Heretics Corner

Email exchange between myself and Harold Ambler

2012-02-22T22:23:00.001Z

For clarity here is the exact correspondence between myself and Harold Ambler :

Subject : A couple of questions raised by your book

Hi Harold, Ive read the first chapter of your book (in PDF form), very interesting. I was intrigued by your statement about Antarctica that "the record maximum value for the ice occurred in 2007." Please could you tell me where did this fact come from? What do you mean by value, coverage or volume or some other measure ?

You also tell us that "One day, anywhere from ten years from now to 10,000 years from now, the inevitable slide back into full glaciation will occur" . Where does the estimate that glaciation could start as soon as 'ten years from now' originate ?

Salutations

Hengist McStone

Subject Re: A couple of questions raised by your book

Dear Sir,

You have not read the first chapter of my book. You have read a chapter of my book, the fourth.

Neither of these facts is controversial or difficult to locate. In this one instance I have done your homework for you, but will decline future requests.

Thank you,

Harold Ambler

for Antarctic sea ice:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png

NSIDC shows same thing

for length of interglacials, there many sources, but the most widely cited one is

Petit et al. 1999

[A graphic of the length of interglacials in the past , will be uploaded shortly]

Did Heartland Insider write the accompanying email?

2012-02-21T23:44:00.000Z

How come Keith Kloor's account of how the Heartland documents came to be made public is at odds with every other account?

The story was broken on Valentine's Day by Brendan DeMelle of DeSmogBlog who wrote "documents obtained by DeSmogBlog expose the heart of the climate denial machine". DeMelle also writes "We are releasing the entire trove of documents now" Later that day Richard Littlemore (also of DeSmogBlog) wrote a post saying that the anonymous source of the documents used the pseudonym Heartland Insider. DeSmogBlog host the documents. The story was picked up by the fringes of the MSM mostly crediting DeSmogBlog , I have yet to see an MSM account which quibbles that DeSmogBlog broke the story, exclusively.

Keith Kloor breaks the story on his blog the following day after it had already garnered some MSM coverage and he speculates that the Heartland Insider was 'a recently fired employee or someone still there [..] not feeling a lot of love for [Heartland President] Bast'. This is Kloor's account of what happened next :

'The whistleblower/insider sent an email around to a bunch of folks yesterday, which got forwarded to me. While the documents have been disseminated on the internet, nobody reporting on this appears to have mentioned the accompanying email'

Dear Friends (15 of you):
In the interest of transparency, I think you should see these files from the Heartland Institute. Look especially at the 2012 fundraising and budget documents, the information about donors, and compare to the 2010 990 tax form. But other things might also interest or intrigue you. This is all I have. And this email account will be removed after I send.

There's no header information or metadata. We don't even know who the 15 original recipients of that email are. We do know that Kloor was not one of them. We don't know whether this email contained attachments or links to the docs. And we don't know when this email was originally sent to it's original recipients. When pressed to reveal more his response is "Alas, as I mentioned in my post, just the email itself was forwarded to me. And because I’m at a conference, I don’t have the capacity to dig into this."

Alas without seeing the email on Keith Kloor's hard drive neither do we.

I should caution that it's plausible that Kloor's and DeSmogBlog's accounts simply differ by omission in which case these differing accounts show a wide gulf between what each blogger feels relevant. The email might have been from Heartland Insider, but it could equally be from someone drawing attention to what he/she had read on DeSmogBlog.

Heartland . Astroturfing ?

2012-02-20T18:38:00.001Z

Taken a peek at the Heartland documents yet? Of course you have.

The most interesting of the Heartland documents appears to be the Fundraisng Plan which mentions Major Projects. Page 19 appears to indicate an astroturfing operation .

"Heartland has been one of the most outspoken defenders of fracking in the U.S., using
Environment & Climate News, its Web sites, and its PR and GR operations to comment repeated on the issue and reach large audiences. "

The document goes on to state that Heartland plans to raise money from businesses with an interest in fracking in 2012.

We also learn in this document about the funding of Anthony Watts weather station project and numerous references to the Anonymous Donor. Heartland's ambition to get their curriculum for pseudoscience into schools through the work of Dr David Wojick, is discussed at some length. So the question 'what shall we tell the children?' has already been asked and answered for us by right wing U.S. think tanks.

Link to DeSmog Blog post by Richard Littlemore exposing the story
Link to DeSmog Blog post by Richard Littlemore confirming Heartland emailed these documents
Link to Heartland's IRS 990 form hosted by DeSmog Blog
Link to the Heartland Fundraising Plan PDF
Link to Fake Science, Fakexperts, Funny Finances Free of Tax by Dr. John Mashey

The Ice Age Cometh warns pseudoscience book (without supporting facts)

2012-02-18T22:04:00.002Z

I've asked the author of a new book to substantiate a couple of his claims (which can be found in this PDF). Here's his bad tempered reply :

Dear Sir,
You have not read the first chapter of my book. You have read a chapter of my book, the fourth.
Neither of these facts is controversial or difficult to locate.In this one instance I have done your homework for you, but will decline future requests.
Thank you,
Harold Ambler

Harold's quip that he's done my homework for me doesn't quite hit home. A claim that runs contrary to conventional wisdom needs to be supported by the author, so discovery of that support is Harold's homework not mine. And I have to suggest Harold's indication that he will decline future requests is not irritability, it's because Harold is unable to support all his claims. And Harold knows it.

So let's look at how he supports his claims. I wrote to Harold "I was intrigued by your statement about Antarctica that "the record maximum value for the ice occurred in 2007." Please could you tell me where did this fact come from? What do you mean by value, coverage or volume or some other measure ?" And his response is to cite this graph. I note that Skeptical Science has an answer to that point, but let's move on.

Harold's book also contains these words "One day, anywhere from ten years from now to 10,000 years from now, the inevitable slide back into full glaciation will occur" I asked Harold how he arrived at his estimate that the next ice age could could be due as soon as 'ten years from now' ? His response is Petit et al. 1999. From the abstract of Petit we can see that it is a reading of the Vostok Ice Core, observational, not predictive. Petit et al 1999 does not support Ambler's assertion that the next ice age could begin as soon as ten years from now.

This is exactly what skeptics should be looking for. Climate change alarmism, based on misrepresentation of science.

Earth to Harold : You're entitled to your own opinion but you're not entitled to your own facts.

I should add that so called skeptics like Watts and Montford have both puffed Harold's book lending credence to pseudoscience again. And unsupported pseudoscience at that.

You've heard of fast food now it's fast ethics.

2012-02-13T21:08:00.001Z

I normally steer clear of animal welfare issues but McDonald's are always a deserving target of anybody's ire.

McDonalds ~~are stopping the use of gestation stalls~~ have asked suppliers to outline their plans to phase out the use of sow gestation stalls (quite beastly cages for pregnant sows if you must know). They tell us so in a press release here.

The take home point here is that gestation stalls were fine for McDonald's until now. But the moment McDonalds express concern about gestation stalls is the moment they garner good publicity for themselves. Before they've actually changed anything. This isn't a corporation with a conscience it's a corporation with a very clever PR strategy. It's a strategy worth emulating by making a blogpost expressing my instant distaste for McDonalds.

H/t Grist

First denialist review of Mann - published without actually reading it

2012-02-08T22:18:00.003Z

Publication of Dr Michael Mann's long awaited new book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines sends the deny-o-sphere into a spin of kneejerk punditry. First out of the traps is blogger Tom Nelson who only manages to blog that a keyword search on Kindle yielded hits for "denier" "Morano" "McIntyre" and "Watts".Yup Tom, it's a book, got words in it.

Quite how that constitutes a review is anyone's guess. But it's good enough for Watts Up With That who then urge readers not to review the book without reading it. But Anthony - that's precisely what Tom has just done.

This nonsense is continuing to barrel round the echo chamber with multiple negative reviews on Amazon from the same reviewer. Contrary to Amazon rules. A practice this blog notes climate deniers have form on.

Wow : The Night Sky in the Atacama

2012-02-06T19:16:00.001Z

An Astronomer's Paradise from Babak Tafreshi on Vimeo.

H/t Grist

Where are the skeptics ?

2012-02-05T10:53:00.000Z

A stage magician cuts his assistant in half. A skeptic would reason that some kind of visual trick is at work, that the girl has not really been chopped in two.

The climate blog-o-sphere is quite different though. Andrew Montford makes a Freedom of Information request to the Met Office asking for Sir John Houghton's emails relating to AR3. The respondent answers that they do not hold any such emails. Monty then writes a blogpost concluding "it appears that Sir John has deleted historic records".

Observation nothing - conclusion scandal.

I've tried asking "How can you be sure that he holds emails relating to AR3 ?" Needless to say Monty meets that line of questioning with a stony silence.

Climate skeptics rewrite Sagan. Can they sink any lower ?

2012-01-07T11:12:00.003Z

Carl Sagan was one of the greats of science communication. Often remembered for his epic Cosmos (well worth revisiting, available on You Tube) he was also the instigator of the Pioneer 10 plaque which carries humanity's message across the galaxy. Thus long after you and I have turned to dust Carl Sagan's work will still be on it's interstelllar voyage .

Vloggers have divided up much of Carl Sagan's work into bite sized chunks like 'pale blue dot' which gives an astrophyscist's perspective on our environment . Tear to the eye stuff.

Hat tip to Climate Crocks for finding this film which directly addresses the question of anthropogenic global warming .

Sagan died in 1996 at the age of 62.

2012 and a guest blogger on the Bishop Hill blog lifts a passage from chapter IV of Dr Sagan's book Cosmos and posits that Sagan would have opposed the AGW consensus and the IPCC. A staggeringly cynical use of a widely respected dead scientist to attack the IPCC and make a partisan point. Does make one wonder what next for the Bishop Hill blog , Charles Darwin blogs on Dark Matter perhaps or Euclid's thoughts on the PIP implant scandal?

Book Review : The Self Illusion

2012-01-04T21:57:00.001Z

Another Book Review for Amazon this time I've read The Self Illusion by Professor Bruce Hood which is free ! Five Stars :

Fascinating look at how the brain works and what the 'self' is inside it (or otherwise). Hood puts forward the view that the 'self' is really just a construct of the brain. This might be controversial and whilst still science his work takes the reader to the edge of philosophy.

Hood reveals plenty along the way such as "We now know that the unborn baby can learn the sound of their mother’s voice, develop a preference for the food she eats while pregnant and even remember the theme tune to the TV soap operas she watches while waiting for the big day to arrive."

Fans of The Matrix will be delighted to learn that it is 'not that far off the mark when it comes to understanding the nature of the human mind' according to the Professor. Indeed Hood is very excited about the internet "I tell my own children that they are living during one of the major transitions in human civilization, that humankind is currently in the midst of the next great evolutionary leap." Probably he didn't mean to sound Maoist there. This inspiring work is well worth a read, as Hood observes 'It is one of most exciting times to be alive in the history of humankind.'

No prior knowledge of neuroscience is required, you will learn a bit about dopamine and how it makes the anticipation of reward more satisfying than reward itself. Just as well , Professor Hood promises us a fuller version of this free ebook later in the year.

Powerful video of Schneider on AGW impacts and denial

2012-01-02T16:15:00.001Z

Hat tip Wild Weather Dan for this. Must see.

Michael Buerk what a berk

2011-12-27T10:39:00.002Z

Michael Buerk enters the fray on the climate debate showing just how conservative and ill-informed you have to be to make it as a newsreader. My two cents worth is :

It's a bit rich for a BBC newsreader to spout "I don’t want the media to make up my mind up for me." Where does Buerk get "... the issues beyond doubt and the steps to be taken beyond dispute" from ? Mr Buerk posits that there probably are answers to all his quibbles and if he researched properly he would find that is so. On the whole Buerk is ruminating on tedious canards.

One statement in particular indicates that Buerk's polemic is biased towards misinforming the public "I would like to hear a clash of informed opinion about what would actually be better if it got warmer as well as worse." The trouble with that is whilst it would get better for a small few , the aggregate effect on humanity would be negative. There is no informed opinion that disputes that ergo Mr Buerk's desire to hear such a clash of opinions is on the face of it misleading.

Another completely unsupportable claim from Monty

2011-12-22T18:58:00.001Z

Once again Andrew Montford brilliantly demonstrates why his narrative cannot be trusted . Montford scrambles a post by contrarian activist (and WGII author) Richard Tol over the IPCC nexus with national FOI laws. Tol isn't actually reporting anything new, but Montford headlines it "IPCC declares itself above the law" and thus another contrarian canard is born. It is however easily debunked. If the IPCC declares something there must by definition be a declaration. However Monty ignores requests to point us to the IPCC declaration he refers to. Come on now Monty, you're making it up as you go along.

Ivor Ichikowitz Not a very nice man

2011-12-15T23:24:00.001Z

Despite never being elected to public office Ivor Ichikowitz boasts that he is part of the inner circle of the President of South Africa. Indeed he flew the President to both Azerbaijan and the U.S. in his private Boeing 727 piloted by a mercenary. So what did they talk about on their travels? We can only guess but it wasn't world peace since Ichikowitz is an arms dealer and he's also known as 'a peddler of influence' .

Unlike most arms dealers Ichikowitz does give a fuck about what you think about him because he hired Bell Pottinger here in the UK to give his reputation a whitewash, that's the mob who've been caught red handed rewriting wikipedia entries on behalf of their corporate clients (not to mention pitching for the child labour business of the Uzbeki Cotton Industry).

Last week blogger Tim Ireland exposed a number of fake wikipedia accounts run from computers registered to the disgraced PR firm. One of those 'Biggleswiki' contributed to the now deleted WP entries for Ichikowitz and his company Paramount Group.

So on the one hand Ichikowitz pays professionals to astroturf his public profile and on the other hand he's pulling the strings at the very top of the decision making process to sell his weapons. Ivor Ichikowitz is playing both ends against the middle.

Mankind is yet to invent a more inefficient method of making collective decisions than warfare. And because of people like Ivor Ichikowitz we can see why it's still so widely used.

Laframboise's reviews on Amazon falsely inflated

2011-11-28T19:40:00.005Z

The new IPCC bashing tome by Donna Laframboise continues to garner positive reviews on Amazon, perhaps because she has implored her followers to do so. Alas some of Donna's shills have taken her bleating "These reviews really do matter" to heart and left multiple reviews. Naughty.

Amazon.co.uk say "We only allow each customer to write one review of each product set."

Update: The above just looks at Amazon .co.uk But theres also the Amazon.com site in the U.S. Foxgoose has managed to post five star reviews on both (October 16, 2011on the US site 14 Oct 2011 on the UK site) Martin A from Normandy posts a third five star review on the US site October 19, 2011 .

Update 20:21 pm : Andrew Montford's Hockey Stick Illusion has also seen it's positive reviews inflated by multiple postings on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk MPHELPS posts five star reviews January 25, 2010 on the US site and 24 Jan 2010 on the UK site.

Climategate 2.0 Has Potholer nailed it ?

2011-11-27T19:42:00.000Z

Three cheers for Potholer for putting his thoughts into words lickety split on Climategate 2.0

Now, I'd like to ask my advocates positioned as skeptics friends if Potholer is right or wrong @ 7:20 "But although conspiracy theorists get very excited when they see a doubt or an uncertainty expressed in the emails - and take this as a sign that these must be secret - no instance has been cited of an uncertainty that hasn't already been openly discussed by these researchers in publicly available scientific journals." ?

Parlez Vous Climate Skeptic ?

2011-11-14T21:42:00.002Z

Mazzer writes "In far too many cases IPCC experts were not chosen on their scientific credentials but on their ideological affiliations and their association with the WWF or Greenpeace." I've asked Mazzer to cite just one case, to give me a single shred of evidence that IPCC contributors were recruited on the basis he claims. Mazzer responds "I can never prove that experts were selected on their ideological qualifications any more than you can prove they were not." So Mazzer interprets my request for evidence as a demand for proof and issues his own counter demand. Such is the standard of rhetoric.

So where is Mazzer getting his ideas from?

Mazzer is responding to my one star review for Donna Laframboise's new book. Laframboise provides plenty of innuendo for Mazzer to frame his view but no actual evidence. In Chapter 21 she writes "One day the IPCC may come to be seen as a textbook case of how badly things can go wrong when political amateurs are recruited and manipulated by UN-grade political operatives." Did you notice the caveat "one day the the IPCC may come to be seen as..." ? It enables Laframboise to employ conjecture to say anything she likes. Here she is doing the same thing to Australia.

At 1:57 Andrew Bolt asks a leading question, suggesting that IPCC contributors are chosen on the basis that they agree with the scientific consensus. Laframboise's response is peppered with "one suspects" "perhaps" and "it's not clear". Having read her book I have to say there is only one correct and honest answer that Laframboise could have given and that is to admit she has no actual evidence IPCC contributors were recruited on the basis of affiliations to Greenpeace , WWF or on agreement to the scientific consensus. I've tweeted Donna Laframboise to ask she support her claims with evidence . Perhaps I'm asking too much, she hasn't corrected the factual errors in Chapter 3 yet. So please, advocates positioned as skeptics and apologists for Donna Laframboise; where is the evidence in her book supporting what she is saying about selection of IPCC contributors ?

Book Review: The Delinquent Teenager

2011-11-01T18:02:00.001Z

Have reviewed "The Delinquent Teenager" byDonna Laframboise, after approval by Amazon this should be posted on Amazon.co.uk too. It gets one star.

Shoddy research or a deliberate attempt to mislead

The first of many misleading claims are the two words ”IPCC EXPOSÉ” found on the front cover of "The Delinquent Teenager" . Nothing is being exposed here, this is basically a write up of Ms Laframboise's blog which the reader can get online for free.

Chapter 3 introduces three scientists Drs Gray, Reiter and Mörner whom she claims have all been “left out in the cold” all well known skeptics of anthropogenic global warming. Laframboise tells us that Gray has never served on the IPCC and goes on to say and that ‘they are all IPCC outsiders’ . This is untrue. Both Reiter and Mörner have served on the IPCC (Working Group II of the IPCC's fourth assessment report.) Laframboise clearly indicates the opposite. It’s either shoddy research or a deliberate attempt to mislead.

Moreover Dr Reiter serves on an advocacy group which receives no scrutiny from the author whatsoever. Such unequal treatment is the hallmark of Laframboise’s work. In Chapter 6 she asserts a new set of rules all her own “Since activists bring their own agenda to the table, and since agendas and science don't mix, environmentalists need to keep their distance from scientific endeavors.” No support is offered for this arbitrary statement, it’s not a protocol or part of any philosophy of science it’s just Laframboise’s made up rule . Any scientist with any connection to WWF or Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth is in Laframboise’s words “tarnished”. It is a witch hunt in print.

Laframboise labours under the illusion that IPCC scientists can be qualified for the job or not. But unable to point to the necessary qualifications she relies on a vague statement by IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri that IPCC contributors “… are people who are at the top of their profession”. Armed with this Laframboise sets out to find IPCC contributors who in her opinion fall short of that mark. So a geography professor in Holland is criticized for being young , an epidemiologist in London is criticized for not getting her doctorate quick enough and whenever Laframboise spots that the doctoral thesis of one scientist has been supervised by another the innuendo of favouritism is made. It is one grossly contrived gripe.

The arbiter of who should and who shouldn’t serve on the IPCC is none other than Donna Laframboise in this tome. She berates a biology PhD for example because there is ‘little indication’ he has reached the ‘threshold’ of being in the ‘world’s-top-experts’ even though no such threshold is established. “[H]is orientation is overtly activist” huffs Laframboise, yes all scientists are divided into two groups ‘activists’ and people the author tolerates.

Bad science is mixed with partisan political advocacy. Examining the link between human generated carbon dioxide and climate change Laframboise claims“But the truth of the matter is far from clear”. If Laframboise really finds that area of radiative physics far from clear then perhaps she should have thought twice about writing a book about climate change. The heat trapping properties of carbon dioxide can clearly be demonstrated in the laboratory and have been known for over a century. But it’s in the final chapter entitled “Disband the IPCC” which gives the game away. Laframboise is an activist herself and the true purpose of her writing is to undermine her subject.

Put simply Laframboise’s work cannot be trusted. She argues that the IPCC should maintain “a strict boundary between itself and green groups” but never stops to ask if perhaps libertarian think tanks might hold sway over some IPCC contributors. A ‘strict boundary’ it seems is a standard only for environmentalists not for Big Oil or libertarians. This is ironic because all four of the testimonials she draws on with a science background to praise her book have documented links to think tanks denying anthropogenic climate change. Laframboise seems to consider that point outside the scope of her work.

No the real villains of the climate change debate hardly get a mention (and when they do it’s complimentary.) Despite their strong anti-science influence, in particular spreading doubt about climate change , the words ‘George C. Marshall Institute’ or ‘Fraser institute’ never appear in this book. One can only assume that’s because Laframboise doesn’t want you to consider the other side of the equation .

Principally this book is about characterizing an institution. But because of the authors poor grasp of science, political prejudices and basic errors there really is no reason to trust anything written in this book, nor any reason to recommend it at all.

Ross McKitrick a fish out of water

2011-10-28T22:34:00.001+01:00

Another IPCC contributor with think tank connections is Ross McKitrick who says "far from being an open network of top experts it has turned itself into a narrow clique of like-minded activists."

I'd like to venture why Professor McKitrick feels that way. McKitrick served on Working Group I which deals with the physical science basis for anthropogenic global warming. McKitrick's field is the dismal science of economics.

McKitrick is far more at home at the Fraser Institute . In 2001 this libertarian think tank published "Global Warming A Guide to the Science" an opus which staes "A review of the scientific literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide ... have produced no deleterious effects upon global climate or temperature." It also tells us "There is no clear evidence, nor unique attribution, of the global effects of anthropogenic CO2 on climate." Although this guff was published in 2001 it didn't stop Professor McKitrick from contributing to the IPCC's 2007 report.

Has the IPCC been infiltrated by right wing think tanks?

2011-10-26T21:16:00.001+01:00

Some months ago I started a wiki listing skeptical scientists who have served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I found the IPCC welcomes representatives not just from academia but from well known corporate interests too like Boeing Exxon Chevron Shell and 3M so I listed the involvement of some of those too. But why are there so many corporate afilliations for outfits whose product is nothing but advocacy or policy?

A quick look at the list of contributors to Working Group III contributors to the Fourth Assessment Report reveals some familiar names like Pat Michaels representing his University and the Cato Institute, yes the Cato Institute funded by those famous progressive leftie pinkoe watermelon Koch brothers.

There's also a Lenny Bernstein of L.S. Bernstein & Associates , L.L.C. Who they? Well L.S. Bernstein & Associates are an environmental consultants employing a staff of approximately one, Lenny has a profile page on the website of the slightly more well known George C. Marshall Institute .

Then there's the representatives from outfits no one has heard of like IPIECA, turns out that's the 'global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues' or Research Triangle Institute who get at least two seats at the table, or the more generically titled think tanks like 'Policy Solutions'. We don't know who their clients are and what interests they represent at the IPCC.

Whether this amounts to infiltration depends on your definition, and the definition doing the rounds now is posited by Donna Laframboise in her ludicrous book with egregious errors I have already noted elsewhere on this blog. She has been taken so seriously the WWF have taken the bold step of issuing a press release denying her claims. So where are the press releases clarifying what the George C. Marshall Institute and the Cato Institute have been up to at the IPCC?

The Fundamental Flaw in Laframboise's new book

2011-10-23T08:25:00.002+01:00

Donna Laframboise posits that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a make up of scientists pre-disposed to accept the consensus. To make her point she focusses on any scientist (out of 2500 plus IPCC scientists) that can be shown to have a link to say Greenpeace or WWF and suggests that makes them an 'activist'. Fair enough you might say but a scientific analysis would consider the other side of the picture too, and ask if there are skeptical IPCC contributors. Donna clearly hasn't looked at this question yet her twitter profile states "If we've only listened to one side of a debate, we haven't made an informed decision. Let's be civil & fair-minded."

In chapter 3 Donna introduces some skeptics William Gray, Paul Reiter and Nils-Axel Mörner "Each of them possesses highly specialized knowledge . Each of them is a seasoned professional with long experience in his field. They are in other words exactly the kind of people you'd expect to find at the heart of [the IPCC]"

Donna goes on to say "But they are all IPCC outsiders" . In the case of Reiter and Nils-Axel Mörner this is simply not true. Nils-Axel Mörner served on Working Group II of the IPCC's fourth assessment report . Paul Reiter served as an expert reviewer on Working Group II of the Fourth Assessment Report. An astonishing omission especially when you consider all three have been active in promoting doubt about anthropogenic global warming outside of the IPCC. Perhaps that would make them 'activists' too in Donna's weltanschauung. A question alas, we will never know the answer to.

Skeptic blogger wants less accuracy in Mail's climate output

2011-10-20T21:13:00.001+01:00

Now read this sentence carefully and see if you can spot a call for for press censorship to protect climate policies from criticism.

"So if Dacre wants to strengthen the case for continued self-regulation of the UK press, perhaps he should consider how it is currently being undermined by his own newspaper's coverage of climate change and its blatant disregard for the PCC's rules."

Spot it? No, neither did I. Blogger "Climate Resistance" did though. He was so sure about it he tweeted. When pressed "Climate Resistance" was unable to support his assertion and insisted the call for censorship was implied. But how did "Climate Resistance" conclude that Bob Ward was implying 'to protect climate policies from criticism' ? "Climate Resistance"s response sheds no light on that mystery.

The twitterstorm was over the indefatigable Bob Ward's examination of the contradictions in the Daily Mail's stance over climate change and Paul Dacre's efforts to resist any kind of external regulation . Bob's article, which is well worth a read, is a criticism of the Daily Mail's editing . And of course it's an editor's job to cut and hence censor bad reporting. So if Bob's conclusion adds up to a call for censorship and "Climate Resistance" is certain of that , it's also implied that Climate Resistance wants to see less accurate climate reporting in the Daily Mail. I wonder if "Climate Resistance" knows what a corollary is.

Jeffrey Sachs Speaks Truth to Power

2011-10-17T11:15:00.005+01:00

The City of New York wont allow speakers at Occupy Wall Street to use amplifiers so Professor Jeffrey Sachs uses a human microphone. It is a video that ought to go viral but it's a little long, the human microphone makes it double it's proper spoken length . So if you can't spare the full fourteen minutes here's my transcription of the good prof's historic speech.

...what they said in the newspaper today. They said Wall Street Bankers , they said you're unsophisticated. You dont look unsophisticated they look pretty foolish. Here's Mr John Paulson, you know who he is, the biggest hedge fund guy, he says we should like him, he says we should be so happy. He says he created one hundred jobs in New York. Let me tell you a story about Mr Paulson. Mr Paulson went to his friends. He went to his friends at Goldman Sachs. He said let's make a derivative so we can cheat some banks, not our banks on Wall Street we'll cheat some German banks. I'll fill up that derivative with junk. And then Goldman Sachs you know how to tell lies, you go sell that junk to a state bank in Germany. So they made this little story and Goldman Sachs sold that junk and Mr Paulson bet against it and the German people lost a lot of money. And John Paulson made $5 billion ! And that's what he wants us to know. And you know what five billion dollars is ? It's 100 000 people earning $50 000 in a year. So John Paulson you created one hundred jobs, your five billion dollars should have created 100 000 jobs! And that's why people walk to your house Mr Paulson, we're not so happy with you. They think you cheated the system. And you know what so did the Securities and Exchange Commission because Goldman Sachs were charged with violating financial laws because of you. And they paid $550 million in fines because they cheated together with you. We don't like the cheats we're pretty sophisticated.

We know what you've done on Wall Street every one of the big banks here Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, AIG, you all stole from the American people. You brought this economy to the brink of disaster.

I'll read you another story from the Wall Street Journal. These people are more confused than anybody on this planet. They want to know what's Occupy Wall Street, they don't understand why we're here. They say why do you go for JP Morgan it's a wonderful bank, what's your problem ? Well let's tell them.

JP Morgan hooked up with a hedge fund , they made a phony derivative, they committed the same financial fraud, they sold junk to the markets, and they ended up paying $153 million this year in fines. Why didn't you mention that Wall Street Journal ? Because your editorials are lies every day. You are propaganda. Mr Murdoch you tell us lies, you cheat ... It's a pack of lies. They also defend John Paulson. They also say why don't we go out and love the keystone pipeline because Rupert Murdoch and big oil are in bed together. The Keystone Pipeline will bring the world's dirtiest energy from Canada to the Gulf, it will help wreck this planet if it goes through. It will profit David Koch. It's all about money for these reckless billionaires.

We are the 99%. And they are wrecking this planet. And we want this planet back from David Koch. We don't want pipelines bringing dirty energy to the world. We want Rupert Murdoch to stop destroying countries with this propaganda. Rupert Murdoch we don't need you. Pack of lies the whole thing. Wall Street Journal, Fox News you're wrecking this country with your lies. That's why we're here on Wall Street. It's not 'cos we're envious. It's not 'cos we think wealth is bad. It's because we think you cheat. It's because you don't follow the law. It's because you don't pay your taxes. And then you say we have no money in this country to educate our children. We have the money. It's your money in the Cayman Islands. It's your money in the Swiss bank accounts. And if you don't bring it home we're going to bring it home because this is a country of laws, because this is a democracy . And we are the 99%. We have the votes. You may have the money, but we have the votes. And you are going to follow the law. We're going to have a decent country again, and we're going to start investing in our children again. And across America they are hearing this message. And around the world today they are hearing this message.

This is the beginning of change long overdue. Ronald Reagan put us on a path to disaster thirty years ago. He said cut the taxes to the rich, squeeze the poor, don't educate the children. And every President since him has followed in the same path because the big money pays them , and they sup with the rich and the billionaires. And it's over now. We need a new direction in this country. You don't need billions of dollars to get elected in America you just need to reach the people. Barack Obama Stop having dinners with $35 000 a plate! We don't want to see you on Wall Street. We want to see you in Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx and Harlem where people live. We don't need to see you in the Four Seasons Restaurant, we don't need to see you dining every week with rich people. We don't need to see the whole White House staffed with Wall Street.

Why is your Chief of Staff from JP Morgan?
Why is the head of the budget office from Citigroup?
Why is your Chief Economic Advisor a former worker from Goldman Sachs?
Why is it that everyone there is from Wall Street?

We need a White House that represents the country again. You promised us this President Obama. You promised change. We are calling on you today to stop catering to the billionaires stop catering to the millionaires. You don't need a billion dollars for your campaign. Send your political advisors home. Send the people back to Wall Street. Then you'll win re-election. Because then you will have the people with you. They'll remember why they voted for you, and you have to remember why you ran for office. You ran to change this country, not to have dinner with billionaires.

This country will change when politicians understand how to get the votes in this country. When they speak to us again. Because we have the free media, because you reach people all over this country . We don't need money to do it. Just put it on You Tube and it'll spread. This is the way to do politics in America now. Young people here, you're in the lead, you know how to do this, you don't have to raise money , you just have to show the camera, put it on facebook, get it tweeted, and get it out there. Because this how news spreads in America. You don't have to buy ads on Fox cable phony news. You don't have to advertise in that junk newspaper the Wall Street Journal. People are tired of the lies. Aren't we ?

[Crowd: Yes ! Applause]

#OccupyWallStreet #occupylsx

Donna on Activists, the IPCC and Vampires (wtf ???)

2011-10-15T12:09:00.002+01:00

Canadian advocate positioned as skeptic Donna Laframboise's schtick is to draw attention to the links between IPCC scientists and any group that can be painted as any shade of green which in Donna's weltanschauung makes them "activists". I'll let Donna explain in her own words what this adds up to :

"Imagine you're an accident victim on the side of the road. You're told not to worry, that the person who is going to wait with you until the ambulance arrives is trained in first aid. What you aren't told is that he is also a vampire and that the blood seeping from your wound will be difficult for him to resist . You have not been warned about the presence of another agenda - one that changes the picture dramatically."

Scary stuff . That's from her new book which boasts glowing testimonials from Matt Ridley, Ross McKitrick, and Richard Tol. All three have connections to think tanks such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation (all), The Fraser Institute (McKitrick) and Economic and Social Research Institute (Tol). A point Donna and her publisher neglect to mention.

Icecap shrinking, but fake doctors blossom in the deny-o-sphere

2011-10-08T18:49:00.004+01:00

Last month I blogged about how climate denier Piers Corbyn allows the inflated claim of him being a Doctor despite not actually being a doctor. Well he's not alone .

Here's Peter Sinclair's look at Steven Goddard's claims about the shrinking arctic ice. Goddard's same claims are also regurgitated by Pierrre Gosselin in a blogpost entitled '2011 Record Arctic Ice Melt Not Even Close' . But Gosselin being on the same side of the argument as Goddard is far more charitable to Goddard, so charitable in fact that he has awarded Goddard a Doctorate.

So , depending on who you read “Steven Goddard” is either a pseudonym used by an anonymous climate denialist crank or Steven Goddard is Dr. Steve Goddard. My research* has determined that Steven Goddard's claims are that he has a Bachelor of Science in Geology and a Masters In Electrical Engineering. So no doctorate then. On learning of this does Pierre Gosselin rush to correct the errors in his post on the curiously titled No Tricks Zone ? No. Pierre's cryptic response to the news is 'Steve Jobs and Bill Gates aren’t doctors either.' So Gosselin's error remains uncorrected and 'Doctor' Steven Goddard is not complaining about it either. Or to give him his full academic title Mister Steven Goddard .

* Comment and response (October 5th 2011 5:45pm ) in this piece Arctic Ice Continues To Recover : Real Science

Tribute to Lee Camp

2011-10-05T22:56:00.001+01:00

The best American comedian since Bill Hicks . He produces three new videos on You Tube every week so it's difficult just keeping up.

'Evil People Have Plans' is a classic.

He explains what Occupy Wall Street is all about.

Don't be put off by the title of this one.

And he's got it in for Starbucks so he cant be all bad

What is Occupy Wall Street About ?

2011-10-05T22:01:00.000+01:00

This Occupy Wall Street thing has been going on in New York for some weeks and appears to be gathering steam. Perhaps we have something to learn from it, we wont know unless we watch the video and find out what it's all about. So what are going to call our British version, Occupy Lombard Street ? Occupy Bishopsgate ? Occupy Threadneedle Street ? Oh well, talented American comedian Lee Camp seems to know what it's all about.

Is This Man Britain's most dishonest hack ?

2011-10-03T22:41:00.002+01:00

Yes it's a crowded field but Telegraph blogger James Delingpole finds the chutzpah to present two conflicting arguments within days of one another. James suggests corruption in this interview without presenting any actual evidence whatsoever noting (at 4:25) " You can buy a lot of vested interests a lot of businessmen a lot of politicians for that kind of money."

A couple of days later I suggest James sign himself up for George Monbiot's proposed register of interests for Journalists . James declines but blocks my twitter for the trouble . But over the next couple of days environmentalists (and Monbiot in particular) persistently trouble James's brain cell " It simply does not occur to them that those on the other side of the argument might actually hold the views they hold sincerely and honestly" James muses in another blogpost on the Daily Telegraph website.

So in the first case money corrupts , in the second case that same notion is "demonstrably untrue" .

Apropos Delingpole back in July he coined the term Polarbeargate in this blogpost about the travails of hard working scientist Dr Charles Monnett. In an article long on speculation and short on facts Delingpole noted that the investigation of Monnett would be "definitely one to watch." He was right about that. Monnett is now back at work, and the investigation floundered when no evidence turned up. Curiously , James Delingpole has not updated his readers about any of this "definitley one to watch" story.

Psst ... Goldman Sachs Rules the World

2011-09-29T11:28:00.002+01:00

Something this man has said has hit a raw nerve and the video has gone viral. It could be "The big institutions dont buy the rescue plan" or the stuff about the recession being a cancer, but that is just boldly expressing the subtext of a lot of commentary these days.

I suggest it's this "Governments don't rule the world" a view not often expressed on breakfast telly (although its in the subtext of a lot of political analyses) . As a negative statement though, it doesnt really capture the imagination because it says what isn't - not what is. Rastani followed with the words "Goldman Sachs rules the world" something that is relevant and pertinent.

At this point an honest media would follow up by examining the nexus of merchant bankers and contempary power.Piers Morgan tweeted the question "Is that outrageous BBC trader interviewee Alessio Rastani an infamous hoaxer? Anyone know? " Of course Morgan has form on spreading financial disinformation - witness the City Slickers scandal.

So we've been thrown this ridiculous 'Yes Men' canard followed by the Telegraph and Mail doorstepping the man to posit an entirely different question , namely is Alessio Rastani 'real' ? It's a proxy question , asked to stop us asking the more pertinent is there any truth in the statement Goldman Sachs rules the world?

Since when has our celebrity obsessed media started asking if someone is 'real'?

It's worth noting that the BBC have stated that they "can't find any evidence to suggest that the interview with Alessio Rastani was a hoax." But the hoax meme will not die.

Astonishingly people seem to have bought it, with seasoned progressive commentators buying the line that Alessio Rastani is something other than he claims so that we can all go back to sleep and forget we ever heard the words "Governments don't rule the world , Goldman Sachs rules the world" live on telly.

The tricks of No Tricks Zone

2011-09-21T10:26:00.002+01:00

You don't have to be a scientist to see that most of the so-called climate skepticism out there is complete bollocks. Step up to the plate Pierre Gosselin in Germany who writes the ironically titled "No Tricks Zone" .

Take this. Amospheric changes on all 9 planets explains the cause of global warming as "the sun, stupid" . A real skeptic would doubt any conclusion that is so forthright but Pierre expresses no doubts whatsoever and if you don't agree you're stupid. But what evidence is there that warming on other planets and the Earth share the same cause? Pierre offers none . He has arrived at his explanation for global warming on the Earth by ... looking at completely different planets. Unfortunately none of those other bodies in the solar system support life, a point that I have made to P but it seems to have gone past him.

A few days later Pierre's headline is "NOAA Data Shows Slowing Sea Level Rise". Pierre sorts the results of a selection of coastal stations around the globe into four categories which he calls 'observed most recent rate trend'. Although he claims six stations show a 'steady drop' three of those (Karachi, Walvis Bay and Tenerife) actually record numerical rises in sea level. So how does Pierre arrive at his 'observed most recent rate trend'? I ask if it's simply Pierre's opinion of the most recent direction of the line on the graph perhaps. "It was arrived at by looking at the data" is P's cryptic response. He then suggests "your time would be better spent if you asked [Stefan] Rahmstorf at the PIK how they reached their conclusions of accelerating SLR. " Quite.

The Ad Hominem attack - Monty's flexible friend

2011-09-13T20:51:00.002+01:00

Ad Hominem means against the person. It's very poor form to attack your opponent's character as the implication is that you can't attack his argument.

Andrew Montford complains that this critical appraisal of a recent controversial paper is mostly ad-hom , but he is tantalisingly non-specific. It seems that his gripe is to note motivations as ad-hominem insisting "the motivations are irrelevant to the science." Debatable, since Roy Spencer (the author of the now discredited skeptic paper) is Chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute a motivation which may conflict with the dispassionate search for truth that should be scientific enquiry.

So, having widened the definition of ad-hominem to include discussion of motivations how long does it take Montford to go back to criticizing his opponents motivations? Not long , the folowing day Monty snipes at scientific journal Nature, and delivers a whole blogpost in which he rants (an unsupported assertion) that 2500 IPCC scientists are "corrupt, so bereft of any integrity."

Would it be bad form to wonder perhaps Andrew Montford's motivations are less than a dispassionate search for truth?

Chris de Freitas not a skeptic

2011-09-05T22:25:00.000+01:00

You can't do too much fact-checking. A profile of Chris de Freitas in the NZHerald prompts me to ask which IPCC reports he contributed to. The Doctor responds with a great deal more, and takes issue that he is a global warming sceptic.

Hello Hengist
Reviewer’s efforts do not get credited as publications. Rather, their efforts are simply acknowledged. In my case see:

Page 558 of the SAR 1995, WG1
Page 851 of the TAR 2001, WG1

BTW, if you read what I write, you will see that I am not a global warming sceptic. I accept that rising human-caused CO2 from fossil sources could ‘change the climate’. The basic physics is there to support this view. But where is the evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging?

I have looked but I can find no unambiguous empirical evidence (not output from hypothetical models) that atmospheric carbon dioxide above preindustrial levels is a major driver of global climate, or that CO2 above preindustrial levels will be damaging or cause dangerous climate change. The so called ‘human fingerprints on climate change’ can also be attributed to causes or processes other than those related to fossil fuel-caused CO2 increase.

In the 1980s and 1990s I wrote papers warning of the threat of human-caused global warming from CO2 emissions, but had to stop when the data required to prove that view failed to materialise. Now there are several peer reviewed research papers that show negative feedback applies when radiative forcing is increased.

I accept one could reasonably argue that lack of evidence of ‘dangerous global warming’ ahead is not a good enough reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to global warming research and lobbying for global warming action and for Kyoto treaties etc. could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect hundreds of millions of people.

Regards

Chris de Freitas

Bishop Hill largely in the absence of supporting facts

2011-08-30T21:41:00.016+01:00

The deny-o-skept-o-sphere's take on the Hackgate scandal has posed a question I'd been meaning to ask for some time:

Which Andrew Montford sidesteps

This is in the context of a cop being arrested as part of the Hackgate police op. But has Monty made up the claim of bribery and corruption , or can he support it?

A question Monty refuses to answer. Instead I recieve a few ad homs from Bishop Hill devotees. This is my personal favourite:

A troll I may be but asking for supporting facts is normal especially when serious allegations of bribery and corruption are made. So is his claim supported or not ? Or did Bishop Hill aka Andrew Montford invent his allegation of bribery of a police officer ?

In a nutshell this is how climate *skeptic* blogs work. Andrew Montford is not used to being called to support his accusations , his blog followers will deal with the correspondence whilst he moves on to the next attack. It's only a week since this thread but already Monty has made at least one other claim of corruption . To date Bishop Hill has not addressed the question directly posed above . Bishop Hill is a blog that maintains serious allegations against some of the world's top scientists yet if it is not convenient the Bishop Hill blog (and the skept-o-sphere in general) will obfuscate and obscure rather than set the record straight and admit a false accusation has been made.

The strange case of "Doctor" Corbyn

2011-08-24T21:01:00.001+01:00

Apparently global warming is nothing to do with mankind. "We know theres no evidence in history for CO2 being a driver for temperature or climate in the real atmosphere we live in." Thus spake Piers Corbyn who is in no doubt that climate change is dictated by solar activity and the moon.

What is in doubt though is Piers Corbyn's credentials. He is often referred to as a doctor, indeed he is captioned on The Great Global Warming Swindle as Doctor Piers Corbyn. And it's disputed here. So who's right?

The Great Global Warming Swindle. Swindle

In a missive to wikipedia editors Piers writes "Instead of speculating about me and making up things some would do well to ask me or go to source. Degrees are easy to check for example. I have a first class degree in Physics from Imperial College and an MSc In Astrophyics from Queen Mary College for example." So no doctorate. Why are there numerous references on the web to 'Dr Piers Corbyn' then ? And why doesn't Piers Corbyn correct erroneous citations? In this interview he's introduced as Doctor Corbyn but he makes no effort to correct it.

Odd that Piers Corbyn should express so much certainty in his climate theory yet tolerate so much uncertainty over his own credentials. I've emailed his office but Piers hasn't replied.

Lord Lawson Class Warrior or Hypocrite

2011-08-21T22:04:00.006+01:00

The Global Warming Policy Foundation's anti-windfarm campaign takes a sideswipe at the landed gentry that fail to shout "get oorrff moi laaand" at renewable energy . Under the headline "Aristocrats Cashing In On Britain's Wind Farm Subsidies " we learn the names of toffs receiving "generous subsidies - that are added to consumer energy bills "

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is led by Lord Lawson of Blaby. Lawson divides his time between his London home and a large 18th century farmhouse in the south of France, an arrangement which enabled him to pocket more than £16 000 before the expenses scandal broke, he avoided prosecution . The GWPF's Board of Trustees consists of five Lords, one Baroness, a knight of the realm, one Bishop but only one person , plain Henri LePage, bereft of any title whatsoever.

What are Fox Expert's Scientific Qualifications?

2011-08-18T13:45:00.001+01:00

There's not much I can add to this excellent little video , but I notice that Fair and Balanced Fox calls on Chris Horner's expert opinion (at about 3 mins in). He has a Juris Doctorate, which sounds fancy but it's a legal qualification. I wonder what his scientific qualifications are.

Dear Dr Horner,

I am a Wikipedia and Sourcewatch editor and was wondering if you could supply me with a little information about yourself that is relevant to our profiles of you.

What are your scientific qualifications? Which Institutions awarded them, when?

I’ve viewed both your Heartland Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute profile pages and neither of them list any scientific qualifications at all. Your frequent contributions to Fox News on such subjects as global warming would, I suggest, carry more weight if your scientific qualifications could be added to the context of what you have to tell us.

Salutations and thanks in advance,

Hengist McStone

SpongeBob more convincing than Morano

2011-08-14T12:24:00.002+01:00

Two shorts from Fair and Balanced Fox News . First, today's final nail in the coffin of AGW is that SpongeBob Squarepants has come out as a warmist. Note that Fox cannot actually point to any errors in SpongeBob's worldview, just 'disputed facts', disputed by Fox that is.

To set the record straight here's Marc Morano, who sadly isn't able to keep his testimony as error free as our underwater imaginary friend . "The global warming theory is in utter collapse " spouts Marc , " you can go from A to Z from the Antarctic to the Arctic ..." Ok Marc's spelling is a little shaky but what about his science? "They're now saying chinese coal will save us from global warming" attests Marc, in fact what scientists are really saying is that chinese coal is so polluting it will blot out the sun for a while. Marc goes on... "scientists are predicting cooling from the sunspot cycle" , yes but that doesn't mitigate carbon based warming.

Oh and Marc, Richard Tol is not a climate scientist like you suggest, his field of learning is the dismal science of economics, oh, what's the point ?

Hat tip : Bob Ward

Words to climategate made up by Monty

2011-06-14T21:35:00.001+01:00

(retitled)

I've long nursed a notion that the climate denial narrative relies on an environment of chinese whispers, that explains how a large and robust scientific consensus is turned into a popular delusion of some pseudoscientific "hoax" or "fraud" or "myth" simply by the shaving of meaning between successive accounts. It's a point I must return to because it works in a temporal dimension too, like our generation teaching the "controversy" of global warming rather than the science.

Anyhow , an Andrew Montford interview spewed forth a couple of dubious claims that need putting to rights and I was putting together a blog post on those points when I realised his entire interview is evidence of the notion above.

Montford has no special experience to relate on this issue, he's simply read the emails himself and tells the reporter what he thinks ofit all. But would the story be any different if the journalist had read the CRU emails himself first hand, and checked the facts ? Getting to the truth is a collegiate exercise. So in the interests of getting to the truth lets put Monty's words under the microscope.

NS: What do you think motivated the Hockey Team to misuse the data, use unconventional statistical methods, etc?

Montford: It is clear that at least some members of the team felt themselves under pressure to produce, in the words of one of the Climategate emails, "a nice tidy story…as regards apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more". On the whole though the shenanigans seem to have been the result of "noble cause corruption" - they sincerely believed that there was a problem that required an urgent solution and that this justified cutting corners.

The question about motivation is somewhat loaded but Montford's answer is a clear misrepresentation. Reference to pressure to produce "a nice tidy story" does indeed appear in one of the emails, but the writer concludes that argument with the caveat that " the reality is not quite so simple". It's in an email from Dr Keith Briffa beginning with the line "Let me say that I don't mind what you put in the policy makers summary if there is a general concensus." But Monty leaves that out. He also focuses on the four words (out of 848) which conjure up the impression that suits his purposes. Montford is cherry picking his quotes to create a narrative that suits him.

I've pointed this out to Montford but he washes his hands of all responsibility with the reply : Hengist I was asked what made them do the things they did. I said they were under pressure to do so and quoted the words that showed this to be the case. 1

On closer inspection though we find the words that showed Monty's case weren't quite the same as those in the hacked emails. Dr Briffa used the verb 'to be' but in Montford's account it has been changed to 'to feel', and declined reflexively in the plural. Montford's words "It is clear that at least some members of the team felt themselves under pressure" is pure sophistry. Briffa's reflection that 'pressure' exists has been turned into a complaint that he (and others) are under pressure.

But it's Monty's suggestion that this affair is the result of "noble cause corruption" which should set alarm bells ringing, because they do not appear in any of the emails. Bear in mind that this interview was conducted by email , so the inverted commas (signifying the phrase can be found in the hacked emails) are Montfords. Those words are in fact skeptic commentary, but he presents them as if they are to be found in the original emails, they are not. I've pointed this out to Monty 2 but answer comes there none.

1 Comment at Bishop Hill May 4, 2011 at 4:49 PM

2 Comment at Bishop Hill Jun 6, 2011 at 10:41 PM

Skeptic Crichton back from the dead for pseudoscience conference !

2011-06-12T16:20:00.004+01:00

Serious scientists are set to ignore the climate skeptic conference hosted by the American Freedom Alliance . Entitled "Big Footprint: Is Green the New Tyranny" skeptic luminaries topping the bill include our ole friends Lord Monckton, Phelim McAleer and Steve Milloy , but what to make of the line up in the California Room (at 1130 on June 12th) considering the question "Is there an Element of Religiosity to Global Warming Advocacy?" Michael Crichton author of "Aliens Cause Global Warming" died in November 2008 and now he's sharing a platform with TVMOB! Ooooh the irony.

Monty's fib fest

2011-06-01T20:21:00.003+01:00

A whopper from Andrew Montford who casually declares 'a finding that "hide the decline" was "misleading" .
Hang on a minute , I thought the enquiry into the CRU hack had cleared climate scientists over dishonestly manipulating data.

To climate geeks the three most contested words in the english language are probably "hide the decline". *Skeptics* tend to say it refers to a decline in temperatures (indeed they even managed to doctor the original email and get it broadcast on the BBC, but that's another tale) , whilst the author of the phrase Dr Phil Jones says it refers to inaccuracies in modern tree ring data. Now Monty is giving us a different definition.

We can check the allegation 1, and the all important finding 2 . There is no 'finding that "hide the decline" was "misleading"'. That statement relies on the temperature graph on a 1999 World Meteorological Organization Report being synonymous with 'hide the decline' . Muir Russell did have a criticism of the graph , and the 'hide the decline' email was clearly about the graph on the WMO Report. We know that because the subject of that email was Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement. But Muir Russell did not say that "hide the decline" was "misleading". Why do climate *skeptics* find this so difficult?

Interpretation is at the heart of the climategate dispute. If Montford can't stop himself playing fast and loose with the wording of the Muir Russell Report could he be misinterpreting the original emails too?

1 Muir Russell Chapter 7 Paragraph 9
2 Muir Russell Chapter 7 Paragraph 26

Is climate skepticism pseudoscience ?

2011-05-23T14:33:00.000+01:00

From a *skeptic* blog

"My (admittedly inexpert) understanding of the impact of global warming on hurricanes is that because the poles are expected to warm the most, the temperature difference between poles and equator will be reduced and there will be less energy to transport between them. In other words there will be fewer, weaker hurricanes."

From NOAA

" The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the earth's climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. "

Hmmmm. Skeptics like to remind us that theirs is a dispassionate search for truth and that nobody is right all the time. But if their position is supported by ignorance, as the above statement by Andrew Montford would appear to be , then at what point has it crossed in to the realm of denialism ?

How superinjunctions work

2011-05-09T19:06:00.004+01:00

1. Hack discovers nauseating titbit about sleb's sex life

2. Editor considers this newsworthy

3. Vanity obsessed sleb calls in scumsucking lawyers

4. Senile old judge issues superinjunction

5. Speculation takes over, cue twitter

6. Real News is sidelined like the fact that tens of thousands of kids a day are dying simply of hunger.

I've blogged before on this and found it was 13 000 a day. According to this website it's 15 million per year or 41 000 a day. Every day. Still not enough to get coverage in the news.

This is what Noam Chomsky was on about in 'Manufacturing Consent'. I personally couldn’t give a toss which sleb is sleeping with which sleb . The super injunctions make the media look even more moronic because their story is now they can’t report what I don’t care about. Meanwhile real stuff goes unreported . Good grief.

Consistency with Andrew Montford

2011-05-04T11:47:00.002+01:00

How much weight should be placed on a particular type of evidence? For Andrew Montford the answer depends on whether the evidence is good or bad for your case .

"The latest bright idea" writes Montford "from CAGW subscribers is to use opinion polls to measure climate change. I kid you not... " Well Montford may not be kidding but he is certainly being economical with the truth. He is referring to researchers taking evidence from remote villagers in the Darjeeling Hills and suggesting that amounts to 'opinion polls' . It's Montford's way of ridiculing a scientific study that produces evidence he disagrees with.

Last month, in his write up of the Spectator debate there was no doubt about the most impressive argument "Benny Peiser's talk was the one that intrigued me. He essentially argued that the science is irrelevant - that the public have made their minds up and that they vote out any party that pushes the green line too far." Doctor Peiser's argument relied solely on opinion polls . And on that occasion Montford found opinion polls very impressive.

Quotes of the Great

2011-04-28T23:59:00.000+01:00

"Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know" BERTRAND RUSSELL

"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature" JACOB BRONOWSKI

"The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions" CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of it's domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary" ALBERT EINSTEIN

"Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world" RICHARD DAWKINS

"Four stages of acceptance:
i)this is worthless nonsense,
ii)this is an interesting but perverse point of view,
iii)this is true but quite unimportant,
i) I always said so." J.B.S. HALDANE

"A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life." ROBIN G. COLLINGWOOD

"The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks." - WALLY BROECKER

"You are disturbing me, I am picking mushrooms" GREGORI PERELMAN

Benny Peiser hopes this is helpful

2011-04-18T14:28:00.000+01:00

Re: seeking supporting evidence or clarification

Dear Mr McStone

Here is some more information for your blog readers. I hope this is helpful:

Only a quarter of Britons believe climate change is one of the most important environmental issues facing the UK today, according to a survey conducted by Ipsos MORI and released to the Ecologist this week.
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/849698/only_a_quarter_of_uk_population_concerned_about_climate_change.html

A poll for this week’s Climate Week found 45% of the younger generation think climate change is man-made but only 26% of people close to retiring age agree. And 56% of women are committed to changing their behaviour to be greener, compared to 44% of men.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/03/25/old-men-in-midlands-are-the-biggest-climate-sceptics-115875-23013783/

The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests. The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November. The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month. And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and "now established as largely man-made".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8500443.stm

With best regards

Dr Benny Peiser

Director, The Global Warming Policy Foundation

1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB

tel: 020 7930 6856

www.thegwpf.org

registered in England, no 6962749

registered with the Charity Commission, no 1131448

This e-mail is confidential to the intended recipient. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender and delete it from your system. Any unauthorised use, disclosure, or copying is not permitted. This e-mail has been checked for viruses, but no liability is accepted for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this e-mail.

One for the GWPF's Inbox

2011-04-17T19:42:00.000+01:00

From : Hengist McStone
To: Benny Peiser
17/04/2011 19:20
Subject: seeking supporting evidence or clarification

Dear Doctor Peiser,

Thank you for the copy of your script you sent me, which I have posted on my blog .

I don’t feel that any of the points I have put to you have been addressed, so please allow me to be a little more direct. The argument ‘that the public have made their minds up’ has been attributed to you . Do you think that is an accurate précis of your speech at the Royal Geographical Society? If so, please direct me to some evidence which supports the argument that the public have made their minds up.

My concern is that between Mr Montford’s account and your own a misrepresentation of the public’s view may have been made. I am simply seeking supporting evidence or clarification on that point.

Salutations,

Hengist McStone

Eight minutes well spent

2011-04-16T18:41:00.000+01:00

Watch this

Doctor Peiser shoots from the script

2011-04-12T22:13:00.000+01:00

Benny Peiser responds below. He doesn't take issue with Andrew Montford's précis but the key question remains how is that statement "that the public have made their minds up " supported? First thoughts: It strikes me as odd that for a man arguing that public concern is waning only offers a copy of his script to an enquiry from a member of the public asking to see support for the claim "that the public have made their minds up. " If it's a fait accompli how was it accomplished ?

Dear Mr McStone

Thank you for your query. I have attached below my short contribution at the recent Spectator debate.

With best regards

Benny Peiser

---------------------

The Global Warming Concern Is Over. Time for a Return to Sanity

Benny Peiser

The hype and obsession with global warming is well and truly over. How do we know? Because all the relevant indicators – polls, news coverage, government u-turns and a manifest lack of interest among policy makers – show a steep decline in public concern about climate change.

Public opinion is the crucial factor that determines whether policy makers advance or abandon contentious policies.

Surveys in the United Kingdom and other European nations reveal that the levels of concern about global warming have been falling steadily in recent years. Media coverage of climate change has dropped sharply. And, as I will show, some of the world's leading science institutions have begun to tone down the rhetoric and alarm about climate change.

The public's concern about global warming as a pressing problem is in marked decline not least because of the growing realisation that governments and the international community are ignoring the advice of climate campaigners.

Instead, most policy makers around the world refuse to accept any decisions that are likely to harm national interests and economic competitiveness.

They are assisted in this policy of benign neglect by a public that has largely become habituated to false alarms and is happy to ignore other claims of environmental catastrophe that are today widely disregarded or seen as scare tactics.

Part of the reason for the evident waning of public concern can be attributed to the issue-attention cycle, a concept developed by Anthony Downs in 1972.

According to the by now well established attention-cycle, certain environmental events can trigger public interest and concern. After a while, though, and even if the supposed problem remains unresolved, other issues replace the original concern because the huge costs to 'solve' the problem become apparent while boredom and fatigue set in.

That future impacts of global warming have been exaggerated by some climate scientists is now widely accepted. Even the government's chief scientific advisor, Professor Beddington, has criticised the failure to disclosure the manifest uncertainties in climate predictions about the rate and extent of climate change.

Let me quote Professor Beddington: "I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed."

I fully agree with Beddington. I also agree with Prof Beddington that uncertainty about aspects of climate science should not be used as an excuse for inaction.

However, what kind of political and economic action is most appropriate and most cost-effective cannot be decided on a whim of some scientists but only after careful economic, social and political considerations.

The Royal Society too has revised and toned down its position on climate change. Its new climate guide is certainly an improvement on their more alarmist 2007 pamphlet which caused an internal rebellion by more than 40 fellows of the Society and triggered a review and subsequent revisions.

The former publication gave the misleading impression that the 'science is settled' - the new guide accepts that important questions remain open and uncertainties unresolved. The Royal Society now also agrees with the GWPF that the warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years.

In their old guide, the Royal Society demanded that governments should take "urgent steps" to cut CO2 emissions "as much and as fast as possible." This political activism has now been replaced by a more sober assessment of the scientific evidence and ongoing climate debates.

Last, but not least, the InterAcademy Council, an umbrella organisation of national science academies, was forced to review the IPCC after a number of scientific scandal had hit the UN-led climate body. The review revealed serious flaws and distortions in the IPCC's reports, its structure and its management.

Harold Shapiro, the IAC chairman, said the IPCC's review on the likely impacts of climate change “contains many statements that were assigned high confidence but for which there is little evidence.”

The Council also criticised the IPCC for over-emphasising the negative impacts of climate change, many of which were “not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly.” The InterAcademy Council (IAC) has called for fundamental reforms of the IPCC. It recommends that, I quote, "review editors should ensure that genuine controversies are reflected in the report and be satisfied that due consideration was given to properly documented alternative views.”

It also recommends that, quote, "lead authors should explicitly document that a range of scientific viewpoints has been considered, and Coordinating Lead Authors and Review Editors should satisfy themselves that due consideration was given to properly documented alternative views.”

From these and other recommendations is it clear that the IPCC and many of its lead authors have been narrow-minded and have not take into account any other views than the 'mainstream' and that lead authors ignored views that did not tally with their own.

Let me conclude:

The scale and long-term effects of climate change will remain uncertain for decades to come.

Moreover, climate change will be generally gradual. This gradualism means that most people have become used to living with moderate warming, not least because the warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt during the last decade.

In all likelihood, we will not know for the next 20 or 30 years who is right or wrong on the scale and impact of global warming. The stalemate in international climate negotiations is likely to become cemented for years to come.

As long as global temperatures remain more or less stable, as long as climate policies and green taxes are a growing political liability and as long as the deadlock between the West and the rest of the world lingers, we should not expect much progress in the heated climate debates.

Unless a significant warming trend re-emerges in the next 10 years, it will be near impossible to revive climate change as a major public concern. I believe we should use this time to restore reason and sanity to a debate that has become far too emotional and doom-laden and all too often depressingly intolerant.

Email to Benny Peiser

2011-04-08T10:12:00.004+01:00

Subject: Fact or opinion or fiction at the Spectator Debate

Dear Dr. Peiser,

I am writing to ask how you support a statement you are said to have made at the recent Spectator Debate at the Royal Geographical Society. I rely on Andrew Montford’s account , who writes:

“Benny Peiser's talk was the one that intrigued me. He essentially argued that the science is irrelevant - that the public have made their minds up and that they vote out any party that pushes the green line too far. He also noted that they have moved on to other issues, such as the economy.”

I don’t mean to argue with your opinion, but I do ask commentators to distinguish between their own opinion and what is an accepted fact. I suggest that the statement “the public have made their minds up” whilst appearing as fact by way of completeness is unsupportable and is ergo opinion . There has been no referendum in this country, nor anywhere in the world (to my knowledge) to support such a statement. In order for the the public have made their minds up a proposition needs to have been put to them and the matter needs to have been considered. In a democracy there is always some formal way of assessing the public’s will, a plebiscite resulting in a counting of votes. No such formality has ever been attempted on this issue and the statement attributed to you appears to usurp the vox populus and bypass the democratic process.

I would be very grateful if you could affirm that your statement is not fact but your own opinion and offer anything else in support of this statement.

Salutations ,

Hengist McStone

Climate Debate - Start Here

2011-04-05T09:16:00.000+01:00

Today's op-ed in the New York Times is making quite a splash. Entitled"The Truth, Still Inconvenient", Paul Krugman argues that a moral dimension is lacking in the so called 'debate' around global warming. His wise words really resonate with me, and I reproduce some of them, in the hope that this quotation ought to throw some light on the darkness . Professor Krugman over to you:

"For years now, large numbers of prominent scientists have been warning, with increasing urgency, that if we continue with business as usual, the results will be very bad, perhaps catastrophic. They could be wrong. But if you’re going to assert that they are in fact wrong, you have a moral responsibility to approach the topic with high seriousness and an open mind. After all, if the scientists are right, you’ll be doing a great deal of damage."

Did Benny Peiser make this bit up ?

2011-04-02T19:44:00.000+01:00

This week a debate on global warming was held at The Royal Geographical Society. Sponsored by The Spectator magazine, it included a couple of notable names from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Benny Peiser and Nigel Lawson.

Now I've been watching the climate scene for long enough to know that "debate" isn't really happening. Mudslinging , yes. So I wasn't tempted to shell out thirty quid to watch something that was unlikely to really challenge my perceptions or inform me. Even though the line up also included the excellent Dr Simon Singh, whose book on codebreaking I am reading right now.

Instead I rely on Andrew Montford's account who writes: "Benny Peiser's talk was the one that intrigued me. He essentially argued that the science is irrelevant - that the public have made their minds up and that they vote out any party that pushes the green line too far."

I wonder how Dr Peiser arrived at the line that 'the public have made their minds up'. No plebiscite has ever been called, nor any proposition put to the public. So how could any reasonable person reach this conclusion? Dr Peiser, a sports psychologist with a background in anthropology is affiliated to the Global Warming Policy Foundation but he has not been elcted to speak for the public. And I am pretty sure I am right when I say that 'the public have made their minds up' is unsupportable.

Now I'm not quibbling that this is how things are working out, but I suggest Dr Peiser is misrepresenting the public's view. I argue that the public have been largely misled, but the fact is there has been no plebiscite or referendum to support Dr Peiser's assertion. And I figure we really ought to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps it is more opinion dressed up as fact. Perhaps Montford's account was a little wide of the mark. Whatever , it looks like I shall have to email the great man himself.

Recyclists cover up emissions figures (only they don't)

2011-03-29T21:10:00.003+01:00

Not normally noted for caring about the environment The Adam Smith Institute weighs in that recycling has a higher carbon footprint than landfill.

In an article strangely titled "Good sense on recycling at last" libertarian blogger Tim Worstall predicts that a Scottish Government initiative looking at the emissions cost of recycling will be suppressed. "Indeed, I have a very strong feeling that this will be quietly dropped and not spoken of again" confides Tim. So can we hope for the stripey shirted blogger to return to the topic when the matter is 'quietly dropped'?

Perhaps not, because Tim's ingeniously found a way to make the suggestion of a cover-up without any actual evidence whatsoever.

Tim's erudite analysis doesnt quite add up either . "[W]hat they're going to find is that ...we already recycle too much. For example, we crush up green glass to be used as underlay for roads" says Tim as if the Scottish Government didn't know that already . But paragraph 5 of Zero Waste Scotland's press release talks of "giving higher weighting to glass which is recycled back into glass rather than that which is used for aggregates or insulation materials." So clearly the Scottish Governemnt did know that already.

When I pointed out that his is not an evidentiary viewpoint and is purely suggestive Tim answered "Yes because I think that the results will be so embarrassing that they will be suppressed. I'll be pleasantly surprised if they're not, of course."

Of course. But on closer inspection we find that the initiative by Zero Waste Scotland is merely a way of measuring and setting carbon emissions targets . The suggestion that results are to be published (and hence covered up) is purely the work of Tim Worstall.

So not only is it more opinion dressed up as fact. It's also a prediction that is not falsifiable. Tim, you haven't got the hang of the clairvoyant gig have you ?

Hat tip to Bishop Hill for this one.

Duck a la framboise

2011-03-21T00:19:00.003Z

Now I have to confess I haven't really been keeping up with advancements in the cut throat world of environmental epidemiology . So I'm not going to impeach Donna's Super Six . Sure I accept that Drs. Reiter Hay Snow Shanks Spielman and Gabler are eminent enough. But her case is still a clutch of canards.

Canard number one: "The onus is on the IPCC to demonstrate that it has, indeed, recruited the best experts. It is not up to the rest of us to do the tremendous legwork of demonstrating, in each chapter ... that others are more qualified." Donna's kibitzing here relies on the IPCC being in the business of bestowing the crown of undisputed-heavyweight-environmental-epidemiologist-champion-of-the-world. But that's not it's function so Donna doesn't have a point .

Canard number two: Donna's story suggests throughout that Kovats didnt make the grade. That a minimum standard was not reached. Donna presents no evidence whatsoever that this view is based on any science, it can only be based on academic metrics. That would be a point easily nailed by showing us the IPCC rule on recruitment, which Donna doesn't do .

Canard number three: I've asked for Donna to point to superior scientists who were overlooked . And Donna has given me the names of the Super Six. Now correct me if I'm wrong but Reiter Hay Snow Shanks Spielman and Gabler are not beefing about not getting a seat on the IPCC . So The Super Six are just Donna's list of her favourite malaria experts who do not support her claim that Kovats is 'far from being a world-class scientific expert' and should resign. And very fine malaria experts they are too, but how would they react if they knew their eminent names were being used in this way?

Canard number 4: All of the above shows that Donna's argument is opinion and not fact. Of course Donna is entitled to her opinion . Donna is a responsible and entirely impartial judge of who should and who should not be serving on this scientific panel , and Donna's not going to let her 'skeptic' views on anthropogenic global warming get in the way of a rational decision. Oh puh-leeeeeese . Donna has form on this, witness her acidic introduction to another lead author.

Donna's super six

2011-03-19T16:29:00.001Z

Donna Laframboise replies:

Dear Mr. McStone,

Thank you so much for your note. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts with me. Please forgive me if I dispute your logic.

We have been told repeatedly by government officials from around the world, and by the most senior IPCC officials, that the IPCC is a body of the world's top experts and best scientists. When that body first gathered together 21 people from the entire world to examine the incredibly important topic of how climate change might affect human health it beggars belief to imagine that there was no one better equipped for this task than a 25-year-old who had yet to publish a single scholarly paper. I think one has to have a very poor opinion of the medical profession to imagine that a more suitable person could not have been found.

The onus is on the IPCC to demonstrate that it has, indeed, recruited the best experts. It is not up to the rest of us to do the tremendous legwork of demonstrating, in each chapter (there were 44 in the 2007 IPCC report), that others are more qualified. However, since you've posed the question and I happen to have a ready answer, I can advise you that while a significant chunk of that first IPCC health chapter dealt with malaria, not one person among those 21 authors appears to have published a bona fide research (as opposed to review) paper on malaria prior to their involvement in writing that chapter. This is more than odd.

Numerous scholars have devoted decades of their lives to the study of malaria. Among the far more suitable candidates for that IPCC chapter are malaria specialists such as Paul Reiter (who spent 21 years with the CDC in Atlanta before joining the Pasteur Institute in Paris), Simon Hay, Bob Snow, Dennis Shanks, Andrew Spielman, and Duane Gabler.(sic)*

Once again, thanks for taking the time to write. All the best to you,

Donna

* I think Donna means Duane Gubler

So there we have it. Must add to the list of Donna's many skills "authoritative evaluator of malarial expertise and relevance in the field of environmental epidemiology".

That suggests I might be a little out of my depth here, but I'll venture Donna isn't able to support the inference that a single one of these eminent individuals has been overlooked in favour of Dr Kovats. Stay tuned.

Move along , nothing to see here.

2011-03-18T20:32:00.000Z

This is an email I've sent to a blogger in Canada who is critical of many aspects of mankind's understanding of the climate, the backstory can be gleaned by clicking the hyperlinks.

Dear Ms Laframboise,
Ive been reading your piece about Dr Kovats, and I think there is something missing. Who has been passed over in favour of Dr Kovats ?
It's especially relevant because you say on Bishop Hill "If we had not been advised for those same 16 years that the IPCC is comprised of the world's top scientists and best experts, there'd be no story here."
Since you conclude that Kovats, the IPCC, and the British government all know she is 'far from being a world-class scientific expert' and should resign you must be able to point to superior scientists passed over in favour of Dr Kovats . Ive read your piece several times but there is no indication nor mention of who the world class scientific experts who were better suited to inform the IPCC might be.
Either Dr Kovats has somehow displaced a superior scientist or Dr Kovats is a world class scientific expert (to whom it would seem you owe an apology) and there is no story here.
I very much look forward to your reply.
Have a good weekend
Hengist McStone

Don't let this put you off your Weetabix

2011-03-11T10:40:00.001Z

Never one to let facts get in the way of a good story Andrew Montford morphs a BBC article entitled "Food sold in recycled cardboard packaging 'poses risk' " into the absurd (and unsupported) suggestion of environmentalists trashing the environment . The BBC article he relies on contains no mention of environmentalists. Nor does it mention environmental damage . But, never mind. It is about a questionable industrial process in the packaging of breakfast cereals. Apparently there are toxins in printers inks. The industrial process involves recycling, and recycling is favoured by environmentalists. And that's good enough for Montford . File under 'tenuous calumny' and 'assertions neither supported nor withdrawn'.

DeChristopher speaks on NVCD

2011-03-06T18:25:00.000Z

'Nuff said

Montford misrepresents ...

2011-03-04T22:05:00.002Z

Just a quick note to record Andrew "Bishop Hill" Montford's latest straw man. He seems to have it in for Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute , so he posts a thread for his devotee's to attack Bob's latest article in the Grauniad . But I am puzzled by this bit from montford " it's hard to take the article seriously when Ward and his ilk consistently refuse to engage in debate with sceptics because the science is settled." So I've asked "The Bishop" for an explanation , answer comes there none.

Hang on a minute though, isnt this the same Bob Ward who debated with Bjorn 'skeptical environmentalist' Lomborg on Panorama only last summer? There's Bob in the middle, debating, with a skeptic, case closed.

It's hard to take the deny-o-sphere seriously when Montford and his ilk consistently misrepresent their opponents.

Bidder 70 is Innocent!

2011-02-27T21:18:00.008Z

February 28th 2011 Salt Lake City, Utah: Probably one of the most heroic episodes of the new geological era unfolds in a Federal Courthouse here today with the opening of the notorious Bidder 70 trial against activist Tim De Christopher.

The story begins on 19th December 2008 the day that DeChristopher, an economics student completed his exams. Wandering down to a protest outside the U.S. Government's Bureau of land Management who were auctioning oil and gas drilling rights described as a ‘fire sale’ and ‘the Bush Administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry’.

Originally given bidder card number 70 in error the penniless student's protest turned in to a bidding war against the oil and gas industry.

DeChristopher enjoys the support of famous names such as Dr. James Hansen , Bill McKibben and film maker Robert Redford who all recognize this to be a turning point in the climate movement.

At first DeChristopher used bidder card number 70 just to drive up the price of real estate, but realised this was probably his one and only chance to make a difference he started to bid higher eventually winning . Although a spontaneous result of erroneously recieving the bidder card DeChristopher bid a total of 1.7 million dollars to win twelve lots of 22 000 acres of Red Rock Desert which he has saved from development.

Despite originally intending to make an example of him the Federal Prosecutor's camp seems to have caught a cold, it has been reported* that the U.S Attorney for the State of Utah has said "maybe a plea deal can be worked out" something DeChristopher is unlikely to accept despite facing ten years in Federal Penitentiary if convicted.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAeqkohEPp4&feature=related 2:31

Further reading :
http://www.newint.org/columns/currents/2010/05/01/environmental-activist-faces-jail/
http://climatecrocks.com/2011/02/22/tim-dechristopher-a-monkey-wrencher-comes-to-trial/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_QW-87MSUk&feature=related This is a video of bidder 70 winning an actual plot.

Rachel Maddow show : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJoLRSQRN74&NR=1

Deniers, get over it.

2011-02-11T22:06:00.001Z

Does Prospect magazine have it in for global warming? Take this which argues that uncertainties are reason enough to prevent action. They gave us "global warming will save lives" from Bjorn Lomborg. And Prospect's lopsided notion of balance meant a fawning review of the Hockey Stick Illusion by Matt Ridley of the GWPF no less.

Now, add to that list philosopher Edward Skidelsky's edict that 'all liberal-minded people should be alarmed by uses of the denier tag' which includes global warming denial in the list. Along that road we reach this juncture

"A charge of denial short-circuits [ ] debate by stigmatising as dishonest any deviation from a preordained conclusion. It is a form of the argument ad hominem: the aim is not so much to refute your opponent as to discredit his motives."

What about a charge of denial to highlight a distinction from skepticism? Skepticism is an honest search for truth conducted with an open mind. Skepticism is not wholesale rejection of a canon of scientific knowledge based on ideological motivations coupled with revisionism of minor points. What word does Doctor Skidelsky offer for that? None. In the AGW debate the word denier is used more to tag motives than to discredit them.

In essence the vocabulary is being loaded . Proper skeptics have nothing to fear from a word, it's just a word . But the AGW debate has become polarized and, desperate not to lose credibility to the casual observer whilst manufacturing uncertainty the deny-o-sphere feigns offence at the use of a mere word.

Doctor Skidelsky is giving academic credence to this canard and his entreaty deserves to be dismissed as Orwellian , at best.

Pantomime Horse makes about turn

2011-02-07T17:45:00.001Z

I should grudgingly credit Andrew Montford for this. I'm barely a third of the way through the Hockey Stick Illusion which I am finding a little tedious. Montford is telling the story of McIntyre's efforts to unpick Dr Mann's work. But the importance of the Mann et al ( Hockey Stick ) graph is widely overblown , it is not as if climate science rests on it. A major premise of the book is that the Mediaeval Warm Period was warmer than current estimates, which supports the view that recent warming is part of natural variability. And this can be used to support the argument that recent warming is not anthropogenic which can then be used to imply that claims by climate scientists that warming is anthropogenic are dishonest which is the sort of logic that underpins the Cuccinelli case and indeed much of climategate.

A rational person would get off that particular rhetorical bus before it steers off the improbable cliff of absurdity.

I wonder therefore what the causes of the MWP are, and expecting to find the phrase 'Milankovitch cycles' consult Skeptical Science. Regrettably, the answer is not so simple. The Mediaeval Warm Period was ( I think) regional not global and, it is due to solar irradiance which IMHO would bathe the entire planet. This presents a contradiction. I have posted at 27 and 31 and until I get a satisfactory answer will consider myself a climate skeptic. Does this shake my acceptance of AGW? Yes, like a fruit fly landing on a slab of granite. My understanding of climate science is incomplete and imperfect just like everyone elses. I don't know whether SkS will answer my questions in this regard to my satisfaction but my fellow skeptics I have to tell you that the political issue is the sharp warming of modern times and whether we allow that to go on into the future, not what the weather was like half a millenium ago. Allowing our concerns about uncertainties in the paleological record to systematically influence our politics is denialism not skepticsm.

A climate hero about to go on trial

2011-02-06T20:29:00.000Z

What a hero. Tim DeChristopher goes on trial on the 28th of February on a Federal rap in Utah. He is facing ten years for bidding on an auction without intending to complete the purchase. According to The Times he has bought 220 acres of the Utah desert for $1.8m of imaginary money. Watch the video here. What a superb way to stuff the system. DeChristopher's account is compelling after wrestling with the notion of going to prison if he bid, he then wrestled with the notion that he would probably never get an opportunity to stop Big Oil's land grab ever again. DeChristopher won 14 lots in a row using bidder card number 70. Should be an interesting trial. Tim DeChristopher's website is here.

My badge of honour from the Deny-o-sphere !

2011-02-06T17:06:00.000Z

Hmmm Looks like it's time to upload a new avatar 'cos I've been caught in the spotlight of contrarian cartoonist Josh . Josh's previous three targets were Dr Gavin Schmidt, Dr Kevin Trenberth and President Barack Obama so I am in good company. Thank you Josh.

Ive got to say no one actually reads this blog normally but thanks to a link from Bishop Hill my hit rate has gone up like a hockey stick.

Ive tried writing more but cut it 'cos it sounded dangerously like a Gwyneth Paltrow Oscar acceptance speech .

Adventures in the Deny-o-sphere

2011-02-05T19:39:00.001Z

Been upbraided by Andrew Montford for calling his website the deny-o-sphere. "Hengist" writes the man who styles himself Bishop Hill and whose followers address him as Your Grace "I discourage use of terms like denier and ecofascist. That includes variants like denialsphere and so on. Please don't - it just makes the threads deteriorate." Trouble is the thread has already deteriorated from the get-go, Montford called mainstream science the warm-o-sphere in his original post.

All in the context of the Lisbon Conference on Reconciliation I have posted

What an utter sham. It's supposed to be a conference on reconciliation , yet what gets discussed is why mainstream scientists don't attend. A mainstream scientist (Dr Schmidt) has been decent enough to give his reasons and that gets interpreted by tallbloke who passes it on to the press (Pearce) and it's the main story coming out of the so-called "conference on reconciliation". There's no reconciliation going on here, it's really a conference (funded by fossil fuel according to Eli) between a few skeptics and deniers who put together a cheap stunt to discredit Dr Schmidt . A lot of time is wasted but please don't pretend this is anything to do with science or indeed reconciliation.

None of that has been refuted but I've had to deal with an army of the Bishop's trolls taking me on on such matters as big oil funding and the protocol of the word denier. A saturday afternoon spent on the deny-o-sphere seems wasted. But hang on, my complaint that Bishop Hill is using an assymetric argot goes unanswered. The deniers are basically dishonest because they paraphrase to their advantage. The thread is here if anyone cares. I am entirely unrepentant, I have been told by one commenter to 'sling your hook'. So much for reconciliation.

What I didn't say in my email to the President of Peru

2011-02-04T20:55:00.000Z

Having just read John Vidal's latest post in the Grauniad I see that the uncontacted Amazonian tribe story is in the news again. I find it fascinating , so I click on the link to Survival International and email the President of Peru as they ask, and I urge you to do too. Ive added my name to a standard mesage that goes like this

President Garcia: Oil drilling and logging in uncontacted tribes' territories could wipe the Indians out. Please protect these peoples' right to live in peace and security – stop the loggers and oil companies from entering their land.

But it occurs to me there is so much more to be pondered. Our civilization could learn something from them. They have developed independently from us in a similar environment yet entirely outside the support of human civilization. Our civilization spends billions looking for extra terrestrial intelligent life yet here is intelligent life on our own doorstep that is about to be decimated by loggers and oil prospectors. You might accuse me of being a yoghurt eating, sandal wearing, woolly minded liberal, but there are potential benefits to mankind that risk being destroyed. The bark of the Peruvian cinchona tree for example provided the cure to malaria. I have to suggest the casual destruction of these peoples raises more ugly questions about the philosophy of our so-called civilization than would be comfortable. So please email President Garcia too.

What's newsworthy and what isn't?

2011-01-24T20:21:00.001Z

Here are two stories from today's news. One is hugely important and has implications that we can't quite foresee. The other is frankly spurious. I want to talk about the spurious one. Why O why does the media use off air off the record statements to make a story? I don't condone the remarks made by the two Sky Sports commentators but surely a person in the media is allowed to vent his (or her) spleen. It reminds me of the "bigoted woman" remark made by Gordon Brown . History may say it cost GB the election, but I say that episode was indicative of how the media has a stranglehold on rational thought. Brown lost votes because of an off the record private conversation. Personally I'd prefer a Prime Minister who spoke his mind , rather than an Eton boy who can spin the hind legs off a donkey.

Thud!

2011-01-10T22:53:00.001Z

Andrew Montford's The Hockey Stick Illusion lands on my doormat. I've bought it because there are a couple of points I want to look up. Does Montford display any moral anchorage whilst prying into other people's emails? There's nothing in the intro to the relevant chapter. Perhaps it's to be found elsewhere in the book but first impressions indicate Montford seems to think it's fair game to read whatever one likes into other people's private correspondence.

Dissing the peer reviewed work of Mann et al is Montford's stock in trade so I'm curious to read why Montford's work hasn't been peer reviewed . I've recently cribbed this PDF from Sense about Science which says "Peer review is an essential dividing line for judging what is scientific and what is speculation and opinion. Most scientists make a careful distinction between their peer-reviewed findings and their more general opinions." Andrew Montford disagrees by omission . A passage entitled So what is peer review for then? makes no reference to this crucial distinction, instead drawing attention to famous scientific work that wasn't peer reviewed. The passage closes with "Yet peer review is the only oversight there is of the validity of the scientific case for catastrophic manmade global warming and on this flimsy basis governments make far reaching policy decisions that affect everyone and will continue to affect our children for decades into the future." Hmmmm, if only there were an ounce of truth in Andrew Montford's words.

Deniers find timetravelling IPCC errors

2011-01-06T15:23:00.001Z

Poor Fred Singer seems to be stuck in a timewarp. He's been asked by one Larry Bell to write a foreword for his new book on scientific corruption, climategate, politics of power, you know the usual guff . In the context of the IPCC S Fred tells us : "For example, the 1966 report used selective data and doctored graphs".

Not bad for an organization established in 1988. Any chance of supporting evidence for that claim Fred?

Needless to say the timetravelling IPCC errors are being copied and pasted all over the web. I found it in Forbes magazine, but it appears to have been pasted in to the ironically titled Real Science website too . Oooo here's another one. Copy editing vacancy going at Climate Realists too.

My You Tube video

2011-01-04T10:01:00.001Z

A case study showing how the work of climate scientists has been distorted by the mainstream media.

High priest of climate deniers claims moral low ground

2010-12-27T18:00:00.015Z

It's snowing all over the UK which for most people means snowmen and sledging, but climate deniers can't resist suggesting this means the globe isn't warming.

Trouble is this conflicts with their summer arguments. This summer saw an unprecedented heatwave in Russia and a deluge in Pakistan. Whilst the real story was of a humanitarian disaster at a time when the death toll was uncertain BBC TV's Newsnight asked if the Pakistan flood could be said to be due to climate change. No, came the answer, a trend is more than a single event .

It's both sad and ironic that despite millions being left homeless by the deluge in Pakistan, that answer was given by an accountant living in Scotland thousands of miles away.

Andrew Montford didn't lose his home in the inundation, indeed, Montford takes a picture of his backyard to prove the world isn't warming.

Scottish snow which disproves AGW

When I suggested that his winter argument conflicts with his summer argument and that as a result he should consider donating his disturbance fee from the BBC to victims of the flood Montford's absurd reply is "it's not obviously any of your business." Montford is the man who produced the GWPF's report into the three enquiries exonerating scientists implicated by the UEA hack. Quite where the boundaries lie between personal privacy and public interest is a moot point but hopefully the answers will be found in the chapter of Montford's book dealing with the climategate emails. If not, how can Montford pretend that those private emails are anybody's business other than the intended recipients?

The upside down world of Andrew Montford doesn't finish there though, ''you are talking bollocks'' Montford writes ''If you think I am carving a career out of any of this, think again. It's costing me a lot of money.'' Little point in asking for supporting evidence for that because Andrew Montford will probably fall back on his earlier statement "it's not obviously any of your business." So , poor Andrew Montford, the victim in all of this also argues in his book that much of climate science is driven by a desire for funding.

Myths can be created much faster than they can be debunked

2010-12-15T15:20:00.001Z

I've been a fan of Potholer's gems for a while now. Does he suggest there is a secret plot by the media to keep us from the truth? Yes, I think he does. Another beaut in this debunk is that the GWPF swallowed the original story. A helping of humble pie Lord Lawson?

File under: Stuff I'm shamelessly plagiarizing

2010-12-11T19:50:00.000Z

Credit to Slowpoke Comics. Hat tip Bart Verheggen and Jim Prall

Is the media biased ? Don't ask

2010-12-05T16:03:00.000Z

I've been listening to Climate Connection on the BBC World Service. Five programmes around the theme 'what's stopping us from tackling climate change?' The listener is offered an array of causes for our species' dilemma of inaction. But one thing seems to be missing.

In episode one a Swedish advertising agency present their ingenoius solution: a staircase that plays a tune. Brilliant , why didn't we think of that before. At this point I wonder when the series is going to consider the media's role.

Episode two is largely in Africa where the witnesses are close enough to nature to notice but sadly not educated enough to understand it. One man confronted with climate change is sure it is god's will.

Episode three and we are in California. Psychology, the herd instinct, behavioural norms, motivation, and the "message selling global warming" are all examined ad nauseum. This episode steers clear of the politics and looks closely at individual behaviour. Yet it fails to note that individuals are informed by the media which is far from presenting the scientist's views. It is the missing piece in the jigsaw. An academic from George Mason University explains "cognitive psychologists say that we have a finite pool of worry". We meet another ad agency who come up with a line too vapid to bear repeating.

Episode four about leadership is somewhat inexplicably in Hong Kong. The most worthwhile quote in the whole series comes from Cambridge University's Stephen Peak "At the international level I think the problem is the way that nation states have decided to engage with each other on this issue. They behave like adolescents arguing with each other about how we got into this sate that we are, rather than applying more energy being more constructively with more imagination on how do we get ourselves out of the situation. That principally is the international problem"
With carbon tax incentives deemed politically unacceptable the question of authoritarian solutions is discussed. So without the suggestion of a media slant we have slided on to the deniers favourite territory.

Episode five was a debate in Milton Keynes, 'nuff said.

So, everything under the sun get's a mention except media slant. We rely on the media for our information and without that information we cannot be informed. Is loss of belief or mistrust of the media largely an impossible sentiment to express?

Warning from 255 scientists ignored as world watches shopped cuddly polar bear pic

2010-11-28T21:58:00.004Z

Back in May, 255 distinguished scientists wrote a letter about the climate and sent it to the esteemed journal Science.

The picture editor at Science unwisely chose to illustrate the letter with a photoshopped picture of a polar bear on an ice floe which is how Telegraph blogger James Delingpole came to tackle the story. Strong words from the scientists like "Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence." gave way to Dinglepole's deceiptful climate scientists narrative for the umpteenth time. Dinglepole argues that a doctored image shows the writer is being dishonest .

The 255 scientists also put their names to the warning 'There is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend' But it is the photoshopped polar bear story that went round the world, reproduced numerous times by bloggers and other newspapers. *

November; and Dinglepole's blog looks back at a year since the final nail in AGW's coffin that was the UEA hack illustrating his words with a picture of a tombstone to global warming clearly made using computer wizardry. Strangely Dinglepole does not deploy the same arguments he used earlier in the year.

*The Daily Telegraph in Australia even manages to get the story wrong twice; erroneously suggesting in their correction that Science had shopped the pic when it was clear ( from Dinglepole's blog and the Science article) that it was a stock shot credited to iStockphoto.com.

P.S. Have had a go myself, here's the results:

When Skepticism Equals Tedium plus Inconsistency

2010-11-22T20:41:00.006Z

The combined intellects of skeptic/denialists Andrew Montford and Tony Newbery have decided to lobby the BBC over it's science impartiality. And I've been leafing through their submission.

In Paragraph 8 we learn how a "dedicated and vociferous environmental activist" who has also been "a trustee of the World Wildlife Fund" could not provide "either an authoritative or impartial assessment of the current state of the scientific evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis." About whom are we talking ? The eminent physicist and sometime AGW proponent Lord May of Oxford no less . Thus establishing an important tenet that a person's background is relevant to assessing their credibility.

The BBC's evil warmist plot is nailed at Point 24(c)
...During the programme Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, and an authority on the
physics of clouds, was introduced as a climate sceptic. He was then shown
smoking a cigarette while a voice over explained that he had a lot of
contrarian beliefs including on smoking. It is most unusual for anyone to be
shown smoking on BBC programmes now and the sequence was clearly
intended to discredit his sceptical views on climate change. (emphasis added)

Well, as some famous jurist should have said 'When your case is piss-weak looks count for everything.' But seriously, these two are asking the BBC to hold back on explaining the background information on this pillar of the denialist community. Dr Lindzen's views on tobacco and health might give an insight into his credibility and perhaps his scientific approach. Never mind that his views on tobacco and health are no secret, Montford and Newbery argue that the BBC must censor some of Dr. Lindzen's views whilst promoting his theories on climate. And if they do not get the balance right that's a warmist slant. Thus establishing an important tenet that a person's background is NOT relevant to assessing their credibility.

Andrew Montford, a great face for radio

The BBC have asked geneticist Professor Steve Jones to conduct the review. Professor Jones I've done the research so you don't have to.

P.S.Could this be the same Andrew W.Montford who made a submission to Parliament dissing the head of the Met Office Board Robert Napier as "too close to environmental groups" and an "environmental activist"? Thus establishing an important tenet that a person's background is relevant to assessing their credibility.

Is my MEP smarter than a 10 year old?

2010-11-21T20:57:00.002Z

The good people of South East England have elected Daniel Hannan to represent us in the European Parliament , who helpfully blogs on the Daily Telegraph website to keep us all in touch with his thinking on the critical issues of the day. Over to you Daniel Hannan:

"The case for anthropogenic global warming was, as far as I can understand, slightly more convincing a decade ago than it is today, with global temperatures having recently dropped."

Hmmmm, a citation would be useful Dan. So by Mr Hannan's reckoning the case for anthropogenic global warming is made up by the sole factor of whether temperatures are rising or falling. It's a very noisy background , as any GMST graphic will prove. Mr Hannan will have to change his mind every time the line changes direction. If he's being honest.

stuff im shamelessly plagiarizing

2010-11-21T11:51:00.002Z

"Apparently, last month was the warmest April, worldwide, on record. We’ve also just had the warmest January-April period on record.

What politically correct alarmist socialist nonsense. These ‘scientists’ with their ‘data’ can say what they like, but let me tell you it’s been bloody chilly lately and no mistake.

In other news, later today I shall be disproving the second law of thermodynamics by tidying my desk."

Hat Tip Freemania

Scientists not skeptical enough for the WSJ

2010-11-16T21:35:00.006Z

Here's a worrying example of just how polarized , and dishonest, reports about climate science have become. First the facts. The esteemed American Geophysical Union a scientific organization offers a Q&A service for journalists . It will not, repeat not, offer a commentary on policy . If you are a journalist and you have a scientific question on the science you can email the service and they will hook up your question with one of 700 experts on whatever field of climate science is troubling you. So it's a resource for journalists, not much of a story I know.

The (Murdoch owned) Wall Street Journal runs a different story though. WSJ hack Anne Jolis contacts Fred Singer, John Christy and Dick Lindzen and argues that the AGU service is corrupted because it does not include their skeptical views . None of these names are new to anyone following the polemic. John Christy graced our tv screens here in the UK recently on Panorama, whilst the skeptical commentaries of Dick Lindzen (Vice President's Climate Task Force 2001) and Fred Singer (SEPP) are too numerous to mention.

Jolis posits that journalists are being misled by the AGU. But she can contact these names for herself if she needs their opinion, that's what her job is. Nobody can view this story without concluding that the truth has been distorted with somewhere. It's rather sad to see a grown up paper like the WSJ run a story that they are being misled, when in reality WSJ.com is misleading it's viewers .

TheGuardian "US researchers fight to reclaim climate science message"

Stop the forest sell-off !

2010-11-16T18:38:00.000Z

If you only do one thing today sign the online petition to stop the government selling off the forests. The background material can be found in this article by the excellent Caroline Lucas. Here is the link to the petition to stop the selling off of the forests. What are you waiting for.

The Optimist Activist

2010-11-05T12:27:00.009Z

`Time is running out’ wrote two activists in Scientific American in August, `to limit acidification before it irreparably harms the food chain on which the world’s oceans – and people – depend.’

That's a quote taken directly from Matt Ridley's website and Times article which is used to suggest ocean acidification has been exaggerated. I didn't know Scientific American was biased by activism, shocking. Googling the quote finds the piece and the authors Carl Safina and Marah J. Hardt. They do not describe themselves as 'activists', the relevant point is they are more eminently qualified to write about the oceans than Matt Ridley . Both are PhDs, Hardt's is from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and both have won awards too numerous to mention. Matt Ridley neatly skips past all that, to him they are just 'activists'.
Matt Ridley likes to describe himself as the rational optimist. That's the title of his book and his website. Optimist yes, but how rational ? Perhaps the answer can be found by reading his paragraph 3

"The trouble is, a shoal of new scientific papers points to the conclusion that this scare is based on faulty biochemical reasoning, unrealistic experiments and exaggeration."

Dr Ridley cites three papers and it is clear this statement is opinion rather than fact. There is nothing wrong with having opinions but if he can't be honest about the weight to attach to the opinions of other scientists why should we attach any weight to Ridley's opinions? I've left a comment on Dr. Ridley's website that all this makes him an activist. He hasnt got back to me.

Astroturfing denied by Koch lackey politician

2010-11-03T20:02:00.057Z

Many American progressives are wondering how the Tea Party have done it. Has the Tea Party hit upon a magic policy formula which finds favour with the wealthy and powerful yet wins votes too? Or is the spontaneous, popular and grassroots Tea Party as portrayed on Fox something of a canard? A recent article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker is a revelation.

Follow the money. The vast majority of the millions flowing in to Tea Party coffers comes from two brothers from Wichita Kansas, Charles and David Koch. They also happen to be the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, America's second largest private company, and have much to gain from the agenda pressed by the Tea Party. A recent Greenpeace report names Koch as the “kingpin of climate science denial” vastly outspending even ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Nobody quite knows how much money has been spent by Koch on political campaigns but a figure of 37 million dollars is cited just on lobbying alone. Greenpeace have called it the climate denial machine, other observers noting that the Kochs political ambitions are much wider than climate change denial have another name for it "the Kochtopus".

Nobody elected the Koch brothers, but they are hugely influential, and it's impossible to gauge the full reach of the Kochtopus. One commentator describes the phenomenon thus "They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

But in a democracy it's votes that count so a popular movement of ordinary people is mobilised to press the agenda of the Kochtopus. Enter the Tea Party. There are conflicting accounts of whether the Tea Party is grassroots or not. The recent film (Astro)turf Wars shows a slick well funded machine manipulating a handful of deluded activists.

One journalist who thinks he knows the truth is Daniel Hannan who blogs for the Daily Telegraph. "The Tea Party is that rare beast, a genuinely spontaneous popular movement." Mr Hannan insists, dismissing the claims of astroturfing. It's opinion though and not fact so how much it clears the matter up is open to question.

One fact that Mr Hannan fails to disclose to his readers though is that he is surpisingly close to the Koch brothers himself. Mr Hannan addressed the Koch Foundation last year on a pro bono basis. He is quoted on page 7 of the Koch in-house magazine*. And on top of his business as a paid speaker and a journalist Mr Hannan finds the time to represent South East England as an M.E.P. in the European Parliament.

"The idea that the Tea Party is “Astroturf” (meaning fake grassroots) just won’t wash" writes Mr Hannan, a point that might carry a little weight if it was being made by someone at the grassroots, but not by someone so close to the Tea Party's backers. He even defends the Koch Brothers campaign to outspend any opposition "we ought to celebrate political donations" says Mr Hannan, who likes to give the appearance of an impartial observer whilst propagandising for his paymasters.

Koch have sent approximately a million dollars the way of the 'National Center for Policy Analysis' and the 'American legislative Exchange Council' (both of which are mentioned prominently in Mayer's article) which shares senior staff with the ironically titled 'Regular Folks United' a Tea Party organizer. These outfits sponsored Daniel Hannan's U.S. tour.

Some might ask just why is the Koch funding of political campaigns so rotten? "The Koch brothers have been funding free market campaigns since the 1970s without ever sparking anything like this", writes Mr Hannan , indignantly. "The only difference between us and the Kochs is one of scale: the Kochs are wealthy, and good luck to them." That's fair enough if were talking about David Koch's support of the New York City Ballet but it's the political slush funds to support the bottom line of Koch Industries which is so distasteful and is at issue. David Koch stood on the Libertarian Party ticket in the 1980 presidential election, and now appears to be pushing the United States towards a libertarian agenda .

The Koch brothers back their weltanschauung with millions of dollars, against other ideas which stand or fall on merit alone. Lower taxes for billionaires, less regulation for polluting industries, no public healthcare option are just some of the causes that attract the Koch's money, and Tea Party support with it . “If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding” , says David Koch.

No one can doubt that Mr Hannan's views overlap with the Koch's to some extent, it is widely reported that Charles and David Koch were particularly influenced by Austrian economist F A Hayek's tome "The Road to Serfdom", Daniel Hannan's new book is entitled "The New Road To Serfdom" .

"I have no special brief for the Tea Party" claims Daniel Hannan in an article which asks "If Tea Partiers are such deluded fools, why are they doing so well?" The answer to that has quite a bit to do with the Koch brothers, whom Mr Hannan appears more familiar with than he is letting on.

*Discovery April 2010 http://www.kochind.com/files/DiscoveryApril2010.pdf

On tricks

2010-10-20T20:21:00.002+01:00

The distinguished Dr. Richard Feynman gave a speech in 1974 to Caltech called "Cargo Cult Science", here it is. He recall's how scientists interpreted the work of Millikan another Nobel Laureate who did some research called the oil drop experiment. Feynman laments that the scientists who followed Millikan were slow to correct errors although they got there in the end. "We've learned those tricks nowadays," says Feynman. The word "tricks" jumps out at me. Isn't that what global warming skeptics are banging on about when they read the CRU emails. Well, there you have it, back in '74 the word trick is used in a scientific context to mean something perfectly innocent. Cargo Cult Science, by the way is well worth a read.

Google Einstein's trick and you will find gravitational lensing the observation that proved light waves are bent by gravity.

2010-09-20T20:21:00.004+01:00

Have finally found a link to the new film PSYWAR http://www.archive.org/details/Psywar_277

Booker wallowing in Hubris

2010-09-13T19:43:00.007+01:00

Its rather sad to see Christopher Booker and Andrew Montford moan that Amazon no longer seem to list their opuses in 'science' . Both of these writers attack the science that has been held in the scientific literature. Whilst they are writing about science do they have a right to expect their work to be categorized as science? I would argue certainly not . The hockey stick graphs and "The Hockey Stick Illusion" by Andrew Montford , cannot both be right , ergo there isn't room for both of them in 'science' . Whilst Mann's work is held "The Hockey Stick Illusion" is polemic. The task and freedom of saying what the book actually is about remains with the bookseller.

Christopher Booker has announced he is getting his publisher to 'look into this' and is agitating for arch sceptical publisher Stacey International (Montford's publisher) to act too.

What's objectionable about Mr Booker is that he is trying to control the context of his work. As a Telegraph columnist he enjoys privileged access to the fourth estate, he uses that to attack the scientific method, and then demands the world look upon his efforts as science. Well done Amazon, I suggest they start a category just for Mr Booker and call it Hubris.

The new iPhone Our Climate app : errors, lies, and critical omissions

2010-08-09T09:01:00.007+01:00

A new toy for climate change sceptics is announced . The 'Our Climate iPhone app'. It gets reviewed in the Guardian by John Cook of Skeptical Science fame. John's review points out an obvious flaw " The cherrypicking nature of climate scepticism leads to an interesting phenomenon – sceptic arguments frequently contradict each other. One week, we're told El Nino is the cause. Next week, it's cosmic rays. No wait, we're cooling... Hold on, it's warming again, but this time, it's because of CFCs. Could anyone compile the many sceptic arguments into a single app without a mess of contradictions?"

In a nutshell climate change denial goes no deeper than what can fit on an iPhone app.

What climate change denial really needs is creativity. A new way to say the same old bollocks. Step up to the plate Australian blogger Jo Nova . "Really, this is a great endorsement" , writes Jo . To arrive at this conclusion Jo asks "Has he found errors, lies, or critical omissions?" Well, yes actually, but Jo answers the question for us and those exact words aren't used in John's review.

The flaw in Jo's argument is apparent. She is saying that any criticism that fall's short (in her view) of this yardstick amounts to an endorsement of her creed. It's a belief she is entitled to. But it's only that , a belief, it's not a scientific view. Moreover it demonstrates the bias that Jo Nova applies in her evaluations.

Denial journalism - Money for nothing

2010-07-23T22:14:00.003+01:00

At the height of the CRU hack the BBC invited Melanie Phillips on to 'Question Time' it's flagship current affairs discussion programme. "Is Global Warming a scam? " asked a member of the carefully vetted audience. "Yes" answered Mad Mel flatly, before positing that "a small group of scientists were conspiring to deny the evidence that the climate was getting colder rather than hotter" and unequivocally stated "there is no evidence for global warming" and "the ice is not decreasing it is increasing". No supporting evidence was offered throughout her rant.

Mad Mel - Disturbed

So let's investigate. In answer to 'the ice is not decreasing' read this from the Montreal Gazette. To refute there is no evidence for global warming there is the entire canon of climate science, I reccomend the Skeptical Science website, or NASA.

But how could Mad Mel be so sure 'Global Warming is a scam'? I sent the BBC a Freedom of Information request asking how much Melanie Phillips was being paid to spout this claptrap. The answer came back "Please note that your request is outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”) but we are happy to explain journalists who appear on news programmes are usually paid a nominal disturbance fee plus any necessary expenses they incur and Question Time is no different."

So there you have it . The BBC is free with completely false claims on global warming. The scam is that licence payers money is paid to Mad Mel and her ilk to keep the lies coming.

A few reccomended videos

2010-06-22T00:14:00.011+01:00

Because of the work I am doing on this BBC complaint thing I have had to gen up on climate science and jeez... I thought Al Gore was sorting it all out. How wrong I was. The mass media is continually trying to sell us this skeptic vs. proponent crap when there should be an entitrely different debate. What it should be , I'm not quite sure myself so I've been trying to catch up on climate science and realised that I am about three decades behind the scientists, as is everybody else except these brave souls who have produced some great videos to reccomend.

I should start with Annie Leonard's "Story of Stuff" for an overview of how society is misled by consumerism ; but we've all seen it right ? One of the latest thing's on the web is Professor John Abraham's stunning rebuttal of Lord Monckton's recent speaking tour in the U.S.A. It's well worth a look, but I realised that it was rebuttal to what we in the U.K. would call a load of codswallop , it is by definition firmly in the denialists ambit . So I decided to look further to try and sus out what the real issues are.

For the science I moved on to this excellent series of scientific videos on You Tube by Potholer54, starting with "Climate Change the Scientific Debate" it's both sober and informative from a pseudonymous science journalist in Australia working under the nom de plume Potholer54. His videos are too numerous to mention here but I've yet to see a better explanation of the scientific method than this one and "Climate Change - Meet the Scientists" is a superb empirical rebuttal to skeptics. A must see also from Potholer54 is "Climate Change anatomy of a Myth" an excellent retrospective on the science and how it's been misrepresented by the media from as far back as the 1970s. So whilst the science isn't settled because science is never settled, it's fair to say there is a mountain of scientific empirical knowledge on the subject of climate change that is at odds with what the media have been saying.

The reasons behind that I can only speculate on, for now . Then I looked at Naomi Oreskes lecture to the University of Rhode Island . It is subtitled 'How a handful of scientists obscure the truth about climate change.' One cannot go away from this dry lecture without realising that climate change is the most important and relevant issue facing humanity today in the second decade of the 21st century, and that anyone facing up to this problem is dealing with a multi-dimensional issue not just about science but one that strikes at economics ideology politics and even the very nature of humankind. To say it is powerful stuff would be to hugely underestimate Oreskes work. All I can say in response to it is watch it!

Naomi Oreskes (Ph.D., Stanford, 1990) is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on the historical development of scientific knowledge, methods, and practices in the earth and environmental sciences, and on understanding scientific consensus and dissent.

Now for more sciencey stuff making the case for action now I turned to "How It All Ends" from the superb hard working You Tube vlogger wonderingmind42, a US High School physics teacher. Importantly this also makes the case from a sensible risk management point of view, a POV completely obscured by the myth or real debate favoured by the mass media. The Nature of Science is well worth a look - it introduced to me the concept of "confirmation bias" which could prove important .Other stuff from wonderingmind42 is the conservatively titled "The MOST Terrifying Video Youll Ever See" which even has plaudits from General Anthony Zinni of the USMC !

But I can't leave wonderingmind42's films (there are at present over 95 of them) without mentioning what he calls the most important video you'll ever see, In which Professor Al Bartlett of the University of Boulder Colorado gives his lecture titled 'Energy Population and Arithmetic' which demolishes Capitalist Growth dogma. It's divided into eight parts - here they are: part 1, part 2 ,part 3, part 4 ,part 5, part 6 ,part 7,and part 8 . Doctor Al says " You are important people , you can think. If there was ever a time the human race needs people who can think it's right now, it's our responsibility as citizens in a democracy to think." He also notes the observation by H.L. Mencken "It is in the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false and comforting". Wise words , which I am finding sum up the public understanding of climate change today in 2010.

Here is a five minute cartoon from the PostCarbon institute that has to be mentioned in despatches.

So there you have it that's where I am right now. Does all this make me a climate geek? I hope so !

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley : You're A Fraud. - Sue Me !!!

2010-06-12T23:31:00.011+01:00

Sorry. I just couldn't resist writing that headline. But I can't be arsed to do any original research, sothis is just a shameless link to here and here and here and of course Barry Bickmore's Definitive site as the world of self proclaimed nobel laureate* the ignoble Lord Monckton unravels.

* Click here for the evidence on that one

Why the Carbon Fairy should go to Coventry

2010-04-04T00:07:00.051+01:00

Here's something odd. Someone with a Master's degree in sustainable development that doesn't find a definition of sustainability helpful.

Solitaire Townsend has a passion for professional green communications. She founded a public relations company which boasts 'we've only worked on corporate responsibility and sustainabilty'. Clients claiming these worthy virtues include Shell Unilever and EOn of Kingsnorth power station fame. She also has links with BP(about to plunge into the Canadian tar sands) , South African mining goliath Anglo-American , child slavers Nike, and the Chinese Government . Her stated goal has been 'to revitalize the way businesses view sustainability, using the tools of marketing and PR to make the message of sustainability more appealing.' Making sustainability more appealing to businesses that is.

Human rights campaigners might want to ask how her work for the Chinese Government squares with her stated claim to "never work on an account that doesn’t directly contribute to environmental or social sustainability" . Don't expect a reply any time soon though, because this blog has found responding to enquiries from the public is not in this particular communication professional's skill set.

Solitaire Townsend's position perfectly invites the same criticism that she doles out. Manipulative and deceitful motivations. In her case that does not prevent getting a platform on the BBC though and on Radio 4 (25.01.10) she claimed to have met with hardcore environmentalists, significant in number with false motivations which compromised the environmental movement's approach to the urgent problems of climate change. She bases this on her exclusive account of the lack of response to a hypothetical question in her monologue in which she pretends to be a 'carbon fairy' with a magic wand that could eliminate carbon emissions. Science no, bollocks yes. This is at a time and place undisclosed . Contextual information also undisclosed.

I asked where and when this happened and for other contextual information, substantiation in other words. Beyond the counter-intuitive reply 'I believe the anecdote referred to a speech at a public event, so I’m afraid I’m unable to give you any more information' her office declines to enter into any correspondence. Her denunciation is based on her quarry's abstention from her question, but when asked (by this writer) to whom she was referring , abstention becomes her prerogative. Hypocrite!

Perhaps that is what her company Futerra Sustainability Communications means by Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility. Using privileged access to the media to develop a straw man argument against a movement they claim sympathies with.

It is extrapolated in the BBC documentary she takes part in to allege fascism.

On the plus side Townsend is nothing if not thick-skinned. In her blog Townsend bemoans being called a 'compromised sell-out' by the left, thereby implying some left leaning background. Elsewhere she is careful to say "I'm not an environmentalist really ". No surprise there, but she declines to say why not. After all Solitaire Townsend is never shy of lecturing the environmental movement. One of her central tenets is to promote green consumerism over environmentalism . At heart she is a businesswoman and an imposter.

That Townsend is concealing the truth can be proved . What that truth is can only be guessed at , but that would probably be to miss the point. Let's just say, that were they to exist , the 200 or so environmentalists she speaks of would not be pleased to learn that Shell and EOn's mouthpiece reckons she has been elected to speak on their behalf.

Her failure to substantiate deprives the environmental movement of any opportunity to exculpate itself from her scurrilous slur. Solitaire Townsend is at ease with that. Any environmentalist or civil libertarian who heard the broadcast will not be.

Buy No Brand - It's Approved !

2010-03-24T11:34:00.011Z

Today I'm going to announce a new initiative in the field of feel good marketing. WTF? Well the religions got there first with their magnificent Kosher and Halal brands. Then the RSPCA got in on the act with freedom foods guaranteeing good slaughter. Nowadays you can pay a few quid extra to call your flight 'carbon neutral'. And there's the Fairtrade logo which assures us that some of the raw ingredients have traded at a 'fair price'. Marketeers will stop at nothing to sell stuff . A cynic might suggest the rise of the ethical consumer is being countered by ethical labels placed on dubious products.

Take the fairtrade KitKat, owned by Nestlé . The words boycott and Nestlé go together like beer and curry. For the last thirty years Nestlé has been one of the most despised food companies there is. I can recall first hearing about the Nestlé Baby Milk Scandal in1984 but this site dates it to 1977. Nestlé will argue there is no proof but it is one of the longest running corporate boycotts and scandals there is. It even has it's own wikipedia page. And then in late '09 the Fairtrade people came along and bestowed their seal of approval on KitKat. My thoughts at the time were "Either the people at Nestlé have become saints or the people at Fairtrade have sold out."

Now Greenpeace have found that Nestlés suppliers have cleared the rain forest which Orang-Utans live in to make palm oil for your Kit Kats. Facing eviction from their habitat and extinction doesn't sound like a fair trade to me. Orang-Utans are more important than my elevenses that's for sure so I find myself boycotting (once again) this product, but now it is fairtade. To many consumers the Fairtrade logo means "you don't need to worry about ethical provenance weve already done that for you". The problem with Fairtade is that it allows corporations to purchase their ethical credentials . Corporations have no conscience. Conscience can only be forced upon them by the consumer . A consumer boycott may not be very powerful but it is the only tool in the box. I'm sorry Fairtrade but you are a corporation too. It is noteworthy i.m.h.o. that The Guardian's announcement of this marriage described it as a 'major coup for Fairtade' not the other way around.

So anyway this new initiative. I'm gonna call it the "Hengist McStone Certificate of Adequacy and Provenance" or CrAP and it is available to all corporations industrialists marketeers and the like. Naturally I will require a small kickback to cover my expenses in processing applications. A million dollars should cover it. Currently there are no products carrying this coveted seal of approval, which is it's selling point really.

¡Hey! Yet another reason to boycott Nestlé !!!

2010-03-17T21:13:00.006Z

Have sent this to the Head Honcho at baby killers Nestlé

"I am writing to express my deep concern at the role Nestle is playing in the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests, and the impact this is having on people, wildlife and the climate.
The palm oil you buy to make Kit Kats is often the result of forest and peatland destruction, which is speeding up climate change and destroying the home of the endangered orang-utan.
By buying palm oil from the notorious forest destroyer Sinar Mas, you and the palm oil traders you buy from are involved in the destruction of Indonesia's precious rainforests.
Sinar Mas continues to destroy rainforests to grow plantations, despite the negative impact on the people and wildlife that depend on it for their survival, and despite the fact that it is also accelerating climate change.
As the world's largest food and drink company, Nestl� could be using its influence to insist on positive changes in the palm oil industry that would have a real benefit for the rainforests of Indonesia. Your company uses over 320,000 tonnes of palm oil every year, which goes into a range of well-known products including Kit Kat. In the last three years, your use of palm oil has almost doubled according to your own figures.
Unilever and Kraft have already cancelled its contract with Sinar Mas due to its bad practices, whilst Nestl� has failed to take the same action. Please stop turning a blind eye and instead immediately:
- Stop trading with companies within the Sinar Mas group
- Stop buying Sinar Mas palm oil and pulp products from third-party suppliers.
- Engage with the Indonesian government and industry to deliver a moratorium on forest clearance and peatland protection
In short, please give the rainforests and the orang-utans a break. I look forward to receiving your response in due course."

Got it all from this website here. Please do the same. You and I share 97% of our DNA with Orang Utans

Death of a Scientist

2010-03-15T13:09:00.003Z

29Jul03 - Death of a Scientist

Here's something I wrote some years ago and just found on my old friend Tony Gosling's website. Astonishingly I still like it.

As soon as Thames Valley Police announced they were not looking for anybody else involved in the death of Dr David Kelly all the mainstream media came onside with that view. Since then the death has been reported as a "suicide" or an "apparent suicide". Could it be a murder made to look like suicide? No one asked. There are very few facts from the scene of the crime to offer convincing evidence either way, but I suggest there is an empirical case that Kelly died at the hands of a state sponsored assassin immune from the law (and the enquiring nature of the media) because his her or their actions were sanctioned at the very highest level.

We all know that from time to time the state has to break it's own laws to do it's business, but most of us happily believe that any infringement of the rules is justified and thus stops well short of murder. That concept is too much to swallow in a democracy. And so when the state says Dr Kelly's death was a suicide human instinct forces us to breathe a sigh of relief, our safe little world remains unchallenged even if it is untrue it is worth believing in.

OK, even if you don't buy any conspiracy theory place yourself in the don't know camp and read on.

The police are not an information service. Usually results of all police enquiries are embargoed until they can be presented to a court. Occasionally they release titbits to encourage witnesses to come forward. (In a murder they always hold something back so that knowledge of specific gruesome details of the crime will be shared between themselves and the murderer and to catch out false confessions.) The Kelly death is different. The police have done their investigating they have formed their view and they have announced their view. That is all. There has not yet been a coroner's inquest to actually give an official view yet all the newspapers have taken their cue and gone to press on what at the time of writing (23/07/2003) is nothing more than opinion of unnamed bureaucrats.

Let's consider the story so far. Outside of the arcane world of civil service microbiologists no one had ever heard of Dr. David Kelly until a week or two ago. He was an arms inspector and it turns out a mole whom we now learn released information to the BBC that the British Government's case for going to war against Iraq earlier this year was at best embellished. Dr Kelly only came to public attention on 15th July when he gave evidence before the parliamentary foreign affairs select committee, subsequently he was called before the parliamentary Security and Intelligence Committee. Before that could happen he was found dead on an Oxfordshire hillside.

Any conspiracy theory minded copy is simply drowned out by other issues dominating this macabre affair. "Who let on that Kelly was the mole?" is a game currently being played out between Downing Street and the BBC. Who cares, I say. The fact that various branches of the state are at odds over such minutiae is unremarkable, yet to the broadsheet newspapers this row is the issue, certainly not how Kelly met his death and why.

Suspicious? You should be.

Perhaps it is so much easier to accept the orthodox view over the conspiracy theory because the notion of sharing Dr Kelly's thoughts is too much for most of us to bear. Kelly had some awful things going on his head, he was an expert in biological warfare for crying out loud. Whatever he knew there were others in government circles who didn't want him to share that knowledge. Bumping him off would have been a sure fire way of preventing him speaking and doing any more damage to the MOD's cause. If he died by his own hand then it proves he had a tortured mind, murder on the other hand proves a cover up.

Whatever the truth of the matter it is grim. Kelly's thoughts led to his death and that's a fact. It is human nature to take our views from the wise and the informed but when that extends to political reasoning the subject can consider himself fully brainwashed.

Apropos of nothing ...

2010-03-15T07:55:00.003Z

I've just read something that is so good simply had to cut and paste it in to my own blog, even without a context to put it in. Here's Charlie Brooker waxing lyrical on the topic of climate change or more exactly climate change scepticism.

"Hey, I'm no scientist. I'm not an engineer either, but if I asked 100 engineers whether it was safe to cross a bridge, and 99 said no, I'd probably try to find another way over the ravine rather than loudly siding with the underdog and arguing about what constitutes a consensus while trundling across in my Hummer."

The Spanish have a word for it ...

2010-03-14T09:50:00.010Z

The purpose of language is the expression of ideas. And the expression of ideas can be a very dangerous thing. That's why despotic rulers crack down on freedom of speech. The lexicon of a language therefore delimits thinking, political or otherwise. For instance the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" or WMDs never became current until Bush and Blair desperately needed a casus belli to go to war with Iraq.

Eskimos have twenty-three different words for snow. The reason is pretty obvious; eskimos spend a lot of time hoop-la-ing in the snow, it means a helluva lot to them so that's what they want to talk about. To an eskimo our word snow probably seems awfully generic.

There's an opposite side to the equation too. Some concepts that aren't represented in certain languages. There's an account that a frustrated EU anti-corruption commissioner reckoned there was no word for integrity in Bulgarian, the veracity of this is questionable but the anecdote can still be used to demonstrate something about Bulgarians. There's the Amazonian Piraha tribe who don't have numbers, but then they only have 300 or so speakers. Of course the need in Piraha society has never evolved to require numbers, they have 'few' 'many' and 'enough' doesn't that sound idyllic?

Now I'm lucky to have the world's most influential language as my mother tongue and I've noticed that it is curiously descriptive-poor in accounting for it's influence. The influence is down to our American cousins and I'm lamenting the fact that the english language has never given them a word all to themselves. Weve all become used to the word American or american but it has more meanings than can properly be said to be useful. It can mean a language or a people or used as an adjective, either for the continent of America or more usually the country of the United States. There is no distinction between all these meanings in english. Our language wrongfully suggests the whole continent were colonized by anglophones too. According to wikipedia George Washington even came out with this bizarre statement in his farewell address "The name of American, [...] belongs to you in your national capacity". Washington was famous for many things and being a freemason was one of them, could this linguistic anachronism be masonic?

Even the phrase United States is not specific enough. There is of course a United States of Mexico. So when ahem americans like to say their country is The United States of America I like to correct them, it is A United States of America. Doesn't quite sound so grand does it?

The spanish speaking world has none of this nonsense and why should they? Most nations of the continent of America have actually adopted an iberian tongue as their official language. So the word 'American' to refer to someone from north of the Rio Grande and south of the 49th parallel is too generic. The spanish have the wonderful word 'estadounidense' for this. It simply means of or from the United States. Why can't we have such a word? I'd like to propose it now : Unitedstatesian, I don't care how it's spelled or pronounced, it may sound odd at first but we'll all get used to it. If someone would like to coin a better word to describe this concept be my guest, but until some word any word to describe the United States is inserted into the lexicon english will be curiously descriptive-poor in this regard.

I'm inspired by George Orwell's excellent essay "Politics and the english language" . Orwell says "But if thought can corrupt language, language can also corrupt thought" . It's a recurring theme of the great man. What I think he was saying was that language can viewed as the chains of a kind of mental slavery, but the key to emancipation is in there somewhere too.

Sharp practice from Sir Peter Rigby

2010-02-21T14:17:00.000Z

A few years ago, just before christmas I got a job as a driver for a computer company. This company was called Specialist Computer Centre and describes itself as Europe's largest independent IT company. Their chairman is a fellow called Sir Peter Rigby.
I thought I'd tell you a little bit about how they do business. After a few days I was given a contract to sign, it included an authorisation to deduct ten pounds per week from my wages for the accountancy costs of deducting income tax and National Insurance. These deductions are obligatory . Under the PAYE system the employer has to deduct the tax at source neither the employer nor employee get any choice in the matter. I know of no other company that charges it's employees this kind of money in this way. Ten pounds a week was a sizeable portion of my income and I didn't feel that I owed this money to Specialist Computer Centre, I wouldn't sign.
I soon learnt about how this company did business with it's employees. Their Birmingham office phoned me and sacked me whilst I was driving round the motorway. It turned out that I was employed by the Birmingham office who called themselves Specialist Computer Recruitment (or something like that) who in turn work for their only client Specialist Computer Centre. This meant that I was always at arms length and the people I met I never actually worked for; and the people I worked for I never actually met. But that is beside the point.
When they came to pay me they still made the deduction of ten pounds for accountancy fees, by then I had left. Eventually they repaid that money. I took it up with Citizen's Advice Bureau who described it as 'sharp practice', but said nothing could be done because I hadn't been there long enough to accrue any employment rights.
There are plenty of lousy employers out there, I nominate Sir Peter Rigby for a Scrooge and sharp practice medal. Yeeeeuuurgh

Food Glorious Food

2010-02-20T20:04:00.001Z

Just a thought. Boston University is among others in offering a Masters Degree in Gastronomy - The art of fine dining. Food of course is very important but should the act of getting it down your gob be the subject of academic endeavour? I am unlikely to be invited to any gastronomic events when I point out that every day over 13000 children die of hunger.*

*World Hunger Education Service

My Oil Depletion Strategy

2008-07-19T22:25:00.000+01:00

I've just googled probably the three most important words in the language right now and got just eight results. Every government has one, every corporation will have one, and you can be damn sure every oil company has had one for a very long time, but nobody is talking about it , least not on the web.

Those words are 'oil depletion strategy' , what is it and why does it have to be kept secret? Well it does what it says on the tin - it's a strategy for when oil is depleted and less plentiful than it is right now. That is inevitable. Oil and oil derived products (that's anything made of plastic for a start) will become hugely expensive and industry which relies on oil (that's all industry) will suffer. The main reason for keeping the strategy secret so far as I can see is not to alarm the public. The inevitability of oil depletion is kept as a vague notion of pessimists. Its the old bury your head in the sand technique - don't let on you have a strategy 'cos then you're admitting there's a problem.

Well in the interests of kicking off the debate I've decided to be the first to publish my own oil depletion strategy. I don't have a nation or a multi-national to manage just have a small cottage with an overgrown garden .

1. Be aware of the problem - the film "oil smoke and mirrors" is a good start .
2. Cut down on energy use much as possible, tick.
3. Ride a bike, tick.
4. That's all I can think of right now, but keep thinking 'cos the oil price can only go up. That is based on the immutable laws of supply and demand , the very mantra of capitalism. So if a capitalist says to me we will never run out of oil I say 'liar liar pants on fire!'

Well you heard it here first, everyone's gonna need one and this may not be the best but it's the first publicly available oil depletion strategy. What's yours gonna be?

first post

2008-07-19T22:04:00.001+01:00

Am I being paranoid or is it open season on conspiracy theorists right now ?