Virgin sacrifices to appease the Earth gods...

...are in order according to Iowahawk's interpretation of the US Waxman-Markey Bill. Whether the bizzare android alien Mr Waxman (right; and this is him after extensive surgery) will officiate at the ritual sacrifices is still unknown. In the meantime House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defended the bill, saying that "...it is critical that we do something immediately to show we are serious about solving this climate crisis. Without burnt offerings of taxes and virgins, Gaia will smite us all in her angry burning wrath. So let me just say to the corporate and virgin special interest groups - don't come crying to us in 400 years, when our temperatures are up almost 1 degree celsius."
Pelosi denied the bill was anti-consumer, pointing out it contains specific infrastructure and job creation funds. It specifies 500,000 unionized positions to construct a planned 300-foot tall National Eco Pyramid and Virgin Sacrifice Altar in Youngstown, Ohio, as well as funds to train over 20,000 youth volunteer earth-priests in live beating heart removal...
"The rider simply recognizes that virgin members of Congress are often so busy doing the work of the people that we have little opportunity for actual sexual intercourse," said Waxman. "For example, were I not focusing on this crucial legislation, I would totally be porking some sexy, sexy ladies. No, really, I'm serious. I would be. Stop laughing."
Bill co-sponsor Edward Markey (D-MA) said that even if enacted into law, the bill allows a 9 month grace period for current virgins to change their sacrifice eligibility status.
"Easy for him to say," complained Kevin Warren, a 34-year old Green Bay Packer fanatic from Fon du Lac, Wisconsin. "You try getting laid with a foam rubber cheese hat, green face paint and Favre jersey..." ...more from the maestro here...

...and Bjorn Lomborg on the colossal rort of taxpayer money that is the climate industrial complex...American electricity utility Duke Energy, a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, has long promoted a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme. Yet the company bitterly opposed the Warner-Lieberman bill in the U.S. Senate that would have created such a scheme because it did not include European-style handouts to coal companies. The Waxman-Markey bill in the House of Representatives promises to bring back the free lunch...more here...

Warmist greetings and apologies...we throw eggs, they throw in the towel...

...when Al Gore famously declared that "the science is settled" over AGW, eggs were thrown by the sceptics. All landed on target. (Al Gore's face.) We now have what amounts to a series of admissions of defeat from the warmists...
Firstly a Canute like pledge to somehow limit global warming to 2 degrees C, and reduce emissions by 50% by 2050, and now an acknowledgement that computer projected climate change/global warming is based on shonky science, and that warming is not expected to resume until "roughly 2020".

All of which suggests that warmists are and always have been merely speculating about global warming/climate change, and that prior predictions of climatastrophe based on computer modelling were, as sceptics have always said, mere hot air...

From the warmist site RealClimate......We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020...Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond...an anguished commenter then asks......How do I answer the sceptics/deniers who utilise the cooling since 1998, matched with the trend lines in the IPCC reports that show warming climbing while the reality is cooling or at least flat lining?(Ergo the IPCC is a crock and therefore every thing relating to AGW is also a crock?)Here in Australia the deniers loaded this question onto Senator Steve Fielding, fresh back from the USA on a “fact finding mission” to the Heartland Institute, Sen Fielding then used his vote in the Senate to block the ETS bill.If El Nino is put up as the reason why doesn’t the the forecast’s take that into account and show it???...and......Thanks for the post Kyle. I hope you’re wrong though, because the thought of 10 more years of the deniers screaming (increasingly loudly) about how global warming is a bunch of not happening BS is a bit more than I for one can take. They could really use this to very damaging political advantage, weakening proactive action just when it’s most needed.

...leading Anthony Watts (WuWT) to observe...Imagine, twenty-two or more years (1998 to ~2020) of no new global temperature record. What would that do to the debate?...uncertainty is a far better reason for justifying action than overhyped claims to certainty, or worse, claims that any possible behavior of the climate system is somehow “consistent with” expectations. Policy makers and the public can handle uncertainty, its the nonsense they have trouble with......I think I hear the fat lady singing...

Here's another cockle warmer...imagine how wonderful it would be...

...if every weekend was a 3 or even a 4 day revel, if your mortgage was eliminated and if man-made global warming was just a figment of Al Gore’s imagination. Read this delectable article to experience some Monday morning bliss...No more ugly wind farms to darken our sunlit uplands. No more whopping electricity bills, artificially inflated by EU-imposed carbon taxes. No longer any need to treat each warm, sunny day as though it were some terrible harbinger of ecological doom. And definitely no need for the $7.4 trillion cap and trade (carbon-trading) bill — the largest tax in American history — which President Obama and his cohorts are so assiduously trying to impose on the US economy.
Imagine no more, for your fairy godmother is here. His name is Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at Adelaide University, and he has recently published the landmark book Heaven And Earth, which is going to change forever the way we think about climate change...Plimer’s uncompromising position has not made him popular. ‘They say I rape cows, eat babies, that I know nothing about anything. My favourite letter was the one that said: “Dear sir, drop dead”. I’ve also had a demo in Sydney outside one of my book launches, and I’ve had mothers coming up to me with two-year-old children in their arms saying: “Don’t you have any kind of morality? This child’s future is being destroyed.’’’ Plimer’s response to the last one is typically robust. ‘If you’re so concerned, why did you breed?’...more from The Spectator, here...

STOP PRESS...a new target, and an admission of failure...

From ProCommerce ....The G-8, minus China when the premier left the meeting early, agreed to an actual empirical target number for global warming. For those of us who know the facts... we have a pure unadulterated victory. The number is 2 degrees C above the current global temperature. There is no way that such a number could be reached in a century, even if global warming were a reality.
The average global temperature is now 21.5C and that is roughly .4C above the 20th Century average. In the past 150 years the temperature, starting before human generated CO2, rose only .8C. The chance that the global temperature could rise 2 degrees in the remaining 90 years of this century is close to nil. Goodbye global warming hysteria. Killed by a target number and, to me, a very clear admission by global leaders that they don't believe in the hysteria...Postscript: The Wall Street Journal reports that the 2 degrees C is based on pre-industry not current global temperatures. So that means a remaining increase of 1.2 degrees C will be allowed (as if these leaders who have never done anything together effectively could do something in the imaginary future). This is inside the possible global temperature range based on the rise in one period of increase in temperature from 1978 to 1998. Otherwise based on any other period it remains a probability close to nil.
...and from WuWT...
...The world’s major industrial nations and newly emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on specific cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.......more here...
...and in G8 jargon...
“We reaffirm the importance of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and notably of its Fourth Assessment Report, which constitutes the most comprehensive assessment of the science. We recognise the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2°C. Because this global challenge can only be met by a global response, we reiterate our willingness to share with all countries the goal of achieving at least a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050…"

A question of morality...

...the green left like to portray themselves as caring and compassionate. They like to think that they have a "social conscience". Alleviating the suffering of the poor and disadvantaged is presumably the focus of social justice, so, as Bjorn Lomborg observes...

...we should focus on the smartest solutions to the problems that the world faces, whether we're dealing with climate change, communicable diseases, malnutrition, agricultural subsidies, or anything else...

John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a participant in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize adds...

...what is the economic and human price, (of dealing with climate change) and what is it worth given the scientific uncertainty?
My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit "global warming."
Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me...

...and to award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer, who recently said...“Congress has been getting bad intelligence...Congress has been badly misinformed about the so-called science that supports the claim that increasing CO2 levels will bring about catastrophic climate change,” Happer called the movement to promote man-made global warming fears a “climate change cult” and noted that “zealots” promoting climate fears “are actually extremely ignorant...the idea that Congress can stop climate change would be just hilarious if the actions they propose were not so damaging to the American people and even more [damaging] to the poorer people of the world...”more here...

...and it seems perfectly clear to a growing army of global warming sceptics, that catastrophic CO2 induced climate change is a political fantasy and the great social justice issue of our age.

Spotted in New York...ex Prime Minister Helen Clark !

...gone is the power dressing, humourless Helen. Gone is the slave to spin and sound bites. Here is Helen after mere weeks in The Big Apple, apparently breaking away from small minded NZ, and asserting her wild and raunchy side; bold and avant garde...saying this is the real Helen, THIS IS ME...

...Helen is seen here among the Michael Jackson mourners, wearing a tribute ensemble, part gypsy, part pirate...Helen we like it ! You go girl !

Hamas, the darlings of the left...

...which should really come as no surprise, der Fuhrer himself was a socialist...In 1933, Hitler was elected to office. He vowed to eradicate the Jews and eventually used the instruments of the State to conduct an orchestrated policy of genocide against the Jews of Europe. In 2006, extremist pockets within Palestine voted in a Hamas government. The most popular book read by members of Hamas is "Mein Kampf". The leadership of Hamas has - like their Nazi forebears - sworn to exterminate the Jews. Hamas has been very clear about its support for terrorism. From its charter calling for the global murder of Jews to the recent pronouncements of Hamas' elected leaders, there has been no change in its worldview. In fact, Hamas' recent appointment of an arch terrorist leader to head a special new PA military force shows quite clearly Hamas' intentions. Despite this, various sections of the UK media have been trying to accomodate their hatred of Israel with a soft line towards the neo-Nazi organisation known as Hamas. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has indicated that Hamas does not have to tone down its antisemitic rhetoric, as long as it maintains a dialogue. That's alright then...with thanks to Cranmer...

Quote of the week...

...from Gary Strand, software engineer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)... "As a software engineer, I know that climate model software doesn’t meet the best standards available. We’ve made quite a lot of progress, but we’ve still quite a ways to go."
Anthony Watts (WuWT) comments ...I’ll say. NASA GISS model E is written on some of the worst FORTRAN coding ever seen (and) is a challenge to even get running. NASA GISTEMP is even worse. Yet our government has legislation under consideration significantly based on model output that Jim Hansen started. His 1988 speech to Congress was entirely based on model scenarios. Do we really want congress to make trillion dollar tax decisions today based on “software [that] doesn’t meet the best standards available.”?

and from ClimateDepot... The credibility of these computer model predictions - used by governments to determine global warming policy based on future climate risks - have been under increasingly intense scrutiny for years.
In June 2007, Dr. Jim Renwick, a top UN IPCC scientist, admitted that climate models do not account for half the variability in nature and thus are not reliable...

Raising the questions; will the voting public ever forgive these self serving prophets of doom once the truth is known ? and will the main stream media publish this to inform the voting public ?

The American Way...

...of President Obama, and his appropriately named cohorts, Waxman and Markey is "is part power-grab, part enviro-fantasy." If passed by the Senate, this will be the defining Bill for President Obama and will confirm his critics allegations; that he is at heart a destructive socialist...The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, known as ACES (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), is more like the third panel in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights — a hellscape that disturbs the sleep of anybody who contemplates it carefully. Two main things to understand about Waxman-Markey: First, it will not reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, at least not at any point in the near future. The inclusion of carbon offsets, which can be manufactured out of thin air and political imagination, will eliminate most of the demands that the legislation puts on industry, though in doing so it will manage to drive up the prices consumers pay for every product that requires energy for its manufacture — which is to say, for everything. Second, it represents a worse abuse of the public trust and purse than the stimulus and the bailouts put together. Waxman-Markey creates a permanent new regime in which environmental romanticism and corporate welfare are mixed together to form political poison. From comic bureaucratic power grabs (check out the section of the bill on candelabras) to the creation of new welfare programs for Democratic constituencies to, above all, massive giveaways for every financial, industrial, and political lobby imaginable, this bill would permanently deform American politics and economic life...When Nancy Pelosi was advising congressmen to back this beast, she said they should not worry about the words of the bill they had not read, but think about four others: “jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.” The legislation offers Pelosi perverse vindication: Waxman-Markey will create a lot of jobs for Wall Street sharps, Big Business rent-seekers, ACORN hucksters, utility-company lobbyists, grant-writers at left-wing organizations, college administrators, light-bulb-policing bureaucrats, and an army of parasitic hangers-on. It’s up to the Senate to stop it....more here...

...and from WarningSigns...What other republic is governed by fools who voted without reading “climate” legislation whose 1,200 pages of rules and regulations will enrich a few and leave the rest scrambling to pay the light bill? That is, if the light turns on. If passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase in the history of the nation. It exists to “save the planet” from a “global warming” that is not happening.What other nation would systematically ensure that its vast resources of coal, enough to power plants to produce electricity for the next hundred or two hundred years, not be used because no new plants will be built? Fully fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal, but this nation is about to waste billions of dollars on wind and solar energy—so called “clean” energy—which accounts for about one percent...more here...

...and what role does Goldman sachs play in this ? ...instead of credit derivatives or oil futures or mortgage-backed CDOs, the new game in town, the next bubble, is in carbon credits — a booming trillion- dollar market that barely even exists yet, but will if the Democratic Party that it (Goldman Sachs) gave $4,452,585 to in the last election manages to push into existence a groundbreaking new commodities bubble, disguised as an "environmental plan," called cap-and-trade. The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance...more here... and what of global warming sceptics ? According to Shrinkwrapped...Aside from the protectionism and higher energy prices, with all kinds of exceptions that are designed to elicit votes from wayward Representatives, there is an entire section devoted to further attempts to silence Global Warming "Skeptics", attempts that have been underway for quite some time...more here...

The answer to climate change...

...is according to Tony Blair "...the development of science and technology. Yes, we will get changes in the way we consume but we will be consuming differently, not necessarily less. People are not going to return to the 19th century. The critical thing is to use the technologies we have and to incentivise the development of new ones. That is the only practical way we will make this thing work.”

Well yes and no. New technology that is cheaper, cleaner and more efficient is obviously preferable to the old, but it won't stop climate change. Climate will always change just as the earth keeps on turning. Blair's statement is important however, and is another acknowledgement that the green red ethos of dismantling capitalism via fear of global warming is a dead duck. Any hair-shirt approach to dealing with climate change is bound to fail. People aren't going to accept a return to a world where energy is extremely limited. As the UK Labour MP Tom Harris says "...for some environmentalists the fight against global warming has another aim: the defeat of capitalism, of economic growth, of prosperity.Which is why I find their arguments so nauseating..." are you listening President Obama ? More here...

Those of us who take delight in vicious bloodletting are anticipating a formidable stoush between the green left factions (the realo's and the fundi's) a stoush which is steadily building up steam, and promising to be a winner takes all battle...

A country of bottle merchants...

...or as Homer Simpson said "cheese eating surrender monkeys" may well be discovering their spines and their pride, as well as honouring their national motto...Al Qaeda terrorists have vowed to 'wreak dreadful revenge' on France over its plans to ban the burkha. The chilling warning comes after President Nicolas Sarkozy said the Islamic garment which covers the head and body 'debases women' and is not welcome in his country. French MPs have set up a commission to decide if it should be made illegal for women to hide their faces in public. Now leaders of Al Qaeda's North African network have called on French Muslims to react 'with the utmost hostility'.
One Islamic extremist website carried the message: 'We will seek dreadful revenge on France by all means at our disposal, for the honour of our daughters... more here...

The smoking gun is getting close to hand...

...Since this blog began, I have posted the address details of the ARGOS and CLOUD experiments many times. To reiterate, ARGOS is an extensive experiment monitoring ocean temperatures using thousands of submersible buoys, distributed around the world. The CLOUD experiment uses a cloud chamber to study the possible link between galactic cosmic rays and cloud formation. Based at the Proton Synchrotron at CERN, this is the first time a high-energy physics accelerator has been used to study atmospheric and climate science. I have stated many times that these two experiments and others will teach us a great deal more about our climate, and in so doing will correct the pseudo-scientific theory of AGW. To their great and everlasting shame, many so-called climate scientists have joined in Al Gore's crusade to cripple Western economies, and have agreed with Gore, Hansen and others that the "science is settled" and that the results of ARGOS and CLOUD will not effect their climatastrophe theories. Many of these sham scientists will be shaking in their boots as results become public from ARGOS and CLOUD, and WuWT offers this hint that the smoking gun is getting close to hand...The end is near for the warmists, I suspect. This month, Jasper Kirkby of CERN explained the Centre’s CLOUD experiment, which is moving forward...
• Climate has continually varied in the past, and the causes are not well understood – especially on the 100 year timescale relevant for today’s climate change
• Strong evidence for solar-climate variability, but no established mechanism. A cosmic ray influence on clouds is a leading candidate
• CLOUD at CERN aims to study and quantify the cosmic ray/cloud mechanism in a controlled laboratory experiment
• The question of whether – and to what extent – the climate is influenced by solar/cosmic ray variability remains central to our understanding of anthropogenic climate change ...more here...

...in other words there is still much to learn, and nothing like certainty over AGW...and P.S, an internal report suppressed by the E.P.A. is having significant repercussions...the truly shocking thing is the content of that report. The executive summary contains a list of items contradicting claim after claim put forth by the IPCC and global warming alarmists. The contents are nothing short of incendiary...more from The Resilient Earth here...

Bernard Madoff, public servant extaordinaire...

...Bernard Madoff, sentenced last week to 150 years in prison for fraud totalling $US50 billion, has to his credit performed an outstanding public servive. David Horowitz explains...few media reports have focused on the damage that Madoff did to left-leaning foundations and political causes...The record-breaking fraud is forcing the closing of the JEHT and Picower foundations, longtime supporters of leftist groups.
Left-wing groups funded by those charities include ACORN (known for its massive voter-fraud campaigns), the Center for Constitutional Rights (a pro-Castro member of the open borders lobby), and Alliance for Justice (which supports habeas corpus protections for terror suspects)and many more...
...every cloud has a bright and shiny silver lining doesn't it ? More here...

Quotes of the day...

...from Dr Alan Carlin PhD, author of an internal US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, suppressed by the EPA, as politically incorrect..."My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide)," he said. "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down." More here...

...and the response from the Obama administration ? The inquisition...Mr. Carlin is instead an explanation for why the science debate is little reported in this country. The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. The global-warming crowd likes to deride skeptics as the equivalent of the Catholic Church refusing to accept the Copernican theory. The irony is that, today, it is those who dare critique the new religion of human-induced climate change who face the Inquisition...more here...

(Flying torts for Master F.D. only.Click on image to enlarge.)

...and...There is little that has been more corrosive for politics than the rise of the ‘professional’ politician: those who went to university to read politics, became a political ‘adviser’ or ‘researcher’, made the right contacts to be awarded a ‘safe seat’, and then became a politician. Such people have never held a real job and have never attained a status in the world by which the mettle of their life might be tested. These are not rounded people: they are party apparatchiks – automatons programmed for nothing but being ‘on message’. They are political poodles...think most of the NZ Labour party...more from Cranmer here...

Why we fight...

...A personal memoir...In 1986, New Zealand was totally preoccupied with all things nuclear. Soviet and American nuclear weapons were armed, aimed and poised to destroy humanity, and according to the green left, all forms of nuclear power in all guises represented unimaginable pollution - condemning the planet to freakish mutations, early cancer, an abhorrent and insurmountable nuclear waste problem, and eventual widespread species extinction. In the cold war 1980's, all nations had to decide which side of the ideological and nuclear fence they sat on, and in New Zealand the ANZUS (Australia, NZ and the United States) pact cemented the bonds forged in WW2, where US troops (largely stationed in NZ) halted the Japanese advance into the south Pacific.

To assess the feelings of all NZ'ers about defence, and in an attempt to justify withdrawal from the ANZUS pact, the Labour Government of 1986, headed by David Lange, instituted a Defence Review Committee. The Committee was chaired by a retired Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Jack Corner, and included a confirmed anti-nuclear "peace" advocate and Quaker, Dr Kevin Clements. The Committee sat, collected over 4800 submissions, and in due course reported its findings back to the Lange government. Among them was a clear unequivocal statement from Dr Clements that "it was neither realistic or rational to continue the anti-nuclear struggle from outside of the (ANZUS) alliance." With those courageous words Kevin Clements summarily executed the NZ "peace" movement, and in effect obliterated the Labour pretence that its anti-nuclear stance was apolitical. Furthermore, the committee's full findings severely embarrassed the Lange government in that it endorsed and emphasised the importance of the ANZUS pact to genuine peace and regional stability.

With this public rebuttal to their anti-American and anti-nuclear foreign policy stance, the Lange government had to pretend that NZ existed in a "benign strategic environment". However, to their dismay, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev publically emphasised the importance of a Soviet presence in the south Pacific. However, the Lange government persisted and withdrew from ANZUS amidst great bitterness and rancour, and the eventual ousting of Lange as Prime Minister was guaranteed. In this climate, with a radical anti-US foreign policy stance clearly at odds with the wishes of the majority of the electorate, the movement to help develop true participatory democracy via Citizens Initiated Referendums (CIR) was born.

CIR was the main plank of the groups Freedom and Individual Responsibility (FAIR), National Reform, and The One New Zealand Foundation. Of those groups, the in house National Party splinter group National Reform succeeded in pushing for the adoption of referendum on demand to be included in the election manifesto of the opposition National Party. Since that time numerous referendums have been held (and ignored, largely under the last 9 years of Helen Clark's Labour rule), and we have now come to the point where the general public of NZ will soon vote via a postal referendum on the weighty matter of whether a parental smack to an errant child should or should not be, a criminal offence. Marxist list Labour MP Sue Bradford of course insists it should, and parental instinct and reaction throughout the country will deliver her via the referendum a short two word, two syllable rebuttal. F*** off.

The point of all this ? With rejection of the "anti-smacking" law, Sue Bradford and other domestic champions of state control via UN statute have had to adopt the platform of a strategic managed retreat; that is to emphasise the cost of the referendum and its non-binding nature. The dead rat that they have had to swallow in the process however, is that thanks to C.I.R. their authority over the electorate is limited to election time, and that given a chance, voters will show their disdain for them and their political bullying via referendums on demand on contentious issues.

To put this referendum and issue in context, the anti-smacking legislation of 2009 is the equivalent of the anti-nuclear, anti-US posturing of 1986. This time however, NZ'ers can speak with a clear and direct voice ...

The "conspiracy of denial..."

...and the collapse of "consensus" over AGW are hurting the green left. Throughout the world, critical voices speaking out against Al Gore's climatastrophe fantasy are being heard and getting louder thanks in no small part to the blogosphere. In Australia, Senator Steve Fielding (left) has declared that he would not be voting for the Australian Emissions Trading Bill, and that he would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The ETS bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter. From Kimberley A. Strassel in the Wall St. Journal...Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S...In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program...The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon...Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day...more here...

President Obama infuriates PETA...

...by thoughtlessly murdering a fly during a TV interview...
...A spokesman for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the group was stunned to see the President swat and kill a fly during an interview Tuesday on CNBC. PETA said it would be sending Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside...more here...

The peerless and ever vigilant Iowahawk has this to say... The widow of the housefly murdered by Barack Obama during a recent CNBC television interview announced this morning that she would be filing a wrongful death suit against the President in federal district court. The plaintiff brief -- citing pain, suffering and loss of income -- seeks a formal apology and compensatory damages, including an unspecified quantity of shit.
"Bob was a wonderful husband and provider," said the widow, Mrs. Vivian Vvzzvzwwzzz, wiping tears from her compound eyes. "Even though he was always busy at the Rose Garden turd pile, he always flew home in time to tuck in our maggots."

...Breaking down, an emotionally distraught Vvzzvzwwzzz was comforted by PETA President Ingrid Newkirk and ACLU President Nadine Strossen. The two groups announced they will file an amicus brief in the case and file a separate class action suit against the insecticide, flyswatter and pest strip industries, seeking over 1 million metric tons of compensatory shit on behalf of 200 billion Fly-Americans.
"The President's treatment of the Fly community has been extremely disappointing," said Newkirk. "He almost seemed to relish his bloodthirsty attack on Mr. Vvzzvzwwzzz. It's obvious he's in the pocket of Big Manure."...more here...

Global warming...and other bullshit...

...It is widely thought that the polar ice caps will melt, causing sea levels to rise, resulting in the loss of cities along the coast, as well as a the majority of polar bears.
And if global warming does not kill us, then obesity or heart disease will thanks to an addiction to junk food and salt...but a new book, compiled by Stanley Feldman, a professor of anaesthetics at London University, and Vincent Marks, a former professor of clinical biochemistry and dean of medicine at the University of Surrey, are questioning the end of the world and healthy eating tips...the pair discuss Global Warming And Other Bollocks: The Truth About All Those Science Scare Stories, where they examine the "facts" behind global warming, the future of polar bears...Maldives property owners are so confident the sea is receding, they are building a number of upmarket seafront hotels. Tuvalu in the Pacific, often seen as being most at risk of flooding, has actually seen a fall in sea levels...Warmer climate and an increase in CO2 could be good for farming and agriculture. Less severe winters will also allow more crops to be grown...more here...
...and order from Amazon here...

David Cameron Tory Euroreformer...

...has, according to Cranmer, written his name into the history books with The Prague Declaration; a statement of principles that is as significant to European, and possibly world history as Martin Luther's proclamations in 1517...
"CONSCIOUS OF THE URGENT NEED TO REFORM THE EU ON THE BASIS OF EUROREALISM, OPENNESS, ACCOUNTABILITY AND DEMOCRACY, IN A WAY THAT RESPECTS THE SOVEREIGNTY OF OUR NATIONS AND CONCENTRATES ON ECONOMIC RECOVERY, GROWTH AND COMPETITIVENESS, THE EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVES AND REFORMISTS GROUP SHARES THE FOLLOWING PRINCIPLES:


1. Free enterprise, free and fair trade and competition, minimal regulation, lower taxation, and small government as the ultimate catalysts for individual freedom and personal and national prosperity.
2. Freedom of the individual, more personal responsibility and greater democratic accountability.
3. Sustainable, clean energy supply with an emphasis on energy security.
4. The importance of the family as the bedrock of society.
5. The sovereign integrity of the nation state, opposition to EU federalism and a renewed respect for true subsidiarity.
6. The overriding value of the transatlantic security relationship in a revitalised NATO, and support for young democracies across Europe.
7. Effectively controlled immigration and an end to abuse of asylum procedures.
8. Efficient and modern public services and sensitivity to the needs of both rural and urban communities.
9. An end to waste and excessive bureaucracy and a commitment to greater transparency and probity in the EU institutions and use of EU funds.
10. Respect and equitable treatment for all EU countries, new and old, large and small."

This declaration will, if it survives, reverberate around the world. The small group of EuroMP's that gather around it have the means to make history as true reformers. The left will hate them and it, (see cartoon from The Independent left, click on to enlarge) as it lays the foundation for a reversal of the constipated bureaucracy that stifles European capitalism, and diminishes individual responsibility and threatens energy security. Bravo that man ! More here...

The weight of the world is on his shoulders...

...In the Australian Senate the vote of one senator, Steve Fielding, (left) may be important for the passage of the government’s cap and trade legislation, also known as the emission trading scheme.
On Monday Senator Fielding had a meeting with the Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, and asked the following questions so he can make an informed decision on whether or not an emissions trading scheme is the best course of action for Australia to take to deal with climate change and global warming.

Q1. Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period ?
If so, why did the temperature not increase; and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?

Q2. Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth’s history ?
If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions; and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?

Q3. Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990-2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling ?
If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?

...and from Joanna Nova...Senator Fielding holds a crucial vote on the proposed Emissions Trading Legislation. Fielding and four independent scientists faced the Minister for the Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, The Chief Scientist, Penny Sackett, and Professor Will Steffan, director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. Read what happened from someone who was there...excerpt...

...Ocean temperatures have only been measured in any detail or to any depth for five years, by the Argo buoys. And as that article says, “Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has reported that the Argo system has shown no ocean warming since it started in 2003. “There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant””. The Argo buoys have been recalibrated, and for a while they showed a slight warming trend. The latest result seems to be slight cooling: see the graphs on this Argo site.

The ocean temperature data is sufficient to prove that the IPCC are wrong about the climate (the rise would have to be over a certain amount to confirm the IPCC case)...more here...

It's hard to censor the internet...

...and the outrage on the streets in Iran is testimony to the power of accessible information. The hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets in Iran communicate via Facebook and Twitter and are energised and mobilised by today's technology. If they are successful in bringing democracy to Iran it will be due to their laptops and mobile phones, and of course a more stable Iraq next door. And if a more stable Iraq leads to democracy and stability in Iran, the G W Bush phobics may have to swallow a little of their pride, and give credit where it's due...some hope...more too, at The Pacific Gatepost here...
...and from The Resilient Earth...Earth's climate system is amazingly complex and modeling is fraught with pitfalls and danger for even the most experienced computer scientists. No climate model predicted the current downturn in global temperatures, though many are now scrambling to predict possible decades of unchanging or cooling climate “within the general warming trend.” Still, climate science remains enthralled by its computerized playthings. I have to echo Professor Pielke's question, how many years of wrong results are necessary before we reject the IPCC reports and the models they are based on? ...more here...
...and from Roy Spencer PhD...it is interesting that the modern belief that our carbon emissions have caused the climate system to rebel are not that different from ancient civilizations that made sacrifices to the gods of nature in their attempts to get nature to cooperate. Technology might have changed over time, but it seems human nature has remained the same.

Zombies from the extreme political left...

...inhabit a dead space in their own heads, occupied by self loathing, obsessed with a failed ideology and tormented by their own guilt...

"...The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one's breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry 'caste.' In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either 'poverty' or 'consumerism.' In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry 'alienation.' In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry 'oppression.' In a society of boundless private charity, they cry 'avarice.' In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the 'exploitation' of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry 'injustice.' In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like 'liberty' in quotation marks when these refer to the West…."

From Alan Charles Kors' essay Can There Be an "After Socialism" ...more about A.C.Kors here...with thanks to poster EBD at SmallDeadAnimals...
...and from Moonbattery..."We don't need proof to execute a man. We only need proof that it's necessary to execute him. A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate." Che Guevara

Another climate scientist points out the obvious...

...that the science of climate change is not settled, and that Al Gore's propaganda about climatastrophe is nonsense. Now, hot on the heels of Ian Wishart's NZ best seller Air Con, and Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth, comes The Climate Caper by Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge. Paltridge is an atmospheric physicist and was a Chief Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research before taking up positions in Tasmania as Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and CEO of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University...from the review notes...The Climate Caper, with a light touch and nicely readable manner, ...shows that the case for action against climate change is not nearly so certain as is presented to politicians and the public. He leads us through the massive uncertainties which are inherently part of the ‘climate modelling process’; he examines the even greater uncertainties associated with economic forecasts of climatic doom; and he discusses in detail the conscious and sub-conscious forces operating to ensure that scepticism within the scientific community is kept from the public eye...

...and from Harmless Sky a fascinating analysis of the recent European parliamentary elections, pointing to a comprehensive defeat for the green left and their ideas...What seems to have emerged from the elections, in which climate change played a relatively minor part, is that a party which is sceptical about global warming came from nowhere to run the ruling party into third place; that the ruling party, which has the highest profile position on global warming, performed abysmally; and that the Green Party, which is the only one entirely devoted to environmental matters, seemed unable to make major gains when, apparently, their time had come and everything was in their favour.
Whatever the politicians, scientists, and the media may be telling voters about climate change, it would seem that this is not feeding through into radical re-alignment of voting patterns. The people who had most cause for rejoicing on election night were undoubtedly UKIP, whose scepticism about the grand European project, and one of its crucial policies - fighting climate change - triumphed at the ballot box...more here..

The venerable Asse Hatte strikes again...

...the dreary and humourless PC left deserve to be mocked and satirised, and nobody does it better than the esteemed Iowahawk, whose genius is a daily must read. His merciless skewering of Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury; Heere Bigynneth the Tale of the Asse-Hatte is a tale to relish. So too is this parable from Doverwatch regarding His Celestial Fogeyness...

..I saw a truly remarkable piece of ‘Street Theatre' in Canterbury yesterday afternoon.The Archbishop of Canterbury was doing a ‘walkabout’ in the town centre during which he approached a woman with a small toddler and attempted to ‘lay hands’ on the child. The mother gently drew the child away from him and told him “Don’t you dare touch my child!”The Archbishop drew himself up and arrogantly demanded “Do you know who I am?” to which the mother replied “Yes I do and don’t you dare touch my child!”Then in an incredible display of arrogance and insensitivity he completely ignored the mother’s wishes and stepping forward, attempted once again to 'lay hands' on the child. The mother reacted to this by shoving a large travel buggy between him and the child to prevent him doing so, at which two of his bodyguards quickly hustled him away followed by the rest of his entourage. Absolutely Priceless. His Eminence, the Archbishop of Canterbury behaving like a complete idiot in front of dozens of people. You simply couldn't make this stuff up...

Pissed on communion wine no doubt...thanks to Doverwatch, and H/T to visitor Norvile...

The green red left on parade...

...the usual suspects; Socialist Youth Organisation, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative are all here, at this climate change protest / jamboree last weekend in Australia. All are convinced in their hearts that socialism is the answer and that our CO2 emissions will disguise the Trojan horse that will allow it in. ( Aided and abetted of course by the useful fools...)

From Emeritus Professor Philip Stott “‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices..."

As the deadline for Copenhagen draws closer we can expect the exhibitionist green reds to display their colours and their hysteria more frequently. By their banners you will know them...with thanks to Australian Climate Madness...

Be very afraid of the UN...

...as the world wakes up to the reality of overblown, oversold green/left disinformation on climate change, the post Kyoto conference looms on the horizon...Remember Kyoto? It would have required us (the USA) to reduce our national emissions of carbon dioxide to 7 percent below 1990 levels. Europe, Canada, and pretty much the rest of the developed world had similar “obligations.” Kyoto failed because, simply put, it was too costly, both politically and economically. It would have had no detectable effect on global warming, anyway — “preventing” about seven-hundredths of a degree Celsius by 2050. (Although New Zealand under Helen Clark couldn't wait to jump on board.) The Earth’s surface temperature bounces around about twice that amount naturally from year-to-year, so it would have been impossible to determine Kyoto’s “benefit.”What’s the response of the U.N. and the Obama administration to this failure? The meeting in Bonn proposes even more drastic cuts in emissions. The legislation currently being discussed in the House of Representatives, and supported by the president, would reduce U.S. emissions to 83 percent below 2005 levels. If implemented, this would allow the average American in 2050 to emit only as much carbon dioxide as the average American emitted in 1867. No one has any idea how this would be accomplished. The president supports the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill renamed the Obama Energy Tax in this space, since it would amount to the largest tax increase ever instituted by any government in history...All this will have minimal effect on global warming. Using standard scientific models (such as they are), we can estimate that, if every nation in the world that has obligations under the current Kyoto Protocol begins to reduce emissions soon and reaches the 83 percent target by 2050, the amount of warming prevented by then is a mere 0.08 degrees Celsius by 2050 and 0.22 degrees by 2100, compared with what the United Nations calls “business-as-usual...more from Patrick Michaels here...
...and be very afraid of Iran...President Ahmadinejad has pledged his life to the ‘liberation of Palestine’, and he now has four more years to fulfil the divine will.This is Iran’s final solution.And the world’s Obamageddon...more from Cranmer here...

The London Underground...

...off topic I know, but the world famous Tube is paralyzed right now due to a drivers strike. 12,000 miles away, so it doesn't affect us, but a colossal problem for commuters, and a huge and possibly defining challenge for the Mayor, Boris Johnston. To gauge public opinion, check this YouTube clip... and the comments after it...sorry, not good at embedding videos.

Caution; lyrics are like, BLUNT, but the message could not be clearer... I wonder whether public comment like this via the net and blogs spells the death knell for mass voluntary union membership and destructive bullying unionism, of the type we came to know and abhor in the 70's and 80's ?...and to deal with those bolshie train drivers ? Harry Hutton's been in touch with a gunsmith...
Dear Sir,
Could you possibly make me a high-velocity sniper's rifle, that could be disguised as a walking stick? It is for purely recreational sniping, you understand, and would not be used in acts of politically-motivated terror. I give you my word on that. I am not a murderer. Why would I wish to kill my fellow man, unless he was sinning?
Money is no object, but it must be accurate enough consistently to bring down sinners at distances of up to half a mile. I would never, I assure you, take up arms to smite my fellow man, without detailed and specific instructions from God our father, or one of
his angels. Woe unto the heathen on that day! The Lord shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
Please send me estimates on price, delivery time, etc. And could you get hold of some explosive-tipped ammunition (for the "right price", naturally)? If the worst came to the worst, and we were absolutely forced to liquidate a heathen, we wouldn't want to leave any ballistic evidence, you see.
But we pray it will never come to that.
Awake unto righteousness, and sin not.
Yours faithfully,

H.Hutton...the gunsmith got back to Harry, as did some of his mate. Heathens and striking train drivers, look out...more here...

From The Scientific Alliance...

...a.k.a The Cambridge Network... a calm and unemotional look at the theory of AGW and a plea for scientific debate...The scientific method is a valuable way to advance objective knowledge. By testing a hypothesis against observation, it can either be falsified or supported. Not proved, of course, but nevertheless over time sufficient evidence can accumulate for a hypothesis to be generally accepted as the best available explanation. It is then known as a theory.Large numbers of people have been sufficiently convinced by the arguments to take it as read that the greenhouse gas hypothesis is essentially correct and that disaster will occur unless radical cuts are made in emissions. They have moved beyond the stage of questioning to simply not listening to anyone who raises doubts. But, what is worse, they are putting their faith in a hypothesis unsupported by anything more than circumstantial evidence.In the meantime, the belief in the greenhouse as hypothesis is such that legitimate criticism based on contradictory evidence – the lack of predicted warming of the upper troposphere, the measured cooling of Antarctica, the lack of change in the rate of sea level rise or the failure of the models to explain or predict recent temperature trends, for example – are dismissed as the propaganda of paid lobbyists or cranks. All societies will gain if we make sure we understand the problem before taking corrective action rather than jump on the currently fashionable bandwagon. Addressing critics' questions seriously is a necessary first step..more here...
...and more too, from Butch, one of the most articulate and interesting people to be found in the blogosphere, a quote from Marcus Aurelius, an exhortation for our teeth grinding times..“Does anything befall you? It is good. Anything that befalls you is a part of your destiny, intended for you alone, and is a part of the great web of the universe.”...and to close for today, from the deliciously named Orange County Register, this gem...It’s hard to keep a worldwide hoax going. Sooner or later there are leaks in the balloon and the hot air seeps out, sort of global-warming style.Even mainline press accounts increasingly are puncturing the global warming balloon. The Washington Post recently pointed out that Al Gore’s dire predictions of devastating 20-foot rising seas caused by global warming are, well, all wet...more here...

Death from a thousand cuts...

...is sapping the morale and profit of the newspaper industry. As readers turn the pages of their dailies, and flick through their TV channels, the technological rise of the internet is slowly stifling the influence and business viability of the organs of the main stream media. In the health sector, the "gatekeepers" who allow access to health care services are our GP's. In the information industry, the gatekeepers who graciously allow us access to filtered information, have been the all powerful main stream media. The advent of the internet, and its offshoot the blogosphere, have changed the equation, and the information gatekeepers are bleeding and frightened...from Samizdata, this wonderful piece...

...I think that genuine fear is being expressed by our former gatekeepers of correct thought. The rise of Adolph Hitler has been obsessively taught in British schools for the last generation or so, as the very definition of that which Must Not Happen, yet now, something not wholly unlike it appears to be happening, here in Britain! Calamity!
I say "former" gatekeepers of correct thought because that is surely the other thing now happening that scares these people. The internet, as we enthusiasts for it have been saying ever since it got started as a mass phenomenon a decade ago or more, entitles people to say whatever they like. They no longer need the permission of anybody more important to reach a quite large audience with an opinion that quite large numbers of people agree with but which the Gatekeepers disapprove of and want suppressed...more here...

...hence of course, the frightened green left, whose vision for the future doesn't embrace Adlai Stevenson's ideal... The first principle of a free society is an untrammelled flow of words in an open forum...

F***ing green hypocrites...

...from Doverwatch, a comment on the despicable greens and the UK elections...Locally, people are seeing the Green party as a more reasonable alternative and on the face of it they do seem to be. Unfortunately this is simply not true. The Greens are also extremists and just as racist as the BNP, but where the BNP have never tried to conceal their intent to 'repatriate' non-whites regardless of citizenship, the Greens have hidden their racist agenda, disguising it as 'ecological concerns'.The reality is the Green Party is part of the same de-industrialisation lobby as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. They would much rather see children starving than allow third world countries to build the infrastructure they so desperately need. Yet at the same time are perfectly happy to allow western industrial interests to exploit those countries' mineral and other resources for their own profit.Naturally when anyone questions their actions, they trot out the standard excuse used by every extremist in history - "It's for their own good"...more here...
...note also the classic Denis Dutton article "Fear mongering greens doom children to death"

...and quote of the day...Drunken sailors generally spend cash that they’ve already earned themselves, rather than running up debt to be paid by others. If our politicians started spending like drunken sailors, it would in fact represent a dramatic improvement...with thanks to Instapundit...

The voice(s) of young America today...

...as heard by the esteemed satirist Iowahawk, are coloured by their enchantment with their champion, President Obama, and relief. Relief from the tyranny of the hated 9 to 5, and eased by a regular relief cheque... leading to what Iowahawk calls funemployment...pictured left, funemployed web developer Ryan Hagstrom, 29, enjoying quality funemployment leisure time behind a Seattle dumpster...Never heard of funemployment? Here's Urban Dictionary's definition: "The condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life. I found a burrito with only one bite in it; funemployment rocks!" ...Funemployment is a statement about American society. Experts say it's a sign that Americans are slowly embracing a healthier lifestyle that centers on self-actualization, survival, and Twitter rather than the often soul-crushing burdens of corporate careerism. These experts frequently credit the Obama Administration."Recession is a great opportuning for people to get outside, enjoy a sunny park bench, and have fun," said Robert Lester, a professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Business. "And President Obama is making that kind of fun possible for more and more people every day."
...The daily lives of the funemployed have never been more public. Many post Flickr sets of their globe-trotting vacations, proudly showing off a deep-bronze tan and washboard ribcage. Others blog about their latest amusing malnourishment hallucination, or broadcast via Twitter the day's weighty menu choices, as @roadkillgourmet did last week when deciding between raccoon and armadillo....stories like Greenleaf and Browning's represent more than just a hip new lifestyle trend among America's urbane unemployable literati. By thumbing their collective nose at employment, Lester said they also are sending a clear message to corporate America."America's increasingly savvy and educated funemployed are demanding much more from the companies laying them off," Lester said. "Until these failing companies somehow figure out how to meet the expectations of the young workers they don't need, it's unclear where our next generation of layoffs will come from...more from the maestro here...

An Aussie battler stands up to be counted...

...As a federal senator, I would be derelict in my duty to the Australian people if I did not even consider whether or not the scientific assumptions underpinning this debate were in fact correct. Unlike the Greens, who with alarmist rhetoric and extreme ideology have painted themselves into a corner, I am willing to engage in this debate so that the best outcome for all Australians can be achieved.

...As an engineer, I have been trained to listen to both sides of the debate in order to make an informed decision about any issue. Any scientist worth their salt will tell you that in order to form a conclusive view about any topic, you need to properly explore all available possibilities.
Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven and Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive. At the conference I attended on Tuesday hosted by the Heartland Institute, I heard views that challenged the Rudd government’s set of “facts”. Views that could not be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories, but that were derived using proper scientific analysis. The idea that climate change is a result of the variation in solar activity and not related to the increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is not something I can remember ever being discussed in the media. The question of whether global warming is a new phenomenon or something that is just part of the naturally occurring 1500-year climate cycle was never raised in any of the discussions I have had with the Rudd government. Has the government considered these questions, or has it just accepted the one scientific explanation for climate change at face value?

...The "alarmist rhetoric and extreme idelogy" Steve Fielding talks about is a perfect summation of the red greens. I wonder if anyone apart from some of their deluded followers see them as uncomplicated idealists any more ?

Jennifer Marohasy writes that... "...the government, however, is likely to take the (Emissions Trading Scheme) legislation back to the Senate in late September or October and has threatened a double dissolution if it doesn’t get its way. This could mean an election with a focus on the issue of climate change. A few independents hold the balance of power in the Senate and the government has said it is keen to negotiate with them. Just last week one independent Senator, Steve Fielding, indicated that there had so far been no debate on the science of climate change in Australia...more here...

...and, in the UK, socialism takes a hammering...In the English local elections held last Thursday, the Conservatives won around 38% of the vote, the Liberal Democrats 28% and Labour 23%. That was poor enough for the ruling party.But Labour's share of the vote at the European elections has slumped to just 15.3 per cent – worse than that worst any Labour MP had hoped and prayed for. In fact, it was a worse collapse than the Conservatives ever endured, even at their lowest ebb. Across Scotland the SNP secured 29 per cent of the vote to Labour's 21 per cent. They also lost in Wales for the first time since 1918, and the Conservative Party came top in quite a magnificent achievement. Nationally, Gordon Brown has delivered Labour its worst post-war election result as the party was beaten into third place by a very impressive performance by UKIP which gained 17.4 per cent of the vote...more from Cranmer here...

Warm your cockles over this...

...blogger Richard Fernandez writes of the Guardian howling with alarm (delicious phrase !) over the UK Labour Party meltdown and its implications for Europe...Even the left wing Guardian lamented “...Labour suffers long, dark night of humiliation — Tories surge as BNP wins first Euro seats”. Even the Conservative’s David Cameron is finding that he may have to shift further to the right simply to remain in step with the European Electoral results. The Guardian (again !) howls in alarm:
The Tories’ success means that Cameron will face one of the toughest challenges of his leadership: taking the party out of the main centre-right EPP-ED grouping in Strasbourg and establishing a new pan-European Eurosceptic group. Under the EU parliament’s rules, the Tories must include MEPs from at least seven member countries to form a grouping.
Cameron has faced criticism from party grandees and former senior diplomats because his group will be dominated by socially conservative parties from eastern Europe. The two biggest parties that have pledged to join the new group are the ODS from the Czech Republic, whose founder, Vaclav Klaus, has questioned many current assumptions about climate change, and Poland’s Law and Justice party, whose founders have made homophobic statements...more here...

...with the loss of the influence of UK Labour Party the green/left face an invigorated climate change scepticism movement within the European Parliament. Watch the hysteria and green scare stories move into overdrive...

Death, taxes and climate change...

...all inevitable and unavoidable, and taken together form the unholy triad of IPPC left wing thinking. The green/left like to warn us that without punitive taxation and more state control of our lives we face climatastrophe. And according to former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, now president of the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, climate change-induced disasters, such as droughts and floods, kill 315,000 each year and cost $125 billion, numbers it says will rise to 500,000 dead and $340 billion by 2030. Adding to the gloom, Mr. Annan predicts "mass starvation, mass migration, and mass sickness" unless countries agree to "the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated" at a meeting this year in Copenhagen.
Now standing up to be counted is one of the world's leading physicists Freeman Dyson, Dyson is scathing of climate models, and climate modellers...I mean it’s a fact that they don’t know how to model (the climate)... and the question is, how does it happen that they end up believing their models? But I have seen that happen in many fields. You sit in front of a computer screen for 10 years and you start to think of your model as being real. It is also true that the whole livelihood of all these people depends on people being scared. Really, just psychologically, it would be very difficult for them to come out and say, “Don’t worry, there isn’t a problem.” It’s sort of natural, since their whole life depends on it being a problem.
The Wall Street Journal takes a similar sceptical viewpoint in its editorial, calling Annan's report "Worse than Fiction" and observing... ...the Annan report deserves even closer scrutiny as an example of the sleight of hand that so often goes with the politics of global warming....the numbers here are a lot less scary when put into context. Malaria kills an estimated one million people a year, while AIDS claims an estimated two million. As for the economic costs, $125 billion is slightly less than the GDP of New Zealand. Question: Are targeted campaigns using proven methods to spare the world three million AIDS and malaria deaths a year a better use of scarce resources than a multitrillion-dollar attempt to re-engineer the global economy and save, at most, a tenth that number? We'd say yes... if the case for global warming is so open and shut, why the need for a report as disingenuous as Mr. Annan's?
...and from Christopher Brooker in the Daily Telegraph...the Arctic ice has failed to disappear...it is now not far off its 30-year mean. Al Gore's polar bears have failed to drown. The ice in the Antarctic is actually way above its 30-year average. Except in the minds of Kofi Annan, Lord Stern and Prince Charles's assembled worthies, the threatened catastrophe seems not to be happening. Meanwhile, on the planet where the rest of us live, the prospects for a new treaty in December, which according to an estimate by the International Energy Agency would cost us all $45 trillion, are not looking too hot. The Chinese and the Indians insist that, since all this global warming is the fault of the developed world, they will only sign the treaty if we agree to pay them $300 billion a year. The Africans and South Americans make similar demands...(H/T PKH)

...so why the need for alarm and scare stories? Simply because the case for man made climatastrophe is a lie, based on fear, overstatement and disinformation, and becoming more untenable by the day...

The green bubble has burst...

...when popular TV satirises the the guilt and gloom merchants. To this jaded observer PC dogma seems so established, that a tilt at it from the mainstream pulp garbage networks has seemed fanciful. However, it's been a long time coming, and probably will not reach our TV screens, but here at last is a show that makes the green/left squirm... the incessant hectoring by the media-political complex's "consciousness-raising" campaign has provoked a comic riposte in the form of "The Goode Family," an animated ABC entertainment program on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Cartoons seem, alas, to be the most effective means of seizing a mass audience's attention. Still, the program is welcome evidence of the bursting of what has been called "the green bubble."
...Gerald and Helen Goode, their children and dog Che (when supervised, he is a vegan; when unsupervised, squirrels disappear) live in a college town, where T-shirts and other media instruct ("Meat is murder"), admonish ("Don't kill wood") and exhort ("Support our troops ... and their opponents"). The college, where Gerald works, gives students tenure. And when Gerald says his department needs money to raise the percentage of minority employees, his boss cheerily replies, "Or we could just fire three white guys. Everybody wins!" Helen shops at the One Earth store, where community shaming enforces social responsibility: "Attention One Earth shoppers, the driver of the SUV is in aisle four. He's wearing the baseball cap..."
...more here... A MUST SEE SHOW !

Shock new news from NASA...

...the sun plays a major role in climate change...and that's why it is HOT at the equator, and COLD at the poles. Who would've thought it ?

...NASA Goddard study suggests solar variation plays a role in our current climate...NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming......Solar activity has shown a major spike in the twentieth century, corresponding to global warming. This cyclic variation was acknowledged by a recent NASA study, which reviewed a great deal of past climate data. Now...a study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth’s climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution...Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles. At the cycle’s peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat...The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA’s own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past. And even the study’s members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes...more from WuWT here...

...and an accurate critique from the comments...As far as this latest solar report. They are covering their behinds just in case this minimum continues and their models can't, or won’t predict cooling.. then we can blame it on the sun. Remember when it was warming the sun had no influence, or slight influence.. but let it cool down and the sun definitely has a measurable effect?

Sceptics are cranks and deniers...Oh Yeah ?

Take this guy for example...Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. is currently a Senior Research Scientist in CIRES and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder (November 2005 -present). He is also an Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and has a five-year appointment (April 2007 - March 2012) on the Graduate Faculty of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Pielke has studied terrain-induced mesoscale systems, including the development of a three-dimensional mesoscale model of the sea breeze, for which he received the NOAA Distinguished Authorship Award for 1974.
Dr. Pielke has published over 330 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 50 chapters in books, co-edited 9 books, and made over 700 presentations during his career to date. A listing of papers can be viewed at the project website: http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/pielke/pubs/ . He also launched a science weblog in 2005 to discuss weather and climate issues. This weblog was named one of the 50 most popular Science blogs by Nature Magazine on July 5, 2006 and is located at http://climatesci.org.

...when the REAL heroes of the struggle against the green left are counted, Pielke Snr will be in the front ranks...more here...

AND...Quote for the day...“… the highly placed conspirators who seek to ride the climate scare to world domination have reckoned without one thing. You. You are here, and you will not let the truth go. Thanks to you, it is becoming evident that the rent-seeking promoters of this great boondoggle, through the very scientific ignorance that they had sought to exploit in others, have merely deluded themselves. In the end, it will be here, in the United States, that the truth will first emerge. … Not in Europe, for we are no longer free. … It is here, in this great nation founded upon liberty, that the battle for the world’s freedom will be won.” Lord Christopher Monckton...more here...

The world's freedom is in the balance...

...over this issue. The global economy, the role and status of science and technology in our lives, the power of the state and its bureaucrats over us, the survival of millions of the poorest people on earth, all hinge on the outcome of this debate. As the saying goes, we live in interesting times...

As Congress debates global warming legislation that would raise energy costs to consumers by hundreds of billions of dollars, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.
In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific support for the position that the warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented, that its impact on human health and wildlife was positive, and that carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.
The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC’s self-imposed deadline of May 2006...read on, more here...

Memo for the day, remind a greenie...

...that they used to talk about global warming. These days however, they are more circumspect, and are aware of the adage to stop digging when in a hole. "Climate change" is the ideologically correct term now, and of course they can't go wrong. With spectacular hail storms in my home town (sea-side Mt Maunganui) last month, this headline comes as no surprise...

TEMPERATURE: LOWEST EVER FOR MAY FOR MANY AREAS, COLDER THAN NORMAL FOR ALL

The national average temperature of 9.0 °C for May 2009 was 1.6 °C below average for this time of the year. Temperatures were below average (by between 2.0 and 2.5 °C) over most of the South Island, lower parts of the North Island, King Country, Waikato, Auckland and parts of Northland. Most other locations experienced well below average temperatures (between 1.2 and 2.0 °C lower than normal). Record low May maximum or minimum temperatures were recorded in multiple locations throughout the country...more here...

H/T Maksimovich at WuWT

...and thought for the day..."Too much democracy" - the number one reason that socialists run out of money. H/T SmallDeadAnimals

Clouds, cosmic rays and climate change...

...while the green/left would like us to believe that the science of climate change is settled, this blog has always stressed the great unknowns about our changing climate. These unknowns include in particular, the role of our oceans and the interactions of our cloud cover. Ongoing ocean temperature monitoring has cast serious doubt on the viability of IPCC climate models, and the great uncertainties regarding the role of the sun, cosmic rays and cloud formation still present great scientific challenges. Some of these challenges will be answered by research at CERN, (the HADRON nuclear collider) with the so called CLOUD experiment...and also with direct cloud sampling techniques. It seems that the more we learn, the more cause we have to doubt the validity of the ubiquitous climate models...

...the formation of low-level clouds...that have a cooling effect on Earth's climate—has vexed climate scientists for years. Current climate models treat cloud cover simplistically and make the assumption that cloud cover decreases as temperatures rise. New data from a cloud sampling experiment indicates that biological material—bacteria, spores and plant material—may account for 1/3 of the airborne material involved in cloud formation. Furthermore, biological material can form clouds at much warmer temperatures than mineral dust. These new discoveries indicate that modelers have the effects of temperature on low cloud cover backwards, placing all model predictions in doubt...In climate change science, which derives many of its projections from computer simulations of climate phenomena, the actions of aerosols on clouds represent what scientists consider the greatest uncertainty in modeling predictions for the future...aerosols' role in cloud formation had been inadequately portrayed in climate models...These are just the latest revelations about the shaky foundations climate models are built upon...missing factors and erroneous feedback loops highlight how arbitrary decisions, which happen to reinforce the modeler's desired result, can undermine a model's veracity. Nobody denies that atmospheric CO2 increases environmental heating. The problem is that, relative to other forcings, this is a small effect that is quickly overwhelmed by other factors. A slight change in cloud cover can completely nullify any effect of CO2, and we have no way of accurately predicting cloud cover—certainly not with the models currently available...more at TheResilientEarth here...

...and, when you've eliminated your carbon guilt with carbon credits, why not consider eliminating your infidelity guilt at Cheatneutral ?

Takeaways Friday night ?

...this blog is not in any way supported by Big Business, Big Oil, or even (sob) Big Burgers, but if you are driving past free-thinking BK tonight consider stopping in... and make mine a Whopper...

...and for an amusing diversion...foul and profane comments as they appear, realtime, on Twitter...here at Cursebird.com...

...and quote for the day...the distance between a welfare state and totalitarianism is a matter of
time...courtesy of Old Holborn...and...

WARNING
If you receive an email telling you that you can catch swine flu from tinned pork - delete it - it's only spam.

H/T N.C-B.

Quote for the day...

...from a debate between Roger Pielke snr, and Mike Smith, CEO of WeatherData Services, Inc., an AccuWeather Company. Smith is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist. He is a recipient of the American Meteorological Society’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Meteorology and WeatherData has received the Society’s Award for Outstanding Services to Meteorology by a Corporation...the debate's conclusion ?

...we seem to be in the early stages of testing the ‘natural variations’ hypothesis. I am referring to the ‘blank sun.’ The very low levels of sunspot activity the last two years — which seems to be continuing — and which I would call a “natural” variation, may give us a chance to sort out natural from manmade forcings. The IPCC has...rejected the hypothesis that variations in the sun’s output have a significant effect on earth’s climate.The falling temperature trend since 1998... will give us a chance to test several of these hypotheses, especially in view of the record (for modern times) levels of CO2 concentration. We seem to be getting close to the point where the IPPC’s hypothesis (CO2 is the dominant forcing) is rejected if temperatures and ocean heat content continue to fall while CO2 levels continue to rise...

...the great global warming rort is coming to an end...

...read the full debate here...

Now here's an idea whose time has come...and one whose time has long gone...

...this could be a hikoi of hope in your main street ... or across the harbour bridge perhaps. A counter protest at a greenhoax rally or a diversion from the next PETA stunt...An arrest or two maybe ...but the face of popular protest is not this...

...but this...racism in action...Some Maori simply don't get it. Pride cannot be handed to them on a platter, or allocated in a quota - it has to be earned. They want their place on the council by right of birth - irrespective of their ability to serve the citizens of Auckland - of every ethnicity.
Bullshit wrapped in indignation...more here...
...and from the UK, a comment on social stagnation...A curious thing about the Labour people who rise from humble beginnings to places of authority where they could if they applied themselves properly change the lives of the many, is that this seldom happens. If you examine the deprived areas of the North of England, Wales and Scotland you will note that these areas have been at the bottom of the social opportunity ladder for generations. This despite the fact that with every election that comes they always elect the latest Champion of the little people resplendent in their Labour rosette.The reason for this is they either get a representative who has worked their way up through the Union ranks who has spent all their life opposing change and almost always proves to be out of their depth when it comes to decision making or, they get a wet eared smoothie straight from Uni who have never worked a day in their life and gathered all their experience at the Union debating society or a Yates's wine bar.Whichever it is they almost all pursue self first soon ensconced in their big house in the smartest part of town with a single minded determination to control peoples' lives not to improve them, for without the underclass they would have no future and in the end thats all they really care about... ...comment from Flemingcrag on Wrinkled Weasel...

PETA stunts and little piggies...

...are very much in the news at the moment. Little UK MP piggies have been gorging themselves, and have been betrayed and shamed by their gluttony, and closer to home, one-time comedian Mike King has confessed to deep shame , and renounced his contract with the Pork Marketing Board because of PETA's insistence that modern pork farming techniques are sadistic cruelty. Well, talking about sadistic cruelty, Mike King may not have read about the sadistic cruelty of our child torturers, so he may not be in a position to use his well known face to denounce such depraved criminals...but surely the time is well overdue for Maori NZ'ers to publicly declare their abhorrence of their bro's shameful record of child abuse. However, as is their wont, the bro's are staunch, and child protection agencies announce that child torture is a community problem. In other words, it's everybody's fault...so really, it's nobodies f***ing fault at all. Meanwhile we brace ourselves for the next horror story...

Another dissenting IPPC signatory speaks out...

...Dr Willem de Lange is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Waikato, specialising in coastal oceanography. Dr de lange has been listed by the IPPC as a supporter of the theory of AGW. But in fact he thinks climate change is mostly natural...

...In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second Assessment Report was released, and I was listed as one of approximately 3000 “scientists” who agreed that there was a discernable human influence on climate...however...

...the observed climate change is consistent with variations in albedo and associated ocean warming and cooling, suggesting that it is just a natural cycle. This pattern of behaviour is evident in palaeoclimate data for most of the last 10,000 years. None of this is simulated in climate models. Instead they (the IPPC) focus on the 20th Century increase in CO2, CH4 and a few other greenhouse gases. The increasing concentrations correlate well with global temperature. This is taken as proof that the greenhouse effect is driving temperature.
However, it is also correct that changing ocean temperatures affect the concentration of these gases in the atmosphere. At annual and 2-7 year time scales it is clear that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is strongly driven by the ocean. At longer time scales it is also clear that the concentration of greenhouse gases lags behind, and therefore is driven by, temperature. Once again the oceans are the likely control on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations...more here...

...As the wheels fall off the IPPC construct of runaway global warming more and more scientists will join the tens of thousands of their peers in condemning social engineering as a pretext for saving the planet. Watch this space...

How did I miss this ?

...In the south of France, there is a large international fusion effort underway named ITER (Latin for “the way.”) The project was originally agreed to by Francois Mitterrand, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in 1985, and was officially launched in October 2007...as part of an international collaboration between France, the US, Russia, the UK, the EU, India, China, Korea and Japan. In 2010, the first concrete will be poured.The deuterium will be heated to 150 million degrees centigrade, forming plasma (decomposed hydrogen atoms) which will be contained by electrical and magnetic fields inside the Tokomak pictured left. (Note the size on the person at the bottom right in the picture above.) The plasma particles combine in a fusion reaction to form helium, and release vast amounts of energy in the process – which is captured as heat and used to generate electricity...and the future ?
...The construction work on ITER is expected to come to an end in 2017. A commissioning phase will follow that will ensure all systems operate together and prepare the machine for the achievement of the first plasma. ITER's operational phase is expected to last for 20 years. First a several-year "shakedown" period of operation in pure Hydrogen will be run during which the machine will remain accessible for repairs, in order to test the most promising physics regimes. This will be followed by operation in Deuterium with a small amount of Tritium to test sheilding provisions. Finally, scientists will launch a third phase with increasingly frequent full operation with an equal mixture of Deuterium and Tritium, at full fusion power...more here...

...The legacy of Reagan and Thatcher lives on. If ITER is a success, then it will effectively move humanities energy generation into overdrive, and the promise of abundant energy "too cheap to meter" will come very much closer... More from WuWT here...

The bloodless British Revolution...

...is in full swing, as details of theft and fraud by British MP's come to light. The disgust that U.K. voters feel for their M.P.'s is profound. Visit OlD Holborn (seen right, placing gunpowder around the Houses of Parliament,) or Cranmer, to gauge its depth. Speculation about an imminent general election has surfaced , but is now less audible. A consequence of the unprecedented unpopularity of Labour in the U.K. though could be a humiliating 3rd, or even 4th place in a general election, and a rejuvenated nationalism, with multi-culturalism and perhaps even global warming alarmism toppled from their sacrosanct positions...and talking about sacrosanct, the poets of WW1 would I hope forgive this British blogger for his eulogy...

...Anthem For Doomed M.P.s (With apologies to Wilfred Owen)...from NightJack...

Why passing-bells? They treated us like cattle,

Only the monstous adding of the sums.

Only the calculators' rapid rattle

Resounded at their houses in the sun.

Full mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of comfort save the choirs,--

The shrill, demented choirs damning to hell;

And Holborn calling for piano wires.

What pensions may be grasped to ease the fall?

What glimmer still of greed shines in their eyes?

The time is come for them to make good-byes.

The hatred of each voter is their pall;

Their monthly cheque is indexed, they dont mind,

And still each month they ask and we must find...

The number one, non fiction best seller in NZ...

...this week and last week is "Air Con" by Ian Wishart (Howling at the Moon Publishing Ltd.) Subtitled, "The Seriously Inconvenient Truth about Global Warming", its prominent placement 2 weeks in a row in the best seller lists neatly deflates the green bubble heading the front page of the Sunday paper. (Although memo to author, when printing the second edition, consider printing the subtitle in a contrasting easily read colour. )

Air Con subjects the science behind global warming/climate change to scrutiny, and examines the individuals and institutions behind climate alarmism. In the process Air Con skewers the fright merchants with an up to date summary of the scientific facts (data analysis closed only last month), including the latest data from the ARGO experiment revealing no warming of the planet's oceans since data collection began in 2003...It is evident that the AGW hypothesis, as it now stands, is either false or fundamentally inadequate. One may argue that projections for global warming are measured in decades rather than months or years, so not enough time has elapsed to falsify this hypothesis. This would be true if it were not for the enormous deficit of heat we have observed. In other words, no matter how much time has elapsed, if a projection misses its target by such a large magnitude (6x to 8x), we can safely assume that it is either false or seriously flawed...Anthony Watts WuWT...
In addition to a thorough debunking of the IPPC version of the science behind climate change, and the fear tactics of the green/left, Air Con takes us on a tour of the one world agenda of the individuals who finance green pressure groups. Prominent among them is George Soros, whose background and public record make interesting reading...explains the author...an expose of George Soros is not the aim of this book, but what I've tried to do is illustrate that behind all the scare stories...lies a left wing billionaire with an agenda and the means to pull it off...That's what this is all about.

Maybe so. And perhaps this comment, including a quote from Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment programme (also quoted in the masthead above) makes the analysis even clearer...
... In 1991, Strong wrote the introduction to a book published by the Trilateral Commission, called Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World’s Economy and the Earth’s Ecology, by Jim MacNeil. (David Rockefeller wrote the foreword). Strong said this: “This interlocking…is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life.”

Air Con is a book the green/left climatastrophists could do without. It comes at a time when governments are struggling to re-balance their teetering economies, and marks the start of a desperate campaign by the left to frighten politicians and the general public into futile and totalitarian, socially destructive measures. This struggle, and the response of governments, could be the Waterloo for dark forces bent on shaping the world and us to their will. Air Con is one man's attempt to defeat those forces, and here in New Zealand at least, Air Con is proving to be a hit with a major weapon.

Quote for the weekend...

...As Americans love Coca-Cola and Islamists love death, so I love baiting greens and liberals and most especially liberal greens. But I don’t do it just for fun, you know. In fact I don’t even do it mainly for fun. The reason I rail so often against so many tenets of the green faith — from biofuels to carbon trading to the ludicrous attempts to get polar bears designated as an endangered species — is because I sincerely believe they are among the greatest current threats to the advancement of humankind. Yes, that’s right: greens aren’t the solution. They’re public enemy number one. (James Delingpole, Spectator)

Well...you would wouldn't you, I do...

...a confession. A major proportion of my income, all my professional life, has come from fellow taxpayers. I chose a profession that has been the recipient of NZ's ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) funding. Periodically, when the government of the day tightens its purse-strings, the media publish details of "unsustainable" funding, and we revert to part charging our patients. With publicity, come accusations that we as a profession are "ripping the system off." To those taunts, I have always replied that we are simply responding to the market; no rip off, just true market forces at work. Which reminds me...my favourite P.J. O'Rourke quote: "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."
The bete noire of the green/left, Bjorn Lomborg, makes a similar observation with regard to a forthcoming conference entitled World Business Summit on Climate Change. Lomborg observes companies and individuals attending are responding to the global warming hysteria and amplifying the hysteria to increase their own profits. Market forces at work here too...but with a not so subtle difference, in this case the market is a bubble, created by pretence and enriching the pretenders...
...The opening keynote address is to be delivered by Al Gore, who actually represents all three groups: He is a politician, a campaigner and the chair of a green private-equity firm invested in products that a climate-scared world would buy.
Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to profit from carbon regulations. The term used by economists for their behavior is "rent-seeking."
The world's largest wind-turbine manufacturer, Copenhagen Climate Council member Vestas, urges governments to invest heavily in the wind market. It sponsors CNN's "Climate in Peril" segment, increasing support for policies that would increase Vestas's earnings. A fellow council member, Mr. Gore's green investment firm Generation Investment Management, warns of a significant risk to the U.S. economy unless a price is quickly placed on carbon...
Lawyers, always quick to spot fellow travellers, might quite rightly describe this collusion as a "rort." Interested observers like myself are more likely to use the F word...more from Bjorn Lomborg in The Wall Street Journal here...
Footnote (excuse the pun)...I happen to know the planet is cooling. Last night I awoke to find 2 feet of ice in my bed. Both of them belonged to my wife...

The dead hand of socialism...

...is reaching into the pockets of the American public. Iowahawk is on to it, and addresses his ultimatum/response to Newsweek (and to the magazine industry in general) ...

...Iowahawk Special Guest Opinion by the three-week old Newsweek magazine...Hello again!
I see the dentist is running late with his 9:30 emergency crown replacement, and you've decided to browse me until the receptionist calls your name. And why not? Your choice of a waiting room magazine says a lot about you, and selecting Newsweek lets the other patients know that you're the kind of person who likes to stay up on all the latest early April current affairs, and my handy up-and-down color coded conventional wisdom arrows. Plus all the surprising new medical research studies that show women and men are different. For example, if you're a man you likely picked me for my gravitas, and because that pimply teenager over there waiting to get his braces adjusted already snagged the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I mean, come on, like you were actually thinking about reading that copy of People instead?
Yes, I have always been there for you, a prestigious middlebrow time-filler helping you keep your mind off that upcoming root canal, ingrown toenail, or expensive brake job. And please, don't think my advertising department and I haven't appreciated the attention. But there comes a time for a magazine and its browser to sit down, reassess their whole relationship, and to evaluate where this thing is going...more here...

Is a free country possible under Labour ?

...a legacy of left wing government is increased bureaucracy and decreased freedom. As Ronald Reagan said "Man is not free unless government is limited." The nadir of NZ's last Labour government and probably the turning point for many voters, was the so-called anti-smacking bill, where parents faced arrest for smacking their children. In NZ, the institution we tend to bow to under Labour is the UN, in the UK, the voters are increasingly ruled by Europe, and according to Melanie Philips, corruption is the inevitable outcome...

...For more than three decades, Parliament has become increasingly powerless. In recent years, this was the result of the Labour Government deliberately outsourcing its powers — to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembliy; to quangos, management consultancies or unelected advisers; or to the courts through human rights law.
But above all, the British Parliament has progressively surrendered its powers of national self-government to Europe, which has reduced the cradle of democracy to the status of little more than Westminster Regional Council.
This whole process was summed up in 1998 by Peter Mandelson, who observed with menacing perspicacity that ‘the era of pure representative government is coming slowly to an end’.

...Paradoxically, the diminution of Britain’s place in the world has gone hand in hand with an increase in the power of the State over its own citizens. Determined to ram through its agenda for a new world order of which the EU is an important part, the Labour Government increasingly concentrated power in itself while it steadily took it away from Parliament...more here...

Bad data leads to bad science...

...or as the IT people say "garbage in, garbage out". Another coup from Anthony Watts (WuWT), points out that historical temperature records across the USA may be a clear case of "garbage in"...more from the project website here...

...Billions of dollars are being spent on "fixing" the climate issue, but how much is invested in data collected to identify the problem? There has clearly been a warming trend over the last century, but by how many degrees? A new report published by meteorologist Anthony Watts draws into question the reliability of temperature data collected at over 1,200 sites across the country. These sites represent the U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN). Some of the surface stations have been collecting temperature data for over 100 years. Working with hundreds of volunteers, Watts has thoroughly documented the environment surrounding some 80 percent of surface stations from coast to coast, an effort never done before...

...According to the U.S. government, a surface station must be at least 100 feet away from a heat source/sink to be considered reliable. Using the goverment's own standards for properly locating temperature sensors, Watts graded each site on a scale from 1 to 5. A grade of 1 or 2 indicates reliable placement. A grade of 3 to 5 can result in temperature errors of several degrees, according to the governments own studies...more here...

...and from Jennifer Marohasy...ask a forest worker from Tasmania, a commercial fisherman from South Australia, a sugarcane grower from Queensland or a cattle producer from New South Wales what they think of Greens and a common complaint will be that “Greens tell lies”.
Each of these groups have been the target of clever campaigns by Green groups including The Wilderness Society and WWF Australia.
Tasmanian forest workers have put up committed and organised resistance and many of their truck and utilities sport bumper stickers with the comment “Greens tell lies”. ...more here...

Constitutional crisis in the UK. Will HRH step in ?

...I doubt it. Her Majesty met the Chairman of the UK Labour Party, Tarquin Biscuit-Barell (left) at a function to greet the newly appointed US Ambassador. Mr Biscuit-Barell, a confidante, close friend and old school chum of Prince Charles, and patron of the Tourettes Society, has assured Her Majesty that his party was committed to completion of the Blair 3rd way project, once the 1st and 2nd ways were complete. HM's response was thought to be, "Air hair lair, what a nice hice."

When I were your age lad...

...a glimpse o'stockin were somethin shockin...now alas, we know all we need to know. But still, retro sex has the ability to shock...OT but fun...

...Human sexual behaviour had been studied, since the late 1940s, by Alfred Kinsey, another American researcher. But Kinsey’s work was sociological, not medical. He reported what people said they did to themselves and to each other. He did not investigate how any of it actually worked. The goings-on in the Masters and Johnson laboratory, by contrast, were audacious, rigorous and weird. Female volunteers masturbated with “Ulysses”, a Plexiglass motorised dildo containing a camera, while wearing paper bags over their heads to preserve modesty. Hundreds of wired-up couples copulated under conditions of intense scrutiny. Over 12,000 orgasms were logged in the research for Masters and Johnson’s first book, “Human Sexual Response”, which was published in 1966. “Why”, asked a laudatory editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, without a trace of irony, “was this study so long in coming?” ...more, here...

The Filthy tag pox...strikes me down...

...not the filthy poll tax, but a blogosphere baton, handed to me by The Salted Slug...
...Slugger writes to advise... 8 random things about my good slimy self. So here yer go:
I once had occasion to blow up a Russian T34 tank.
I spent New Year 2007/8 at a Las Vegas Blackjack table singing Johnny Cash songs with a Nebraskan Soy bean farmer.
People who conflate being pedantic with making an intelligent observation drive me nuts.
At school, I once wrote to the Chinese embassy to ask for a copy of Mao's red book; my Dad did the same thing when he was younger (and in the Army). He got a visit from Special Branch, though.
I have an impressive collection of cocktail ingredients, and often go shopping and buy limes and ice but forget to buy actual food.
I cannot remember when I last had hiccups.
I can sleep on anything.
I think the music that I find most emotionally evocative are Commodore 64 game soundtracks...and another tag pox victim, the reprobate Captain Ranty, advises that he can count up to 4 in Druid*
...And, as I must, here are 8 random things that have helped to define me...
...as a 9 year old school prefect I was stood down in disgrace after slashing a boy's trousers with the blade from a pencil sharpener,
...again as a 9 year old I found that I could chew, with some difficulty, 60 separate pieces of chewing gum,
...I had a wonderful teacher who achieved international glory as an athletics coach, graced with the name of Archibald Jelley,
...my first car was a 1929 9hp. Riley with leather straps, spoked wheels and a stainless steel bonnet...it got me where I am today...
...I had an evening with the Sydney constabulary on New Years Eve/Jan. 1st 1968,
...my late father in law, God rest his soul, surprised me in flagrante delicto,
...I have a compulsive weakness to get totally trolleyed when enjoying the company of my brothers, and;
...the most evocative song for me is Van Morrison's, Angel of the Slipstream...there ya go...
* eeny,meeny,miny, mo...
I am passing this baton to Butch, Mr Mulholland, and also hurl it in the direction of Eric, lounging by The Pool Bar...

Is the Monarchy relevant to us, or simply useless ?

...does Her Majesty actually defend the faith, as she is sworn to, or pay a whit to any of the noxious Bills she must approve into law, or is she and the institution of the Monarchy simply an historical curiosity and a tourist attraction, doomed by the nutty antics of Prince Charles to ridicule and scorn...from Cranmer...Her Majesty must dissolve Parliament: it is her moral duty. The Prime Minister must call an immediate General Election: it is a political imperative. The Houses of Parliament belong to the people: the House of Commons is our chamber. The constitutional checks and balances developed over the centuries need to have their powers restored. The House of Commons must be free to debate and make its own laws, for it is their privilege, irrespective of EU suppression; ministers must be accountable to Parliament, irrespective of the myriad of bureaucratic quangos which have usurped that responsibility; the House of Lords must be reformed, for it is has become a chimera of confusion; the Monarch must have her kingdom returned to her, for she is the Head of State; and the people must have their sovereignty restored, for democracy depends upon it.Your Majesty, please dissolve this decomposing parliament for the stench of decay reaches right to the nostrils of God...more here...

Shame, shame, shame....

...all our concerns about politics and political corruption and politicians' lies, pale into insignificance when we read, yet again, and again, and again of children being brutally tortured to death.
It happens in this country with regularity. It is reported with graphic detail. It reduces readers, MP's, police and ambulance personnel to angry tears. This sadistic violence is largely perpetrated by Maori men on Maori children. Maori have a melodious word in their language for love. It is aroha...yet the all pervasive culture of violence in Maori society shows no aroha, and the statistics of Maori violence show a sickness that shames and condemns their race...read this if you dare...

The tide is turning...

...the following speech by Keith O. Rattie, Chairman, President and CEO of Questar Corporation was delivered on April 2, 2009 at the 22nd Annual UVU Symposium on Environmental Ethics, held April 1st and 2nd at Utah Valley University. It is titled "Energy Myths and Realities" and strikes at the heart of the hypocritical pretense of politicians masquerading as environmentalists. Audience feedback isn't yet available, but presumably green scare merchants were in the audience. Interestingly, AGW believers are absent from the comments section after this post...
...Today, you students are being told that before you reach my age America and the world must stop using fossil fuels. I'm going to try to do something that seems impossible these days – and that's have an honest conversation about energy policy, global warming and what proposed cap and trade regulation means for you, the generation that will have to live with the consequences of the policy choices we make. My goal is to inform you with easily verifiable facts – not hype and propaganda – and to appeal to your common sense...more, here...

Nuclear Reactor realities...

...From 1968 to 1973, I was an engineering officer aboard U. S. nuclear submarines. The chief engineer would routinely sneak back into the engineering spaces and trip some piece of equipment off the line. These were not computer simulations. The equipment really would be in an emergency condition. We would be sitting in the reactor control room, and suddenly alarms would go off. We would have to figure out what had happened, and recover from it. The equipment is designed to survive such accidents. After many decades of operation under those conditions, the Navy has had zero deaths from nuclear power. You are more likely to drown in your bathtub than to die from operating a nuclear reactor.
A coal-fired electric power generating plant uses 120 railroad cars full of coal every day. A nuclear plant uses one semi truckload of nuclear fuel rods every few years. All the spent fuel from every nuclear reactor in the United States could be stored on one football field, a pile nine feet tall. Recycle it as the French do, and the pile shrinks to three inches. In 500 years it will be less toxic than coal ash...more here...
...While here in "Nuclear Free New Zealand" we remain an international laughing stock, courtesy of the green/left scare machine...

All is not well in CO2 regulation land...

...manipulating and distorting scientific findings to suit the political agenda is one thing. Wrecking the economies of the developed world on the basis of CO2 as a poison is another. American voters are becoming aware that the rush to increase their taxes behind a smokescreen of climate emergency is a charade...From WattsupWithThat...

...a leaked memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) questions the EPA findings on CO2 being a “threat to human health”...The leaked internal memo, was marked “Attorney Client Privilege”.It has some strong language about the negative impact EPA regulation of CO2 would have on the U.S. economy.
“Making the decision to regulate CO2…is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities...” A spokesman for OMB said...the brief is a “conglomeration of counsel we’ve received from various agencies” about the EPA finding, the conclusions of which would trigger regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act...
“In the absence of a strong statement of the standards being applied in this decision, there is concern that EPA is making a finding based on…’harm’ from substances that have no demonstrated direct health effects,” the memo says, adding that the “scientific data that purports to conclusively establish” that link was from outside EPA.
But here is the real kicker. There’s language in the memo that says there may be beneficial effects to increased CO2 rather than negative effects, and that man, as always, can quickly adapt:
“To the extent that climate change alters our environment, it will create incentives for innovation and adaption that mitigate the damages,” the memo reads. “The [EPA finding] should note this possibility[.] … It might be reasonable to conclude that Alaska will benefit from warmer winters for both health and economic reasons,” the authors note...

From the comments...Obama is intent upon getting at least the start of a regulatory structure in place, over as many aspects of our economic lives as possible...(the) agenda is all about control, seized urgently. Obama knows he has a limited window during which his “shock and awe” campaign is most likely to succeed. He will use that window, facts, science and law be damned......more here...

...and Quote for the day...‘90% of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth’s climate has been an ice age’...more from Geologist Dr David Deming, here...

STOP PRESS ! Sad sad, news...

...Swine Flu claims its first celebrity victim...

...and WE ALL KNOW who's responsible...
H/T the compassionate and sensitive N.C-B.

Quote of the day...

...from the laudable Cranmer on the corruption crisis rocking the UK, in particular regarding the Speaker of The House of Commons...Michael "I didn’t come into politics not to take what’s owed to me"Martin, a.k.a. Gorbals Mick...

...the sheer self-righteous arrogance of ‘what’s owed’ to him when he earns a quite remarkable £141,866 per annum reduces Michael Martin to a level of existence somewhere between the swine flu virus and faecal bacteria... As Michael Martin sullies his great Office of State, he brings the whole House into disrepute. He is nothing but a shop steward, completely out of his depth and quite without honour. Speaker Martin will go down in history as possibly the most contemptible speaker ever, having betrayed Parliament, abused trust, and presided over the most corrupt, self-serving and partisan episode in the history of the office ... more from the enraged Cranmer here...

PR BS, how the spin doctors plan to re-brand Global Warming/Climate Change...

...when reporter John M. Broder wrote “Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus.” ...he put in the first sentence, “The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is ‘global warming.’” This is a very real problem, especially when the word is getting out that the planet has been cooling for a decade.The problem worsens for them as word leaks that the ice at the North Pole is a lot thicker than earlier suspected—something that does not happen if it’s supposed to be melting. And the same holds for the South Pole whose ice is growing, along with many of the world’s glaciers.Having spent the past twenty years or so blaming “global warming” for everything happening on Earth, the public has grown tired of the endless blather about it. Since it has provided much of the funding that Green organizations have pulled in from the gullible, not to mention from millions in government grants to study something that is not happening, the time has come to “re-brand” global warming into something that will still generate the money these charlatans depend upon...more from Alan Caruba, "Warning Signs" here...

Turning green with embarassment....Arctic activists to be rescued...

...THEY went to the Arctic lamenting global warming, but ever since they got there they have been wishing for warmer weather. That was how I started a post earlier this year, about three Brits who set off for the North Pole in February hoping to draw attention to the issue of global warming and take a few measurements of ice thinning along the way.
Still 500 kilometres from the North Pole the team now plan to be “lifted off the ice” by the end of this week because it’s just too cold – too cold to keep going and too cold to get the measurements they intended.
According to Steven Goddard blogging at WUWT, “I believe that they have done a fantastic job educating the public about the Arctic. Their mission has been followed breathlessly by BBC and Guardian reporters, who previously believed that the Arctic had melted and become a place for sunbathing.
“Following the daily reports of ice, cold, frostbite, hypothermia, pain and general misery being endured by the team – even the most daft newspaper reporter must be aware now that the Arctic is a very cold and icy place.” ...more from Jennifer Marohasy here...

Multi-cultural Europe today...

...is a chaotic cauldron, simmering with resentment and anger. Europe appears to labour under an inheritance of pseudo-guilt; guilt at being in the forefront of Western values and Western civilisation. According to this article, Europe today inhabits a despondent vacuum, a trough of cultural cringing inspired and instilled in Europeans by an arrogant liberal left mindset. Future generations may come to see the elitist left as flawed multi-cultural idealists; an aberrant clique devoted to instilling self hatred, in the guise of tolerance, who despise their own society and exist as nihilistic traitors to their own heritage... Fear masquerading as tolerance...

...The European obsession with third world ‘‘causes’’ was a function of Europe’s new, guilt-based moral order. Immigrants and their children were at liberty to express politically their wishes as a people in a way that European natives were not. Grim-faced censure was always at the ready for Europeans who indulged in the merest nostalgic buffoonery, like that of the UK Independence party, which favoured nothing more radical than pulling Britain out of the EU. The only national claims that could be made without provoking accusations of nationalism, racism, or xenophobia were those of foreigners. Where it interacted with immigration, there was an illogic at the heart of diversity. If diversity ‘‘enriched’’ and ‘‘strengthened’’ nations as much as everyone claimed, why would any nation ever want its immigrants to integrate into the broader society? That would be drawing down the nation’s valuable fund of diversity. In this regard Ethiopians are for serving Ethiopian food, and helping substantiate the boasts of suburban school administrators that ‘‘our students speak 170 languages in the home’’—not for taking jobs as marketing managers and dental hygienists. Or was the supply of diversity meant to remain—via immigration—permanently on tap? No European public wanted that. So European leaders defended mass immigration in one breath by saying it would make their countries different (through diversity), and in the next by saying it would leave them the same (through integration...
...Gordon Brown has suggested that his countrymen be more explicit about the values and customs that everyone in society ought to respect, no matter what their background. But it is late in the day to make such a suggestion. The old religion-based cultures of Europe performed just the function Brown describes until challenged in the 1960s and 1970s, in the name of personal liberation and autonomy, and then repudiated in the 1980s and 1990s, in the name of making Europe more friendly to minorities. How can Brown now expect immigrants and their children to help revive a culture that natives and their children have done little but snicker at? ) ...more from Prospect online, here...

Global warming hits my home town...

...balmy Mt Maunganui, known for its surf beach and sunshine, rarely experiences a decent frost. Yesterday however, the situation changed and the dawning of a new ice age seemed evident. A freak hailstorm hit the Mount causing a total white-out. A local supermarket roof partially caved in, 3 cows were killed (either by lightning or hail) and surfers swapped their surfboards for snowboards...

Global warming is still the popular public catch phrase, even though the green left have tried to redefine their climatastrophe scenario as "climate change". This unprecedented weather bomb will make global warming a very hard sell indeed in this area...more from the NZ Herald here...

...and from Jennifer Marohasy, confirmation that the arch priest of voodo science, NASA's James Hansen, has got it all wrong with his theory about oceanic warming...ACCORDING to the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis while surface temperatures may vary from year to year, as long as we spew out carbon dioxide there will be a gradual accumulation of heat in the climate system eventually resulting in a climate crisis.
In 2005, NASA boss James Hansen stated in an article in the journal ‘Science’ that confirmation of the planetary energy imbalance can be obtained by measuring the heat content of the oceans which are the principal reservoir for excess energy.
A problem for the AGW hypothesis now, is that the oceans have been cooling. Indeed there is no known mechanism to account for what some describe as vast amounts of missing heat, suggesting that contrary to the AGW hypothesis, heat is not accumulating in the climate system and there is no longer any radiative imbalance from all the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases... According to William DiPuccio, in a guest post at the blog ‘Climate Science’, this not only demonstrates that the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models are failing to accurately predict global warming, but also presents a serious challenge to the integrity of the AGW hypothesis.
Mr DiPuccio concludes “When all is said and done, if the climate system is not accumulating heat, the hypothesis is invalid.” ...more here...

Oh Yes, thanks to G&S and to EvanMJones...

It is the very model of a modern Maunder minimum

(I wanted to be plainer but I couldn’t find a synonym)

And thanks to modern media it’s not believed by anyone

The sun has done a bunk and we will freeze for a millennium

And so I’ll see you later; I am off for the equator

For is the very model of a modern Major-minimum...

Who said/wrote this ?

"[It] (capitalism) has accomplished wonders, far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.”

Clue; it was not Al Gore or Helen Clark...Have a go, enduring fame and distinction will be yours...

PS. Temperature update: The latest global temperature data from the satellites still shows no significant warming since 1978; when the satellites were first launched...more from Jennifer Marohasy here...

An Aussie author responds to his critics...

...IN Heaven and Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science, I predicted that the critics would play the man and not discuss the science. Initial criticism appeared before the book was released three weeks ago.Well-known climatastrophists criticised the book before they actually received a review copy. Critics, who have everything to gain by frightening us witless with politicised science, have now shown their true colours. No critic has argued science with me. I have just enjoyed a fortnight of being thrashed with a feather...Robert Manne (The Weekend Australian, Inquirer, April 25-26) claims to be a great democrat yet demonises dissent on a matter of science. He is not a scientist. The gains made in the Enlightenment, the scientific method, history and integrated interdisciplinary science are all ignored in an ideological push to remodel the economy...The huge number of recent letters tell me that there are winds of change. The average punter has been told for more than two decades that we are all going to fry. He is not stupid and is blessed with a rare commodity missing in many academic circles: common sense... My correspondents feel helpless and disenfranchised with the unending negative moralistic cacophony about climate change. They know it smells but they cannot find where the smell comes from.The reason why the book has been a publishing sensation is because the average person knows that they are being conned and finally they have a source reference...The hypothesis tested in my book was that increased atmospheric CO2 creates global warming. This was shown to be invalid on all time scales and by a diversity of methods.In the past, climate change has never been driven by CO2. Why should it be now driven by CO2 when the atmospheric CO2 content is low? ...read the full riposte from Ian Plimer in the Australian, here...Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide, is author of Heaven and Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science (Connor Court)...
...consider the case of Professor Ian Plimer and the book he couldn't sell.
Well, couldn't sell until now, because Plimer's Heaven and Earth, debunking the great global warming scare, has become an instant best-seller. It today gets its fourth reprint in little over a fortnight, bringing to 25,000 the number of copies now sold or ordered.
This, in a country where a best-seller is reckoned at some 8000 copies, so we're talking about a publishing hit...more here...

...and here in NZ, Ian Wishart's "Air Con" has shot to the top of non-fiction book sales. There is obviously a hunger to know where the stench of BS comes from...

Threats from within...

...Prescient words of wisdom from the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address in February 1961...
...Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.... in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite...the full address here...
H/T to commenter and blogger P202...

2009 ?... No, it's still 1984...

...and George Orwell's newspeak is popular among the green/left... although today of course, it's IPPC UN Internationalism which demands unquestioning obedience. When Maurice Strong, the founder of the UN Environment Programme said "Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? " he created today's 1984 style Ministry of Truth. True to the Ministry's message, socialists around the world have embraced Maurice Strong's dictum, and with the help of a compliant news media, have branded climate change sceptics as deniers, who wish to condemn future generations to a polluted, unlivable planet.

Cometh the hour, cometh the technology...The failure of the main media to live up to their investigative past leaves the field open to independent bloggers to disseminate the sceptical message. Opinion polling shows that the sceptics (assisted by an uncooperative cooling planet) are winning the day. When the accolades are distributed, taking the gold medal will be Anthony Watts, who continues to rage, rage against the dying of the light...

Why we fight...

From Anthony Watts ...Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein’s words express a foundation principle of science intoned by the logician, Karl Popper: Falsifiability. In order to verify a hypothesis there must be a test by which it can be proved false. A thousand observations may appear to verify a hypothesis, but one critical failure could result in its demise. The history of science is littered with such examples.
A hypothesis that cannot be falsified by empirical observations, is not science. The current hypothesis on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), presented by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is no exception to this principle...Despite expectations of warming, temperature measurements of the upper 700m of the ocean from the ARGO array show no increase from 2003 through 2008... It is evident that the AGW hypothesis, as it now stands, is either false or fundamentally inadequate. One may argue that projections for global warming are measured in decades rather than months or years, so not enough time has elapsed to falsify this hypothesis. This would be true if it were not for the enormous deficit of heat we have observed. In other words, no matter how much time has elapsed, if a projection misses its target by such a large magnitude (6x to 8x), we can safely assume that it is either false or seriously flawed...

...more from WuWT here...

The "single experiment" that proves Al Gore and the IPPC wrong is likely to be the smoking gun of ongoing monitoring of planetary heat and sea temperature by the ARGO project. It is no small wonder that politicians such as Australia's Kevin Rudd, and Democrats in the USA, are stalling climate change measures and making contingency plans for delaying the implemenation of radical IPCC measures.

If Einstein and Karl Popper were alive today, they would demand that their scientific voices be heard. They would also be aghast that science is being subverted by politicians, compliant bureaucrats and self-interested members of the scientific community...

Quote of the day...

...Vested interests now dominate climate science. Whether climatologists, their employers and other people believe the government-approved line has become irrelevant, because they all wish to retain an income stream and whatever reputations they've established. These people advise governments, which subsequently set policy and research funding regardless of any contradiction with observational data.
Climate science is no longer an impartial truth but a slave to the yoke of politics and opportunism. If this continues, society will be the inevitable loser...more from The Australian here...

...and so ultimately will the international left. The green movement will have to rebrand after AGW becomes evermore politically unpalatable... No politician will escape the wrath of ordinary people who will have to endure higher taxes, unemployment and poverty just to appease environmentalists. It is little wonder that people like Hansen and Lovelock are now growing ever more concerned about Cap&Trade, their green revolution is being directly threatened by a deeply flawed policy (Malcolm, posting on WuWT) ...It is difficult to see how the green/left can morph into anything other than the so-called peace movement of the 70's after the scam of AGW is finally clear to the electorate .(And the great god of opinion polling is making his feelings known day by day. Here...and here...) By resurrecting the peace movement the left will of course have to snuggle up to the enemies of peace; militant/repressive Islam...

AND STOP PRESS...Fifty-nine additional scientists from around the world have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists, pushing the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists – a dramatic increase from the original 650 scientists featured in the initial December 11, 2008 release. The 59 additional scientists added to the 255-page Senate Minority report since the initial release 13 ½ weeks ago represents an average of over four skeptical scientists a week. This updated report – which includes yet another former UN IPCC scientist – represents an additional 300 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial report’s release in December 2007...more here...

How long before the peasants revolt ?

...CO2 emissions from the U.S. in the year 2050 are proposed to be 83% less than they were in 2005. In 2005, U.S. emissions were about 6,000 mmt, so 83% below that would be 1,020mmt or a reduction of 4,980mmtCO2. 4,980 divided by 1,767,250 = 0.0028ºC per year. In other words, even if the entire United States reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 83% below current levels, it would only amount to a reduction of global warming of less than three-thousandths of a ºC per year. A number that is scientifically meaningless.This is the type of information that we should be provide with. And, as we have seen here, it is not that difficult to come by.
The fact that we aren’t routinely presented with this data, leads to the inescapable conclusion that it is purposefully being withheld. None of the climate do-gooders want to you know that what they are suggesting/demanding will do no good at all (at least as far as global warming is concerned).
So, if you really want to, dust off your bicycle, change out an incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent, or support legislation that will raise your energy bill. Just realize that you will be doing so for reasons other than saving the planet. It is a shame that you have to hear that from us, rather than directly from the folks urging you on (under false pretenses)...more from WorldClimateReport here...

The myth of rising sea levels...

...explained by journalist, conservationist, and blogger-on-the-spot Achintyarup Ray...

...Let us save the islands of the world heritage zone of the Sunderbans. Let us try to find out the real reasons why some of the islands of this archipelago are eroding away. According to official records, there are 102 islands in the Indian Sunderbans. But of them, at least two have already disappeared (one is rising from the waters again, though) and a dozen-odd are likely to vanish in the next two to three decades if no action is taken immediately. The Sunderbans houses the world's largest mangrove forests which are a natural habitat of Bengal tiger and many other wildlife unique to this area. This region may fall prey to the climate change, but the islands which have vanished are not really global warming victims, say scientists and engineers WHO HAVE WORKED IN THE REGION for years. There has been very little study on the effect of global warming on the Sunderbans...more here...