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...

It was 30 years ago today...

...that Margaret Thatcher was elected to power. (Click to enlarge image.) For the left wing and the marxists within the unions, a disaster. For those in Britain who were happy with Britain in decline, a wake up call, and for those who looked for a clear and unambiguous anti-communist voice at the height of the cold war, a beacon of hope...and for those who feared and hated her, attempted assassination...

...Margaret Thatcher did not only leave her stamp on her own party: she also transformed the Opposition, for many of her reforms were retained by Tony Blair’s New Labour with his ‘Third Way’ fusion of mutual exclusives. The tragedy is that Labour has now reverted to type: with its instinct for centralisation and bureaucratic control; its financial incontinence; its loathing of liberty and personal responsibility; its envy of the rich and successful who once again face punitive levels of taxation. Once again, Labour has brought the nation to the edge of bankruptcy. The life blood of British identity has again been poured out as a sacrifice to a utopian Socialism which stifles, strangles, oppresses and deceives. On this 30th anniversary of her coming to power, it is worth remembering Margaret Thatcher's remarkable political achievements which eclipse her personal failings like a thousands suns. If ever another Margaret Thatcher were needed, it is now.

More from the incomparable Cranmer here...

Take the global warming test if you dare...

...Andrew Bolt challenges AGW enthusiasts...IT'S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever. And that's just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours - and all over our global warming alarmists.
Time's up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week. Doubt it? Then here's a test...

Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your "proofs" are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming. And if your "proofs" indeed turn out to be false, don't get angry with me. Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?
So let's see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions...more from Andrew Bolt here...

British, you know...

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun

The Japanese don’t care to, the Chinese wouldn’t dare to

Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve till one

But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun...

Noel Coward, 1931

...Persistence is the British trait which kept the Shackleton crew alive and helped England withstand the Nazi’s throughout World War II. Persistence (and lunacy) inspired the late Sir Arthur Strebe-Greebling to spend 30 years attempting to teach ravens to fly underwater. Persistence keeps the Catlin Crew going and kept Lewis Pugh relentlessly paddling his kayak over Arctic Ice towards the pole. And it is the same trait which keeps the UK Met Office forecasting warm summers year after year. The Met Office forecast 2007 to be the warmest year ever globally, and a hot summer in the UK. Instead it turned out to be a cool summer and the rainiest on record in England. Similar story for summer 2008 and winter 2008-2009 . Yet in fine British tradition the Met Office remains undaunted ...more from WuWT here...

Can we solve climate change ?

...readers of this blog will understand the answer to this question immediately. No of course we can't solve climate change. No more than we can "solve" the problem of rainbows or volcanoes. And Mike Hulme, professor of Climate Change at East Anglia University agrees. He says "we are heading up a "dead end" by putting climate change science at the top of the political agenda.
In fact he thinks we are pretty arrogant to think we can control the climate.
...Mike, who has spent the last 25 years researching climate change, has just written a book about climate change where he questions why climate change has become "the mother of all issues... we should take the spotlight away from climate change at the top of the pile.
It is rather hubristic to think we can actually control climate. Climate change is the new human condition we have to live with. Let's accept this is the new reality.
Don't construct the problem in a way which means we cannot have a solution which is the way I think we have got it constructed at the moment." ...More here...

While remaining a believer in AGW, Mike Hulme at least reinforces the views of realists such as Bjorn Lomborg who argues that billions spent on climate change would be better targeted towards providing sanitation and safe water supplies to millions of people around the world who lack the basic amenities of life...and Lomborg also observes ...strategies to reduce carbon have failed. Meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, politicians from wealthy countries promised to cut emissions by 2000, but did no such thing. In Kyoto in 1997, leaders promised even stricter reductions by 2010, yet emissions have kept increasing unabated. Still, the leaders plan to meet in Copenhagen this December to agree to even more of the same — drastic reductions in emissions that no one will live up to. Another decade will be wasted...more here...

Bjorn Lomborg would also presumably support Tom Harris,UK Labour MP, who writes on his blog... 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...

Polar bears at play...

...In 2001, Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering speculated that rising global temperatures were naturally increasing the levels of carbon dioxide, not the other way around, and that global warming was a "natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years."

...Here's how Essenhigh sees the global temperature system working: As temperatures rise, the carbon dioxide equilibrium in the water changes, and this releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to this scenario, atmospheric carbon dioxide is then an indicator of rising temperatures -- not the driving force behind it.
Essenhigh attributes the current reported rise in global temperatures to a natural cycle of warming and cooling...According to Essenhigh's estimations, Earth may reach a peak in the current temperature profile within the next 10 to 20 years, and then it could begin to cool into a new ice age. Essenhigh knows that his scientific opinion is a minority one. As far as he knows, he's the only person who's linked global warming and carbon dioxide in this particular way...more here...

...In light of the fact that solar activity is the lowest that it has been for a hundred years, an overall cooling planet is to be expected. Whether the good professor's theory is correct is as yet unknown. Time will tell. But the fact remains, that overall, CO2 levels are increasing, and the planet is showing a cooling, not warming trend. None of the IPPC forecasts predicted this persistent cooling yet we are expected to compromise our national economies, our freedom of movement, and pay more for energy use on the basis of IPPC computer modelling...

The Sun influence climate change ? Come off it...

...Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has been believed? Climatologists had dismissed the idea and some solar scientists have been reticent about it because of its connections with those who those who deny climate change. But now the speculation has grown louder because of what is happening to our Sun. No living scientist has seen it behave this way. There are no sunspots.
The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it’s gone on far longer than anyone expected – and there is no sign of the Sun waking up. “This is the lowest we’ve ever seen. We thought we’d be out of it by now, but we’re not,” says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. And it’s not just the sunspots that are causing concern. There is also the so-called solar wind – streams of particles the Sun pours out – that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree. “This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming...more from The Independent here...

If they could, the green/left would censor these pictures...

...of US submarines at and near the North pole because they refute the idea that our planet is experiencing unprecedented arctic ice melt.
If any one factor is causing loss of interest with the main news sources we have once trusted and now despise, it is so-called "advocacy journalism." In this case the media's uncritical approach to climate change. These pictures are unlikely to make it to the front page or the TV news, but are available to the public, and reinforce the fact that present day climatic conditions are simply part of normal cyclical change...clockwise from left, USS Skate at and near the North Pole, March 1959, USS Hawkbill at the North Pole 1999, and 3 submarines, including HMS Superb at the Pole in 1987...

from WuWT...
...What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like “NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER”? Or maybe “Global warming melts North Pole”? Perhaps we would. Sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines...more from WUWT here...

P.S. Take another look too, at Congressman Waxman's comment posted here yesterday. I wonder if anyone may show these pictures to him ?
...and before you go, take a trip down memory lane to revisit the very first Earth Day 1970...

...Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions. "We have about five more years at the outside to do something," ecologist Kenneth Watt declared to a Swarthmore College audience on April 19, 1970. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that "civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation," wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment. The day after Earth Day, even the staid New York Times editorial page warned, "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." Very Apocalypse Now.Three decades later, of course, the world hasn't come to an end; if anything, the planet's ecological future has never looked so promising. With half a billion people suiting up around the globe for Earth Day 2000, now is a good time to look back on the predictions made at the first Earth Day and see how they've held up and what we can learn from them. The short answer: The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong...more from Reason here...

Quote of the day...

...courtesy of WuWT...from Congressman Henry Waxman, Chairman, Committee on Energy and Commerce...leading to this comment from Sam the Skeptic...
...Words failed me when I first read this quote. They continue to fail me today. There never was any chance of anything I have read anywhere since last Sunday ever being in the same horse race as this for Quote of the Week.,..fellow-sufferers, really do be afraid. If this is what US politicians genuinely believe and they do not have enough of an open mind to consider they may have got the facts wrong, then we are indeed doomed...

“We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point - they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by that ice cap...”

...That’s probably the scariest statement on “science” ever uttered by a Congressman.
Let me go on record by saying Waxman is stunningly and stupidly misinformed and intellectually inadequate for the tasks at hand that bears his name: The Waxman-Markey Bill

...more from WuWT here...

This is becoming laugh out loud material...

...From the once esteemed London Telegraph comes this amazing GOOD NEWS story, bylined in today's NZ Herald as "Pollution stalls climate change, scientists find".

Well...our awful pollution via our filthy capitalistic excess can't be all that bad after all... The climate has stopped misbehaving and leading us to climatastrophe, thanks apparently to all our efforts with disposable nappies, plastic bags and SUV's and leaving the TV's on standby...ripper ! Greenies will be slightly thrilled ...I think. (Nothing to do of course, with the fact that solar activity is at a 100 year low, it's the use of our wasteful and destructive aerosols, plastics, oil and coal that's put the spanner in the climate change works). But there's a lot more...the article continues...

...Pollution is protecting the world from climate change, according to 2 new studies.

The first found that the hole in the ozone layer, caused by the use of CFC's, has prevented the melting of Antarctica, even as the rest of the world warms. The second found that plants absorb more carbon dioxide under polluted skies, thereby slowing global warming...

...mmm. Hang on. Haven't we been told ad nauseum that our "pollution" acts as an envelope, trapping "greenhouse" heat ? Anyway, fair enough, carry on, there's more...

...Scientists said the findings made it even more important to cut carbon emmissions as pollution from CFC's and other sources was expected to decrease...the survey found sea ice in the South Pole has increased at a rate of 100,000 sq.kilometres a decade...even as the ice cap around the North Pole melts. The scientists said the reason was the hole in the ozone layer...the ozone layer absorbs heat in the atmosphere, but the emergence of the hole...has cooled temperatures, resulting in more ice...

...Professor John Turner, one of the lead authors said, "...the results underlined the complexity of climate change..." (more from Prof. Turner here.) You are so right Professor...the phrase "headless chooks" comes to mind... I thought the science of climate change was all cut, dusted and settled. Meanwhile, what does Anthony Watt (Watt's up with That WuWT) think of it all ?

here's his take on it......Last weeks’ top Antarctic AGW story was :Antarctic ice melting faster than expected, due to CO2, of course. This week the #1 story is :Antarctic ice spreading but the increase in size is due to “stratospheric ozone depletion” which is of course also caused by man-made gases...So Antarctic ice is disappearing faster than expected due to man, and it is also expanding in size due to man... and one minor problem with the ozone hole theory ”The ozone hole occurs during the Antarctic spring, from September to early December” - but the positive ice anomaly occurred during the autumn and winter (March through July)...more from WuWT here...

Soccer dads make a subtle point...for St. George's Day...

Academic combat...a lot of hot air...

...THERE'S nothing like healthy academic combat. In the corridors of Adelaide University, two respected professors on opposite sides of the climate change debate are pushing their theories on the subject, sparked by a new book that has sceptics rubbing their hands with glee.
Outspoken academic geologist Ian Plimer yesterday launched Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science, concluding that scientific modelling had placed too much emphasis on the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming should not be blamed on increased human activity.
Speaking after the launch yesterday, Professor Plimer accused high-profile climate change advocates such as former US vice-president Al Gore of "scaring people witless" with theories about the world ending.
He also said 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery pushed a "political line" and had considered only a "small body of evidence" when studying global warming.
Many scientists, he said, had not considered the history of the earth when discussing climate change, or factors including the earth's rotation, changing tides and solar winds... more from The Australian, here...

... and while the academics debate, the general public become ever more sceptical...Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying...more from the Rasmussen Reports here...
...and from WUWT...Nearly half (48%) believe the cause is naturally occurring planetary trends. Just a year ago, only 34% said warming was a natural phenomenon, while 47% said human activity was placing the planet at risk of disastrous climate change. That’s a huge shift...

Antarctic ice...the real picture...

...While Al Gore and green/left politicians like to whip up fear of catastrophic sea level rise and melting glaciers and ice shelves, the truth of course is not so scary...in fact ice cover is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts "are concerned" at ice losses on the continent's western coast.

The apparent ice loss on the Western Peninsula is more than countered by increasing ice mass in East Antarctica...East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week's meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown "significant cooling in recent decades".

... Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica...more here... and more from The Australian here... and here...

and, (right) from this morning's NZ Herald, captioned "Another plastic bag we can do without"...a sign that arch PC Joris de Bres, (Race Relations Commissar) is stretching community tolerance to breaking point...

Is Geert Wilders the canary in the mine ?

...he certainly looks the part, but the song that he sings isn't melodious. I have posted about Wilders before. He is a Dutch Freedom Party MP, and was refused admission to the UK because it was feared he may incite racial hatred towards followers of Islam. Wilders had in fact been invited to the House of Lords to screen his movie Fitna, and his banning was seen by exhausted Brits as another sign that the UK, the cradle of democracy, was kowtowing towards Labour party Islamic voters. In the following speech, delivered in the USA Wilders outlines his opinions...
The resolute Cranmer carries the speech in full here, but this is worth watching...

Blogger Butch...

...seems to like to write between bouts of boozing, on and around his flatboat on London's Thames. His must-read offerings have the precise measure of controlled anger, nostalgia, satire and scathing wit that this jaded and nearly defeated reader/blogger needs. His name (and the nickname Butch, short for butcher) was also affectionately given to Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris by his crews, and Blogger Butch closely mirrors their cynical affection for their boss with his observations of his fellow men. (Although Blogger Butch takes his inspiration from Butch Cassidy, rather than the War Cabinet)...yesterday, Butch points out, was the 185th anniversary of the death of Lord Byron...

If a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours.
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on the head for his labours.
To do good for mankind is the chivalrous plan
And is always so nobly requited;
So battle for freedom wherever you can,
And if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted.

Butch and I battle on in our own way for freedom, on the blogosphere. There is still "freedom to fight for at home", although anti-freedom forces are hard at work, more so I think in the UK rather than NZ. However, the blogosphere has an international reach that Adlai Stevenson may have had in mind when he said: "The first principle of a free society is an untrammelled flow of words in an open forum. "

"Keep blogging Butch, it's what you're good at".

The war on terror...

...takes a fiendish new twist, with the arrival of the deadly curry bum blast. CCTV cameras are being scoured as we speak for bum blast terrorists in overly baggy suicide pants.

Anti-terror police squads are frantically installing automatic premature bum blast detonation modules consisting of random thunderflash fireworks designed to startle the would be assassins before they get to their detonation point...H/T to ever vigilant blogger Old Holborn...

Quotes of the WEEK...

“It’s never wise to imagine that either man or technology has the upper hand in the natural world.” Pen Hadow, leader of the now farcical Catlin Arctic Ice Survey. More from WuWT, here...

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it." P.J.O'Rourke. (Speaking in Auckland on April 30th. See http://www.cis.org.au/.)

...and I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts. Ronald Reagan 1989

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum. Adlai Stevenson.

Playing with models...

...The argument about the cause of climate change is not like faith or religion, right or wrong; it’s a scientific hypothesis. Climate models are produced by computers that are fed a series of equations and assumptions and then spit out a prediction of rapid global warming. To date these models have failed to identify the current planetary cooling. In 2006 NASA scientists said the cooling was just a “speed bump” on the road to global warming.Many factors contribute to the climate... we are in the second-quietest period of sunspots since 1900... volcanic activity, sunspots, ocean currents, global winds, and more interact to cool and warm Earth. Man plays a role, but it is dwarfed by the natural variability of the planet.The media support the idea of man-made warming through the omission of important facts. They fail to tell the public that glaciers grew in Alaska in 2008—the first time in 250 years—or that overall ice coverage in Antarctica has reached an all-time record level.

We cannot assume that the data used to report the worldwide temperature warming are accurate... Anthony Watts, (What's up With That) a former television meteorologist and expert on weather measurement, discovered hundreds of the U.S. observational stations are not compliant with NOAA regulations...

...Examination of past data shows there have been far more alarming temperature trends than we have witnessed recently. Evidence found in ice cores shows where temperatures in Greenland rose 15 F (8 C) in less than a decade. No Hummer caused that meteoric rise in temperature...The entire premise of man controlling the weather or climate will, if left unchallenged, yield rules and regulations as crazy as the very premise on which they will be based. Conserve, preserve, and find alternative forms of energy. But let’s do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because of the fear associated with some unproven hypothesis...more here...

Every totalitarian regime needs its defining myth...

...With the green church it is the sanctity of Mother Earth and mankind's polluting influence on her ...with the Nazis, it was the “Aryan” fantasy of racial purity...Global warming is not indisputable. Thousands of highly qualified and experienced scientists question it. But the problem is that global warming is not being treated as a theory, a possibility, but as a truth of nature on a par with the law of gravity. It is the unassailable myth of the new totalitarians...Rigorous examination of hypotheses is the very basis of science. And this is what is being asked for by, among other intelligent sources, The Scientific Alliance. I quote: “The whole juggernaut of global warming is based on a framework which accepts the International Panel on Climate Change’s view of the enhanced greenhouse effect as indisputable truth. Hence the refusal to concede that any degree of scepticism or a different interpretation of evidence is legitimate. So it is even more important for critical points to be raised and debate encouraged.
Scientific understanding will benefit from this: and the better the understanding, the better any necessary response can be formulated.” More, here...
...The kiwi response ? We are seeing the emergence of pragmatic politics when dealing with global warming hysteria.We have a government line that expresses interest and concern (and keeps AGW sceptic Rodney Hide silent, no easy task) yet does enough to soothe the panicked and the green/left agitators. A wait and see policy that is classic Sir Humphrey Appleby greenwash...very clever stuff. And time of course, and the refusal of the planet to start warming up again is diluting public interest by the day...
...and from the late Sir John Maddox ( honorary fellow of the Royal Society, author of The Doomsday Syndrome and ex editor of Nature magazine)...
"One of the distressing features of the present debate about the environment is the way in which it is supposed to be an argument between farsighted people with the interests of humanity at heart and others who care not a tuppence for the future.... This false dichotomy conceals a host of important issues." And, he continues, "The doomsday cause would be more telling if it were more securely grounded in facts, better informed by a sense of history and an awareness of economics and less cataclysmic in temper. .. Too often, reality is oversimplified or even ignored, so that there is a danger that much of this gloomy foreboding about the immediate future will accomplish the opposite of what its authors intend. Instead of alerting people to important problems, it may seriously undermine the capacity of the human race to look out for its survival. The doomsday syndrome may be in itself as much a hazard as any of the conundrums which society has created for itself." More here...and here...

There is a sin at the heart of Labour...

... and a desperate feeling of loss. With no ideological underpinning Labour MP's must take a trip down nostalgia lane to the left, or snuggle in to the political centre. If they become centrists they risk becoming indistinguishable from Tories, if they retreat to the left they become yesterdays socialists or a diluted version of the luddite greens.

In the UK individual Labour MP's of character are bucking the government line and declaring an independence of thought. Two in particular stand out as men of principle; Tom Harris and Frank Field. Both have distanced themselves from their corrupt and dawdling political masters. Harris recently quite flatly stated...the fight against global warming has another aim: the defeat of capitalism, of economic growth, of prosperity. Which is why I find (green) arguments so nauseating...unless we can find a way of saving the planet without sacrificing prosperity – here and in developing countries – then the fight is already lost...
...and from Frank Field, who describes the UK Labour Party as "staring into the abyss"

...It is this contrast between how we should be behaving, and what has been exposed, that is the real killer. A necessary government information machine has been corrupted by a spin that seeks not to inform but control and, if needs be destroy. And it has been in existence for over a decade... If this is the war the Prime Minister thinks the country wants he is in for a very rude awakening. In the meantime, Labour supporters are left bewildered and wondering what happened to the moral crusading side of our mission...
Addendum: "Above all, The Man said, we must avoid having the sort of debate
that the Tories and the media wanted - about spin doctors and aides at Number Ten. 'That will be the death of this government." Tony Blair.

...Here in New Zealand the political and ideological dilemma for Labour is no less acute. With a (bye-bye) election looming in Helen Clark's seat of Mt. Albert and a clear declaration from the greens that they will stand a candidate, thus splitting the centre-left vote, Labour has to find a reason other than sentiment for electorate support. Associated with that search for identity will be an enhanced community awareness of Labour's loss of direction, loss of prestige and loss of relevence.

Hate crime ring busted...

...a victory for the good guys !

"SHARP-EYED officials with HM Customs arrested five foreign nationals disguised as homosexuals at Heathrow this morning in what they termed the “largest international gay joke smuggling bust in UK history.” The haul include over 300 one-liners, 120 insults, 18 prop gags, and what was described as “a detailed instruction manual for effeminate mincing.”Police declined to release the identities of those apprehended but said they include two Americans, an Australian, a Canadian, and a French poodle.“The damage this contraband japery could have inflicted on the self-esteem of the British gay community is incalculable,” said Liam Green, a spokesman for HM Customs’ Hate Humour Trafficking Task Force, who estimated the street value of the haul at over £30..."more from Anorak, here...

Mmmm. Perhaps, (says Paul Sheehan of The Sydney Morning Herald), I was wrong...

...What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let's see...

With these words, Paul Sheehan throws a brick through the greenhouse window, (thanks to the help of Gary Larsen and The FarSide) and introduces "Heaven And Earth", written by one of Australia's foremost Earth Scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. In reviewing Heaven and Earth (due to be released today) Sheehan delicately presents his own confession, that his past assumptions about AGW may have been mistaken... How long before more journalistic recantation becomes routine ? and how appropriate that it should follow my last posting...

Aside from Sheehan's position, Ian Plimer has written a significant summation of the present climate change debate and its political origin... Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive"..."It is little wonder" he says, "that catastrophist views of the future of the planet fall on fertile pastures. The history of time shows us that depopulation, social disruption, extinctions, disease and catastrophic droughts take place in cold times … and life blossoms and economies boom in warm times. Planet Earth is dynamic. It always changes and evolves."
To sum up...Is dangerous warming occurring? No.
Is the temperature range observed in the 20th century outside the range of normal variability? No...more from Paul Sheehan here...and Anthony Watts (WuWT) here...and Australian Climate Madness here...

Le traison des clerc's (and the journalists)...

...is responsible for their increasing unpopularity. With public disdain comes a lack of patronage and trust, and as DeadLion observes (commenting on the George Orwell Award for "writers who have made outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse") George Orwell's descriptive "newspeak" characterises today's MSM. Hence the blogosphere, and hence thoughtful analysis by ex-journo's and bloggers such as DeadLion... ...As Orwell and Auden pointed out, when language gets corrupted thought gets corrupted; and corrupt language and thinking has been in great evidence in the past 11 years and beyond. Auden, in September 1, 1939, called the 30s a low, dishonest decade. Well, the past decade can easily be so described. (Nick) Cohen's points about a de facto conspiracy among the BBC and the Guardian to do down Euston Manifesto type journalists who won't swallow the Left's take on Islamism and related matters (ie, climate change, and diverse green propaganda) is worth serious consideration...

...(recent past winners) have never written a word I have found 'original, beautiful', or 'showing steely analysis and courageous independence of mind'. They simply parrot Islington dinner party socialism/big government solutions, even when big government solutions have been found as wanting as small government sink-or-swim. I would re-award the prize to Toynbee myself if she had the 'courageous independence of mind' to admit that her - and Labour's - big ideas for the poor have caused more harm - to the poor and everyone else - than good. I can't help thinking George Orwell would have noticed by now...more from the esteemed deadLion here...

From the very perceptive Butch...

...who's always thinking...

...BBC Radio 5 live interviewed a G20 protester, a politely spoken young lady bunking off university to attend the activities. Her interviewer was Victoria Derbyshire.

Derbyshire: So, why were you there?

Young lady: To protest capitalism. Look at the government bailing out the banks, it was just so wrong.

Bless her... Sometimes, you just want to take someone gently by the shoulders and look into her eyes, smooth a stray lock of hair from her forehead, assure her you are not going to try to kiss her, and say: A GOVERNMENT BAILOUT OF BANKS IS ABOUT AS FAR AWAY FROM THE PRINCIPLES OF CAPITALISM AS IT’S POSSIBLE TO GET, YOU YOGHURT-BRAINED BEAZEL. NOW GO AWAY AND READ FOR THREE OR FOUR YEARS. PROPER BOOKS, NOT BOOKS WRITTEN BY MICHAEL MOORE AND GEORGE MONBIOT. JOHN LENNON’S ‘IMAGINE’ IS A LOW-GRADE POP SONG WRITTEN BY A HYPOCRITICAL SCOUSE C**T, NOT ADAM SMITH’S WEALTH OF NATIONS. LILY ALLEN IS NOT JIM ROGERS. AAAAAAARGH!Keep wearily holding your head in your hands and sobbing uncontrollably, Butch. That's what you're good at... read more from Butch here...

Mencken was right...

Over 50 years ago H.L.Mencken said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Nothing is more imaginary than the claim that CO2 is causing global warming and the proposal designed to lead us to safety is unnecessary and will create real problems... Imagine basing a major global policy on the output of a grossly simplistic computer model of a very complex system. Worse, the model considers only one miniscule variable known to have no effect while it ignores the major variables. In any area of science, social science or politics the insanity would be soundly rejected. However, that is what the entire world is planning to do with global energy policy to counteract the non-existent problem of global warming...More from Dr Tim Ball, Meteorologist, Canada Free Press, here... and Quote of the Day...
“What most alarmists don’t seem to fathom is that real people want balance in their decision/learning process. Balance arrives on the wings of debate.” More here...

Africa, Africa...

...waay off topic; but hell it's my blog, and this is excellent...

...Dambisa Moyo’s prescription for economic sustainability in Africa—which includes cutting off all aid within five years—might seem insane if the statistics weren’t so grim: despite one trillion dollars in western aid over the past sixty years, the economic lot of the average African has only gotten worse. Most Africans now live on one dollar per day, and sub-Saharan Africa remains the poorest region in the world. Despite a deluge of aid between the years of 1970 and 1998, poverty on the continent skyrocketed from 11 percent of the population to 66 percent, which means over six hundred million Africans are now impoverished. The average African can only expect to live to be about fifty, and half the continent’s citizens are under the age of fifteen. In addition to poverty, AIDS, corruption (half the continent is still under un-democratic rule), civil war, and genocide ravage the continent. Indeed, Africa seems constantly embroiled in a steady stream of horrors, the likes of which are not seen anywhere else on the planet. Why? Are Africans innately different from the rest of us? Nonsense, says Moyo. She blames aid...

...and by so doing blames socialist welfare statism...exactly the system that is producing an underclass wherever it is applied. Africa ? think Murupara/South Auckland/Otara...more here...

...and the inestimable Theodore Dalrymple on green halfwits...

"The environmentalist ideology threatens to make serious inroads into the rule of law in Britain. This past September, six environmentalists were acquitted of having caused $50,000 worth of damage to a power station—not because they did not do it but because four witnesses, including a Greenlander, testified to the reality of global warming.One recalls the disastrous 1878 jury acquittal in St. Petersburg of Vera Zasulich for the attempted assassination of General Trepov, on the grounds of the supposed purity of her motives. The acquittal destroyed all hope of establishing the rule of law in Russia and ushered in an age of terrorism that led directly to one of the greatest catastrophes in human history." H/T Butch

We must all take a bow...we're winning...

From WattsupWithThat...Over the last year or so I have been taking an informal survey of a key news metric - Google news searches for the term “global warming.” A year ago, the ratio of alarmist/skeptical articles was close to 100/1. About six months ago, the ratio was 90/10, Two months ago it was 80/20, and today it hit 50/50 for the first time - including the lead skeptical story “A Cooling Trend Toward Global Warming“. One thing that has changed is the rise of blogs written by informed citizens, complemented by the demise of corporate newspapers which make money from keeping people continually alarmed about one thing or another.Congratulations to Anthony and all the readers for being a big part of this. Democracy in it’s purest form - hope and change we can all believe in.The top two items from Google news “global warming” search today...more here...

Quote(s) of the day...

"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."Ayn Rand, 1975...

...the Resource Management Act for example...

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. Sir Winston Churchill.

The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed."Adolf Hitler.