Question for the day...

...the Poms want laughing boy Abu Qatada (left) deported. Hardly surprising, as he is Osama bin Laden's right hand man in Europe.
...Cranmer hears that Abu Qatada has won compensation from HM Government (ie the taxpayer) for the years he has spent in prison. This is by order of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.This is lunacy, when one considers that Mr Qatada could have walked free at any time if he had simply agreed to leave Britain...
Cranmer gently asks...
...Abu Qatada is concerned that his enforced repatriation to Jordan is likely to result in him being severely punished, even executed, for his alleged involvement in acts of terrorism. Again, Cranmer, does not mean to be thick. But why should those Muslims who wish to see Shari’a law in the UK be protected from its punitive excesses when they are obliged to go and live in a more Shari’a compliant country?...more here...

Perhaps the questions should also be put to all the other terrorist/crypto-refugees who make the same demands...

Stop the monkey business...

...says kapa haka judge.

(For the culturally unaware, kapa haka is an essential component of our New Zealand school curriculum. Kapa haka is based on the Maori traditional challenge, and encompasses song and dance.)

A judge at the national kapa haka festival (contestants at left) is reported as saying... "...there are some people who don themselves in all sorts of regalia, short capes, and when they roam the stage they look more like monkeys than Maori. They go hu hu ha. That's not Maori. Charles Darwin would be a proud man - he was the one who said we came from apes."

We are indeed a wise, superior and tolerant society here in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Nod nod, wink wink. Such a publically aired comment elsewhere could be interpreted as an ethnic slur and mean public shaming, dismissal and ridicule...more, here...

The green dilemma...

...revolves around the provision of safe, secure, cheap energy supplies. The fundamentalist red/greens (the ideological force behind the green church,) hate the idea of abundant, cheap and safe energy, hence their laughable and ludicrous "precautionary principle" . Their vision of humankind is that we are all programmable socialist robots at best, at worst a cancer on mother earth. However, deeper thinkers within the green and Labour movements see green socialism/nihilism as an albatross around their collective necks. For example, Tom Harris UK Labour MP, 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...(Tom, which green/left faction is the most "progressive" ?)

The differentiating point between red/green socialists and genuine environmentalists is their respective attitude to nuclear energy. Within the left, the argument has forced an ideological split. In Germany the Fundi's hate the pro-nuclear Realo's leading to a dysfunctional environmental movement. On the blogosphere the war rages on... Check this out and the entertaining comments/argument after it...

...Modern reactors are incredibly safe, with physics-based 'passive' safety systems requiring no user-operated or mechanical control to shut down the reaction. Indeed, a certification assessment for the 'Generation III+' Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) put the risk of a core meltdown as severe as the one which occurred at Three Mile Island (TMI) in 1979 at once every 29 million years. For reference, the TMI incident resulted in no deaths. Similarly, comparing the inherently unsafe Chernobyl reactor design to an ESBWR is a bit like comparing an army revolver to a water gun. Fast spectrum reactors, also known as 'Generation IV', are able to use 99.5 per cent of the energy in uranium. There is enough energy in already-mined uranium and stored plutonium from existing stockpiles to supply all the world's power needs for over a century before we even need to mine any more uranium. Once we do start mining again, there is enough energy in proven uranium deposits to supply the entire world for at least 50,000 years. Fast reactors can be used to burn all existing reserves of plutonium and the waste stream of the past and present generation of thermal reactors...more here...

Quote for the day...

...Scientific authoritarianism, weak or strong, has no role in climate politics.

Roger Pielke Jnr, (Prometheus) criticising megalomaniac doomster James Hansen, more here...

...Pielke Jnr and Senior have differing views on AGW, although both condemn the bastardisation of science for political ends. Hence the quote above, and the comment...
...Climate politics is collapsing because of political realities, and not real or perceived changes in how people see the science. As I have often argued, in the ongoing battle between climate scientists and skeptics there will be disproportionate carnage, because the climate scientists have so much more to lose, and not just as individuals, but also for the broader field, which includes many people simply on the sidelines....More from Prometheus here...

...and thought for the day...

...from columnist Johann Hari... ...It would be a betrayal ...to apologize for what I wrote. Yes, if we speak out now, there will be turbulence and threats, and some people may get hurt. But if we fall silent – if we leave the basic human values of free speech, feminism and gay rights undefended in the face of violent religious mobs – then many, many more people will be hurt in the long term. Today, we have to use our right to criticise religion, or lose it...read what Johann Hari wrote in The Independent, here...
...and the riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article above that followed...
...My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states have successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets.” Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it...more here...

Where is the public outcry over this ongoing suppression of free speech and its entrenchment by the UN?
In the 1980's as a member of Amnesty International I wrote dozens of letters to heads of state protesting about human rights infringements. We based our protests on the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. In particular...
Article 18. "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief...
Article 19. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression...

Today in response to Islamic threats and intimidation the UN is diluting its own 1948 raison d'etre, and to their shame Amnesty International is more concerned over the rights of Islamic fifth columnists than the people they oppress...

From the Manchester Guardian again...

...an organ which risks becoming a regular source of global warming scepticism (in spite of the over-excited George "Moonbeam" Monbiot, its environmental editor), this from Patrick Michaels...

...so, Antarctic cooling and warming are both now consistent with computer models of dreaded global warming caused by humans. In reality, the warming is largely at the beginning of the record – before there should have been much human-induced climate change. New claims that both warming and cooling of the same place are consistent with forecasts isn't going to help the credibility of climate science, and, or reduce the fatigue of Americans regarding global warming. Have climate alarmists beaten global warming to death? The Pew Research Centre recently asked over 1,500 people to rank 20 issues in order of priority. Global warming came in dead last. We can never run the experiment to see if indeed it is the constant hyping of this issue that has sent it to the bottom of the priority ladder. But, as long as scientists blog on that both warming and cooling of the coldest place on earth is consistent with their computer models, why should anyone believe them? More here...

...and again in the Guardian, this time from Bjorn Lomborg (right), re the forthcoming round of climate change talks in Copenhagen. (Waterloo may be a more apt venue for the alarmists,)... doomed to failure he thinks... more here...

...and Roger Pielke Snr. alerts us to the curse of "yellow journalism"...
...since papers and weblogs have documented that the warming is being over-estimated in recent years, and, thus, these sources of information are readily available to the reporters, there is, therefore, no other alternative than these reporters are deliberately selecting a biased perspective to promote a particular viewpoint on climate. The reporting of this news without presenting counter viewpoints is clearly an example of yellow journalism;
“Journalism that exploits, distorts, or exaggerates the news to create sensations and attract readers.”
When will the news media and others realize that by presenting such biased reports, which are easily refuted by real world data, they are losing their credibility among many in the scientific community as well as with the public...more here

...and a very interesting (albeit a bit pointy headed) debate re AGW at Skeptiko, here...

Here's a "tipping point"...

...alarmists like eco-pornographer Al Bore and James Hansen like to warn that we must act immediately to save the planet. "Tipping points" are frequently mentioned; the moment in time where calamity is an imminent inevitability, but note this...
...Sceptics now have a tipping point of their own, a moment in time where the crack in the alarmist case widens to a chasm. From WattsupWithThat...

...today’s Guardian has a lead story unlike anything we have seen before.
‘Apocalyptic climate predictions’ mislead the public, say experts’
Experts at Britain’s top climate research centre have launched a blistering attack on scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming. The Met Office Hadley Centre, one of the most prestigious research facilities in the world, says recent “apocalyptic predictions” about Arctic ice melt and soaring temperatures are as bad as claims that global warming does not exist...
...The Met Office has been badly burned by their seasonal mispredictions of warm UK weather, particularly during the current winter and the last two summers. But particularly interesting to me are the comments about Arctic Ice. (Caption above... "Dr Vicky Pope claims losses of Arctic ice could be due to natural fluctuations in the weather")
I was about to write an article forecasting the return of the Arctic to near normal ice conditions this summer, based on the light polar drift this winter. It appears that The Met Office agrees with that prognosis.The walls are tumbling down in the UK. President Obama promised to align with the Europeans about global warming. Will he keep his promise?
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall... Pink Floyd

The (AGW) walls are tumbling down in the UK...more, here...
...and the original article from the Guardian, here...

The Australian bushfires...

... link here . Click on photo to enlarge, red dots represent fires.
Photo uplifted from the NASA site and well worth viewing as a high resolution image at link above. I can see my house (kidding) in the bright sunshine, and under the smoke the home of a dear friend and his family in Benalla. Hope things are OK mate...
...worth pondering too, while you're viewing the full image, the fact that the atmosphere over the globe contains approximately 380 parts per million of CO2; and that this whole debate re catastrophic global warming, is whether another 100 parts per million will melt Greenland and inundate the planet...
...see The FatBigot for a wider perspective on these figures...
...and read the angry anti-green backlash over the fires...
...So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies...
...from the Sydney Morning Herald here...
...and from The Melbourne Age...
...and this commentary from Germaine Greer (!) in The Australian... (thanks to cartoonist Zeg... click on cartoon to enlarge)

...Liam Sheahan was one of the few whose home survived the bushfires in Australia. As you can see from the photo, he cut himself a firebreak a hundred yards wide all around his home.
The council, however, would only permit him a firebreak six metres wide and took him to court for disobeying them. This action cost Mr Sheahan nearly $100,000 in costs and fines.
Even with the wide firebreak he had illegally put in place, it was a close-run thing. His house caught light eight times as the bushfire passed. His is now the only house standing in the area...

..."the council" had better have massive indemnity insurance for the legal actions that will surely follow. Apart from the total devastating loss of property it may be argued they have blood on their hands...H/T Bishop Hill, ...

...an Australian poll, here, asks "Was conservation policy to blame for the bushfires ?" 62% answered yes, 38% answered no.

...and while the fires still rage, news that the Royal Commission of Enquiry will have the "broadest possible" terms of reference...this will allow Justice Teague to look at early warning systems, “green” planning codes, permanent firebreaks, fire bunkers and other ideas canvassed in The Australian and other media outlets last week... more here...

More on the Ibuki space probe...

...for those like eco-porn kings Al Bore and James Hansen who claim the debate is over, the science settled... the Ibuki space probe will collect data for 5 years to help determine atmospheric levels of methane and CO2. Ibuki is part of an ongoing programme aimed at determining whether the planet is warming or cooling, and helping to identify the reasons for temperature changes . ...
...The Ibuki can log incontrovertible evidence, observing over fifty thousand locations every hundred minutes. It's pretty much the best measurement you can get short of confiscating the atmosphere and sticking it through a spectrometer. Whether the data will support the current greenhouse gas scenarios or suggest that something else is taking place remains to be seen, but whatever it says people will have to listen or brand themselves as utterly ignorable from then on. When someone actually comes back with numbers based on "leaving the planet for a better view," you either accept them or put on your novelty "I ignore what doesn't suit me" baseball cap (with complementary blinkers)...more, here...

Now, even The Pope and Environment Minister Sam Wilson MP (who ?) has joined in...

...and when the late Pope John Paul stepped into the ring he helped to dismantle communism.

The wonderful Cranmer points out that Sam Wilson MP is in exemplary spiritual company by pointing out the pseudo-science behind Al Gore's environmental fantasies...

...Sam Wilson MP is Northern Ireland’s Environment Minister, (take note Rodney Hide) and he is persuaded that man-made global warming is an ‘hysterical pseudo-religion’. And so he has halted a government advertising campaign – which gave people ‘the impression that by turning off the standby light on their TV they could save the world from melting glaciers and being submerged in 40ft of water’ – denouncing it as ‘insidious propaganda’...

...Sammy Wilson will find a religio-political soul-mate in Pope Benedict XVI. For he too has dared to challenge the orthodoxy of the political aspects of the global warming movement around the world. While Sammy Wilson calls for ‘reasoned debate’, the Pope has also demanded the application of the scientific method to counter the hysteria surrounding the half-baked theories of pseudo-scientists and ignoramuses like Al Gore. The Pope is proving himself to be the defender of the protestants of postmodernity, confronting head-on the climate change ‘prophets of doom’ with the warning that any solutions to global warming ‘must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology’. Truth is not made by consensus...

...he is quite right: no amount of money is ever going to control solar activity, no matter how well-meaning the religious fervour which underpins the theory, or how sincere the fanatical zealots who propagate it. The notion of man-made global warming is a political agenda to deprive people of their liberty, property, and livelihoods. They shall be taxed in their homes, in their cars, on aeroplanes and on trains. They might even be taxed for breathing...more here...
...and how the panic-stricken BBC report the shocking news...

The treason of the intellectuals...

...is nothing new.
While voices of dissent are being raised within the scientific community regarding AGW, some of the opposing voices are branding dissenters as deniers, cranks and flat earthers and comparing them to war criminals. And while backbiting, jealousy and intimidation among intellectuals may be perennial, within science such discord and know it all dogmatism is somewhat rarer. Dominating the scientific debate of AGW today is "the debate is over" sentiment espoused by NASA's James Hansen.
In the 1930's news was filtering through to the West about wide scale mass famine produced by Stalin in the Soviet Union. During those times many Western intellectuals, convinced that communism would usher in a new world of brotherly love, blithely ignored or downplayed the tragedy faced by the Soviet people. Those in the West who articulated their concern were treated with contemptuous disdain by the generally left wing intelligentsia.
This episode of intellectual shame, intimidation and dishonesty has been covered by Robert Conquest in his book The Great Terror.
In this book, Conquest accuses Western intellectuals of denying the full scale of the famine and attacks their politically blinkered and morally ambivalent views as "an intellectual and moral disgrace on a massive scale." He later wrote that the Western world had been faced with two different stories about the famine in the 1930s, and accused many intellectuals of believing the false one: "Why did an intellectual stratum overwhelmingly choose to believe the false one? None of this can be accounted for in intellectual terms. To accept information about a matter on which totally contradictory evidence exists, and in which investigation of major disputes on the matter is prevented, is not a rational act." (Wikipedia.)

The AGW parallels are there, but today, thanks to free speech within the blogosphere the dissenters possessing "contradictory evidence" are being heard...

H/T PKH.

The history of the great global warming scam...

...The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute's areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming...

...Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation's bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meetings...

more, here...

and this, in a nutshell is what it's all about...

....Now that pretty much all (OK, all) evidence now directly refutes the global warming premise–ice core data, lack of relationship between CO2 and temperatures, missing greenhouse gas signature, falling temperatures last ten years while CO2 is soaring, etc.–the entire theory is like a house almost completely consumed by termites, and ready to collapse into dust with the next strong wind. What will that do to the scientific and journalistic community? It will set back their credibility for years, maybe decades. By suggesting that the “scientific debate” is now a side show, and the real debate is on a political level, Dr. Pielke I believe is trying to cushion the backlash against the scientific community that is becoming inevitable. That’s an honorable goal and I hope it succeeds. The scientific community is going to have to go through an era of soul-searching to make sure such a vast amount of mis-information is not served up to society ever again...

...more here...

Another Obama appointee bites the (dead hobo) dust...

...caution, satire alert...WASHINGTON - U.S. Energy Secretary and Al Gore lookalike Stephen Chu (left) announced his resignation this morning amid new reports that Alameda County workers had unearthed more than a dozen additional dead hobo bodies at his former home in Berkeley, California. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist had been the subject of a week-long controversy after he amended his White House application form to declare "3 or 4" hobo corpses in his crawl space, but after this morning's discovery, Chu said he felt he could no longer serve as an effective spokesman for Administration energy policy.
"Getting America on the road to energy independence requires a secretary who is focused full time on developing comprehensive strategies for alternative fuels, rather than a political distraction over a handful of decomposing drifters," said Chu. "I'm afraid I am no longer that person."
Chu said he would return to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he will resume his scientific work investigating particle dynamics and local homeless shelters. President Obama said he would accept the resignation with regret, and expressed hope that a new Secretary could be named within the week.
"It was an honest mistake on Dr. Chu's part," said the President. "The section of the screening questionnaire about dead hobos has been confusing for a lot of nominees. In his defense it only specifies 'basement/crawl space/storage shed,' so I can somewhat understand why he didn't mention the ones discovered by the backhoe yesterday. That said, it's important that we move forward with revitalized American energy leadership. I'd like to thank Dr. Chu for his service and delicious home-made beef jerky, and wish him well in his future endeavors...
... Sources inside the administration say the President is favoring University of Texas petroleum geologist / registered sex offender G. Harland Tellis as Chu's replacement. Tellis is expected to face stiff opposition from netroots blog sites like the Huffington Post, who have thrown their support behind British pop singer Gary Glitter...

More from the ever vigilant Iowahawk, here...

The Collapse of Climate Policy and the Sustainability of Climate Science...

...We are witnessing the end of an era. An era in which some politicians have attempted to use and distort science to achieve their political goals.Churchill had an inkling of an unholy alliance between science and politics when he warned of "... a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science..." Here, Roger Pielke Jnr. addresses the beginning of the end for the marriage of climate science and politics...

...The political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon. The collapse is not due to the cold winter in places you may live or see on the news. It is not due to years without an increase in global temperature. It is not due to the overturning of the scientific consensus on the role of human activity in the global climate system.

It is due to the fact that policy makers and their political advisors (some trained as scientists) can no longer avoid the reality that targets for stabilization such as 450 ppm (or even less realistic targets) are simply not achievable with the approach to climate change that has been at the focus of policy for over a decade. Policies that are obviously fictional and fantasy are frequently subject to a rapid collapse...

Climate politics is collapsing because of political realities, and not real or perceived changes in how people see the science. As I have often argued, in the ongoing battle between climate scientists and skeptics there will be disproportionate carnage, because the climate scientists have so much more to lose, and not just as individuals, but also for the broader field, which includes many people simply on the sidelines....More from Prometheus here...

Winter in London...

Two venerable British institutions, The UK Meteorological Office, and the BBC have been shown to be inept and economical with the truth...

...The UK Met Office forecast last Autumn “the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average... ” Well, we've now passed the 2/3 mark of the meteorological winter, and it is time for another report card to send home. Yesterday’s press release was titled “Wintry start to February” which stated “So far, the UK winter has been the coldest for over a decade” and “Met Office forecasters expect the cold theme to the weather to continue well into next week with the chance of further snow.”
The UK is expecting the heaviest snow in about 20 years tomorrow. “Snow and freezing weather threaten to shut down Britain;Arctic blizzards are set to cause a national shutdown on Monday as forecasters warn of the most widespread snowfall for almost 20 years.” “Now is the time you’d expect to see the daffodils coming out but we’re not expecting them for two or three weeks at best if it warms up.“
So why is this important? Climate is not weather, after all. The Met Office is one of the most vocal advocates of human induced global warming, and they have gotten into a consistent pattern of warm seasonal forecasts which seemingly fall in line with that belief system. Is it possible that their forecasts are unduly influenced by preconceived notions about the climate? It is worth remembering that London had it’s first October snow in 70 years this past autumn...more, from WattsupwithThat, here...

...and within the BBC, once an international paragon of broadcasting impartiality, an unashamed alarmist bias has taken hold to the extent of splicing/editing President Obama's inaugural speech to distort his message...more here...

...comment from Melanie Phillips...
...As Britain shivers in its harshest winter for 13 years, atmospheric data shows that the earth is getting colder, not hotter, the ice caps are increasing not disappearing and the rise in sea level has slowed and is nothing out of the ordinary.
Yet despite the patent absurdity of these predictions of environmental doom, this thinking now dominates political life.
The reason is undoubtedly the grip upon politics of those who want to control our lives in order to reshape society.
In all corners of everyday life, from state interference in parenting to telling people what to eat or what not to drink, from council snoopers to idiotic health and safety rules, the aim is to control and change the way we behave.
The green movement camouflages this sinister tendency under cover of the urgent necessity of saving the planet. But with people like Jonathon Porritt apparently believing that the only thing wrong with the planet is the human race, the big question must be just who he will be saving it for. More, here...

...cartoon of the day...

...the writing is not just on the wall, it's everywhere...when people start to laugh, it indicates a lack of fear and dread. And remember (Al Gore sure does) that...
"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." H. L. Mencken...
...from Roy Spencer...I have to wonder…how many more scientists will be outing themselves as skeptics? While we may never constitute a majority, and many of us have differing views on the real causes of climate change, it only takes one of us to be right for the global warming house of cards to collapse...
...and the public start to wise up, and scoff...

On the decline of Britain...quotes for the day...

...on moving from England to France...
"I have removed myself: not that I imagine things are much better, only slightly different, in France. But one does not feel the defects of a foreign country in quite the same lacerating way as the defects of one's native land; they are more an object of amused, detached interest than personal despair...
"...No wonder the British (and he could include Kiwis, Australians etc, etc) have changed in character, their sturdy independence replaced by passivity, querulousness, or even, at the lower reaches of society, a sullen resentment that not enough has been done for them. For those at the bottom, such money as they receive is, in effect pocket money, reserved for the satisfaction of whims. As a result they are infantilized. If they behave irresponsibly — for example by abandoning their own children — it is because both the rewards for behaving responsibly and the penalties for behaving irresponsibly have vanished..."
"... more from Theodore Dalrymple, here... and...legislators take note...

"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice." Adam Smith...

It shouldn't be too difficult then should it ?

Greens must examine their conscience over nuclear energy...

...while domestic (New Zealand) greens still cling to their anti-nuclear phobias, greens internationally are confronting the lies propounded over the last 30 years by greenpeace and other green fundamentalists about the reality of nuclear power generation.

Nothing has damaged green credibility more, or continues to demonstrate green anti-capitalism and green left wing hypocrisy better than their stance on this issue...

...Says self proclaimed climate change activist and environmentalist Mark Lynas...Global warming and finite resources mean our way of life is more threatened than ever, and it's time for the environmental movement to face up to some hard truths...

...Even Chernobyl, surely the worst-imaginable case for a nuclear disaster, was far less deadly than most people think. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, 28 people died due to acute radiation sickness – all firemen and power plant workers, some of whom had been exposed to radiation doses as high as one million millirems. By comparison, 167 men were killed during the Piper Alpha disaster on a North Sea oil rig in 1988. But it is the long-term effects from Chernobyl that tend to scare people most. In a 2006 report, Greenpeace claimed that “60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000”.
These figures, if correct, would make Chernobyl one of the worst single man-made disasters of the last century. But are they correct? The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation reports 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children and young people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, but very few deaths (thyroid cancer is mostly treatable). Indeed, it concludes, “There is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident”...more here...with ongoing discussion/comments...

...but Mike Lynas and other pro-nuclear progressives will not confront the elephant in the room. That elephant is the zealous anti-capitalist, nihilist mindset of fundamentalist greens. As I pointed out in a (deleted) post at his website, Mark Lynas and other pro-nuclear greens must acknowledge that for many in the green movement public access to cheap safe energy is a total anathema, hence their illogical attitude to nuclear energy...

The two child solution...

..."I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible" - Herr Jonathon Porritt...chair of The Optimum Population Trust (a charity, 'natch) - who seem to want to encourage the limiting of the population by whatever means possible (though I suspect being a bunch of tree-hugging lefties it won't include concepts such as placing theoretical caps on annual immigration as that's beyond the pale for most lefties - it's easier to harass the existing sheeple/population.)
Herr Porritt, a former chairman of the Green party, says the government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion...more from The Scumbag Times, here...

The trickle of sceptics is becoming a flood...

...We are reaching the stage where independent scientists will want to make sure they are known to be on the skeptical side of the fence...more from Jo Nova here...
Among the independent scientists is Chris de Freitas, a long time global warming/climate change realist. He is also an Associate Professor in the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
"Climate is not responding to greenhouse gases in the way we thought it might...if increasing CO2 is in fact increasing climate change, its impact is smaller than natural variation. People are being misled by people making money out of this..."
NZ Herald Feb.2nd 2009...

and as an article of note, this takes some beating...