Something is very, very rotten in the state of Denmark...

...so says our brave but endangered columnist Jim Hopkins (aka Jam Hipkins) in his fortnightly offering (see also my posting 27.11.09) in this morning's NZ Herald...

...the heart's not singing 'cos there's sod all to sing about, sunshine! We can't even sing about that anymore without some sobbing celeb sanctimoaniously banging on about our bloody carbon footprint. It's hard to get a tingle in our Jingle Bells when there's a colossally wasteful, doom-on-steroids loath-in happening in Denmark. And tough to get the goodwill going with 30,000 and four hoarse men of the apocalypse screaming "Repent! Repent! The End is Nigh! Last chance to save the planet" at their taxpayer-funded religious rally in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen. That's why we're not shopping,...because we're numb with despair. Because we feel hopeless, bludgeoned by shonky science and dodgy data into a state of abject grovelment - ashamed of our sinful selves and terrified our delicate little planet is going to hell in a (very hot) handcart.
It isn't and it won't. She's a tough old Mother, Earth...more here...

...and on the 10th day of Christmas, my true love sent to me...ten computer programmes, nine researchers dancing,eight grants for milking, seven bears a swimming,six doctors lying, five declines a hiding, four suspect graphs,three hockey sticks, two tricks to play and a cross section of a pine tree...

...I didn't intend to enlarge today's posting, but MUST ADD THIS remarkable and incredible exchange of emails between Tom Wigley of Climategate fame, and (the temporarily stood down) Phil Jones of the CRU. Read this, and judge the truth and integrity of these men for yourself...from Andrew Bolt...

...the person he was rebuking in this email, Michael Mann, was an
author of this same IPCC who had his now discredited “hockey stick” included
prominently in the third IPCC report to “prove” what now seems almost certainly
false - the today’s temperatures are the hottest for more than a 1000 years. The
Keith Briffa he attacked in the first email is also an IPCC author, whose
similar attempt to “prove” there was no medieval warming is now also regarded as
completely discredited. The Phil Jones that Wigley sent the first email to is
another IPCC author, who vowed to keep out sceptical papers from the IPCC, urged
the destruction of evidence and boasted he had used a “trick” to “hide the
decline” in temperatures in another graph used by the IPCC...more here...

Our extinguished Poet Laureate...

...writes often in the NZ Herald as Jam Hipkins. His witty and self deprecating columns pierce the PC pretence that abounds here in NZ. Hopkins is an iconoclastic rebel with a fortnightly column and produces politically incorrect satire with bite. Today he's at his very best, brightening our Friday mornings with a column headed Dodgy science gets us all off the hook...

...The other (example of monetary muckiness) concerns a gaggle of Newton's heirs, scientific geezers beavering away, recording data, analysing statistics and reporting only what is provable and true. Except these crooks haven't. They've cooked the books. They've lied. They've falsified the facts to induce needless panic and alarum in the bosoms of the groundlings. Along the way, they've blackened the reputations of others who challenged their conclusions, whilst earning for themselves great renown and large amounts of dosh.There's supposed to be an absolute rule in science: if the facts don't fit the theory, the theory must be wrong. But these beneficiaries of massive research grants have adopted a more creative approach. In their world, the First Law of Prestige and Avarice applies; when the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts...But these egregious boffins have done more than remind us that the purest of research is prone to the corruptions of ambition and income. What they've done is wilfully attempt to influence public opinion - and political outcomes - around the world. For these data-bodgers weren't investigating the mating habits of the Lesser Crested Gobsnot. No, they were climate scientists. Or, more precisely, pseudo-scientists, twisting the truth to produce results which they and their employers desired...more here...

As with other MSM, the NZ Herald has reported the scandal around the CRU as a breach of security rather than a gross and grotesque scientific fraud. Jim Hopkins, God bless him and reward him, has shone the spotlight on the elephant in the room. We wait now for further news and comment re NIWA, CRU and Jim Salinger as posted yesterday. The s*** has now hit the fan..

...AND, because it's Thanksgiving...

...and from the usually very unexcitable Bishop Hill...On the code thread, James Smith has just posted this comment:
From the file pl_decline.pro: check what the code is doing! It's reducing the temperatures in the 1930s, and introducing a parabolic trend into the data to make the temperatures in the 1990s look more dramatic.
Could someone else do a double check on this file? Could be dynamite if correct.