Green technology...powered by hypocrisy and guilt...

...while local greens wring their hands over climate change, and work assiduously to cripple their own economies they brazenly ignore comparitive features of the environmental landscape in China and India. Such as this...Every four months, from now until 2020, China will build new coal-fired power stations possessing the same capacity as Australia’s entire coal-fired power sector.” Every four months – three times a year, every year for 10 years – China will build one Australian coal-fired power industry. Not one power station, but the equivalent of all Australia's power stations. Every four months...
Give or take one or two ‘Australian industries’, depending on how things play out in practice, it will build 25-35 Australian coal-fired power industries by the year 2020 (...the interim date for substantial reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions. )
Australia can close down what is to all practical intents and purposes their entire power industry – give or take a few dams in Tasmania and thousands of all-but useless wind turbines – and the emissions ’saved’ would be spent in China in four months.
... green fantasists believe – and that word is used deliberately, ...we can march into some energy-free or completely ‘green’ energy Elysian future...

...No, I don't think green leaders think that at all. I think they are absolutely aware that crippling an economy is the surest way to the delivery of a fatally injured independent nation; and that such injury hastens the advent of their beloved one world socialist utopia. That notwithstanding, what adds insult to injury to Australians, is the reluctance to boost energy supplies by using their own domestic uranium ore. One time greenie Peter Garrett, now Minister of the Environment has approved a huge new uranium mine, and its refined ore will empower China, but won't fuel a domestic Australian power station.

How long will it be before public outrage over such ruinous economic policies and blatant hypocrisy explodes ?... More...>

Pinch the nostrils, head back, tap the throat...

...say, me me me meme, meme...It has often been said that one of the more important functions of blogs like this is to get 'memes' (or ideas, as I prefer to call them) started and then spread around virally. In the spirit, I think it behoves us to begin spreading this idea: that people who work in the public sector should be exempt from having to pay tax. All tax.
And, no, I am not proposing to do them a big favour, though expect that many in the public sector will see it as a favour and that is all for the good. No, what I am proposing is the stripping away of a fig-leaf that disguises the very important distinction between tax-payers and tax-consumers. Currently, only those who earn their living in the private or voluntary sector are tax-payers and while public sector employees do file tax returns and, on the face of it, pay their taxes too, this is a mere bookkeeping fiction. They are the recipients of tax, adding nothing to the public purse. The number of people who fail to understand this distinction, holding instead that "we are all taxpayers" is alarmingly high. By forcing the public sector to lead tax-free lives, we make their true status not just clearer but undeniable.
It is high time that we made it crystal clear as to who bears the burden of taxation and who enjoys the benefit; who produces the wealth and who gets the wealth handed to them. It is a cheap and easy means of dramatically changing the dynamic of all economic and political debate. If you like this idea, then tell someone else. Let's start spreading it...this sedition comes from Samizdata... I like the concept, on the precondition that civil servants (and technically I'm one) lose their vote and have to wear an identifying uniform. (Many do anyway, police, defence personnel, schoolteachers etc.) Oh, and productive tax payers get 1.5 or perhaps 2 votes each...

We come from a land downunder...

...and look likely to lead the developed (Northern Hemisphere) world back to environmental sanity. Not that the NZ Herald would care to notice of course...The wobbly house of cards that represents the IPCC response to climate change is teetering evermore. The latest tilting force (after Australian Senator Steve Fielding's declarations of independence) threatens to bring the whole edifice crashing down...Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.
The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.
“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

...“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.” ...more here...

and STOP PRESS...the renowned Princeton physicist, Will Happer has joined with colleagues in urging the American Physical Society (APS) to rethink its position on AGW. To its credit, it has agreed to do exactly that...more here... H/T The Reference Frame...

Never mind the quality, feel the width...

...and never mind the GIGO computer models that the green left and Al Goreful use to predict climatastrophe, take a look around.. Ever vigilant PKH spotted this, from Christopher Brooker in the UK Telegraph...It was delightfully appropriate that, as large parts of Argentina were swept by severe blizzards last week, on a scale never experienced before, the city of Nashville, Tennessee, should have enjoyed the coolest July 21 in its history, breaking a record established in 1877. Appropriate, because Nashville is the home of Al Gore, the man who for 20 years has been predicting that we should all by now be in the grip of runaway global warming.
His predictions have proved so wildly wrong – along with those of the Met Office's £33 million computer model which forecast that we should now be enjoying a "barbecue summer" and that 2009 would be one of "the five warmest years ever" – that the propaganda machine has had to work overtime to maintain what is threatening to become the most expensive fiction in history...more here...

...and here in NZ, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith may yet develop into a very satisfactory greenbaiter. His latest press release on climate change basically says "we are as wet and concerned and green as the greenest, but we know all our efforts to influence the climate are smoke and mirror stuff, so we're going to do f*** all...." ...attempting to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 would cause too much economic hardship. Appearing on TVNZ's Q&A programme yesterday Smith was concentrating on what will happen when the Kyoto agreement expires and a new deal comes into place after 2012. Smith said while decisions were yet to be made, targets of around 40 per cent by 2020 in comparison to 1990 were neither achievable nor affordable. Asked if a 40 per cent reduction would have too great an economic impact, Smith said it would...more here...

Show me a lefty "progressive", and I'll show you home wrecker...

...the forthcoming referendum on Sue Bradford's anti-smacking bill is a custard pie in the face of the left. It's not so much that the general public are aggrieved over the attempted criminalisation of smacking, it's simply the fact that they recognise in Sue Bradford a true subversive, and see in her ham fisted attempts at law making an attempt to subvert the traditional Mum, Dad and the kids family.

Melanie Phillips reports that the UK Tories are about to announce a far reaching policy that will develop and respect and not subvert, the family...

...The family is the building block of society. If the institution of the family is broken, society breaks with it.
That is what has happened in Britain over the past four decades as part of a deliberate attempt by the ‘progressive’ intelligentsia to reshape society around the unrestrained gratification of adult sexual desire under the banners of ‘liberation’, ‘equality’ and ‘rights’.
As a result, nearly half of all babies are now born outside marriage; Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe; and women and children are at far greater risk of sexual and physical abuse.
Children from fractured homes do worse in general in every single area of their lives. As the High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge recently observed, the family courts are overwhelmed with cases involving damaged, miserable or disturbed children...more here...

...every word of Melanie Phillips' article is applicable to NZ. Our statistics are every bit as shameful and horrifying, and even more shameful is that "progressive" politicians like Sue Bradford have helped create the misery, and now want to extend it further...

Excuse me Ms/Mr Green, can you explain this ?

...as CO2 levels continue to rise, temperature readings continue to fall. Did the computer models predict this cooling ? Sorry, speak up...can't hear you...what was that... ?

The graph has been cited by Senator Steve Fielding as justification for his wait and see policy over the Australian response to CO2 emissions. Senator Fielding has written to every Australian senator urging them to look at the graph and ask themselves the key question: What is driving climate change?
Senator Fielding has suggested if they can’t answer that simple question they shouldn’t be voting for the emissions trading scheme.
He has also suggested it’s the biggest economic decision in Australia's history, one which is too important to simply vote along party lines...more from Jennifer Marohasy here...

.....meanwhile..."We've got to ride this global warming issue.Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy." Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation

Thermageddon, Victoria Australia, February 2009...

...I've commented before that the green political movement has the blood of innocents on its hands over the needless banning of DDT, and because of its bigotted hatred of genetic modification. Just this year and close to home, 173 Australians died in Australian bushfires. Green policies are thought to have contributed to their deaths...In 1994, Ray Evans bought a cottage at Marysville (Victoria, Australia) which he and his wife subsequently renovated and extended. The cottage and its extensive garden were destroyed by fire on the night of Saturday February 7 – now known as Black Saturday. In the following provocative and political article Mr Evans blames the fire “on green doctrine” and the Victorian government wilfully ignoring the advice of a previous inquiry because it did not want to “offend the sensitivities of the greens..."
"...currently the clearing of fallen logs and other debris from roadsides is prohibited. This prohibition is another example of Green Power in action. People should not only be allowed, but should be encouraged, to obtain firewood from the roadside and to keep the road verges clear of debris.The capture by the Greens of a number of shire councils and the regulations such councils imposed on new housing certainly aggravated the damage and arguably caused increased loss of life on Black Saturday. This issue has received considerable attention in the media but there has been no comment on how a small group of people, admittedly passionate in the religion which gives meaning and purpose to their lives, can capture a council and impose regulations which are not only dreadful in their consequences but are also regarded as lunatic by most people...more from Jennifer Marohasy here...
...and from Vaclac Klaus...environmentalism ...is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming. The recent awarding of Nobel Prize to the main apostle of this hypothesis was the last straw because by this these ideas were elevated to the pedestal of "holy and sacred" uncriticisable truths...more here...

Clouds, the CLOUD experiment and cosmic rays...

...on July 2nd, I posted that "the smoking gun" that shatters the warmists' arguments is getting close to hand. The smoking gun will be wielded by scientists, and the bullets will come from the CLOUD experiment at CERN, and from the ongoing ARGOS sea temperature buoys, quietly bobbing around in their thousands worldwide gathering sea temperature data. Entering the arena on behalf of AGW sceptics is Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, the author of The Chilling Stars... his theories contradict the IPCC’s theory of anthropogenic global warming, which basically blames last century's rise in average global temperature on human CO2 emissions. As many good scientists outside of the inbred climate change community have noticed, carbon dioxide just isn't up to the job of causing last century's observed global temperature rise. Instead, Svensmark and his colleagues hypothesize that clouds created by cosmic rays, which are in part controlled by the activity of the sun, regulate Earth's climate. Because this contradicts the IPCC's view of global warming, Svensmark's theory has been ignored by the climate alarmists and Svensmark himself vilified...according to Svensmark: “Instead of thinking of clouds as a result of the climate, it’s actually showing that the climate is a result of the clouds, because the clouds take their orders from the stars.” He has released a new paper detailing the most recent results from his continuing study of a possible link between cosmic rays, aerosols, cloud formation, and our climate, which concludes:

• Our results show global-scale evidence of conspicuous influences of solar variability on cloudiness and aerosols. Irrespective of the detailed mechanism, the loss of ions from the air during fine days reduces the cloud liquid water content over the oceans. So marked is the response to relatively small variations in the total ionization, we suspect that a large fraction of Earth’s clouds could be controlled by ionization. Future work should estimate how large a volume of the Earth’s atmosphere is involved in the ion process that leads to the changes...and its importance for the Earth’s radiation budget. From solar activity to cosmic ray ionization to aerosols and liquid-water clouds, a causal chain appears to operate on a global scale....more here....

Note the Eagle Nebula picture above, click to enlarge. More here...

Here's the bottom line...

...any politician, of any country, who would vote for radical environmentalist legislation that would cripple their own economy, while literally doing absolutely nothing to reduce "global warming" should be kept away from sharp objects for their own self-protection. In NZ and Australia similar legislation to the US Waxman-Markey Bill is being looked at askance. Analysis of Waxman-Markey concludes ...in the year 2050 with an 83% emissions reduction the temperature reduction is (estimated) nine hundredths of one degree Fahrenheit, or two years of avoided warming...all together a scientifically meaningless, and economically ruinous project. It has to be asked if the Senators supporting such snake-oil lunacy are doing so with their eyes and ears open or shut, and whether they have any concern for the people they pretend to represent...more, here... and, while the warmists get more desperate, they talk of "treason". Bjorn Lomborg replies...reasonable people can differ over their interpretation of the Waxman-Markey bill. Even if we set aside its masses of pork-barrel spending and analyses that show it may allow more emissions in the US for the first decades, there are more fundamental problems with this legislation.
At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars annually, it will have virtually no impact on climate change. If all of the bill’s many provisions were entirely fulfilled, economic models show it would reduce the temperature by the end of the century by 0.11 degrees centigrade – reducing warming by less than 4 percent.
Even if every Kyoto-obligated country passed its own, duplicate Waxman-Markey bills – which is implausible and would incur significantly higher costs – the global reduction would amount to just 0.22 degrees centigrade by the end of this century. The reduction in global temperature would not be measurable in a hundred years, yet the cost would be significant and payable now.
Is it really treason against the planet to express some skepticism about whether this is the right way forward? Is it treason to question throwing huge sums of money at a policy that will do virtually no good in a hundred years? Is it unreasonable to point out that the inevitable creation of trade barriers that will ensue from Waxman-Markey could eventually cost the world 10 times more than the damage climate change could ever have wrought?
Today’s focus on ineffective and costly climate policies shows poor judgment. But I would never want to shut down discussion about these issues – whether it is with Gore, Hansen, or Krugman. Everybody involved in this discussion should spend more time building and acknowledging good arguments, and less time telling others what they cannot say. Wanting to shut down the discussion is simply treason against reason...more here...

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, 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...