A contempt for scientific objectivity...

...whatever the outcome of Copenhagen, whatever stitched up shonky deal is made, the verdict of history and of science will remain the same; climate alarmists are frauds, and their stooges within the science establishments and in the media are guilty of collusion, lies and deceit. The information is now released, and the stink and shame of corruption will follow those who wilfully choose to ignore it...

...In the last few days, the cause of climate alarmism took a big hit when more than a thousand e-mails exchanged by scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) suddenly surfaced online...But notwithstanding the e-mails’ route to publication, their actual content is extraordinary. These behind-the-scenes discussions among leading global-warming exponents are remarkable both in their candor and in their sheer contempt for scientific objectivity. There can be little doubt after even a casual perusal that the scientific case for global warming and the policy that springs from it are based upon a volatile combination of political ideology, unapologetic mendacity, and simmering contempt for even the best-intentioned disagreement. Especially in anticipation of the major climate summit taking place in Copenhagen next month, the significance of this explosive disclosure is hard to underestimate. According to climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”...more here...

...and from Ian Plimer in the Daily Mail...They put forward an ideology that is blind fundamentalism, unrelated to scientific facts. Politicians build new bureaucracies and pose as environmental saviours without having to face the consequences of their actions. Heads must roll. Meanwhile, the planet will do what it has always done: change...more here...

...remembering the warning message from George Orwell.. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984.

...and here's Rodney Hide's "please explain" letter to Nick Smith...

If this is the only surfing you do today...

...you couldn't do any better than spend a few minutes with the brilliant Bill Whittle, and his expose of media and academic political correctness. H/T and thanks to Slattsnews. Have a look at this superb commentary. This is outstanding and startling... Here...
...A note too, on a rarely seen commodity in NZ politics; political principle. Rodney Hide, Minister of Local Government, offered to resign his ministerial post if a new Auckland "supercity" was created offering designated seats to Maori only. Such racial separatism Rodney Hide observed, was contrary to the principle of "one man, one vote." What he should have added also is that it is contrary to what the left like to refer to as our founding document; The Treaty of Waitangi. (A fact conveniently forgotten by Maori protesters as they brandish their taiaha in street protests.) As always, lefty PC hypocrites within the media, particularly the craven NZ Herald and TVNZ, follow their PC guidelines and depict Rodney Hide as a bullying blackmailer and populist, not a politician of conviction. What utter hypocritical bullshit !
But now, the left have a fantastic opportunity to use the provision for a citizen's initiated referendum to test public opinion on institutionalised apartheid in outeroa... C'mon you leftie hypocrite scumbags, show your courage and let the people of Auckland vote on the matter... Some hope. ( Cartoon from NotPC with thanks.)
(Note to Rodney Hide. Well done, let's see much more of the same. Let's also see a press release about the futility of an ETS. Didn't you say last year that AGW was "a hoax" ?)

May you live in interesting times...

...environmentalism is a political idea; it aims to reorganise society around its values and ethics. Yet this ideology has never been tested democratically. It hasn’t won any seats in the UK parliament, yet almost the entire house of commons has embraced environmentalism. It's as though, one morning, the House of Commons turned up for a debate, not as the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats, and the independents, but as members of the Green Party. (More here...)

Why is this? Is it that the science is truly settled or that the precautionary principle has won converts? Or simply that most elected MP's in the U.K. are entirely comfortable with drastic wealth reduction ?

Next month's elections, the global financial crisis and the acknowledged forecast global cooling - for possibly the next 30 years - will see the beginnings of a reappraisal of climate change as an environmental and economic priority. At least one likely future cabinet minister in NZ, Rodney Hide; is a firmly declared climate change sceptic.

The gloves are coming off, and battle is about to begin...in NZ we can only hope for determined, principled leadership and an enlarged debate over climate change...



This too, re financial anguish internationally from the UK blog An Englishman's Castle. Challenging and interesting times indeed...

The intervention, or rather interference, of the state in financial and economic matters can only lead to sclerosis, the suppression of enterprise, the raising of taxes, starvation of investment, lack of innovation, technological retardation and the rise of the power of organised labour. Judging from yesterday's interest cut, the much-vaunted independence of the Bank of England has already gone out of the window and state control of the central bank is back with a vengeance.
If you doubt this analysis, recall what happened in this country between 1945 and 1979, when such an ethos as we are now returning to existed unchallenged, even by Tory governments. The more the state intervened, the more it had to intervene: the appetite grew with eating...more here...

"Climate Change"...a sham and a hoax...

Rodney Hide speaks out...

Speech to Parliament; Tuesday, September 2 2008

I think I will be the only person speaking in this debate who has any qualifications in environmental science.

It is not that that should count, but I think that it is significant for what I am about to say—that is, that the entire climate change - global warming hypothesis is a hoax, that the data and the hypothesis do not hold together, that Al Gore is a phoney and a fraud on this issue, and that the emissions trading scheme is a worldwide scam and swindle.

Enacting this legislation will cost New Zealanders dear—that is the point of it - and it will drive up the costs of basic goods and services for New Zealanders probably by at least $500 or $600 a year.

It will put businesses in New Zealand out of business, and put farmers off their farms. And it will do all this for no impact on world weather, for no environmental gain, and for no conceivable advantage to New Zealand or to the world.

Yes, it is bad that we are rushing this legislation through in the dying days of a teetering regime, propped up by a *Minister of Foreign Affairs who is under investigation for serious and complex fraud.

That is bad, but it is the impact that this legislation and this policy will have on New Zealanders that is so truly shocking. All we have in this is a computer model. That is notoriously difficult, because the answers are written in the assumptions. Let me give members just one example.

The problem for the first two Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change reports was what was called the medieval warming period, where a thousand years ago the Earth was warmer than it is now.

Then, magically, an obscure physicist in the US came up with a new bit of analysis - the hockey stick - that showed world temperature to be flat and then rising dramatically as the world became industrialised. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change grabbed this, put it on the front of its document, and repeated it five times.

Researchers all around the world were puzzled by this, because it did not fit any of their data. Eventually they got hold of that computer model and they discovered this: any numbers fed into that model would produce the hockey stick.

We could take the Wellington telephone directory, feed it into the model that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used in 2001, and we would get the hockey stick that saw the world running scared, that saw policy-makers running scared, and saw Al Gore make his movie based on it.

The science was rubbish, because a computer model is not science. Science is about theories, hypothesis, and the testing of these against the facts. That is not what has happened in the basic science here. That is bad enough, but what is worse is the policy rationale underpinning this legislation. The Minister would come before the select committee and talk about a "cap and trade" but, when asked, would say: "Yes, there is no cap." We are creating a market in hot air, without any quantified amount.

ENDS