The "Good Lie"...

...is a lie that may be necessary or excusable to advance a greater cause. Thus, Phil Jones of Climategate infamy felt obligated to use a "good lie" to "hide the decline". History abounds with thousands of other examples. A storm of controversy is brewing on Twitter and elsewhere about the professional conduct of Johann Hari, the Left-wing Independent columnist and winner of the Orwell Prize for journalism. (A paradox, as Orwell saw the truth when most of his literary colleagues colluded with lies. See masthead above.) Hari has been using printed excerpts as verbatim oral quotes - a "cut and paste" journalism that has aroused his critics ...Now Hari says it doesn’t matter it he invents a conversation because it helps to express a “vital message” in the “clearest possible words”. The idea of a “good lie” is a dramatically Orwellian device, designed to deceive and to patronise. A lie is a lie, whether your intention is to convince people that Saddam is evil and must be bombed or that Gideon Levy is a brainy and decent bloke. Lying to communicate a “vital message”, a liberal and profound “truth”, is no better than lying in order to justify a war or a law’n'order crackdown or whatever. That more journalists cannot see this, that many of them have instead allowed their personal friendship with Hari to cloud what they think of this affair, is depressing. Why would anyone take seriously the reporting or commentary of people who believe it is acceptable to massage and refashion the facts in the name of telling “The Truth”?...why indeed ? And we surely see this every day with unquestioning media acceptance of the green political movement and its bedrock foundation of green lies. Are greenpeace and green politicians really "pro-environment" ? Or shouldn't they more accurately be termed anti-capitalist ? How grotesque it appears then, that the Orwell prize for journalism ( "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” ) may have been so mis-directed.

Headline of the week...

...The science is settled (1) : US liberals really are the dumbest creatures on the planet... guess what these liberals believe the problem with Climate Change is? Go on: think of the most stupid, reality-denying, fact-ignoring, evidence-torturing tosh anyone involved in the media could possibly have to say on the subject... H/T Climate Depot...They think that the naughty yellow pixies who pull the special, magic Climat-O-Levers which control the weather have been paid by evil capitalists with fat cigars in their mouth and $ signs on their pinstripe suits to make the world’s climate all horrid so that poor, underprivileged and disabled people and endangered creatures suffer – and that the reason we don’t know about it is because the media is run by evil Conservatives who want to keep this truth a secret.
Well, almost. What these liberal opinion-formers actually think – and you’ve really got to hand it to them: not even a lobotomised amoeba could beat them in a competition for dumbest creature on the planet, these three are absolute champs – is as follows.
They think the main reasons for the public’s growing scepticism on Climate Change are 1. The media has been far too balanced on the subject and is not pushing the eco-message hard enough. 2. Big business is funding Climate Denialism. 3. Evil Conservatives – led by Evil Talk Show Hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck – are deliberately telling lies about Climate Change. 4. The Republican party is “anti-science”...more from James Delingpole of the UK Telegraph here...

The Science is Settled (2)...from The US Supreme Court, "The court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon-dioxide emissions and climate change,” reads the 8-0 decision, delivered by the court’s acclaimed liberal, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But the Supreme Court judges would say that, wouldn't they? They all work for big oil...More here...
...and another Headline of the Week...Vote for Change...link here

Geert Wilders acquitted...

...from the redoubtable Cranmer...it is not a criminal offence to offend a group of people about their theology.And not just theology, but political theology...Either one is free or one is not. And it is no freedom at all which may not criticise or offend. All that Geert Wilders did is tell it as he sees it. And that isn’t so very far from how thousands if not millions of others see it. Ignorant of the nuances of Islamic theology they may be. Unaware of Islamic scholarship and the plethora of schools of thought they undoubtedly are. But all Geert Wilders did was to point out the fact that the Qur’an contains offensive passages and that some imams still preach it – and they are free to do so. His Grace is sometimes called a bigot. The Pope is occasionally called the Antichrist. The Holy Bible is frequently defiled, Christians are mocked and reviled, and the name of Jesus is dragged through the mud. And we all have to live with it. There should be no special protection for Allah, Mohammed, the Qur’an or Muslim sensitivities. For that would be to treat people unequally and elevate Islam to that place in law once occupied by Christianity.Geert Wilders has fought to defend the liberties of us all, and he won. Rejoice! This is a marvellous day for democracy and for liberty. When a politician sounds the trumpet to warn a continent of the incursion of an antithetical ideology and an oppressive power, it is ironic indeed that he should have been silenced not by that alien ideology or foreign power, but by the very agencies of government he seeks to guard and of which he is part. But Geert Wilders has been vindicated. He will now be exalted, and his Party for Freedom poll rating will go stratospheric. Doubtless millions of Europeans will only be sorry that the Presidency of the European Council is not subject to the popular will. And the ruling class will breathe a sigh of relief...more here... and from the UK Telegraph...a historical Dutchman who went on trial for saying such things about Christianity would be lauded across Europe. Wilders says things about a more conservative religion and he is accused of a hate crime. Where is the liberal outrage at this trial? Where are the BBC radio plays? When’s George Clooney going to make a film about Europe’s Islamophobia McCarthyite witch-hunts? Unlikely – the Oscars in 2005 didn’t even mention Theo Van Gogh on their annual slide show of movie people who died in the previous year. Freedom, if anything, means defending the rights of people you profoundly disagree with, even find offensive. Half a century ago the idea that a major European politician could go on trial for insulting a religion, in the Netherlands of all places, would have been fitting only for a dystopian parody. Yet this is really happening, as western Europe adopts Singapore-style multicultural authoritarianism...more here...

The Ultimate Resource...

...with thanks to Slattsnews...Part 3. Part 2 was written by the late, great doomslayer Julian Simon, who argued that human ingenuity would guarantee increasing prosperity and development (as long as totalitarian control kept its hand off the tiller.) Taking up this theme is Matt Ridley of The Australian...

...POLLYANNA is a fool; Cassandra was wise. As a self-proclaimed "rational optimist" who argues that the world has been getting better for most people and that the future is likely to be better still, I am up against a deep prejudice towards pessimism that dominates the intelligentsia. As John Stuart Mill put it, "not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage". What is more, pessimism has become a hallmark of the Left, chiefly because it justifies activism... Today, infected by Malthusian ecology, the Left relentlessly preaches millennial doom and technological risk: the climate is heading for catastrophe; resources are running out; population is growing too fast; farming cannot keep up; habitat is being destroyed; poverty, hunger, pollution, disease and greed are only going to get worse. A dramatic change in human stewardship of the planet is needed...The evidence suggests that these predictions are likely to be wrong. Based on the trajectory of the past five decades, and even (or especially) if the world economy grows rapidly, this century is likely to see mild climate change, cheap and abundant resources, falling population, ample food, more wilderness, and the average person becoming gradually - though erratically - wealthier, healthier, happier, cleverer, cleaner, freer, kinder, more peaceful and more equal. Each of the past five decades has almost certainly seen records set for each of those adjectives for the world as a whole. Yet the pessimism monster is irrepressible...Read the full article here... and by the way...
...The Japanese recent, 3/11 Tohohu earthquake, ... left Tokyo with 5 minutes of noisy shaking and virtually no damage in the world’s most high-tech city. See more here...

...and I just couldn't go past this from the UK Telegraph's James Delingpole...The Man Made Global Warming industry is a crock, a scam on an epic scale, fed by the world’s biggest outbreak of mass hysteria, stoked by politicians dying for an excuse to impose more tax and regulation on us while being seen to “care” about an issue of pressing urgency, fuelled by the shrill lies and tear-jerking propaganda of activists possessed of no understanding of the real world other than a chippy instinctive hatred of capitalism, given a veneer of scientific respectability by post-normal scientists who believe their job is to behave like politicians rather than dispassionate seekers-after-truth, cheered on by rent-seeking businesses, financed by the EU, the UN and the charitable foundations of the guilt-ridden rich, and promoted at every turn by schoolteachers, college lecturers, organic muesli packets, Walkers crisps, the BBC, CNBC, Al Gore, the Prince Of Wales, David Suzuki, the British Antarctic Survey, Barack Obama, David Cameron and Knut – the late, dyslexic-challenging, baby polar bear, formerly of Berlin Zoo...

On the banned list...

...are FLUSH TOILETS. Flush toilets ? You better believe it. They are apparently responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of goldfish. No, no, no, so sorry got that wrong. It's GOLDFISH that are to be banned. No kidding. Their lives as pets swimming round in dirty little bowls, psychotic with boredom and so intolerably overfed they explode has been deemed cruel. So cruel that their purchase as pets is to cease. So says The San Francisco Animal Control and Welfare Commission anyway. Puppies, guppies, hamsters and kittens (and pythons pining for the fjords) are likely to be next.

Global warming and ecosystems ya see... Read all about it here..

..and from the UK Guardian...

...Leaving climate change out of the curriculum would allow sceptical teachers not to teach their pupils about climate change. “It would be like a creationist teacher not teaching about evolution," said Bob Ward.
Climate change should not be included in the national curriculum, the government adviser in charge of overhauling the school syllabus in England has said. Tim Oates, whose wide-ranging review of the curriculum for five- to 16-year-olds will be published later this year, said it should be up to schools to decide whether – and how – to teach climate change, and other topics about the effect scientific processes have on our lives. In an interview with the Guardian, Oates called for the national curriculum "to get back to the science in science". "We have believed that we need to keep the national curriculum up to date with topical issues, but oxidation and gravity don't date," he said. "We are not taking it back 100 years; we are taking it back to the core stuff. The curriculum has become narrowly instrumentalist...more here...

from an Anonymous commentator yesterday...this deserves further exposure...
When all the WATERMELON WARMERS admit their LIE
We will raise a MONUMENT into the SKY
A monument of SOLID Carbon
To commemorate their BOGUS BARGAIN.

...and from Andrew Bolt...

We may be in for some cooling:
Scientists say the Sun, which roils with flares and electromagnetic energy every 11 years or so could go into virtual hibernation after the current cycle of high activity, reducing temperatures on Earth. As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, scientists from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory independently found that the Sun’s interior, visible surface, and corona indicate that the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all… “This is highly unusual and unexpected,” stated Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, in a statement. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation. . ”If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.” ...more here...

Environmentalists are still split over the issue..

...how very nice to know that the green movement is consuming itself - as left wing movements tend to do - over nuclear energy. In the 80's and 90's, the green debate in Germany was between the Realo's and the Fundi's. Judging by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's anti-nuclear lunacy the Fundi's must have won. This seems to put Europe's powerhouse economy at odds with its neighbours. This from the UK Guardian...

Nuclear power is back in favour, at least in government circles. Today, energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband will expand upon the UK's plans for a fleet of new nuclear reactors. Elsewhere, Sweden has reversed its decades-old ban on nuclear power and an increasing number of countries are expanding their nuclear generating capacity. Four new reactors are under way in Europe at the moment: two Russian-designed reactors in Slovakia, plus Finland's Olkiluoto 3 and France's Flamanville 3, which both rely on the French state-owned Areva's involvement and expertise. The Finnish site has been beset by delays, rising costs and criticisms over safety and still has no definite opening date, while the cost of Flamanville 3 has risen from €3.3bn to €4bn. But it's China that is pursuing nuclear power more enthusiastically and on a bigger scale than anyone else...more here...

...and from the comments...

...This was always going to be the case. The silly wind turbines are a feint for the real deal which will be implemented by New New Labour (the tories). Co2 is a very clever scam. Could you imagine hordes of enviro-dummies screaming for nuclear power ten years ago ?

...and from Nature.com , What are the knock on effects of Germany's decision ?...If Germany doesn't import electricity, its domestic carbon emissions are likely to increase — because even a doubling of power from renewable sources combined with a 10% cut in demand can't quite replace the low-carbon nuclear power that will be lost. Analysts put the increase between 170 million and 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2011 and 2020 (depending on different assumptions about the country's shifting power mix). Germany has national targets to cut carbon emissions to 40% below 1990 levels for 2020. That means that by 2020 it needs to slash 70 million tonnes a year from its electricity sector's carbon emissions, says Varró. "Without nuclear power, decarbonization is more difficult and more expensive," he says — predicting that the nuclear phase-out will lead to a surge in lower-carbon gas plants replacing coal plants...all up a signal that Germany, read Europe, will not meet its carbon emmissions targets...Ultimately, the effects of Germany's nuclear phase-out decision will spread around Europe. Other countries may have to replace coal plants with gas plants, and electricity will become a little more expensive for everyone. There will be a greater need for networks to transmit the cheapest sources of renewable electricity (such as northern European wind power or southern European solar power) across many European countries. "The power system needs to change substantially from a national to a supranational system," says Lindenberger.

Why worry mate ?

...from the Economist, on Australia and its approach to climate change...

...The topic is fraught. On becoming prime minister in 2007, Mr Rudd, who had in opposition called climate change “the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time”, ratified the Kyoto protocol (disdained by Mr Howard) as his first official act, and put a trading scheme for carbon emissions before parliament. In the face of falling polls and rising opposition, however, he abruptly dropped it. His successor, Ms Gillard, having vowed during the 2010 election campaign that there would be “no carbon tax under the government I lead”, has now said she will introduce one...selective and situational morality in action - trying to develop political policy on an issue based on lies - results in even more lies... Her plan is to fix a price for carbon for three to five years, after which a trading scheme will take over. The details remain to be settled, but the idea is that transport, energy and industry will be included, though farming will not.
Whether it will ever come about is uncertain. The Liberal Party, under its previous leader, Malcolm Turnbull, supported a trading scheme, but that support cost him his job. The man who got it, Tony Abbott, had also once been a backer of such a scheme, but then decided it was a “great big tax on everything”. He is now adamantly opposed, knowing that many in his party are climate-change sceptics and sensing votes from those who would be hit by a carbon tax. What he himself believes is unclear: he has declared the science to be “crap”, but even so vowed last year to spend $3.2 billion over four years to secure emissions cuts. The fate of the scheme may lie with the Greens, who help keep Ms Gillard’s minority government in power. In 2009 they voted against Mr Rudd’s scheme, saying it was too feeble. They may find this one no better, yet to reject it would be to invite charges of irresponsibility...all up, a dog's breakfast of waffling and insubstantial pollie newspeak. What then are Kiwi's to do ? A pragmatist would say stay on course as we are, talk the talk, but don't scare the horses, and for pity's sake don't upset the electorate or the economy...more here...

Dr William Happer...

...is a physicist who has specialised in the study of optics and spectroscopy. He is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University. His academic career started at Colombia University where he became a full professor and director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. In 1980, he left to go to Princeton where he was later the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics. In 1991, he joined U.S. department of Energy where he was the director of its research budget of $3 billion. In 1993, he returned to his position at Princeton where he became the chair of the research board in 1995.

Writing recently in the US journal First Things "The Truth about Greenhouse Gases - the dubious science of the climate crusaders" he begins...

"The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims...The existence of the little ice age and the medieval warm period were an embarrassment to the global-warming establishment, because they showed that the current warming is almost indistinguishable from previous warmings and coolings that had nothing to do with burning fossil fuel...

...read the full article here...

A greenie recants... this is a must read...

....and a courageous confession from George Monbiot ...(who in the past was scathingly referred to as George Moonbeam by his many detractors.) Monbiot writes in the left-leaning UK Guardian...

Over the last fortnight I've made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged, and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice...I began to see the extent of the problem after a debate last week with Helen Caldicott. Dr Caldicott is the world's foremost anti-nuclear campaigner. She has received 21 honorary degrees and scores of awards, and was nominated for a Nobel peace prize. Like other greens, I was in awe of her. In the debate she made some striking statements about the dangers of radiation. So I did what anyone faced with questionable scientific claims should do: I asked for the sources. Caldicott's response has profoundly shaken me...Failing to provide sources, refuting data with anecdote, cherry-picking studies, scorning the scientific consensus, invoking a cover-up to explain it: all this is horribly familiar. These are the habits of climate-change deniers, against which the green movement has struggled valiantly, calling science to its aid. It is distressing to discover that when the facts don't suit them, members of this movement resort to the follies they have denounced.
We have a duty to base our judgments on the best available information. This is not only because we owe it to other people to represent the issues fairly, but also because we owe it to ourselves not to squander our lives on fairytales. A great wrong has been done by this movement. We must put it right. Read the full article here...

Ignore for a moment the passing reference to climate change deniers. This article kicks away one of the founding principles of the green political movement. It exposes the hypocrisy, disinformation and outright lying that we have known about for so long, but which has been ignored and countenanced by a green sympathetic and sycophantic news media. Not since the release of the climategate tapes has the green movement been so publicly shamed, exposed and humiliated. This expose is another very significant nail in the green coffin. It's well worth following the link above to the original debate between Monbiot and Caldicott to get a flavour of the exchange which led to Monbiot's column...Pass this link around !

Note too, that this is not the first time that Monbiot has done a public about face...

“This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case...read more re Monbiot's reviewed position on veganism, here...

...and here, YouTube explains global warming panic...

...and now another party...

...and this one's even sillier than the last Extremely Silly Party. This is a party searching for a name, and it has been formed to attract all the really silly people. They are already rolling up. Hone Harawira, Nandor Tanczos (alas minus the hilarious dreadlocks) sexy Sue Bradford (that's not her on the right, that's sexy Sue Kedgley) John Wacko Minto !! Matt McCarten and one or two other hopelessly deluded lefties...The party name they are most (un)likely to choose is The Really Politically Correct Party, which is a great shame, as all their utterances will be sooooo ideologically sound. But what a wonderful election we can look forward to...a Prime Minister enjoying record popularity with a rejuvenated right wing partner versus a moribund opposition Labour Party, a dispirited Maori Party, a flaky Green Party, a lost and abandoned Winston First Party looking for a space at the trough and now with this new exceptionally untalented vote splitter party yet without a name. STOP PRESS...it's now The Mana Party...destined of course to be an uninfluential and powerless minor party after the election.

Ahh democracy is wonderful...the November election will be more fun than the Fuhrer's birthday party!

Footnote...climate change is gone. The new term is Global Climate Disruption...from The Washington Times...There is no evidence that America is facing an increased risk from tornadoes based on human activity or carbon-dioxide emissions, but what if it is? Can we accept that risk? “What if global warming *does* cause more and more powerful tornadoes in the south?” asks The Atlantic. “What then?” This type of non-argument is typical of the reasoning the alarmist camp has been forced to employ as the factual basis for their pet theory crumbles. The questions the global-warming crowd should be asking themselves are: What if everything they have so deeply believed and trusted over the years turns out to be completely wrong? What if the belief system that has given their lives meaning for decades can no longer sustain its inner contradictions? What if their god dies? What then?

The Tea Party...

...has there ever been a popular movement like it ?

Our news, filtered as it is through a liberal, left leaning news media gives us only scant detail of what these Tea Party protesters are on about. A friend sent me a newsletter from an expat Kiwi living in the USA which contained this link...

As he explains...(the link) has become enormously popular with 6 million “hits” in its first four days. Why I ask you to view it is because it encapsulates the psyche of America – the distinctiveness of the country. Within the oratory of the narrator lies the heart of what made America great – rugged individualism and freedom of expression. Notice the devotion to the military and its place in society. When America goes to war it is always about freedom; freedom to maintain the American way of life. So those who die in these wars are exalted. You will hear an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln, “that unfinished cause for which our soldiers willingly go to battle...” It is very easy for this country to engage in war, because the cause is never finished.

The Kiwi expat quoted above however, is not necessarily a cheerleader for the anti-Obama brigade. He points out inaccuracies and hyperbole. They are there for sure, but compared to the years of psychotic anti-Bush venom and hate, these anti-Obama protesters seem quite restrained. Judge it for yourself, check the link out...

A post-mortem on the greens...

...from the journal The New Republic which asks, in its lead article the question of the day ... Has the Green Movement been a Miserable Flop ?

What the hell went wrong? For months now, environmentalists have been asking themselves that question, and it’s easy to see why. After Barack Obama vaulted into the White House in 2008, it really did look like the United States was, at long last, going to do something about global warming. Scientists were united on the causes and perils of climate change. (Interjection. Loud raspberry from stage right.) Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had stoked public concern. Green groups in D.C. had rallied around a consensus solution—a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions—and had garnered support from a few major companies like BP and Duke Energy. Both Obama and his opponent, John McCain, were on board. And, so, environmental advocates prepared a frontal assault on Congress. May as well order the victory confetti, right ? Instead, the climate push was a total flop... more of this exquisite lefty hand wringing here...

...with self-hating comments to brighten your day like this ...
The failure of greens (not Greens) to accomplish anything is horribly despressing, but not at all surprising. It's a never-ending slow-motion trainwreck that demands decisive and forceful leadership from people who have shown time and again to be utterly devoid of any leaderly qualities. It's like watching the debacle over the debt, except worse, since at least everyone recognizes that a problem exists there. Particularly bad is that leadership on this issue must come from Americans, whose primary qualities are greed, individualism and anti-intellectualism. It does not inspire much hope...

For my money, the failure of the green political movement has come about because of blatant green anti-capitalism- served up with green hypocrisy, dishonesty and patronising faux-concern for the planet. (As an example see Maurice Strong's statement below this blog's masthead and follow this link.) Rather than a true environmental movement, the green political machine has been shown to simply be the present day vehicle of the political left. Since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, green tactics have been to arouse fear and guilt among the gullible. Green fear mongering and green double talk has finally been discredited and dispersed by public opinion and debate. More blood-letting of course is still to to come, probably with an imminent metamorphisis of the defeated green left into a modified political vehicle. I bet the tactics stay the same though.
Where will they go ? ...the anarcho-animal rights/anti-globalisation loonies are all that's left these days. What will the green gasbags do ?

There's no excuse...

...for child abuse... So said the 1994 bumper sticker. Since then NZ has been subject to child abuse reports that sicken, shame and horrify. The term child abuse in itself understates the horror of it all - it makes it sound like childish banter and bullying in the playground. Child torture is a much more accurate term. Michael Laws of the Sunday Star Times has dared to dwell on the subject. He alone features it regularly in his columns to the shame of other journalists. If the issue involved systematic ongoing conservation or environmental concerns many more would no doubt join in as would editors and protest groups. Similarly muted are the voices of politiciansand bureaucrats, except of course to say that more "resources" are needed to fight it, as if throwing money around will alleviate our national shame and agony. What a pathetic, cowardly lot we all are !

Chief among the cowards are our Maori MP's. They are aware that proportionally, Maori statistics outweigh all other groups - with regard to offenders and victims. Maori MP's no doubt shed silent private tears over reports of dead and battered children, but the main sentiment from them that reaches us is that historic colonial oppression is a major causative factor and that more research and more money and more Maori cultural awareness is needed from us all to solve the problem. No mention of any shame or any personal responsibility, or the fact that for decades young mothers have been encouraged with cash handouts to bear children away from the shelter of the secure family unit into the whanau, where the young child is subject to attack from the current (non blood related) boyfriend(s) and all others.

I recently heard Paula Bennett, our Minister for Social Welfare speak. She said that her department are aware of 30,000 cases a year of child abuse and brutality. Many cases of severe injury; burns and broken bones, go unreported. It is only the more sensational and horrific that make the news.

The real news then, behind this posting is simply that deliberate brutality inflicted on children is evil. The concept of sin has all but vanished from our terminology, we even use the word "wicked" as a positive adjective of endorsement. I intend to do my small bit to publicise the evil of child abuse and its circumstances here in NZ, and in particular to publicise the politicians whose ineffectual hand wringing over it effectively condones and prolongs the scandal of it all. We have a general election looming in NZ. I will be agitating to see that each political party has a policy to help reduce the numbers of abused children. I have a feeling that many voters are disgusted, dismayed and angry over the hypocrisy, inactivity and double talk that surrounds the problem. A helpful site I have stumbled on is FamilyIntegrity.org.nz. Please pay it a visit. Enough is enough...

Why oh why...

...does this ludicrous AGW farce continue ? Like a Terminator that won't die, or a Monty Pythonesque knight with severed arms and legs that won't yield, the malevolent AGW ghost won't depart. The science behind it has been shown to be dodgy, the statistics shonky, the main instigators are accused of self interest (think Al Gore) yet politicians such as our Minister for the Environment, Mr Nick Smith continue to defend it and the costs it will incur. Smith has announced an Emissions Trading Scheme that aims to halve our CO2 emissions by 2050. For once, I have to agree with the Alfred E. Neuman look alike Russell Norman of the Greens who says...the pledge to halve New Zealand's greenhouse gases emissions is "unambitious" and shows the Government is not serious about addressing climate change ..."If they were serious about a target they would set milestones that they could be held accountable for, not a target that is 13 electoral cycles away." Nobody is in the least concerned any more about so-called catastrophic climate change, nobody that is except the socialist greens, so why on earth even bother ? More here...

The heroes of Fukushima...

...are the clean up workers who may well be quite calmly and rationally comitting suicide. After the Christchurch earthquake the deliberate acts of heroism and compassion were a wonderful testimony to the strength of character of those involved. This altruism is a feature of most of us I think, but is ingrained in the Japanese psyche. One only has to think of their military heroism as exemplified by the WW2 Kamikaze pilots. Their spirit is reflected so clearly in the heroism displayed at Fukushima...

...Apart from that, this post is a brief analysis of the human cost of energy consumption...

...The earthquake and tsunami in Japan delivered a devastating one-two punch to that island nation and to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. So what does much of the world do? You guessed it. They blamed the designers, builders and operators of the nuclear plant for not doing a good enough job. They call for all reactors in the world to be closed down. Electricity has been restored to all the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. That means that the control panels have lit up and banished the inky darkness. Electricity is available to the electrical cooling pumps.The overall situation is looking much better. They are not out of the woods yet, but day by day the residual nuclear decay heat, in the reactor fuel elements, is dropping and the prospect for any major release of nuclear material is diminishing.

It seems likely that the main toll from the nuclear emergency will be to a small number of heroic plant workers and emergency responders who continue to brave exposure to radiation to restore cooling to the reactors.The focus for Japan and the world should remain on recovery from this crisis and we should be wary of any seeking to exploit, rather than solve the situation. Serious risks remain, however, it is appropriate to place the harm and risk from Japan's nuclear emergency in context of the full scope of the tragedy. The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami stands at 9,300 with 13,800 missing. These numbers continue to rise. Any death or injury is tragic, but inside the nuclear plant only one person, a crane driver died from injury sustained, and some nuclear workers may have been exposed to high levels of radiation. Outside the nuclear plant no people have been injured in any way from any radiation...

... The Fukushima plant was forty years old, near retirement. Its staff did a fantastic job under the circumstances. There was no disaster. No people outside the plant got injured, no property outside the plant was damaged by nuclear material. Give the reactor crew a round of applause. Nuclear power just got a whole lot better and safer. Nuclear power survived the onslaught well, and we learned a great deal. The lessons learned will be shared with the rest of the world to the betterment of all. Current designs could withstand even this worst-case scenario. Nuclear power remains, safe, viable and vital.

We should also compare the harm done from this and other nuclear power emergencies with past power plant disasters.

Look at the following list (from “What is the worst kind of power plant disaster? Hint: It's not nuclear” by Annalee Newitz):

1975: Shimantan/Banqiao Dam Failure
Type of power: Hydroelectric
Human lives lost: 171,000
Cost: $8,700,000,000
What happened: Shimantan Dam in China's Henan province fails and releases 15.738 billion tons of water, causing widespread flooding that destroys 18 villages and 1500 homes and induces disease epidemics and famine.

1979: Morvi Dam Failure
Type of power: Hydroelectric
Human lives lost: 1500 (estimated)
Cost: $1,024,000,000
What happened: Torrential rain and unprecidented flooding caused the Machchu-2 dam, situated on the Machhu river, to burst. This sent a wall of water through the town of Morvi in the Indian State of Gujarat.

1998: Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Jess Oil Pipeline Explosion
Type of power: Oil
Human lives lost: 1,078
Cost: $54,000,000
What happened: Petroleum pipeline ruptures and explodes, destroying two villages and hundreds of villagers scavenging gasoline...read the full article here...

The radiation bogey man...

As an ex-radiographer I remember being taught to respect and avoid radiation. At work each day we used to put on a radiation monitoring badge which was sent every month to the National Radiation Laboratory in Christchurch where our exposure to what we called scattered radiation was assessed. We wore lead rubber aprons when working with prolonged radiology techniques, and some even wore lead rubber gloves when using old out-dated fluoroscopic equipment. Even today I have some distaste for dental xray techniques and the often cavalier attitudes of dental staff when taking them. Health risks from radiation are real, as the effects over a lifetime are cumulative.

However, in "nuclear-free" NZ, the militant anti-US brigade have succeeded in inducing hysteria among the general population over all nuclear issues. Food irradiation for example, to prolong shelf life was mooted and rejected with allegations of "frankenfood" mutations possible. Nuclear propelled ships are not allowed in our harbours because some feel they may become transformed into nuclear explosions.

A healthy respect for radiation is to be aware of its dangers, yet embrace its benefits. Much as we do with electricity and petrol. With this in mind I am delighted to see from a Mr Randall Munroe, a Radiation Dose Chart illustrating the wide range of radiation we may experience or hear about in a lifetime; from sleeping next to someone (0.05 micro-sieverts) to a flight from New York to LA (40 micro-sieverts) to the maximum yearly dose permitted for US radiation workers (50 milli-sieverts)...full chart here...

Another illustration of comparitive radiation exposures compares radioactive seepage of naturally occuring radon gas from rock...Radiation exposures in highly publicized nuclear accidents are thus considerably lower than those received by people in these (high radon) areas every day. Note that the Pennsylvania area includes the region around the Three Mile Island plant; people living near that plant get more radiation exposure from radon in their homes every day than they got from the 1979 accident. Within any area, there is a wide variation in radon levels from house to house. About 5% of us, 12 million Americans, get more than 1,000 mrem (1 mrem = 0.00001 Sv = 0.01 mSv = 10 μSv ) per year, and perhaps 2 million Americans get over 2,000 mrem per year from radon. In a few houses, exposures have been found to be as high as 500,000 mrem per year...more here...

Radiation is and always has been part of all our lives. Its peaceful usage in medicine and in modern well controlled nuclear power plants will remain and help drive modern society into a more prosperous and safer future - Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Windscale and Chernobyl notwithstanding...hat tip PKH

The wearing of the green...

...will last as long as we keep commemorating St.Patrick. Green politics though are of a much less durable nature. Now that the mainstay of the green movement - runaway apocalyptic global warming - has lost its potency, green political impetus has waned, and the hope of global wealth redistribution to save the planet has all but died. Green eco-pornographers though have been given CPR, courtesy of Fukushima. The earthquake that partially destroyed the Fukushima plant and the ensuing tsunami that inundated vast swathes of land were both exceptionally severe episodes however, Fukushima is not the devastating indictment of nuclear power that the greens would like. Indeed, the awful calamity and its aftermath will eventually strengthen the case for an expanded nuclear industry with even more robust safety parameters.

From the BBC... Power hopes rise at the Japan plant...

...Fukushima now becomes the third level five incident in half a century of nuclear power. The first was the Windscale reactor fire in the UK in 1957 - the second, the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979. Richard Wakeford from the Dalton Nuclear Institute, a visiting professor in epidemiology at the University of Manchester, recently re-assessed the effect of radiation released at Windscale. Using data and computer models, his scientific paper concluded that the release could have caused about 240 cases of cancer, half of them fatal. However, inquiries into Three Mile Island concluded it probably caused no deaths.
That raises the question of why both are in the same INES category, given that Three Mile Island did not, in the end, have more than a local impact. "The reason why Three Mile Island was rated a five is that there was major damage to the reactor core and there was potential for a widespread release of radioactive material - it didn't happen, but that potential is built into the event scale," said Professor Wakeford...

As time passes, the (Fukushima) reactors should in principle become less dangerous. The rate at which they pump out heat decreases quickly, and by now the rate should be down to about one-thousandth of what it was a week ago, just before the Tohoku earthquake triggered a shutdown.Prospects of exposure to perhaps the most dangerous radioactive substance, iodine-131, also diminish rapidly. It decays quickly through radioactivity - after eight days, half the atoms present initially will already have decayed away. ..In addition, the continuing efforts to keep seawater flowing into reactors 1, 2 and 3 appear to have been relatively successful on Thursday and Friday. If the reactors have been cooled, fuel rods will have been degrading at a slower rate, again curbing the release of radioactive substances.

On Friday afternoon, radioactivity readings had reportedly declined to less than 500 microsieverts per hour on site - below the level at which operators have to sound the alarm...The cure for the plant's immediate problems could be the restoration of electrical power. A grid connection was hooked up on Friday, although technicians were clearly struggling to power up systems around the site given that some of the plant's internal circuitry had been damaged by the tsunami or the gas explosions. The nuclear safety authority outlined a timescale that would see power restored in reactor buildings 1-4 by Sunday.
If this all works, the prospects of the Greenpeace scenario should recede. Then it will be time to take stock...(and once more re-evaluate the credibility of greenpeace ). And it may turn out, said Richard Wakeford, that no deaths at all will be attributable to the Fukushima incident. "If you take one of the workers who's been exposed to 100 milliSieverts (mSv), that's not going to have any serious short-term effects," he said - "certainly nothing like the situation facing the Chernobyl emergency workers that killed 28 of them.
"The risk of a serious cancer arising from that kind of dose would be less than 1% in a lifetime - and you have to consider that the normal chance of dying from cancer is 20-25% anyway."As for people outside the plant - I can't see any chance of picking out the effect of the Fukushima releases against the general background of cancers." More here...

...and a Sinner Repents...from George (Moonbeam) Monbiot at the Guardian...the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology...full column here...

Green jubilation...

...will be short lived as the damaged Japanese nuclear reactors are brought under control. What will become more apparent as time goes by is the difference between Chernobyl, where safety procedures were absent and where reactor design (rejected by the UK in the 1950's) was inadequate, and this incident, where one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded has tested emergency procedure to the limit.

In Japan, as in Christchurch last month countless heroes are emerging from the devastation. I salute them all.

When reconstruction and reappraisal begins to take place, nuclear energy will come under the spotlight like never before. This time however, unlike Chernobyl, green fear-mongering will be tempered by the pragmatic reality of nuclear versus coal/wind/ solar energy sources. And when the Michael Moore's of the left have had their say, nuclear energy will be seen to have survived with its safety reputation intact. For up to date information and comment re reactor status, see Brave New Climate here...

And as for wind farms...well, courtesy of PKH, this startling news ...According to researchers at the University of St Andrews, the sound of offshore wind farms is likely to mess with the whales’ sensitive sonar systems and drive them ashore, where they get stuck on beaches and die. More here...and the original press release here...

Windfarms KILL WHALES...buy the T shirt !

Clive James...and the death of environmentalism...

....on Climate Change and the recent Aussie floods.

While commentators like Clive James and many others assess the moribund state of climate alarmism correctly, main stream media still run a diluted form of green orthodoxy. Here, Clive James, always a good read, is in fine form poking a sharp stick in the eye of the dying green global warming dragon...

Poetry, said Auden, makes nothing happen. Usually it doesn't, but sometimes a poem gets quoted in a national argument because everybody knows it, or at least part of it, and for the occasion a few lines of familiar poetry suddenly seem the best way of summing up a viewpoint. Just such an occasion has occurred recently in Australia. By the time the heavy rains first hit Queensland early this year, the theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW, to borrow the unlovely acronym) was ceasing to exercise unquestioned thrall in the minds of Australia's progressive voters. But spokespersons for the Green party clung on to it, encouraged by the fact that the theory, in its Climate Change form, was readily applicable to any circumstances.
Before the floods, proponents of the CAGW view had argued that there would never be enough rain again, because of Climate Change. When it became clear that there might be more than enough rain, the view was adapted: the floods, too, were the result of Climate Change. In other words, they were something unprecedented. Those opposing this view — those who believed that in Australia nothing could be less unprecedented than a flood unless it was a drought — took to quoting Dorothea Mackellar's poem "My Country", which until recently every Australian youngster was obliged to hear recited in school. In my day we sometimes had to recite it ourselves, and weren't allowed to go home until we had given evidence that we could...more here...and...

The Long Death of Environmentalism
Last week Breakthrough co-founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus returned to Yale University for a retrospective on their seminal 2004 essay, "The Death of Environmentalism." In their speech they argued that the critical work of rethinking green politics was cut short by fantasies about green jobs and "An Inconvenient Truth." The latter backfired -- more Americans started to believe news of global warming was being exaggerated after the movie came out -- the former made false promises that could not be realized by cap and trade. What is an earnest green who cares about global warming to do now? In this speech, Nordhaus and Shellenberger reflect on what went so badly awry, and offer 12 Theses for a post-environmental approach to climate change...more here...