Rolls-Royce and a Japanese consortium as partners we were given the choice of units and decided on imperial, which the Japanese team accepted without blinking. (They also drive on the left).
Also, as aircraft are operated for many years, it is more than a bit difficult to somehow transform drawings and technical data from, say, 30 years ago, to a new set of units and standards for the purpose of modifications or repairs.
Money is a different matter. We had to master pounds, shillings, and pence in primary school, including multiplication and division of the same. I have a vague feeling at the back of my mind that the system originated from weights of coinage or metals, but I could be wrong. Decimalisation is basically much simpler - but not as interesting.
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264 DHW
Logic dictates metric and SI units or whatever they call them these days but then you start dealing with those pesky Americans and you are back to fahrenheit and fractions and have to learn your 3/32" and 5/64" all over again.
Irononically those dedicated Europeans France and Germany now only manufacture some products to American specs. having discarded the European specs. for purely commercial reasons.
Ain't life fun!
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Mike Jay
You got in there first all I can say is ditto.
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I can still do it, I reckon.
two ha'pennies make a penny, three pennies is a thrupenny bit - two thrupenny bits is a sixpence, which is a tanner, and two tanners is a bob or a shilling - two and a half bob (or two and sixpence) is half a crown or a florin - four florin is ten bob, and two of them make a pound
And they said people would struggle with the "new" money!
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..bet the dentist does not charge in florins any more when you have bitten on your thrupenny bit.
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And nobody mentioned farthings! 4 to the 1d, ie 960 of the little perishers to the pound. They had half farthings in Victorian times, imagine almost 2000 coins to a pound.
Actually you could do decimals with old money. A florin, (2 bob), was a tenth of a pound it followed that a shilling, (bob), was 5% , a tanner, (6d), was 2 and a half percent. ( My typwriter keyboard has fractions such as a half on it)
A crown, (5 bob) was 25% and a half crown, (two and a tanner), was 12 and one half percent.
THe thing that I miss most about the old currency is carrying round a living history in my pocket. Coins back to Geo III were in circulation when I was young and you soon learned the dates that monarchs ruled from the coins. And they were proper silver until 1920, then half till 1947 then none. And now our new copper coins can be picked up by a magnet.
Some of you have mentioned engineering. That was always a nightmare as there were so many standards, Whitworth, BSF, AF, BA etc. You needed several sets of spanners to work on most things.
A 12bore shotgun has a barrel bore the size of which is determined by the size of 12 equal size balls made from a pound of lead. The French 12 bore was different because their pound, yes they used them , was differnet to ours. Just like the US gallon is different to ours.
I love all these differences.
And SAga you paint a pretty picture in 274. Only needs Mary Poppins.
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280 XTUN
I can top your farthings with some slug feet - I have some old papers which M-J might appreciate where the units are gilberts and slug feet.
Before my time [honest!] but great for historical reference.
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Now we know why Milliband raised his nose above the parapet. He clearly isn't allowed to tell us any more that furry animals are dying out, apocalyptic hurricanes will devastate the planet or that the world is melting, or use any other attention grabbing myths, so there must have been some incnvenient reason to have to risk a barrage of rotten fruit.
Today was the last date for countries to submit their voluntary non-legally binding commitments and action plans for what they're doing about the 'nothing much' they agreed in Copenhagen.
"By Tuesday, only nine of UNFCCC's 193 members had replied formally, according to UN sources."
"De Boer, who described the Copenhagen negotiations as "not a complete success (for a finished cake)," however, noted that the negotiations in the Danish capital "left countries with all the right ingredients to bake a new one (cake) in Mexico."
This sounds like a bizarre reference to Richard Harris' sole chart success - about someone leaving a cake out in the rain, and never having the recipe to bake it again (I believe it was titled MacArthur Park). Cake allusions must be hard to come by, but don't establish any greater clarity than they did in the 60's.
I can only presume that someone did a quick phone round to tell everyone tha they had to say they were doing something, and it didn't matter really much as there was no binding commitment, or the Cancun party was going to be cancelled.
Clearly there's something in Global Warming for politicians, but they had better find better justification than the cobbled together science they have assembled so far. I believe they're putting together an alternative at the moment
"His comments come as scientists gather in London for an international conference to discuss the prospect of discovering extra-terrestrial life.
Lord Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Astronomer Royal, said such a discovery would be a moment which would change humanity."
This one has the backing of a scientist and a Lord, so it's already twice as credible as Global Warming, and if they can get Will Smith to replace Pachauri it's got box office appeal too.
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Ah, so I forgot farthings and - per the small print of 280 - I confused florins with half crowns. That's two (!) serious errors. Thank god ... I'd have come over as a good twenty five years older than I actually am, if I'd got it all completely right.
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If you argue with a confirmed decimalisation enthusiast, after they have finished ranting about the need for us to be good Europeans and fully metricate, I suggest you ask them how tall they are. The answer is always in feet and inches. We are ingrained in our history.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me. Wasn't there an American Mars probe that crashed into the planet because two departments in NASA were working in different systems? Or am I getting it mixed up with the focusing problems on the Hubble telescope>
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281 Coats
Tell us please! What on earth was,(is?), measured in slug feet and gilberts? It sounds like playground terms for nasal wotsits!
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#261
Catch22 does seem to have broken the dam yet again. Is there no limit to what the British people are seething about. What we miss is the comfort of the imperial system. The 'bob' the 'furlong', the 'chain' etc...the penalty box in footbal is still the 18 yard box, or what is the metric equivalent, do we still miss the target by inches, or miles, or I mean centimetres. As for knots, and the road signs are still 30 mph, and as for light years, let's not go there. However, in our dim and distant past was there not a unit of currency in this country of the mark, and as for the shekel. Thank you all, there is hope, all we have to do is to ask the Queen if she would like to back a horse at which odds, 33/1 6/4 on, or the decimal equivalent. I mean when you watch the French racing 'and they have 1500 metres to run' not so many furlongs. I was quite a good runner, when we had the 110 yards, the 220 yards, the 440 yards, the 880 yards, and the mile, 1560 yards, as soon as it became the 100 metres, the 200 metres, the 400 metres, the 800 metres, and then, the what, the 1500 metres, where does that come from, there is no sequence, its illogical. I will finish on what exactly is happening to the marathon, one minute its miles to run, then metres, then something in between, I don't know, I am even confusing myself now, must get back to the war.
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Good Morning Andrew,
what I think is interesting is the way in which Blair and others are now spinning Iraq. When Blair gave his evidence he tried a very nice googly.
Iraq was according to Blair a 'fascist' or 'semi-fascist state' if I paraphrase. Saddam was the head of that state, therefore he was a fascist. Blair removed Saddam, a good thing, but if you disagree with the means by which Saddam was overthrown, then you support Saddam, and if you support Saddam, then you too must be a fascist. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Remember, what 'removed' actually meant, the execution by hanging of a head of state, removed by 'allied' forces.
There is another aspect which is now coming through. If you did or said nothing before the war, then you supported the war. If you subsequently did or said something then why did you not say something at the time of the war. If you knew something or did something then you followed orders so you have no right to speak out. We all can think about what must have gone through the mind of Dr David Kelly, that is why I think many have blood on their hands, they might not have killed him, but sometimes there is only one way out.
If you give evidence to Chilcot then there is no point in you writing a book, because why did you not say that to Chilcot, if you didn't say it to Chilcot then why did you not say it when you had the opportunity. Also what about the Official Secrets Act. As for the documents which are slowly being declassified, why were they classified in the first place.
We know that General Sir Mike Jackson has written a book, what about all the other Generals, what about Special Forces. Well now Special Forces have to sign a special clause which restricts what they can write about. The MoD are not at all happy that some books have been written by ex-SAS which are now available but which seem to be making money out of the many heroes who stay silent.
As for the reporters, the media, well they seem to have a good war, apart from those who were killed or injured. They go off to 'the front' and send back their despatches, after clearance from the 'censors'. There are still D-notices, or DA-Notices as they are now known, and evidence is the appalling situation they allowed them selves to be embroiled with Prince 'we do bad things to bad people' Harry. Who now 'does' charity.
I will finish with the Mandelson comments over the week-end, when he pulled the patriot card, how dare he. It is as though any criticism of the economic policy of the country is to talk it down.
Sarah Brown said that Gordon was her hero. Soldiers on the front, in Afghanistan, are heroes, well Gordon Brown is no hero, I mean he would not even risk an election. I mean Blair won an election after he won the war, overthrew a fascist regime, all by himself, the ends justify the means, well no they don't actually!
Too many people have been bought off, stay in your job, keep your nose clean, don't rock the boat, history will not be kind to this generation. Got a wife and kids to support, a mortgage to pay, debts to pay off, taxes to pay, exploit the workers, all that 'stuff', petrol to buy, flight to take, all that global warming stuff, that's so much nicer to talk about, pass the whiskey dear, I'm turning into an Aspidistra.
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Andrew,
some people might think that I am mad, what with some of my strange postings but, this is an example of a DA-Notice which is available for all to read under the guise of transparency:
It is requested that disclosure or publication of highly classified information within the categories listed below should not be made without first seeking advice:
(a) details of present or future operations, methods, tactics and contingency planning, to meet particular hostile situations and to counter threats of terrorist attacks;
(b) details of the state of readiness and operational capability of individual units or formations whose involvement in such operations is current or may be imminent;
(c) operational movements of such individual units or formations (as distinct from routine movements unconnected with operations);
(d) particulars of current or projected tactics, trials, techniques and training (including anti-interrogation training and operational techniques and tactics used to counter terrorism);
(e) details of defensive or counter-terrorist measures taken by individual installations, units or formations;
Rationale. In general it is important not to publish highly classified information which could be damaging to national security by giving a potential enemy important strategic or operational advantages; which could be exploited by terrorists to devise counter-measures with the consequence that attacks which might otherwise have been frustrated could prove successful; or which could compromise counter-terrorist operations, endanger lives or put sources at risk.
So, when the Prime Minister tells me, as do some of the military, that we are about to launch an offensive against the Talibhan, then should they not be advised that it really is not a good idea. That they must read sections (a) and (b) before they open their big mouths and put the lives of our, and our allies, soldiers, at risk. Or are they hoping that the Talibhan just run away, whilst we occupy their country, which is not a country, or do they want to be the great war leader, and then write their books.
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Andrew,
there is something which people may well feel unhappy about. That is the way in which injunctions and special injunctions have been applied. Now John terry is in the news, because a judge would did not grant an injunction, nor a special injunction preventing publication. Now what the media need to disclose is which judge, or judges, are granting these injunctions, or not granting them.
I have to ask the question is there a particular judge, or group of judges, which are in conflict over this tendatious issue. Do some of them see the freedom of the pressa s paramount, as against the imposed privacy, which some seek. I mean where would MPs be if a national newspaper had not had the guts to go public on MPs expenses. By the way Blair did not take us to war against Iraq, MPs did, they voted for it. They could have stopped it, but they didn't. I acn't wait for when Jack Straw goes before the inquiry, that will be so funny.
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Ref 261 Catch22
Taggy,I love the memory lane stuff on metric v imperial and me being from the old school yearn for the good old days of imperial but we MUST all move on with the metric system. I fervetly believe the metric system was part and parcel of wider conspiracy to CON the General Public.
Network Rail, whom ,purport to own a MODERN NETWORK are still working to a CHAINAGE measurement system, i.e. 22 yds =chain etc and these chainage marks are STILL seen along Network Rail MODERN system?!!
Ref you 250 on Sanctions, my namesake was the BIGGEST sanction buster and ref your comments on Clair Short,don't forget she was in charge of the DFID when the the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline was commissioned and she is on record saying the pipeline is a FLAGSHIP.
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US Pilot Capatain Dan Hanley appears to be causing a bit of stir across the duckpond
http://www.airline-whistleblowers.org/SEC-DOJ_Ltr.html
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I notice from the Clare Shorts website she STILL makes numerous trips (JOLLIES) around the Globe and the World Bank pick up the flight and other expenses. About time the Daily Telegraph investigated the World Bank expenses and the UK MPs who take advantage of this WB gravy train??!!.
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Does this government or the opposition party take BLACKLISTNG seriously.
I don't think so Tim
http://www.ier.org.uk/node/447
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Andrew,
will nobody save us from this labout government. Apparently, today Brown is going to announce that the building of two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy will go ahead. Is this like the Dreadnought programme of the last century.
This is just like when they authorised the construction of the Humber Bridge. Talk about buying votes, the great war monger Brown, cut back on helicopters, but build aircraft carriers, talk about a guilt trip.
Hero Brown really must be stopped. I know its jobs for the voters in the North, but please we don't need them. They will go the way of the TSR2, and Concorde, useless bits of junk. They will also need protecting, so where are the frigates, the Destoyers, why we might as well bring back the convoy system, to protect our ships from those Somali pirates, aye Jim lad, bring back keel-hauling whilst your about it.
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"Network Rail, whom ,purport to own a MODERN NETWORK are still working to a CHAINAGE measurement system"
Its not really a modern system. Its a Victorian system, built using the imperial measurement system. That's one of the problem of setting up things like railways and telecoms first. You end up lumbered with a huge out of date network. While others build from the start with much more modern technology. Do you remember Tomorrow's world talking about fibre optic technology being the future? Our broadband and telephone mainly still uses old copper wire. With a clever workaround to allow broadband.
Another mistake we made in rail is choosing the narrower gauge system rather than the wide gauge. If we'd chosen the wider gauge we'd have the high speed railway ages ago.
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Andrew,
during his speech to the labour conference Brown proposed changes to the care for the elederly. Be very careful because of the use of the words greatest needs. The health community uses the term to justify extensive intrusion into the private lives of people. Who decides what the need is.
This care for people at home is so inefficient apart from anything else. You are discharged from hospital, in many cases according to reports too early, and you are assessed for your needs, by a needs assessment team. They then rip out your bathroom, and put in a shower. They then put in a stairlift, for you to get to the shower. Then they may move your bed downstairs, and change access to the home for wheelchair access. This is all paid for by giving you the money to spend as you wish mind you. So, on this advice you do all this. Then after thousands of pounds have been spent, you go and die. But at least you haven't blocked a bed at the hospital, and you aren't on the deaths in hospital register.
As for the local tax payer, you've lived in the South East, or up North,earnt your money, profited from the home, then you move to retire to the westcountry, and you expect me to pick up the mammoth bill, whilst you have done nothing to contribute to the local community! Keep the incomers out of the westcountry, we can't afford you.
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It's fascinating to look into the issue of Global Warming and Dr R K Pachauri. You could be forgiven for believing that the two are so implacably enmeshed that one cannot exist without the other, leading to the strange situation that in spite of his credibility being utterly shredded, there is little chance that he can can be dropped by the IPCC.
The credibilty of the IPCC is the credibility of Dr R K Pachauri, and with the UEA CRU on life support, he's all they've got. It must therefore make ministers bang their heads on their desktops to find the he has now become a writer of fiction (no comment), reported to be of the racy and tittilating variety. As a product of the Indian bureacratic class, it's unlikely anyone will manage to rein him in, so Cancun risks turning into high farce of an order that would outdo Brian Rix.
It appears that most 12 year old's are better versed in science than our own Ed Milliband, who is now resorting to the mode of argument favoured by the original 'flat earthers' - 'everyone knows its true' - at the same time displaying his own lack of knowledge.
Someone has to put their foot down to bring this whole hoax to an end now. We've already been led into one global disaster, and those same forces appear to have been marshalled to set up a new one without pausing for us to recover from the first.
I won't vote for a party that has anything to do with this nonsense.
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The way our opinions get managed goes back into the mists of time, but sometimes I do feel I am being steered to a view with a distinct lack of respect.
Especially by politicians who seem to confuse 'acting' with being left alone to do what they think is 'right' whilst being poor on mea culpas on intemperate comments that have damaged their credibility, and are still pretty vague on what they mean to do save demanding a lot of money to do 'it' with based on some very odd and/or highly subjective claims:
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/climate+change+controversy+warning/3521937
Often aided by highly supportive media who confuse press releases as fact depending on how comfortable they feel with the issuer and agenda being portrayed:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-emails-hacked-by-spies-1885147.html
I have to say I prefer my reporting based on a little more than 'probably...' based on '...bearing hallmarks of...' Last I heard it was accepted as a leak, but now it's those darn spooks again? When no one seems to doubt the real issue is with the content, if accurate, and not how sourced.
This is much too important to be left to the competencies of the current defenders of the faith who see themselves as guardians of 'the message'.
Most from the 'we know better' enviro-establishment who have sought high profile soapboxes have either proven ill-informed, inept, defensive, poorly-qualified or just plain partisan, and have been hung out to dry and hence been fatally compromised by dogmatic association with and blindly loyal devotion to what is a minority, but still a significant and damaging collection of scientific errors combined with clear evidence of scientific politicisation to bend facts to suit desired agendas.
There is a huge place for people who care for the environment, and work hard to research it, and man's impacts honestly. They deserve to be heard, and judged with respect. Especially if they are open to questions and possible critiques. Better yet if what they proffer is also dosed with pragmatism and an appreciation of the myriad interactions that go in to man's impacts. Cherry picking based on niche interest or selective ideals is not going to cut it.
The petulant collection I am seeing currently have pretty much failed in this across the board.
Can't see it happening any time soon, but a new broom is needed.
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Update: Roger Harrabin still fighting his rearguard action on Today this morning - asserting as fact that the recent scandals do not in any way change "the View" of "the Science". What do these terms actually mean? I don't know whether he is writing Miliband Minor's scripts or vice versa. (Your acceptance of reality will be all the more painful when it comes, Roger; others are getting their U-turns in first.)
GomerPyle @297 - a passable interview with Miliband on TWTW yesterday was marred by the interviewer's failure to ask him whether he feels he should apologise for the Flat-Earther jibe. Hopefully someone with some cojones (basically that means Andrew Neil) will ask him soon.
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Xtun
Now I may be wrong on this [ and cannot be bothered to look it up] but I think a Gilbert is a unit of magnetomotive force and slug feet was a unit for moments or something like that.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
300 coats
I just had to look it up.
You are right Gilberts are magnetism/electricity units named after some guy from the 1600s.
Slug feet. Ah, me look, me no understand. Moments of inertia? And 1 slug mass goes at 1ft per sec squared when acted upon by a 1lb force.
Havnt the faintest idea wot that all means but slug and inertia seeem well matched and its Imperial so its ok.
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#300 menin
You're right about the gilbert - I looked it up, never having come across it before. And a slug is apparently an alternative unit of mass (= 32.2 lb). I'd heard of slugs, but never had to use them.
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It's only vested interest that are deniars then!
4 trillion euros (from telegraph/indy blogs)
This might help explain the AGW bias of the BBC, the Environment Agency, some Governments and some Universities.
http://www.iigcc.org/index.aspx
“The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) is a forum for collaboration on climate change for European investors. The group’s objective is to catalyse greater investment in a low carbon economy by bringing investors together to use their collective influence with companies, policymakers and investors. The group currently has over 50 members, including some of the largest pension funds and asset managers in Europe, and represents assets of around €4trillion. A full list of members is available on the membership page”.
Did you catch that: FOUR TRILLION EUROS!
IIGCC chairman and BBC head of pensions investment Peter Dunscombe said: “The credibility of emissions trading schemes would be greatly improved with a robust price signal as well as clear and frequent communication from the regulator on trading data and improved transparency over direct government participation in schemes.”
”
Catch that: “IIGCC chairman and BBC head of pensions investment Peter Dunscombe…”
The BBC is the Chair of this Carbon Trading driven investment scheme!
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Andrew,
let us say that buying off your insurgents is no new problem. Remember Dane Geld, as for the Scots, we used to pay them not to raid across the border, surely an insurgency.
As for Chilcot, listen to the testimony today, we were the problem and never the solution. Something which many of us were saying so many years ago. In 2004 we were going to draw down in Iraq, and uplift in Afghanistan, that never happened, oh cunning plans, just like we have no plans to do this nor plans to do that.
Everything has a life and momentum of there own. We could never draw down in Iraq, and transfer to Afghanistan, we just don't have the resources. Now we are paying the price in blood, on all sides. Today is much more 'interesting' than Blair.
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Here's an interesting and controversial thought.
If we're now paying off the Taliban, and let's not beat about the bush that the only reason we're doing so is because we can'r beat them, then why are we so reluctant to pay pirates to return hostages ?
If I were a pirate I'd probably feel that I should be able to seek legal redress for the muddled policy of the West, which involves completely divergent attitudes following no logical thinking.
It appears that we allow the pirates to ply their trade, more or less unhindered, hoping that there are no casualties, but this is tying up massively expensive naval assets in what is little more than playground duty. We tie ourselves in knots over international law, and my own attitude is that pirates don't deserve the protection of any law.
Now we have taken the Taliban on to our social security payroll, maybe we should consider adding Somalia too. There doesn't appear to be a problem that our government can't throw our money at, unless you happen to be a non-banking citizen of the UK.
It's just a shame for the government that the Taliban and Somalis don't have a vote in the UK election.
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306. GomerPyle wrote:
"If we're now paying off the Taliban, and let's not beat about the bush that the only reason we're doing so is because we can'r beat them, then why are we so reluctant to pay pirates to return hostages ?"
Fair point.
It'll be interesting to see if this monetary incentive drives up Taliban recruitment. Join the Taliban, hand yourself in to the nearest army base, renounce violence and receive a financial package.
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There seems little point in continually asking political spokespersons on the DP where their cuts are going to fall or how large they are going to be.
The Tories keep changing their language and varying their hints, laying themselves open to ridicule (again).
Labour are just as bad - no one can deduce what they are up to. Gordon still promising billions for aircraft carriers, Mandelson cutting higher education budgets, Balls ring-fencing, Darling looking for severe cuts, sometime. It's a real dog's dinner.
And the Liberals? All fairness, one way or another - taxing the rich to give to the poor, mansion taxes, slashing Trident, more wind farms, greater EU integration, etc. But does it matter for them?
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304. At 11:17am on 01 Feb 2010, Barry Woods wrote:
'The group’s objective is to catalyse greater investment in a low carbon economy by bringing investors together to use their collective influence with companies, policymakers...
Just wondering in the objective, no conflict of interest world our national broadcaster (and its pension pot) inhabits... what, precisely, is covered under 'using collective influence'.
There's what might be good for the planet. And there's what might make a wadge of wonga for those well placed. The two need not be mutually exclusive of course, but it doesn't surely hurt if your business interests are served by certain narratives being enhanced or, perhaps, less well performing ones either ignored or shored up.
It always seems to end up back at the money. Especially when one's funding is 'unique'.
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If the UK government is prepared to pay off the Taliban and not the Somali pirates, surely the British government can be accused of racism? And what about the human rights of theSomali pirates?
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310.
Start up a protest group; 'Parity for Pirates'?
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#306
Now let's be even more controversial. Why can we the British taxpayer n ot be represented in the Afghan parliament. No taxation without representation. Our taxes are going to bribe them so I want to be an Afghan MP, or their equivalent.
As for Brown and the Northern Ireland problems, I hope that we are going to have him not going missing again at PMQs, it would look rather stupid, and if there is an agreement then it must not be discussed at PMQs, but be subject to a Prime Ministerial statement to the House. He can then explain what is different to when the agreement is signed and the wasted time he spent over there last week.
Mind you no deaths this week in Afghanistan to announce, so far anyway, so that's good, Speaker won't have to stretch PMQs, we've worked that ruse out. Mind you knowing Brown he will probably say that he is pleased that nobody has been killed this week, this is due to us bribing the Talibhan, it's working already.
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I suppose it might not be such a terrible policy, utilising, as it does, something (money) which we have a great deal more of than they do. I mean, if I were dirt poor and somebody were to come along and ask me, what's the best way (?) to win my "Heart & Mind", then I guess cash would be right up there near the top of the list. We'd prefer, of course, to be winning people over with all the other good stuff - attractive offerings such as western liberal democracy - but perhaps people respond better to hard cash. Not sure really.
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#313
what do people think is happening in this country. The government are bribing us with our money to vote for them when the election is held.
All of the political parties have a problem. Let us say that we do have to raise interest rates. That will attract money from other countries. so they buy pounds. This will improve our exchange rate against other currencies, so manufacturers, and exporting industry in general will then lose the advantage of the fall in sterling.
Also, one reason why people will buy sterling is to not only make a return on the interest rate, they will also want to see the pound rise, so that they make a capital profit on their transactions. Accordingly, nobody is going to buy pounds if they think that it will fall, they will only buy if the interest rates offer a greater return than any anticipated fall in sterling. If sterling were to fall by 10 per cent, then the interest rate would have to be at 10.1 per cent otherwise the foreigner would lose on the transaction. They aren't that stupid. another lesson next week if you like. I think thet call it attribution, you might be in the right stock, but in the wrong market, or vice verce.
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Our politicians must appear very stupid to Afghans. The mistake was for us ever to get involved.
Funding the Taliban to prevent terrorist attacks in the UK ? Words fail me.
We should only employ our armed forces to fight wars, ideally wars against people actually threatening our borders and citizens. Trying to use your army in a semi social function in a distant country, is rather like trying to cut your nails with a hedge clipper.
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313 saga
Maybe pragmatic as a concept, but 'hearts and minds'? I think it takes more than cash - unless it's an endless stream.
The obvious problem is monitoring and control if it's just a matter of bribery. What's to stop repetitions, group fiddles, etc - it's bad enough in Britain re benefits.
It might be different if the 'bribery' is more sophisticated and is used to create jobs and attract 'fringe Taleban' back into mpeaceful, mainstream society. That might stand a better chance of long term success.
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315 Gomer
It is the first step in a cunning plan.
Get this payment to change ideology accepted on the Taliban then extend it to Tories, Lib Dems, BNP etc and Gordon wins again.
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Ref 312 catch 22.
So you want to be an Afghan MP, no wonder they call you Terry the Taliban?!
If you are serious,you must get yourself a pickup truck and keep away from thoses poppies at the end od Salmonpool Lane because they are mine??!!
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The 'afghani' is the currency in Afghanistan.
What happens to this 'bribe' initiative if the pound falls below the afghani? It'll cost us a fortune.
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It says more about our democracy that Gordon thinks he can buy off an Afghan with some cash.
The fact that an Afghan has principles may come as a shock to him, and the fact that they can outwit him will surprise no one. The greater tragedy is that the deaths will continue for no great purpose.
Vote Labour and they'll do as they please, and I don't know if the Tories will do better, because who knows what they'll do ? All we do know is that someone will tell us the truth after the election, and that's fairly indicative of the state of our democracy.
The greater surprise would be if a politician told us the truth, but the Global Warming farce is just plain insulting my intelligence too much - perhaps not that of Milliband, but then he's playing stooge to the hapless comedian in charge of the IPCC.
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One wonders if the payments to the Taliban will be known as Jobseekers Allowance.
Do they have to apply for jobs and if so does applying to the Taliban and or Al Quiada for one count?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
American is a great and peace country , i love the U.S.A People.
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Ref 321 superangry
Very funny SA but seriosly though this is not the first time government/federal funds have found their way into terrorist hands ,just look at the Word Bank funding of the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline where the well known terrorist President Deby has funneled WB oil funds into his private coffers to keep himself in power. How many other WB projects are loosing money to the terrorists??!!
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Could someone please tell me if Saudi Arabia contribute to the Afghanistan War via soldiers,equipment or cash and just what was their contribution to the Iraq War.
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Ref 322 Lee.
Your not one of the original 60's Poppypeople by any chance are you Lee.
Uncle Sam is never far from the root cause of any trouble where oil can be found,Africa,MiddleEast,South America,just to mention 3.
Nothing wrong with the Yanks in general,I have worked and lived with them a lot,it's just their governments,bit like us in the UK really.
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What Dafur crisis??!!
http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/clips/davos-icc-prosecutor-expects-bashir-genocide-charge/
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Dejavue with Chad/Cameroon Pipeline. Nodoubt the Chineese involvement in Chad is the main reason why the Dafur crisis is STILL apparent.
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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Andrew perhaps you could have a look and comment on this little gem.
The man responsible for looking after the fat pensions of the boys and girls at the BBC is a climate change fanatic, and he is part of an international group of investment managers who bust a gut to invest in 'climate change' schemes. He's called Peter Dunscombe, and he runs the £8.2bn corporation pension fund.
Full comment at
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/02/fingers-in-pies.html
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Ref 329 ukpahonta
Bloody hell, this beggars belief, Aunti Beeb up to her neck in this one
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Andrew,
surely all we are seeing is that in Afghanistan we want to win 'hearts and minds', is this not the same policy which Brown wants in this country, nothing other than to win our 'hearts and minds' and then vote labour.
As for Brown promising us a referendum on any voting system, this is the same man who took over running the country as a result of a bloodless coup. As for being voted in by his British constituents in Scotland, well I'm afraid that the Scots are as bad as the democrats were in Massachusetts, they would vote for a haggis if you put labour colours on it.
What I think interesting is that Clare Short will be giving her 'evidence' to Chilcot today, Straw will be giving more 'evidence' next week, when will Brown be giving his 'evidence' for what it will be worth because of course we know now from the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, which was not hosted by Andrew Marr, that Brown was marginalised. By the way I thought it interesting that Short did not sit on the settee at the end, doesn't she want to be seen next to Harman?
Do like the idea that the Pope is now apparently the 'enemy' because he doesn't like our new proposed equality laws. I think he is right and the analysis on the Today programme was right in that there is the worry of 'mission creep'. An example of that can be seen with Ben Bradshaw, the first openly gay MP, who has been civil partnered, only his Facebook site he describes himself as married. I don't think he is, what do others think, I mean you give these people a millimetre, and they take a centimetre.
Finally, and this is my final point, people seem concerned about how large numbers are described, you know billions, trillions, well may I humbly point out that large numbers are described as ten to the power of another number, these are large numbers and it stops errors of misnaming billions, or trillions, or whatever, depending on which country, or convention, you are quoting.
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More on the BBC pension man??
Peter Dunscombe,
Chair, IIGCC & Head of Pensions Investment,
BBC
After university Peter joined a major firm of stockbrokers in the City to carry out company and economic research. However most of his career was spent with Imperial Investments the in-house investment management operation of Imperial Group/ Hanson plc and for the last ten years was joint managing director of the operation. In the summer of 1999 he left the company and took six months off to “do all the things he had wanted to do if only he had the time” – this included a trip to Everest base camp. In 2000 he joined the BBC Pension Scheme as Head of Pensions – Investments and he is also an adviser to one other large scheme. At the start of 2007 he took over the role of Chair of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change
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HAve we reached a media AGW tipping point:
The GUARDIAN has just published these articles....
IN ONE THEY ACTUALLY quote climate gate emails!!!!!!!
"Strange case of moving weather posts and a scientist under siegeIn the first part of a major investigation of the so-called 'climategate' emails, one of Britain's top science writers reveals how researchers tried to hide flaws in a key study
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/dispute-weather-fraud
THE GUARDIAN HAS PRINTED EXTRACTS FROM THE CLIMATEGATE EMAILS
just a couple of them:
From sceptic Doug Keenan to Dr Wei-Chyung Wang and Prof Phil Jones – 20 April 2007
"I ask you to retract your GRL paper, in full, and to retract the claims made in Nature about the Chinese data. If you do not do so, I intend to publicly submit an allegation of research misconduct to your university at Albany."
From Jones to Dr Kevin Trenberth
"I seem to be the marked man now !"
From Prof Michael Mann to Jones
"This is all too predictable. This crowd of charlatans is always looking for one thing they can harp on, where people w/ little knowledge of the facts might be able to be convinced that there is a controversy. They can't take on the whole of the science, so they look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalise that the science is entirely compromised."
From Trenberth to Jones and Mann – 21 April 2007
"I am sure you know that this is not about the science. It is an attack to "undermine the science in some way. In that regard I don't think you can ignore it all … the response should try to somehow label these guys lazy and incompetent and unable to do the huge amount of work it takes to construct such a database."
From Prof Tom Wigley to Jones – 4 May 2009
"I have always thought W-C W [Wang] was a rather sloppy scientist. I therefore would not be surprised if he screwed up here … Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it's not too late? I realise that Keenan is just a troublemaker and out to waste time, so I apologize for continuing to waste your time on this, Phil. However, I *am* concerned because all this happened under my watch as director of CRU and, although this is unlikely, the buck eventually should stop with me."
Also in the guardian:
Leaked climate change emails scientist 'hid' data flawsExclusive:
Key study by East Anglia professor Phil Jones was based on suspect figures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
The day before the SAME journo wrote the exact opposite???????
How the 'climategate' scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics' liesClaims based on email soundbites are demonstrably false – there is manifestly no evidence of clandestine data manipulation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/climate-emails-sceptics
This is really bizarre - Did this journalist ignore the emails until yesterday - have a read - say oh my god - and reralised what has been going on!!!
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Ref 331 Catch 22
I would like to see Clair Short face an enquiry on the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline because she is on record that it is/was a FLAGSHIP pipeline.
Flagship my donkey
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#333
all you have to do to understand the media 'industry' is to read a bit of Chomsky, and Zinn. It is not only the politicians, the civil servants, the military who have to hold their noses over the terror attack on Iraq, it is also the media, who could have done more. Same with the Universities, who were bribed with research grants not to get involved in the war.
Whatever did happen to student rebellion. Oh that's right they now run the country, looked good on the old CV, Grosvenor Square, I was there...Vietnam War, oh how I demonstrated, Stones in the Hyde Park, John Martyn at Cousins, oh yes really radical I was. What is that Marx and Shakepeare have in common, oh yes, money makes pimps and whores of us all.
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Andrew,
Clare Short giving evidence to Chilcot. I could get no money from the Treasury. Get Brown to Chilcot, now!
DFID had about a thousand people paid to work in Iraq, keeping the oil for food prgramme going, keeping the sewers working, to stop cholera. It will be interesting to see how this is reported.
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Andrew,
questions to Short, do you have any evidence, no. How could she have any evidence if she was not at meetings and previously people had written and been told why have you put this in writing. As for the cabinet meeting oh Clare shut-up.
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Andrew,
I sort of multi-task and am listening to the overtime scam which the police have been pulling. Call out for five minutes to chaeck a prisoner, four hours minimum overtime. I mean what has been going on, what is going on!
In the meantime Short is being brilliant. I don't like her, but she really should have resigned. However, so many others should have done as well.
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Andrew,
Taking into account the 'evidence' given yesterday to Chilcot I thought that your readers might be interested in the following:
Sir John Bourn, the Head of the National Audit Office, told Parliament today that Exercise "Saif Sareea" II, held in Oman in 2001, successfully demonstrated that the United Kingdom is capable of mounting a balanced, coherent force over a long distance. Among the United Kingdom's allies, only the United States has shown that it could undertake a deployment of similar size.
Despite the redeployment of some elements to operations in Afghanistan, each of the three Armed Services met the majority of their objectives for the Exercise and gained valuable training experience from operating in a desert environment. Much equipment performed well, including Warrior armoured fighting vehicles, the C17 strategic lift aircraft, and the Personal Role Radio.
A number of other, non-warfighting, elements also operated successfully, for example, the provision of food and the recovery of personnel and equipment. The Operational Welfare Package, which included the provision of telephone and Internet facilities, was a qualified success given that it was not always possible to make it available to units in the field and in more remote locations.
The report continued:
Complexities in the scoping, costing and funding of the Exercise led to difficulties in the planning process. No overall investment appraisal to inform the most cost-effective design for the Exercise was carried out, although options were informally costed. Planning went through several iterations regarding size, location, and budget until the Department finally settled on deploying a medium-scale joint task force to Oman within a budget of £90.3 million.
Taking into account the 'evidence' from Short this morning about the Treasury, and funding, I really do think that Brown must be called as a matter of urgency. The exercise I refer to above is proof, if any were needed, that this really was a totally failed government. They all have blood on their hands, the blood of not only our people but many locals as well.
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# 333
Barry Woods - Edward (Milliband) the Deluded, says that we shouldn't diregard the IPCC report over one mistake. As Pachauri is reported to have known of the error well in advance, it was much more than a 'mistake', and the count is up to sixteen mistakes and growing, and that doesn't include the 'massaged' temperature figures which underlie (my preferred spelling) the whole mess that is proffered to us as scientific research. The other major pillar of warmist delusional fantay is the 'greenhouse effect', reproduced in kitchen sinks all over the UK, but has been debunked by scientists as being utter drivel.
I have to quote this example from the Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II, section 15.7.2 Economic activity and sustainability in the Antarctic. It just demonstrates the lack of any attempt for scientific credibility
"The multiple stresses of climate change...............necessitated the implementation of stringent clothing decontamination guidelines"
They quote a Cites boot cleaning guide for the Antarctic that makes no mention of climate change or raising temperatures.
On this basis the 'Dandy' and 'Beano' have more factual content, though no one has discovered them being quoted as a source in the IPCC report - yet.
In a democracy, politicians do what the electorate tell them to do, not under Labour. Labour must be kicked in to touch as a lesson that they are paid to be servants, not tyrants. No scandal or revelaton upsets them, simply because they'll ignore any consequences and accept no rebuke. Basically, they make my flesh creep, and it's not enough to chide the BNP as being an immoral choice when I see they suffer the same base morality.
The good thing is that Pachauri is all warmists have left, and if that's the best they#ve got, this boat won't float. The only drawback is that politicians are besotted with the concept and are wasting their time and our money on this doomed project. Clearly the perks are mouth watering.
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A beautiful quote from the Press Trust of India / New Delhi attributed to Dr Pachauri
On allegations over scientific errors regarding Amazon forests and disappearing of ice in world's mountain peaks, he said, "The IPCC is correct on its claim on both issues."
It appears that Milliband is singing from a different hymn sheet to Dr Pachauri. I recommend that they get their facts straight, but perhaps they'd be better advised to get some together at the outset.
The IPCC has now veered from the scientific consensus and shows that it won't allow anything like that to divert it from its purpose.
Now we see the IPCC in the stark light of day.
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With a general election 3 months away, and journalists bombarding politicians with questions about their plans for the economy, what does Brown introduce to hit the headlines? A future referendum on the AV (alternative vote) system for electing MPs!
Has their been a popular clamour for this? Have there been riots on the streets? Have there been weekly polls showing 90% support for a change to the voting system? If so, I and many others have missed it.
Just how cynical can you get in order to stay in power by wooing Lib-Dems and wavering Labour voters? Even some dedicated Labour MPs are expressing unease or downright opposition. Brown really has shown his true colours by this move - and the predominant colour is yellow.
As if that wasn't enough, why is it that nearly every time I switch on the radio or TV, Lord Mandelson is giving what seems to be a political broadcast on behalf of the Labour party? It's incredible that a thrice-disgraced, non-elected peer, is now the mouthpiece for moral compass Brown. The rest of the cabinet seem to be largely kept under wraps - obviously lacking in the smooth conman style of their shadow leader.
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342 MJ
Impossible not to put a cynical interpretation on this - why didn't they start the ball rolling back in 1997 when they would have had time to implement it.
Politicians are held in such low esteem these days and cheap stunts like this only reinforce that opinion.
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#342
Could not agree with you more. Please remember my earlier comment about Brown not being able to make his state visit to Exeter at the time of the failed coup. Also keep an eye on all these regional cabinet meetings, they are set up to get all the publicity for free from compliant local press and other parts of media.
Thought that it was interesting that the photo of Brown at Auschwitz seems to have disappeared from the Number 10 photo shoot. It was very misleading to suggest that he went there at a time when he didn't. The other one is shame that the soldier with prosthetic legs, managed to fall over on the steps of Number 10. Mind you interesting that Brown will not meet the families of the dead soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, like Blair, well not unless they had been properly screened in the first place, or not in public anyway. Can't possibly have people refusing to shake hands, or turning their back on the very important people.
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This Governments gerrymandering of the electoral system is simply disgusting.
They are a tyrannical govt determined to maintain themselves in power come what may. Tinpot dictators one and all. In fact most tinpot dictators are not that blatant.
We all know what happens to dictators one way or the other.
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#342 mike-jay
I think that you characterise Brown's ploy correctly. Some are born to cynicism, we have it thrust upon us. Plainly he is a drowning man clutching at all about him.
There are calls for the voting system to change, but he and Nu£! are not the ones to hand it out. Power2010 are yet seeking people to vote for options for democratic renewal, all easy to find.
So much of our present system of democracy has failed in the hands of these lesser souls.
This change is best brought about by we--the--people at the ballot booth AT this next election. Bottom-up Democracy as the word itself implies.
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Dont tell anyone you speak English you are a racist!!!!!!
Daily_Telegraph Taxi drivers accused of racism over St George stickers http://bit.ly/9ecY8a
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Credit must be given to Clare Short ( I despise this woman as a rule)for her frank evidence to the Chilcot inquiry.
Why wasn't she SO honest when she ran the DFID and said the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline was a FLAGSHIP,
Appears to me these MP tinker with the truth when it suits them.
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#347 sa
I wonder what action the council would take against taxis with an EU flag and a sign saying 'I speak English, French, German and Italian'.
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"The Conservative Party has recruited Lord Stern, the economist hired by Tony Blair to report on the impact of global warming, to help create Britain's first environmentally-friendly investment bank."
I'm thoroughly stunned.
Clearly the Tories want to make sure they don't win. Now I wouldn't vote for them even to keep Gordon out. How he jump on the bandwagon just as the last wheel's dropped off and the donkey's making funny noises in the background.
Dr Pachauri is taking leave of his senses, though not of the IPCC yet. The IPCC charter states
"The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive."
He overstepped that boundary long ago, and with his increasingly demented ramblings he appeas to believe he's, either leading a crusade or formenting a riot.
".....launch urgent grassroots action by civil society, business and local governments towards a pattern of sustainable development. National governments and multilateral initiatives would follow inevitably."
I believe that our government would like him to stop peddling debunked science, rather than promote mass riots, not that I see it as a major threat, especially as coal fired power stations are all that stand between us an major power shortages in the near future.
A 'green' environmentally friendly bank ? What on earth is the man thinking of ? I find that combination of words offensive, especially as it is now reported that RBS bonus recipients will be able to convert their payouts quite promptly into cash, after they've received them.
MP expenses - nothing done, Banks - nothing done, Bank bonuses - nothing done. Anyone seen the Tories knocking about ?
We can be pals now sagamix. Cameron clearly believes that becoming a pale imitation of Gordon is the way to go.
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Re: 349
Its just another assualt on the English by English hating racists mike-jay who will promote any minority above the English and England.
They are loathesome.
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Unnn Beleivable.
This just shows how far the global warming scam has gone. If this story is true then it's time switch off the lights and close the door on this country of ours. Please someone tell me that this is an untruth before I find a nice little atoll in the pacific to emigrate to.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196189-Global-Warming-Afforded-Same-Legal-Status-as-Religion-in-UK
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#352 ukp
That is incredible! It opens the door to deluded cranks of all shapes and sizes. Just think of something to believe in obsessively and you're protected by law against all sorts of actions that ordinary people have to accept.
I keep saying that the politicians have hijacked the climate change debate, but it now looks as if others - equally deranged - are jumping on the bandwagon, but for different reasons. How on earth can we stop the juggernaut of insanity that is destroying all aspects of what used to be our society?
Choose a bigger atoll in the pacific and leave room for more of us.
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@352 more research provides a write up in the guardian last November
In his written judgment, Mr Justice Burton outlined five tests to determine whether a philosophical belief could come under employment regulations on religious discrimination
• The belief must be genuinely held.
• It must be a belief and not an opinion or view based on the present state of information available.
• It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life.
• It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.
• It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.
Humanism was given as an example meeting the criteria, while belief in a political party or the supreme nature of Jedi knights, from the Star Wars movies, were offered as ones that do not.
I have a fundamental belief that the decisions that I make in life are correct without the intervention of government, public or private bodies. My belief expands to the fact that I am free to think, or say, whatever 'I believe to be right' without having to face fine or prosecution from state. I am old enough and wise enough to know the risks of my actions without having to sign waivers or insure against indeminity. My belief is that I have a right to defend myself, my family and my possesions against theft or criminal damage by any reasonable means. I believe that I am a free man.
Do I qualify for religious discrimination if any of my beliefs are comprimised?
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Anyone see Channel 4 this evening ? The evil empire strikes back.
"As Phil Jones, the man at the centre of the climate change emails row, finally gives an account of himself, Peter Liss, his temporary replacement at the head of the University of East Anglia's climate research unit, tells Channel 4 News Jones will get his job back and be vindicated."
It is more than a little presumptive to start second guessing the findings of the investigation at this stage, particularly after the relevations so far.
They then had a debate with Lord Lawson and Professor Bob Watson of the UEA CRU
"Director of Strategic Development. Robert T. Watson is also DEFRA Chief Scientific Advisor and former Chief Scientist and Director for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD) at the World Bank." (cached version of UEA CRU website).
It seems there's an endless stream of establishment 'experts' being brought in to play. I hope they'll be of a better grade than the one who reran the 'foreign spy' accusations over the 'hacked' e-mails.
Now that the IPCC is sinking as Dr Pachauri's behaviour and comments become more erratic, I can only judge that the government need a more controllable supporting source, otherwise their assertions are hanging without any visible means of support.
It looks like a last desperate throw of the dice. Even if the enquiry gives UEA CRU a cleam bill of health, ironically it leaves them in a worse position. It can't undo the content of the e-mails that makes it a liability in the world of climate science.
The most satisfying aspect is that such an all pervading attempt to manage world opinion has blown itself apart, and now actually feeds on the anti-establishment sentiment they sought to exploit. Too late Dr Pachauri is trying to whip up a populist frenzy, but it's only likely to interest the 'usual suspects'.
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I want to go to this escape atoll so long as it does not mean sailing close to the edge of the earth.
A jest in perhaps poor taste and with no offence meant to the Flat Earth Society members.
But how much longer can this biggest example ever of Emperors clothes go on ?
At least when the little boy pointed out the Emperor's nakedness everybody else saw it too !
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Forgive me for blathering on, but the more I discover the more amazed I am by the Global Warming adherents and this example is mind boggling, and really exposes how the mindsof these people work
"Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.
In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades."
You got thet - he finds NO INCREASE IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 since the Industrial Revolution. In that case man made (or any other CO2) CANNOT be responsible for Global Warming. It also debunks the theory of the greenhouse effect.
It is reported that warmists jumped all over Dr Knorr in a Galileo type operation and he then conceded that CO2 must be reduced, though for the life of me, I can't imagine why.
We know that the IPCC and UEA CRU have problems with temperature records, but surely they checked the CO2 at least. If they can't respond to this research, then the whole of the Global Warming argument is over and done with.
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329. At 08:00am on 02 Feb 2010, ukpahonta wrote:
Andrew perhaps you could have a look and comment on this little gem.
Mentioned this aspect of the debate over at Newsnight's blog from last night, as they have decided to get a little bit interested in what gets claimed, and hence what gets reported, by whom and with what interesting backgrounds that may inform their activities.
Oddly, the mods were... are currently... not keen.
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World Bank wakeup call,too little too late to save the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline and Lake Chad.
http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.11516.aspx
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Ref 355Gomerpyle
Hi Gomer,trust you are well. Hadn't realized all this Co2 skullduggery was even connected to the World Bank until I read your post.
Well mate,if the WB are connected to it, then we are doomed,see my 359 as it would appear the the WB are getting a wee bit of a wakeup call by their Uncle Sam paymasters.
The World Bank are TOO big to be effective in my view and they, there are a number of failed projects funded by the WB and the Chad/Cameroon is one of their biggest failures to date.
Keep up the good work mate.The tap drippeth.
I think you will be my Minister of Environment when I get to #10
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Regular punters at this blog will know the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline is one of my major concerns and with all this "ENVIRONMENTAL" debacle could someone please explain to me why the World Bank have been allowed to walk away from the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline, they have thrown in the towel because President Deby insists on using the oil revenues for ARMS but the IFC are maintaining a presence.
The IFC are the financial arm of the World Bank, hence, why are they still there,is it a game or am I missing something?
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Andrew,
there was a very interesting conversation this morning on the Today programme relating to the the use of injunctions and super-injunctions. What i think should have been asked, which was not asked, was which High Court Judeges are involved. Is there in a similar way to which there is a 'problem' with stem cell research with peer review, and a sort of clique of High Court judges who are more, shall we say sympathetic, to the elite, and government.
We should know which judges are granting these injunctions, and whether any one or two in particular take a different view to their colleagues.
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@ 354
"It must be a belief - not an opinion based on the present state of information available."
This implies that if man made climate change were to be proven it would cease to be a belief, and would thus lose protection. Or put another way, the protected status - assuming this case is not a rogue - relies on being divorced from the "present state of information". Regardless of one's views on CC, this seems a little odd.
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Andrew,
I think that people who are interested in the Global Warming debate at to look at something called the Phillips Curve, which was used extensively by economists to show the link between wages, and inflation.
Now I had to ask that the research which went into this was conducted how, because it went back to 1850s, so where was the data obtained from. Basically, I found that that the reasoning behind the source was, to say the least, flawed. The curve itself showed nothing. It suited an argument. Yet I was expected to tell people where the obvious flaws were.
The experts get very well remunerated for their expertise, yet the very fact that they get well remunerated only goes to show the flaws in their argument, he who pays the piper calls the tune, and money makes pimps and whores of us all.
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Catch22, when you get a chance mate just have a stroll by the new City Council funded Housing Association site on the Quay,which is purported to be on the POSH side of town?!. But be careful how and where you walk because there are a number of trip hazards with the reinstatement of the slabs and setts and the site has been left in a tardy state in my view.
You will also note that 2#crash barriers have been installed outside the front door to prevent any "nasty" people driving their cars into the building,unfortunately,there is STILL a gap which would allow a HGV Lorry thru?!.
As you walk around this building ,take a peep thru the the window and you will see numerous PVC downpipes,toilets,waste etc from the 2 floors above which have not been fire proofed in accordance with fire and building regs,ditto for the main structural steel.
The project manager got a bit shirty with me yesterday when she said this building had been approved by the local authority so what's it got to do with you.
I would send an email to my local Council but as you know, I am BANNED from emailing them.
Grateful if you would have a look round and send an email to the local council??!!
I have alerted Bradshaw but he won't have a clue what I am talking about?!.
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Catch 22 a.k.a. Taggy
Your last sentence in your 364 is not conducive to a future MP in my government,however true it may be.
I am neither a whore or a pimp.Please be careful with your language,especially when inspecting the New Housing Association block??!!
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Clare Short will get a LOT of credit for her performance at yesterday's Chilcot inquiry.
She hit the nail on the head with her remarks about the Attorney General and I ferevently believe the AG role should be looked into because the AG currently reports to the PM ONLY which CANNOT be right.
Such a relationahip between the PM and the AG is not conducive to SOUND transparency and accountability??!!
However, I am not fully convinced Ms Short did all she could have done,ditto for her housemates.
Don't forget Ms Short held remit for the DFID,which in my view is a disaster, not only in Iraq but the Chad/Cameroon BOONDOOGLE is living proof that Ms Short is NOT the goodytwoshoes she purports NOW.
These politicians should be remined that inactions and failure to act is as BAD as the action of the Bullyboys Blair,Bush ,Straw etc.
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# 360
EXXONMOBIL2 - Clearly the World Bank through its trading arm, the IFC, are absolved from paying any attention to any environmental issue. I mentioned in an earlier post that the World Bank had been caught out in Indonesia in its policy of financing the destruction of what little rain forests remain there.
Orang Utans are ugly little critters, so don't have quite the appeal of polar bears, but the effect of financing multi national companies to slash and burn the forests there is also taking away the habitat of the indigenous populations. Our response is to put up fifty million pounds to mitigate the effects, which will hardly deter the economic interests who managed to swathe Malaysia in smog from all the forest fires burning recently. Amusingly, some of the major players are also Malaysian property developers with interests in golf courses there, which can't be quite so appealing when the putting greens are obscured by choking fumes.
It's reported that the locals were being forced to sign away their carbon rights at the point of a gun, but when you're environmentally responsible, it pays to get your papaperwork in order using any means you can. I didn't know the environmental lobby were armed and dangerous.
More likely is that someone's worked out that if you wear an 'eco hat' you can get away with anything. Did anyone believe the government would send any MP's to prison, that bank bonuses would be stopped, that the government wants to reform the constitution to give the electorate power, that environmental concerns drive government policy ?
It's a major concern when the only effective scrutiny of government policy exists online, but it's proving to be quite effective in repulsing what has been exposed as the biggest hoax of all time.
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#366
On this one we will have to disagree. It may be a famous mis-quote but I'm sorry to say that money is the source of all evil. Getting rid of money will not end all evil, but it will go an awful long way. If the cap fits, then wear it, if not then try on another one.
Votes are bought, they are not earned, listen to Brown when he announces the great links with France in respect of defence. Do we really want to link ourselves to a country which so manifestly broke sanctions against Iraq, where Presidents in the past have had affairs, and have very dubious financial dealings. A country which is allowed to sit on the top table at the UN, but which surrendered to Germany in 1940, and seemed quite content to be occupied, little insurgency until they realised that the tide had turned. It's probably Brown trying to kiss and make up for Churchill ordering the blowing-up of the French fleet, the very same French fleet which he had colluded with in sending down to the Med in 1912, leaving Britain with the North Sea.
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Andrew,
with regard to our operations in Afghanistan and the losses of our soldiers I think that one of the worst things which has happened to our regiments is the loss of their old names. I mean when a death is announced of somebody from 'The Rifles' what on earth does that mean to the modern British soldier. I mean 'The Rifles' what name does that convey, where is the history of the great Regiments, for example Devon and Dorset, did there not used to be a regiment with that name, a great name and a great tradition. The same with so many other areas no doubt.
Which of the leaders of our army allowed these mergers to take place, who allowed this travesty, who did it. We have allowed our traditions to just disappear, military training facilities sold off, more training facilities under threat, they even wanted to reduce the training of the TA soldiers, to save money, and yet we want to do more stuff with the French. Can we really trust the French, same as the UN in Kosovo, when soldiers from another country just stood by and let 'stuff' happen.
As for the aircraft carriers, its just toytown stuff, a job creation scheme.
Oh just to change the subject slightly, why do we still have manslaughter, surely we have stopped manholes and firemen, and policeman. Women do murder to, so let's go the way of the Americans and have homicide, and categories, manslaughter is too sexist by far.
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"Banks told to comply on bonuses or lose UK banking licences in shock FSA ultimatum"
I'll be looking out for the blinds coming down on RBS branches today then. I just ddn't realise that the government regulator had such teeth and was so brutal in enforcing its regulations.
Of course the reality is, that this is just comedy posing by a toothless and useless regulater that proved its irrelevance in the world's biggest crash and is now being royally ignored by every financial institution that has two free fingers to give it the salute it deserves.
The government's new found concern for constitutional change is gut churning in hypocrisy after the Lisbon Treaty farce. The last thing we can afford is for smaller parties to be squeezed out, and this would be the major effect of their proposal. I'm coming to the conclusion that a hung parliament might be an ideal solution, as I have little faith in the Tories, who are liable to merely adopt Labour policies with seamless ease.
Political parties no longer have agendas, merely a quest for power and the only place in the UK where the gap between rich and poor has been broken down is in Parliament. where Labour MP's are as likely to have country estates as Tory MP's.
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If you haven't seen this - hilarious
The BBC are now a hot-bed of climate change denial according to Sunny Hundal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/03/bbc-climate-change-denier
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Yet another attack on the English as the Govt stops a debate in the House of Lords re The Barnett Formula
http://toque.co.uk/government-cancels-barnett-formula-debate
Elsewhere the English Question is moving up the political agenda though MPs are too stupid to know what to do about it. Party first before country as always with these shysters.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/guy-lodge/mps-attitudes-to-english-question
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Ref368 Gomerpyle
Sadly Gomer, you are right that the World Bank appear to have lost their environmental morals and the IFC are obsolved from any environmental matters and they continue to fund projects which rape the great rain forests etc.I don't accept that the WB should be able to throw in the towel as they did on the Chad Cameroon pipeline which was their FLAGSHIP and leave the IFC in charge.
The IFC are the world bank and if the original environmental and safety regulaions are being circumvented,which they are/were on the Chad /Cameroon Pipeline, them payments should be frozen.
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372. At 1:41pm on 03 Feb 2010, Plato-says wrote:
If you haven't seen this - hilarious
Kind of a two wrongs... or in this case a few thousand lefts and one right make a ri... balance.
I was actually impressed and reassured that the majority of the Guardian bloggers though he was a raving loon, and wondered who called who to get this uploaded without anyone in editorial going 'Ok... it will get ratings, but will not end well'.
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This is intolerable! People have lost their livelihoods because of the effect of carbon tax on industry. Now we finally find out that the IPCC's much vaunted "The Science is Settled" Reports rely incestuously on "fundraising pamphlets" from Global Warming pushers such as Greenpeace and WWF!!
These are Not scientific sources at all. They are simply propaganda leaflets designed to shake down donations using scare stories.
The UN's IPCC report recycles these scare stories and claims they are rigorous science. Then the UN and our government rips us all off for Billions of pounds in carbon taxes. But these aren't just any new taxes that we can protest about. Oh no - the UN, IPCC and HM Government are trying to "Save the World" before it is too late! So don't be a denialist flat-earther and don't dare to complain!
We all know that third world countries have completely corrupt governments. But somehow we thought that by putting hundreds of third world government sponsored bureaucrats together and calling them the UN, suddenly they would be honest and incorruptible?!? Pure lunacy...
It is high time people sent the government and the UN-IPCC a strong message: "You can't fool all of the people, all of the time." These corrupt con-artists should be tried. If found guilty, they must be sent to jail for a very long time!
Email your MP now, and tell it that you want the fraudulent carbon taxes canceled AND your money back.
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http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2009/29-climate.asp
Hmm...politicians, green activists and NGOs only in the IPCC? Smells like more sceptical media spin!
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As a Chaoticist, the shape of the global temperature curve does appear to suggest temperatures topped out around 2000 when considering data from the last 100 years, and I think this is being born out in the temperature record too now.
We don't live in a linear world within which is it possible to extrapolate a perceived relationship from a set of variables in a natural system (that in reality we know very little about) even if on first glance they appear to show some degree of correlation. Nature just isn't like that. There is always another variable that kicks in and a bigger wave (and a smaller one too). If nature was linear, we would all be waist deep in rabbits from Fibonacci's experiments in the 12th century and then up to our necks in them a month later. Nature will expand so far, before some other constraint becomes the overriding influence and then push things back to the mean, just ask Galton and look at his experiments on peas. Also consider that the constraints are also ever fluctuating too!
Nature is fundamentally stable, it forms clumps and oscillates around a mean. Consider things like waves on the sea, leaves fluttering in the trees, and bodies orbiting other bodies. The leaves only flutter so far. If nature weren't stable, we wouldn't have got here in the first place as we would have all exploded, our atoms homogeneously dispersing throughout the universe long ago. Similarly our oscillating, vibrating universe is the very stuff of life and absolutely not to be feared. It mixes us all up and the strong develop and survive, and the weak die. It is natures way, and we are fooling ourselves if we believe we can buck that trend, or rather oscillation! for very long with our feeble attempts to keep things the same.
Contrary to the fear mongers at the IPCC and Green's, if we were told the glaciers weren't getting smaller (or bigger) or the planet getting warmer (or colder), and at times doing it faster and slower than at other times I'd be concerned (and still just as sceptical).
I'm old enough to recall the scientists telling us that in the 50's DDT was so safe you could eat it, in the 70's we were heading into an Ice Age and computers would mean all our kids didn't have jobs, in the 80's eggs would kill you, in the 90's beef wouldn't kill you!, and in the noughties Gordon Brown had done away with boom and bust.
The reality is that environmental science is still a very new discipline, and easily manipulated for political ends by those with a vested interest or ideology to make you behave in a way that suits them. Environmental Science is about as well developed as 16th Century Chemistry or 21st Century Economics! It's as much about the science as 17th century doctors were about the medicine; little more than guess work.
As for the IPCC 'dodgy' report winning a Nobel prize, they gave Harry Markowitz the Nobel prize for economics in the 1970's for his Efficient Portfolio Theory that was developed in to the Capital Asset Pricing Model. They even taught it me at university. That's a load of bunkum and doesn't work too.
As far as I am concerned, all these so called scientists might as well try and Climate change model my ar*e for all the good they are doing and I really, really object to the fact that Government think it is a valid justification by which to take more of my money.
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This is intolerable! Now we finally find out that the IPCC's much vaunted "The Science is Settled" Reports rely incestuously on "fundraising pamphlets" from Global Warming pushers such as Greenpeace and WWF!!
These are Not scientific sources at all. They are simply propaganda leaflets designed to shake down donations using scare stories.
The UN's IPCC report recycles these scare stories and claims they are rigorous science. Then the UN and our government rips us all off for Billions of pounds in carbon taxes. But these aren't just any new taxes that we can protest about. Oh no, the UN, IPCC and HM Government are trying to "Save the World" before it is too late! So don't be a denialist flat-earther and dare to complain!
We all know that third world countries have completely corrupt governments. But somehow we thought that by putting hundreds of third world government sponsored bureaucrats together and calling them the UN, suddenly they would be honest and incorruptible?!? Pure idiocy...
It is high time people sent the government and the UN-IPCC a strong message: "You can't fool all of the people all of the time."
Email your MP now and tell it that you want the fraudulent carbon taxes canceled AND your money back.
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hi Andrew,
You should also check out Atle Nesje, a Norwegian professor studying glacier mass changes in Norway for the past 12,000 years. As he shows, most glaciers had melted away 5-6,000 years ago, but then came back as it got colder again, and had their maximum about 350 years ago, and most of them have since then been in decline. One glacier is only 2,000 years old and might now disappear again.
It provides a sound foundation for a discussion about 'normal' temperature or 'normal' climate - even if we all sat completely quiet for 100 years, glaciers will come and go as they like.
Thanks for a great blog!
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Global Warming belief now resembles a religion much more than a science. It even comes complete with an Eden-like rainforest, Mankind's fall from grace through the Original Sin of enjoying the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge (the industrial revolution) and a great flood sent to destroy Mankind for our evil industry.
Only large donations to the high priests of the UN-IPCC, can wash away our collective guilt. Mankind may just be saved from the apocalyptic wrath of AGW - but only if we repent and change our sinful ways and renounce all our ill gotten wealth.
Only with a religion could you have so many of the Global Warming apocalyptic stories and "science" so thoroughly discredited, and yet still have "true believers" continuing to cling to their faith.
And of course, the true believers are always morally superior than thou and love to demonize the "blasphemers", "heretics" and "unbelievers" (or "deniers") of the only true path to eternal salvation (sustainability).
It is time to take a hard look at the facts and to stop believing these scare stories.
Alarmist Fiction Vs. the Facts:
"Polar sea ice levels are actually decreasing rapidly. Polar bears are starving as a result of not being able to get out onto it to hunt. Sea Levels are rising fast and will soon drown Bangladesh, London and many Island nations"
No - Polar sea ice levels are not decreasing rapidly - quite the opposite:
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007.
No - Polar Bears are not starving - they are increasing very rapidly:
The global polar bear population has at least quadrupled in 40 years. Estimates from about 1970 - when they tightly regulated hunting, suggested about 5-6,000, and now the estimate is about 25,000.
No - sea levels are not rising at all.
The world's leading authority on sea levels is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Morner, formerly chairman of the International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the verdict of Dr Morner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.
Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years."
No - Bangladesh isn't drowning it's gaining 20 sq kms annually!
Data shows that Bangladesh's landmass is increasing, contradicting IPCC forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the waves by the end of the century, experts say.
Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh's landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres annually.
It is time to wake up & start examining the facts & science critically. Unless, you prefer to have faith in the new apocalypse, prophesied to come and punish Mankind (especially those damned deniers!) for our terrible sins?...
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Hi Andrew,
Given some of your extraordinary performances on this subject, I thought you could use a note of sanity:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/ippc-sealevel-gate/
Stefan Rhamstorf reveals the real problem with the IPCC - namely its culture of conservatism and understatement, in much more serious circumstances than the cases to which you refer. This hardly ever seems to be mentioned, though mistakes (and in some cases - such as the Amazon - non-mistakes) are seized on relentlessly by ill-informed journalists, many with their own agenda.
I notice you are doing the same thing here. Is the whole adaptation agenda - including funding to help poor countries cope with future climate impacts - +really+ founded on a +single+ study of recent extreme weather events? For some reason I'd thought it was largely about dealing with future impacts that are already in the pipeline, including many impacts that have nothing to do with extreme weather events. But then, what do I know?
I'd also got the impression that the author of the extreme weather study has not actually "repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work", but pointed out that - to give a verbatim quote - he:
"believes the IPCC fairly referenced its paper, with suitable caveats around the results, highlighting the factors influencing the relationship that had been discovered between time and increased catastrophe costs."
I also - foolishly, no doubt - imagined that the science referred to in the "Amazongate" story was solid, as pointed out by your colleague at the BBC Roger Harrabin, here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8488395.stm
Anyway, do send more of these pearls of wisdom our way, Andrew. Maybe you'll get lucky and one of them, one day, will turn out to be true.
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Good Morning Andrew,
Thank god you are involved in this election. Too often your colleagues in the media are backing off the crucial questions.
Benefit figures and unemployment are false. Incapacity benefit has ceased it is now called ESA and nobody can gain enough points at the medical tp qualify.
I am recovering from surgery and unable to walk for at least another three weeks, 10 weeks in total. I failed by a long way to qualify.
My sisters husband lost his job at a uni. on health ground and he was refused ESA because he was not sick enough and the assessor did not understand his condition
Medicals are being carried out by " Health Professionals" and not doctors.
GP's are issuing genuine certificates of sicknes and the ESA are refusing to accept the GP findings, in my case this applied to my Consultant surgeon as well.
Labour and the Liberals are not getting the appropriate level of scrutiny, please keep up the good work!
Gerry
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Hi Andrew,
I fully understand the desire across Europe and other poorer countries to come to the UK for the advantages we can offer in terms of freedom, future and quality of life.
Foe what is now millions, we are the "Promised Land"
For me, as I approach retirement, this is the land of "Shattered Dreams" and " Broken Promises"
Gerry
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Hi Andrew,
The Liberals want to raise the tax threshold for all, within a max payout the more you earn the more you will get !
Foe the lower paid, most are getting crucial additional benefits. By increasing their net income the levels of benefit will drop proportionately.
What a waste of effort, Clegg has said he will not give with one hand and take with the other.
He is either misleading the electorate or he really does not understand the old "WILSON" adage,
" The pound in your pocket" this is always the bottom line.
Gerry
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The dam has cracked. It turned out to be a volcano. Also happens to be where humans held their first Parliament, in Iceland, on that fault.
If Magnus Magnussen was here we'd be alright. The Gods aren't happy, that's the real cause of all this.
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Cough *full retraction* cough
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jun/24/sunday-times-amazongate-ipcc
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