DUFF & NONSENSE!

Oh, no, dinosaur farts caused global warming!

And there was me blaming cows, and the 'Memsahib' blaming me, but all the time the real culprits who caused global warming were 'Dan and Doris', the dinosaurs!  I kid you not, it says so in The Daily Telegraph:

Scientists believe that, just as in cows, methane-producing bacteria aided the digestion of sauropods by fermenting their plant food.

''A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate,'' said study leader Dr Dave Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University.

Yes, yes, I know it's from Liverpool polyversity but please show some respect:

''Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources - both natural and man-made - put together.''

I'm not going to ask her but I just know that the 'Memsahib' might give the good Doctor an argument over that one!  Moving on quickly:

The key factor is the total mass of the animal.

Medium-sized sauropods weighed about 20 tonnes and lived in herds of up to a few tens of individuals per square kilometre.

Global methane emissions from the animals would have amounted to around 472 million tonnes per year, the scientists calculated.

The figure is comparable to total natural and man-made methane emissions today. Before the start of the industrial age, about 150 years ago, methane emissions were around 181 million tonnes per year.

Only 472 million tons of methane!  Just give me six pints of Butcombe bitter and a really good, oily fish and chip supper and I could blow those dinosaurs back to the stone age!

My thanks to 'SoD' (Son of Duff) for pointing me to this, er, important story.

 

One picture worth a thousand raindrops!

On this occasion, need I say more except thanks to Watts Up With That via I Hate The Media.

 

Photo by Delemere Lafferty

 

The 'urug' changes what passes for his mind!

Er, 'urug' is 'guru' spelled backwards which is how you have to put it when the owner of the title completes a 180 degree turnabout.  The particular 'urug' I am referring to is not just a leading HAF (Hot Air Fanatic) but virtually the movement's High Priest.  From his pulpit over the years he has thundered dire warning of 'Apocalypse Now'.  For example, as WUWT reminds us, he told The Independent in 2006:

“billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” by the end of the 21st century.

And has been quoted in The Guardian:

80% of humans will perish by 2100 AD, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. Indeed “[t]he people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain”.

Yes, it is everyone's favourite looney HAF, the inventer of the 'Gaia theory', James Lovelock, who like many of us has grown old and is now beginning to learn something even if, at 92 years of age it has taken him a while - I mean there are late developers and then there are way-past-their-bedtime developers! 

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.”

Poor little 'Georgie Moonbat' will probably burst into tears - so it's good news all round, really! 

All quotes from What's Up With That

 

Obama close to becoming a tar baby!

Hoist in his own petard and about to be dropped into a large, smelly puddle of oil!  Too, too delicious!  For those with more important matters to concern them than esoteric American squabbles over oil pipe-lines and supposed environmental damage let me explain that Canada has discovered an astronomically huge oil and natural gas field.  The Chinese have already rushed in with orders but for the Americans to accept it required the construction of a very long pipe-line named 'Keystone'.  Cue every soppy Greenie-Tree-hugger to come out of the woodwork and agitate against it.  They, of course, are part of 'Tar Baby's natural support, both financial as well as electoral.  Then there are the business shysters in the so-called 'alternative energy' racket, like the late but unlamented Solyndra company who went belly-up after receiving zillions in Federal hand-outs, who want desperately for oil to be even higher priced than it already is so that their product looks cheap!  So, naturally, the 'Tar Baby' refused to sign any contract with the Canadians and told Congress he would veto any Bill that tried to circumvent him.

But that was in the past which, in its usually irritating way, has come back to haunt him.  Since then there has been a midterm election at which the Dems lost much of their power in Congress. Even worse, in November a whole lot more of them will have to face the voters who are 'wailing and gnashing their teeth' at the price of fuel at the pumps.  The Canadian product could almost free them from their reliance on Saudi oil.  So suddenly a very large number of Dem Congressmen are withdrawing support from Obama's green stance and are voting in favour of a Republican motion to build the Keystone pipe-line.

As Rick Moran sums it up at The American Thinker:

If the environmental lobby wants to take Obama over a cliff, that's one thing. But the potency of Keystone as a campaign issue along with Obama's relative unpopularity in many red states where a Democrat is running for re-election has many Democrats nervous about the GOP making use of the issue.

The odds are pretty good that congress will send a pipeline bill to the president before the election. He will then have to decide whether to sign it, thus angering the greens, or veto it, thus angering everyone else.

Either way, it will be a big loss for the president.

Ah, shame!

It's not just bankers who are corruptible crooks

Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the charlatanry that has been exposed in the so-called 'scientific' world of global warming will suspect already that the phrase 'scientific ethics' is now an in-house joke.  Of course, many learn-ed opponents of the 'warmers' have dismissed them as not being truly scientific at all in the rigorous sense of the word, but now I read of  behaviour in a branch of very real science and, moreover, unlike so-called global warming, this is one of critical importance to us all.

According to a story at Yahoo News, a former Head of Research at Amgen, a huge international biotechnology company with headquarters in California, has announced that during his ten years in this position he checked out 53 "landmarked" papers from reputable labs published in top medical science journals under their supposedly strict rules which govern checking and peer-reviewing of new scientific papers.  The man concerned, Glenn Begley, said that of those 53 papers making claims that such and such a procedure had efficacious results in the treatment of cancer, 47 of them were impossible to replicate in laboratory tests!  Another giant bio company, Bayer, had similarly pathetic results according to the Yahoo report:

Scientists at Bayer did not have much more success. In a 2011 paper titled, "Believe it or not," they analyzed in-house projects that built on "exciting published data" from basic science studies. "Often, key data could not be reproduced," wrote Khusru Asadullah, vice president and head of target discovery at Bayer HealthCare in Berlin, and colleagues.

Of 47 cancer projects at Bayer during 2011, less than one-quarter could reproduce previously reported findings, despite the efforts of three or four scientists working full time for up to a year. Bayer dropped the projects.

Begley suggests that there is in the scientific community a widely held belief that anything published in a prestigious journal must be right and reliable.  Nothing, apparently, could be further from the truth which, I might add, any old global warming sceptic (er, like me) could have told them years ago!

The problem goes beyond cancer.

On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.

Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, speaking to the panel, said he blamed a hypercompetitive academic environment that fosters poor science and even fraud, as too many researchers compete for diminishing funding.

Ah yes, that naughty 'F' word - Funding!

"The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high-profile journal," said Fang. "This is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior."

The academic reward system discourages efforts to ensure a finding was not a fluke. Nor is there an incentive to verify someone else's discovery. As recently as the late 1990s, most potential cancer-drug targets were backed by 100 to 200 publications. Now each may have fewer than half a dozen.

"If you can write it up and get it published you're not even thinking of reproducibility," said Ken Kaitin, director of the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. "You make an observation and move on. There is no incentive to find out it was wrong."

All of which brings us back to bankers who appear to be on a par with medical research scientists!

 

A wicked parody

And you can take the word "wicked" in my title either in its traditional meaning of extreme naughtiness or in the contemporary sense, as used by our 'youfs' and 'youfettes', as being really rather admirable.  It will depend on your view of the parody itself.  However, first of all let me give you the object of parody.  This is the famous, and rightly so, poem by Henry Reed written in memory of basic weapon training in the army during WWII.  You have to imagine (or in my case, remember, because nothing much had changed in the 15 or so years when I had to sit through this) a warm Spring afternoon with recruits half listening to a weapons training NCO repeating the same lines he has delivered a thousand times before.  As a poem it stands on its own merits and seems to have remained a favourite even with many people who never experienced that particular situation.  I find it tremendously evocative and moving:

NAMING OF PARTS by Henry Reed

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
          And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
          Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
          Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
          They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
          For to-day we have naming of parts. 

Well, that's the original poem and now here is the the 'wicked parody' which is sharp, deadly accurate and very, very witty.  My thanks to Bishop Hill for finding it on another blog, and even greater thanks to a commenter called 'Sleepalot' who wrote it:

SCARING THE PROLES by 'Sleepalot'

Today we have scaring the proles. Yesterday,
We had narrative writing. And tomorrow morning,
we will be taxing them into the dirt. But today,
Today we have scaring the proles. CO2 bubbles
harmlessly through coral reefs east of Papua New Guinea,
And today we have scaring the proles.

This is the adjusted temperature data. And this
Is the residual anomaly, whose use you will see,
when you are given your graphs. And this is the raw temperature data,
Which in your case you have not got. The trees
stand unflinching, steadfast against all adversity,
Which in our case we have not got.

Now this is the graph, and you hold it like so,
And you cover this end with your thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone grinning. You can keep a straight face,
if you have enough faith in the Cause. The daisies
shadow the lawn with their leaves, never letting anyone see
Any one of them grinning.

And this you can see is our model result. The pupose of this
is to extend our reach. As you see, We can change these
parameters just as much as we please: we call this
building consensus. And rapidly backwards and forwards,
the advocates are alarming and corrupting MPs:
They call it building consensus.

They call it building consensus: it's easy enough
if you can keep a straight face: like the trend,
and the scale, and the narrative, and the tipping point,
which in our case we have not got; and the skeptics
excluded from every arena, and the advocates going backwards and forwards,
For today we have scaring the proles.

How about that as the very best joke to read on April 1st?!

 

Dammit! Now the Germans are doing 'irony'!

Isn't it enough that the Germans regularly out-produce us, out-design us, out-sell us and embarrass us at our national game of football?  Must they now destroy our much-loved notion that they have no sense of humour and that like all foreigners they don't understand irony?  It's really too much when one of them produces an essay on 'Greenery' that had me chortling and chuckling as the irony positively dripped from every paragraph.  I blame Alexander Neubacher at Der Spiegel.  I am about to paraphrase him in my usual sneak-thief fashion and, honestly, you would do much better to pop over and read the whole thing - simply too, too delicious!

He begins by writing German rubbish - no, that's not quite right - he's writing about German rubbish, in particular, the utterly brain-dead stupidity of the 'Greenie' madness that controls it - as it does here!  To give but one example, amongst the plethora of different coloured bins into which 'free citizens' are forced to segregate their rubbish is one for plastic.  This is duly sent to the re-cyclers who dutifully recycle exactly 35% - and then incinerate the rest!

Herr Neubacher also tells of the non-stop agit-prop  indoctrination government advice that is aimed at everyone but especially the young in order to get people to use less and less water.  It has worked.  German water consumption has fallen enormously.  And the result is an equally enormous stink because now there is not enough waste water flowing through the sewers to clear, er, the waste!  I think even we know the dangers of the new 'Green' lightbulbs.  Being very exact, as they are in Germany, they conducted a test in which a bulb was smashed inside a room and the mecury level measued 5 minutes and then 5 hours after the event.  In both cases the levels of this highly toxic element were above limits especially for children and pregnant women.  Needless to say, these 'eco-friendly' bulbs are so hazardous that it required the design of a special machine to suck out the dangerous mercury which then has to be packed in special containers and buried in a mountain - thus providing future Germans with another problem!  God knows what happens over here.  I suppose they could dump it all in Liverpool and they'd all turn green but no-one would either notice or care!

Finally, he describes the unforseen ignored problems which have beset old buildings which have been lined, inside and out, with thermal insulation and which are now erupting in mould and damp patches.  Herr Neubacher finishes on a surprisingly mild note:

People who shop in organic grocery stores, eat a vegan diet or drive an electric car are free to do so. But this should not give them the right to lecture others on the environmentally correct way to live their lives. Things are sometimes more complicated than they seem at first glance.

Yes, yes, Neubacher, that's all very well and good but remember your heritage!  Just take every third 'Greenie' outside and shoot him!  That will soon solve your problems.

 

Who the hell cured the sun's acne?

Someone is to blame!  Normally ( a relative term, I know) 'the sun has got his hat on' -mostly to hide the fact that his face is covered in spots.  I gather that amongst the swots there is some disagreement as to the exact effects here on earth of these fairly regular outbreaks of acne.  But I have no doubts whatsoever!  Our sun is so enormous compared to the mere speck that earth represents in comparison that if it so much as coughs, we're history!

 

Now here is another similar chart showing sunspot activity but over a longer period and I would like you to pay particular attention to the early years of the 19th century:

 

And here are a few quotes from The History of British Winters:

1811: A late start for severe winters in the 1800s, but January of 1811 saw the Thames freeze, once again!

1813-1814: [...]  One of the 4/5 coldest winters in the CET series. [...]  A frost fair was held on the Thames, possibly the last 'great' one. The frost began in late December, approaching the new year. [...]

1816: Known as the year without summer, snow fell very late on, and the summer never recovered. [...]

1819-20: Severe winter. -23c was recorded at Tunbridge Wells [...]

1821: Late May saw snow in London, probably the latest snowfall there until 2nd June 1975.

1822-23: Severe winter, ice on the Thames by late December. February 8th saw a great snowstorm in Northern England. People had to tunnel through the snow.

I have said it before and I will say it again - go long on Long Johns!

I am obliged to Anthony Watts - again!



Matt Ridley puts his money where his mouth is!

As most of you know, Matt Ridley is a distinguished and aristocratic academic, a convinced but practical libertarian and a decided sceptic on AGW.  Any one of those, of course, makes him 'an enemy of the people' to the likes of little Georgie 'Moonbat' at The Guardian but all three together place him quite beyond the pale!  However, I always try to judge a man by what he does rather than what he says and judging by a report at The Coffee House, Matt Ridley is a very pukka chap!  Being the son of a viscount, naturally he has a family trust (wish I had one!) which owns land some of which is rented out.  Ridley was dismayed to learn that some of this land, which earned his trust £8,500 a year, was going to be used for wind turbine machines, a scam an industry which Ridley has castigated in the past.  Unable to stop the activity, he has volunteered £8,500 as an annual prize for the best essay exposing 'Greenie' twaddle.  That's what I call putting your money where your mouth is.  Well done, sir, you're a gentleman and a scholar!

 

'Peak Oil' just peaked and died!

I remember when I first discovered this 'internet-blogging-thingie' I began by just visiting other sites and joining in the commentary.  I don't know why but, despite my placid personality, most times it would end in an 'e-fight'.  One of the topics almost guaranteed to kick off trouble was when some 'Greenie' would come on, tolling his bell, so to speak, on the subject of 'Peak Oil', it's imminent arrival and our certain decline into mass starvation and destitution.  Their cures for this supposed ill varied from 'Herodical' (kill all the children - now!) to dippy-daft (we must all revert to living in rural mud-huts).  My mild suggestion that whilst the notion of 'Peak Oil' might be considered as an abstract possibility it was not worth wasting time (and energy - heh-heh!) worrying about it because it was never going to be a problem.  Cue hissy-fits, rage, insults and then, usually, a ban!

Courtesy of IHTM, I have been reading a piece by Andrew Orlowski at The A Register. (The name Orlowski rang a bell and courtesy of my superb search-thingie I discovered that I had referred to him back in January 2010 when he succeeded in giving my mate 'Rupe' a slap for some unscientific nonsense printed in The Times.)  Anyway, this time Orlowski is drawing our attention to a paper produced by Citigroup commodity analysts (PDF version here) which is entitled: 

Resurging North American Oil Production and the Death of the Peak Oil Hypothesis  

The United States’ Long March Toward Energy Independence [*]

According to Orlowski, the report states that new "unconventional" oil and gas is now available as it is extracted from shale via such means as 'fracking'.  In addition, progress has been made in the production of synthetic oils and, according to Orlowski:

in a decade the low-carbon synthetic replacements for oil will be in production, too, assuming oil remains at $40-$50 a barrel.

So now the 'Greenies' are faced with an all too real 'end-of-the-world' scenario as their own deeply cherished beliefs literally go up in smoke.  What will they think of next to scare the children?  My best guess is Global Freezing.  Stick around, it will not be long in coming!

[*]  Mind you, the thought that the USA might be self-sufficient in oil energy in the near future leaves me worrying about who will undertake to keep supplies flowing from the middle-east?

 

The future is NOW - and thank God it's in Germany!

Sorry to bang on, I'm beginning to sound like a saloon bar bore - sorry, didn't quite catch that?  However, we can now see the absolute and awful result of 'Greenery' at work - in Germany.  Der Spiegel covers it in a detailed report which should be required reading for all government ministers, and especially, an  ex-minister who might well have time on his hands over the next few months in between 'slopping out'!  The whole sorry mess is summed up by the fate of the ThyssenKrupp steel plant in Krefeld:

Despite the signs, protests and pickets, ThyssenKrupp, Germany's largest steelmaker, sold its Krefeld stainless steel mill to Finnish competitor Outukumpu two weeks ago. The new owner plans to shut down production by the end of next year, leaving more than 400 workers without a job. The economic loss to this stricken city on the lower Rhine will be significant.  

The closing of the Krefeld mill cannot be blamed on low-wage competition from the Far East or mismanagement at ThyssenKrupp's Essen headquarters, but rather on the misguided policies of the German government. That, at least, is the view held by those affected by the closing. Since Chancellor Angela Merkel's government abruptly decided to phase out nuclear energy last spring in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, the situation for industries that consume a lot of electricity has become much more tenuous.

This is not some local event but reflects a reality that is being felt all over Germany:

In macroeconomic terms, the impending demise of heavy industry is all the more worrying, because the job losses will not be offset elsewhere. There is no sign yet of the green economic miracle that the federal government promised would accompany Germany's new energy strategy. On the contrary, many manufacturers of wind turbines and solar panels complain that business is bad and are cutting jobs. Some solar companies have already gone out of business. The environmental sector faces a number of problems, especially -- and ironically -- those stemming from high energy prices.

And it isn't just the high price of energy that is forcing German manufacturers to relocate but also the increasing risk of power cuts:

It is equally important to stabilize the power grid as quickly as possible to prevent blackouts from occurring. Until now, the reliability of the German electricity supply was seen as a significant advantage for doing business in the country. But the loss of several nuclear power plants, coupled with the unpredictability of electricity from wind and solar sources, has changed the situation.

There have been several instances recently of power cuts resulting from the strain imposed on the German grid.  These cuts, as power is desperately switched from one area to another to meet demand, take place so quickly that domestic consumers are unaware of them but the damage to manufacturing industry is enormous because their sophisticated machinery cannot just be stopped and started again without hefty costs.

In Germany today we can see 'the Green future' - and it stinks!

 

Warming! What bloody warming?

It is now obvious, other than to the most dedicated HAF, that the whole notion of CO2-caused global warming has followed the example of the dodo!  It is patently clear that given an increase of CO2 of 11% over the last 22 years (no doubt helped along by all those Chinese coal-driven power-stations which open at the rate of one a week, or is one a day?), then global temperatures should be rocketing with daily queues forming for sun-block and parasols.  Alas, the best this measely old globe could manage by way of an increase in temperature from 1989 to 2011 was - wait for it - a pathetic 0.2C.  In fact the only red faces around are not due to sun burn but to the embarrassment of the HAF 'scientists' who fed the data to the IPCC who then produced their wildly exaggerated forecasts:

Desperately seeking an umbrella under which to hide their embarrassment, not their sun-burnt skins, the HAF 'scientists' have now come up with a real corker:  the heat they absolutely and definitely forecast, they now say, is actually hidden at the bottom of the ocean!  (Oh, yeah, right, OK, now why don't you take your pills and have a nice lie down?)  As the 16 scientists point out in a reply to the criticism leveled at them by the likes of Trenberth & Co (dedicated HAFs, all of them):

The ARGO system of diving buoys is providing increasingly reliable data on the temperature of the upper layers of the ocean, where much of any heat from global warming must reside. But much like the surface temperature shown in the graph, the heat content of the upper layers of the world's oceans is not increasing nearly as fast as IPCC models predict, perhaps not increasing at all. Why should we now believe exaggerating IPCC models that tell us of "missing heat" hiding in the one place where it cannot yet be reliably measured—the deep ocean?

What will they think of next?  This blog in its usual fair and open-minded way is open to suggestions as to where all that missing heat is hiding but I must ask you to observe the proprieties.  Suggestions to the effect that the barmaid at the Dog and Duck is definitely hiding some considerable heat down the front of her blouse will not be allowed!  (Er, unless you tell me where the Dog and Duck is located!)

 

No wonder they lost the war!

What an amazing people the Germans are, so clever, so organised, so efficient, so that one can say with absolute accuracy that all their myriad mistakes are at least well-thought out mistakes.  All careless mistakes are strictly verboten!  I raise this hoary old truism because I am still soldiering on through Maj. Gen. Melvin's superb biography of von Manstein in which, despite the Field Marshal's almost super-human efforts, the mistakes keep piling up.  (I shall be writing more on this but so far I have only reached Stalingrad - and my heart is bleeding for all concerned.)

So let us turn from strategic folly to mere monetary and pseudo-scientific folly, and let us all be honest, in our different ways we are all as daft as the Germans.  Not for the first time I am obliged to that rumbustious Dane, Mr. Bjørn Lomborg, who continues in his very naughty practice of pouring buckets of commonsense over idiots!  In this case, the idiots are German but look no further than Southwark Crown Court in a few weeks to spot a particularly ripe British example.  (Mind you, with a name like Huhne, I can't help feeling there's a bit of Hun in him!)  Anyway, back to Deutschland where, Mr. Lomberg tells us, they have finally decided to cut all their subsidies to the green lunacy we call 'solar panels':

Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies—totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University—to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?

I can hardly wait:

Subsidizing green technology is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill.

Well even I could have told them that and I wouldn't know the difference between "photovoltaic" and a Box Brownie!  You see, this is a point I can never quite get across to the HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) who are forever demanding to know my scientific credentials and I keep telling them I don't have any or need any.  All you have to do when faced with the latest 'End of the World is Nigh' merchants is to ignore them and do the opposite of what they preach.  Certainly when it comes to grandiose schemes involving 'loadsa' money you must instantly clutch your wallet and make for the exit because they couldn't spell the word 'economics' and they think a balance sheet is a something that keeps weighing machines neutral.  The sort of monster cock-up described by Mr. Lomberg could have been seen coming decades ago:

Germany’s enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world’s energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun’s energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe’s energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000 square kilometers (155,342 square miles), about 2.6 percent of the Sahara Desert.

Unfortunately, Germany—like most of the world—is not as sunny as the Sahara. And, while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.

In the words of the German Association of Physicists, “solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants.” On short, overcast winter days, Germany’s 1.1 million solar-power systems can generate no electricity at all. [My emphasis] The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic.

And, poor things, they can't even depend on their own nuclear power stations because, as I told you a few weeks ago, the 'Kaiserin' has shut them down.  Still, perhaps, it gives them a warm feeling of moral superiority.  If so, it is the equivalent of the man who is proud of his 5 cm willy:

Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany’s CO₂ emissions by roughly 8 million metric tons—or about 1 percent – for the next 20 years. To put it another way: By the end of the century, Germany’s $130 billion solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours. [My emphasis]

A whole 23 hours over the next 88 years.  Gosh, that's a relief!

 

Never, ever, even for a second, take your eyes off the bastards!

In a way, I suppose this is a follow-on from my previous post because it provides the perfect example of what the political class get up to when they think they are not being watched.  In this case it is even more important because the story concerns the global political class where the insane dementia is even more rampant.  I am obliged to Commentary magazine for pointing me in the direction of a story by George Russell of Fox News.  He has obtained, by means he does not disclose (so it's a good job he's not British - see post below), a copy of the confidential minutes of a secret meeting held in a Long Island mansion last October.  It was chaired by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, and was attended by 30-odd of his principal UN advisors.  This exclusive group have given themselves a long title which carefully obscures the nature of their business.  I will abbreviate it to the CEB.  It is important to understand that without Mr. Russell's journalistic efforts you would know nothing of this meeting which the participants had made considerable efforts to keep private. 

So, what were they up to?  Well, you can read the actual minutes but for a summary you can rely on Mr. Russell's summary:

•    “the catalyst” for solidifying a global economic, social and political agenda, built around “green economy” goals

•   a means to “reorient public and private decision-making” to make the world’s poorest people the new economy’s “main beneficiaries,”

•   a method of also reorienting national decision-making in countries around the world to put the new agenda “at the heart of national ministries,”

•   the occasion to create new bodies, like a U.N. Sustainable Development Council, similar to the U.N. Human Rights Council, to help guide the global process further in the years ahead, or give additional responsibilities to the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP), the world body’s chief environmental agency.

Don't you just love their language?  Like, "green economy", "re-orientate public and private decision making", and all with the aim of putting the ideas of these 30-odd self-appointed apparatchiks "at the heart of national ministeries".  Apparently, a leading light at this little gathering was some Chinese cove called Sha Zukang and he was positively brimming with ideas to, er, "re-orientate your decision-making".  Yeeees, I bet he was !

The participants were disappointed at the set-back they suffered at the last global warming conference in Durban, South Africa but they recognised that the world financial situation was not conducive - for the moment - in ramming insinuating these notions of global socialism into mainly western nations.  But, "stick around, kid, you ain't seen nuthin' yet", these operators plot and plan for the long term.

 

The tendency to think that all the idiots live in your own country is wrong!

And I offer Germany as a proof of my contention!  Their desperate, and not altogether discreditable, post-war efforts to be 'Good Germans' has allowed their nuttier fringe to lead them up several garden paths to disaster.  Not the least damaging of them is the way in which the 'Greenies' have rammed through alternative energy policies which are not only useless but also hideously expensive.  This mad tendency was capped last year when the 'Kaiserin', in a fit of panic after Fukushima ordered 8 of the 18 nuclear reactors to close immediately prior to the phasing out of the remainder.  The resulting energy slack would be taken up by renewable energy sources especially wind farms.  However, some quite disgraceful energy expert, Dr. Günter Keil, has carried out an investigation on behalf of  The European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) - no, me neither - and has come to some rather startling conclusions.  Well, they're startling if you only possess three brain cells and lack an imagination!

According to this worthy, the German energy policy of the last 12 years is a disaster waiting to happen:

Years ago Germany ambitiously embarked on transforming its energy supply system, and hopes to supply at least 80% of its energy needs through renewable energies by 2050, and thus become a moral leader on environmental responsibility for the rest of the world.

To do this, the former Socialist-Green coalition government, led by Gerhard Schröder, enacted the so-called Renewable Energy Feed-In Act (EEG) in 2000. This Feed-In Act requires electric utilities to buy all renewable energies, such as solar and wind power, from all producers at fixed, exorbitant rates and to feed it into the power grid for a period of 20 years. This has led to a boom as thousands of homeowners, businesses, and investors have installed thousands of megawatts of solar and wind power capacity over the years. The current Conservative-Liberal government, not to be outdone by its predecessor, is also gleefully pushing the Feed-In Act to the limit.

Enough to warm the freezing heart of any 'Greenie' but there is a teensy-weensy problem:

The problem is that these energy sources are weather-dependent and thus their sporadic supply is starting to wreak havoc on Germany’s power grid and is even now threatening to destabilize power grids all across Europe. The other problem: the power grid needed to distribute the decentrally produced green power is simply not there yet. They forgot to build it! [My emphasis] So far, after tens of billions of euros spent on renewable energy systems and higher prices for consumers, not a single coal or gas-fired power plant has been taken offline. To the contrary, old inefficient plants have been brought back into service in an effort to stabilize the grid.

And just to add to their woes:

Before the shutdown of the nuclear reactors, Germany had been a net power exporter; today it is a net power importer and is at times severely straining neighboring power grids. To compensate for the missing nuclear power, the government is now heavily promoting even more weather-dependent wind power, which is further destabilizing the German and European power grids. A solution to the problem of storing electricity is still at least a generation away.

Still, not to worry, eh?  Surely Convict 101's Mr. Huhne's windmills will do the trick over here, no problem.  Well, not according to this useful table provided by Richard North at EU Referendum, which indicates that on 'Freezing Monday' they supplied a less than magnificent 0.9% of the total power used:

Another excellent source for keeping tabs on the lunacy of windmills as an energy source is the indefatiguable Autonomous Mind who offers this table showing the contribution from wind sources last Sunday when the big freeze began:

Somewhat plaintively he asks:

Is there any more clear a demonstration of the folly of the government’s plans to spend billions of pounds adding more wind capacity, when it cannot come close to replacing the amount of energy generated by coal-fired and nuclear power plant that will be decommissioned?

What compounds this folly is that additional gas-fired power will have to be built just to act as back up for the wind power on days like this.  There is no economic sense to paying twice to install capacity, particularly given the extent of taxpayer subsidy being devoted to wind turbines to make them more ‘affordable’ – code for helping generators make money from them at our expense.

And one senses and sympathises with the note of desperation in his tone when he asks:

If this doesn’t convince those who favour wind of their nonsensical folly, what will?

 

Good grief! Good news!

This is going to make all the doomsters even more miserable!  David Middleton over at WUWT brings "glad tidings of great joy".  I will not attempt to paraphrase his wonderful essay because, apart from anything else, I have been told by 'she who must be obeyed' in terms which brook no argument that this garret I occupy along with my computer and my books has got to be tidied and cleaned - or else!  However, I will leave you with a couple of quotes by way of a taster and then you can pop over and be made cheerful:

The world has plenty of food, water, space, mineral resources and the Earth’s environment is generally cleaner now than it was 35 years ago. Crop yields have continued to maintain an increasing upward trend for 40 years… And there is every reason to believe that crop yields will continue to improve (unless we really are on the verge of returning to Little Ice Age climate conditions).  [...]

The only thing the world has a genuine shortage of is honest and competent people in gov’t. Almost all of our problems are due to political interference with market forces.

Can't argue with that last one!

 

Holding the coats whilst others fight - such fun!

When it comes to fighting I am definitely on the side of the spectator.  I still remember my one and only venture in a boxing-ring when my opponent kept punching me in the face and making my eyes water and thus through which I could then see nothing.  I back-pedaled, blinking furiously to clear my vision when - SMACK - another punch landed and once again blindness followed.  This went on for what seemed a lifetime.  I retired from the ring after that experience!  There-after I joined the spectator-tendency where at least you see the action and, best of all, feel none of the pain.

I was reminded of this after reading an article in Der Spiegel describing a growing argument between Germany and her neighbours - I know, I know, hard to believe but there it is!  You may remember that the 'Kaiserin' took fright after the Fukushima nuclear plant went, er, nuclear having been hit by an earthquake and a tsunami, neither of which are likely to occur in Germany, and which killed exactly - two people!  In her panic  - well, actually, I think an election was hovering and if she could nick a few Green votes it would help still her beating heart! - she ordered the closure of all nuclear power stations inside Germany.

Needless to say, her neighbours saw an opportunity and both Poland and the Netherlands have announced that they intend to build and operate new nuclear power plants, some of them quite close to the German border.  According to Spiegel, there is absolutely nothing that Germany can do about it - yet!  And anyway, her decision to switch off her 'nukes' has already resulted in Germany facing power shortages which were only solved by buying electricity from France and others and most of which was produced by nuclear means.  If 'Dim Dave' is really intent on Britain expanding the number of its nuclear power plants then he had better get on with it because by the time they are up and running the Germans will have twisted enough arms in Brussels to ensure that they will all be banned under European edict just about when he opens the first one!

 

Sports report from a Hot Air Fanatic

Courtesy of m' Lord Bishop Hill comes this 'headline' from a HAF sports reporter referring to yesterday's Shlock-Horror result in which, for once, 'Fergie' did not look as though he had swallowed a wasp but an entire nest of them:

Newcastle did not beat Manchester United today, because the long term trend is for Manchester United to beat Newcastle.

Exactly, and in football as in climate who could argue with that?!

Misbehavin' models and the stern Austrian!

I have been meaning for some time to draw your attention to an excellent post (and interesting comments thread) emanating from Cafe Hayek and it's proprietor, Don Boudreaux.  In it, he quotes a passage from Friedrich Hayek's acceptance speech on being presented with the Nobel Prize for Economics.  In it, Hayek drew attention to the dangers when what I call 'technologists' attempt to use the tools of real scientists working in the fields of physics and chemistry and apply them to human activities, in this case, economics.  He warns especially of the use, or misuse, of mathematical modeling, beloved of so many macro-economists whose prognostications have proved so wrong, so often.  However, I would stretch Hayek's warning further to include the 'technologists' attempting to forecast global climate by means of mathematical models which so far have proven to be almost totally useless.  So, in this extract I have added to Hayek's reference to "economists" the words "global climate technologists":

"It seems to me that this failure of the economists [global climate technologists] to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences – an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error.  It is an approach which has come to be described as the “scientistic” attitude – an attitude which, as I defined it some thirty years ago, ‘is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed’”

Hmmn!  "Scientistic", ugly word but then it sums up an ugly attitude.

 

A Tale of Two Koreas

 I am very grateful to Indur M. Goklany who has written a piece for WUWT which, if I had my wits about me I might have thought about writing myself!  (That's the trouble with being a third-rater!)  Anyway, Mr. Goklany, no doubt nudged by the news of the 'Dear Leader's passing, took the opportunity to compare North and South Korea which together form a perfect economic experiment.  Nothing illustrates the outcome of the experiment better than these two recent, nightime satellite photos of the South China sea:

As well as providing a perfect picture of the difference between capitalism and communism in action (yeah, yeah, I know neither of them are paradigms of either but in an imperfect world they'll do) they also provide a lesson for the HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) who are forever prating at us to cut our carbon emissions.  Well, they should be really pleased and proud of the various 'Dear Leaders' because North Korea's carbon 'footprint' is only the size of Kim Jong-il's little 'piggy':

Of course, as 'every fule do know', except the 'fules' in the AGW religion, a low carbon emission policy has certain knock-on effects, you know, like malnutrition and death, that sort of thing.  Personally speaking, I think on the whole, and by and large, I would prefer Chris 'the lesbian-straightener' Huhne to starve and die rather than me.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/19/9564314-satellites-document-north-koreas-dark-ages?pc=25&sp=25. Bottom photo is from 2009. Source: http://agora. ex.nii.ac.jp/~kitamoto/research/rs/stable-lights.html.en.

 

See, they really love me over at Deltoid

As some of you know, I pay the occasional visit to the HAFs over at Deltoid, a place where even if you suggest mildly that it's been a bit chilly recently they fall on you like a pack of dogs - old dogs and puppies, mind, pretty toothless and totally harmless.  However, every once in a while one or two of them stand out from the pack by the style of their writing or the wit of their vitriol.  This, from a commenter called 'Mercurious' @ #335 I thought was so good I decided to share it with you:

There once was an old troll named Duff,

Who posted a whole lot of guff,

From each stinkin' word

Grew a great pile of merde

That no-one but no-one could flush.

See, they love me really, in fact, I'm the love that dare not speak its name over at Deltoid!

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php

No need to sing 'Tootle-oo to Tuvalu'

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you  - Nils-Axel Mörner!  Alright, alright, I 'd never heard of him either until 'Dellers' tipped me off but now this cheerful Dane, so unlike his gloomy but more famous predecessor, has written an article for The Spectator (no link yet but I'm sure there will be one eventually so keep trying, or better still, rush out and buy a copy!)  So what is the good news brought to us by this fearfully brainy, Danish scientist?  Well, Canute was right after all!  I had better explain.

First of all, for those who place great value on such things (which includes every HAF there ever was), Mörner is, according to Wiki:

the former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University.  He was president of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) Commission on Neotectonics (1981–1989).

Also, and more to the point today:

He's also been the Chairman of INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution.

However, the really important thing about Mörner is that he doesn't just sit around in the UEA with the likes Phil Jones playing around with computer models.  Instead he, Shlock-Horror, actually goes out and measures things - things like global sea levels.  Thus he writes:

At Tuvalu in the Pacific, I found no evidence of flooding - despite claims in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth that it was one of those "low-lying Pacific nations" whose residents have had to "evacuate their homes because of rising seas".  In fact the tide gauge of the past 25 years clearly shows there has been no rise.

Gotta love this guy!  But proving that Al Gore is the lying liar's lying liar of first choice is relatively easy, but Mörner makes a much graver accusation:

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment claimed that "there is strong evidence" of sea-level rising over the last few decades.  It goes so far as to claim: "Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data  with nearly global coverage.  This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, sea level has been rising at the rate of 3mm yr-1, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century.  Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation, and indicate that similar rates rates have occurred in some earlier decades".

Crikey!  I admitted the other day that I had no idea what a 'jib' was but perhaps I had better start learning - fast!  But no, Mörner saves the day:

Almost every word of this is untrue.  Satellite altimetry [no, me neither, but it's obviously the dog's bollocks!] is a wonderful and vital new technique that offers the reconstruction of sea level changes all over the ocean surface.  But it has been hijacked and distorted by the IPCC for political ends.

In 2003 the satellite altimetryrecord was tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year.  When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: "We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend". (My added emphasis)

Fiendishly clever, these HAFs, in one area they try like mad to hide the trend and in another they boost it up.  If any of them promised you it would be a sunny day today, would you take a brolly?

 

'Dellers' kicks sea water in the faces of the 'warmers'!

What a deliciously naughty cartoon 'The Speccie' has produced for tomorrow's edition!  Never mind the huge furore over "hide the decline", now we have another chapter in the story of  'show the incline', that is, the supposed increase in sea-levels which are, if you believe the 'warmers' about to engulf the Maldives and Bangladesh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to 'Dellers' at The Coffee House, the world's greatest acknowledged expert on sea levels is a Dane called Nils-Axel Mörner and he has just returned from yet another expedition where, instead of theorising on the backs of computer models he actually measures things and that has confirmed:

his long-held view that reports of the world's imminent inundation have been greatly exaggerated for ends that have more to do with political activism than science.

Apparently, this cheerful Dane reckons:

'If sea levels really are rising and islands like Tuvalu and the Maldives are in imminent danger of drowning, where is the physical evidence to support it?' So far there is none. It is those who claim otherwise who are the true 'deniers'.

Anyway, you can read all about it in my favourite magazine, The Spectator, tomorrow - so go out and buy a copy and probably they will have one of their very generous deals on how to buy a year's subscription for next to nothing!

(Yes, this has been a badly disguised advert; and no, I haven't been paid - dammit!)

 

Willis Eschenbach calls Dr. Phil Jones "a liar": now it begins!

Pheeew!  I have just read a long and damning indictment of Dr. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia (UEA) written with great lucidity by Willis Eschenbach at WUWT.  In it, he accuses Jones, several times, of being a liar, not a metaphorical liar, but the real thing, an out-and-out, deliberate teller of untruths.  I am conscious of stepping into a legal minefield here so I reproduce one of the less inflammatory passages to give you the flavour:

You gave lots and lots of explanations to me, everything except the truth—that your records were in such disarray that you could not fulfill my request. It is clear now from the Climategate emails that some records were there, some were missing, the lists were not up to date, there was orphan data, some stations had multiple sets of data, some data was only identified by folder not by filename, you didn’t know which data might have been covered by confidentiality agreements, and the provenance of some datasets could not be established. The unfortunate reality was that you simply couldn’t do what I asked.

Jones and/or the UEA are faced with a deadly decision - to sue or not to sue.  Failure to do so will leave the accusation standing in the public record.  I urge you to read Eschenbach's letter and judge his side of the story.  Now it gets 'down and dirty'!

 

I try to cheer them up but do I get a thank you . . . ?

I have been exasperating the excitable kiddies over at Deltoid.  This is an 'Ultra-Warming' site and needs to be approached with care!  They are in a fair old strop over 'Climategate II' and despite my efforts to be, er, helpful they show no gratitude.  If you have nothing else to do you can start at Comment #90 in which I reply to an earlier comment.  You can then jump to Comment #102 in which Jeff, a true believer, takes me to task.  I reprint my reply to him below because it sums up, in rather blunt terms, much of my re-action to 'Greenery' in all its forms.  I should point out that in the original, somehow Jeff's name mutated to Jeremy, another contributer to Deltoid, but I have corrected it here.  Also to aid your understanding, my first paragraph refers to the not too surprising story that two years ago the 'scientific experts' all agreed that the Canadian caribou had disappeared and, natch!, it was all the fault of Man/global warming/oil exploration or whatever.  None of these experts bothered to ask the local natives who would have told them that the caribou always went off to some other place at certain times.  Anyway, lo and behold, they're back and hopefully Sarah Palin will have plenty of targets if any of them are foolish enough to wander into Alaska.

Well done, Jeff, exasperated, of course, but sticking to the point, by and large. I'm just a little hurt that you failed to thank me for the good news on the missing mooses, or caribous, or whatever you call those great hairy things that have the temerity to shit all over Canada. They're safe and sound!

As to your first main paragraph, are you telling me that my description of bird species as waxing and waning and then, perhaps, waxing again is not an accurate description of their history? And are you also denying that there is some controversy over the fact that those giant windmills are damaging birds?

Also, let me assure you that we have no disagreement that climate change has an effect on different species of both animal and plant life. That, in fact, is the entire history of this planet - it was ever thus. Also, I did not suggest that the "dustbowl" [of the '30s] was the same as the conditions current in Texas, my point was that if it isn't 'one damn thing' it's another! By and large, central areas of big land masses suffer big weather and geological effects. Again, it was ever thus.

Finally, and at this point I must urge you to sit down with a large scotch to hand, let me spell something else out to you. You are quite correct to maintain that human activity has had an effect on living things. Some of it has been deleterious and at this point you can reel off the names of several cuddly animals to weep over but let me tell you bluntly that I, personally, couldn't give a stuff! Even worse, I don't give a stuff about polar bears! What I do see is that through human efforts more and more humans are living longer and longer because they are healthier and healthier. And, this will come as a bit of shock to you, Jeff, I actually think people are far more important than, say Natterjack Toads, or, some flower that lives in a desert and comes up once every ten years. I cannot stress this too much, people are more important than anything else! (How are you feeling? Have a sip of scotch, it'll help.)

Don't misunderstand, I don't wish other living things to be destroyed; if there are sensible ways to preserve them (which increasingly there are) then by all means do it. But, if it comes down to a straight choice then polar bears don't even get a look in!

Now you may suggest that such wanton behaviour will lead to the destruction of people as well. I would suggest that you are wrong. Because as well as causing harm, people also do good. Just two silly/simple examples, dogs and cats thrive because of Man. New types of crops, some bio-engineered, are now feeding more and more people. I could go on but you take my point.

So, I hope that positive ending has cheered you up, Jeff, because I do think you are a tad too dismal - no, no, don't thank me!

Our impartial BBC? You're having a laugh!

Here's a corker I came across on Climate Audit but which first appeared in the comments somewhere on Bishop Hill's site:

4894 is interesting. From Alex Kirby at the BBC to Phil Jones if I have read it correctly, in the run up to COP-10 [the Copenhagen conference] in 2004:

-

Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies [er, that's you!] for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats. (My emphasis)

Do bear that one in mind when next you receive your demand for TV licence money!

Gradually this monstrously huge release of e-mails is being trawled through by the blog-hounds and more and more embarrassing - well, they would be embarrasing to most people if not the likes of the insufferably smug Alex Kirby - gaffes and admissions are coming to light.  And remember, the scamp who nicked them is still holding back several thousand more!  Give him a knighthood!

 

Peer review: choose your own reviewer!

A constant refrain from the HAFs, particularly the technicians (I refuse from now on to refer to them as 'scientists'), is that any criticisms or propositions from blogs can be dismissed because they have not been 'peer reviewed'.  This imprimatur, in which at least two other scientists/technicians must first study and then act as referees to either approve or not any paper offered for publication to a science magazine, is considered to be absolutely essential.  The fact that if you print a paper on the internet everyone and his brainy uncle can criticise it, is neither here nor there.  The gold standard remains the peer review system.  So just how 'golden' is it?  This, from an exchange of e-mails between an editor of a scientific magazine and 'Jones the Techie':

Glenn McGregor Chief Editor of the International Journal of Climatology and Phil Jones paper

1524.txt

Referee 1
“…I recommend to reject this manuscript, it is well below the standard acceptable in IJC or any other refereed journals. The manuscript did not contribute to the area of research, and the methodology used for comparison is naiveEand unaccepted in scientific publications…”

McGregor
“…In view of the comments of the referee(s) your manuscript has been denied publication in the International Journal of Climatology….”

Jones
“…I’m afraid these two reviews will definitely discourage me from submitting more papers to IJC! The two reviewers have not realized the novelty of this paper…You can ignore this email if you want. I won’t be submitting this paper to IJC again…”

2288.txt

McGregor
“…As I am not able to read every paper in detail I have to resort to taking a decision based on the reviews. In this case both were rather negative, hence my decision. Based on your response what I would like to do, with your permission, is to send the paper to a 3rd reviewer and request an opinion within 3 weeks…”

Jones
“…Can I make one suggestion? Good if the reviewer were a Brit – then they’s know something about the context. Possibilities would be Rob Wilby and Nigel Arnell…”  [My emphasis]

McGregor
“…Phil Thanks for the useful suggestion…”

2452.txt

McGregor:
“…I managed to get a third reviewer to look at the comments on your WG paper. Have pasted these below. I will rescind the decision of “reject” and change it to major revisions. Hope you are satisfied with this…”

“3rd Reviewer’s Comments
“…I think both of these reviews are very reasonable and not overly harsh, especially the lengthy and measured remarks from Reviewer 2. My major criticisms have all been noted by one or both of the reviewers:…”

I think the moral of the story is simple: if at first you don't succeed, choose another referee.  Honestly, would you buy a second-hand car from any of these wretches?  And remember, as a result of their scare stories, the Lesbian-straightener is going to whack another £280 a year on your energy bills in order to give handouts to windmill-makers which don't work when the wind is too high or too low which is most of the time.  Have a nice day!

I am grateful to commenter 'Intersting Times' at Climate Audit:

ADDITIONAL:  And here, from the same source as above, is yet another cosy exchange between a member of the editorial board of The International Journal of Crapulata Climatology(IJC) and a co-author with 'Jones the Techie' of a 'paper' which is actually a critique of another paper due for publication.  See how they 'fix' the problem! 

4235:
Osborne to Santer and Jones:
“…I’m on the editorial board of IJC. Phil is right that it can be rather slow (though faster than certain other climate journals!). Nevertheless, IJC really is the preferred place to publish (though a downside is that Douglass et al. may have the opportunity to have a response considered to accompany any comment).
I just contacted the editor, Glenn McGregor, to see what he can do. He promises to do everything he can to achieve a quick turn-around time (he didn’t quantify this) and he will also “ask (the publishers) for priority in terms of getting the paper online asap after the authors have received proofs”. He genuinely seems keen to correct the scientific record as quickly as possible. He also said (and please treat this in confidence, which is why I emailed to you and Phil only) that he may be able to hold back the hardcopy (i.e. the print/paper version) appearance of Douglass et al., possibly so that any accepted Santer et al. comment could appear alongside it. Presumably depends on speed of the review process…”

0455
Santer:
“…The editor of IJoC, Glenn McGregor, has agreed to treat our paper as an independent submission rather than as a comment on Douglass et al. This avoids the situation that I was afraid of – that our paper would be viewed as a comment, and Douglass et al. would have the “last word” in this exchange…”

What an absolute shower they are!  And if you don't believe anything you see in the papers, then certainly don't believe anything in a 'techie' magazine.

 

John L. Daly is not forgotten

John Lawrence Daly was a straightforward, straight-speaking Aussie whose clear-eyed intelligence saw through the bluff and bluster of the HAFs and their manic forecasts that the end of the world is nigh.  His premature death in 2004 silenced a much-needed and persistent voice expressing commonsense.  There can be no better example than this e-mail brought to light by 'Climategate II', the second release of a huge number of pirated e-mails from East Anglia University.

For those not familiar with this old battlefield, one of the problems facing the HAFs was their inability to know for sure what global temperatures were prior to the 19th century when measurements began.  Of particular concern to them were the indications of two historical periods, the Medievil Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA), which if confirmed would break Michael Mann's (in)famous 'Hockey Stick' graph which had become the global icon of the HAF religion:

As you can see, this 'reconstruction' of ancient temperatures shows them as virtually flat up until naughty Mankind got the furnaces blowing, so to speak, in the industrial era, at which point Anthropological Global Warming (AGW) began.  This iconic graph forever associated with Prof. Michael Mann of Penn State University became the badge, the 'regimental colours, if you like, of the entire Global Warming movement.  The entire construction depended on the use of physical proxies, that is, ancient but still existing items such as ice cores and corals.  However, the proxie of prime importance in confirming Mann's hypothesis was tree rings whose pattern is altered by alteration in temperature.  By taking cores from very old trees we would be able to look back in time and see the temperature fluctuations, if any.

Sounds good when you first think of it but, as John Daly demonstrated, it only takes a second or third thought to realise the proposition is bollocks!  Here, in plain language in an e-mail from February 2001 he explains why:

Take this from first principles.

A tree only grows on land. That excludes 70% of the earth covered by water. A tree does no grow on ice. A tree does not grow in a desert. A tree does not grow on grassland-savannahs. A tree does not grow in alpine areas. A tree does not grow in the tundra We are left with perhaps 15% of the planet upon which forests grow/grew. That does not make any studies from tree rings global, or even hemispheric.

The width and density of tree rings is dependent upon the following variables which cannot be reliably separated from each other. sunlight – if the sun varies, the ring will vary. But not at night of course.

cloudiness – more clouds, less sun, less ring.

pests/disease – a caterpillar or locust plague will reduce photosynthesis

access to sunlight – competition within a forest can disadvantage or advantage some trees.

moisture/rainfall – a key variable. Trees do not prosper in a droughteven if there’s a heat wave.

snow packing in spring around the base of the trees retards growth temperature – finally!

The tree ring is a composite of all these variables, not merely of temperature. Therefore on the 15% of the planet covered by trees, their rings do not and cannot accurately record temperature in isolation from the other environmental variables.

In my article on Greening Earth Society on the Hockey Stick, I point to other evidence which contradicts Mann’s theory. The Idso’s have produced more of that evidence, and a new article on Greening Earth has `unearthed’ even more.

Mann’s theory simply does not stack up. But that was not the key issue. Anyone can put up a dud theory from time to time. What is at issue is the uncritical zeal with which the industry siezed on the theory before its scientific value had been properly tested. In one go, they tossed aside dozens of studies which confirmed the existence of the MWE [Medievil Warm Era] and LIA [Little Ice Age] as global events, and all on the basis of tree rings – a proxy which has all the deficiencies I have stated above.

The worst thing I can say about any paper such as his is that it is `bad science’. Legal restraint prevents me going further. But in his case, only those restraints prevent me going *much* further.

Cheers

John Daly

I should add that it was this controversy over tree rings which became one of the main attack platforms for Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit as he persisted with his forensic examination of the 'evidence' and the conclusions drawn by the HAFs in regard to tree ring cores.

John Daly was your archetypal, intelligent outsider.  He thought, and then he wrote, and he wrote with great clarity - I miss him!

 My thanks to Anthony Watts and Rick Werne of WUWT.

 

Climategate II explodes like an incoming Trident missile

My thanks to 'DM', my regular commentator, for the nod and wink that Climategate II has just exploded!  The first release of 'private' e-mails between the so-called 'scientific' HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) was enough to hole them beneath the water-line and the subsequent rise in scepticism amongst both governments and people has been perceptible.  Now a second tranche has been released by some mysterious internet site in Russia.  At a quick glance it looks to be even more damaging than the first.  I will give you just a few examples to indicate the grossly unscientific attitudes of the 'scientists' involved but to keep track of the ongoing situation go to either of these two sites:

 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/#more-51549

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/#comments

<3373> Bradley: I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

<3115> Mann:  By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year
reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that
reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc. [Michael Mann is a leader of the AGW movement] (Emphasis added, I think)

<2440> Jones: I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process  [Jones is the principle AGW 'scientist' at East Anglia UNiversity whose activities were cleared after an 'enquiry' conducted after the first release of e-mails.

<1939> Thorne/MetO: Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary [...] (Thorne, presumably, is from the Met Office - which you and I pay for!) 

Perhaps the most interesting knock-on, or knock-out, effect will be to the slippery codgers who conducted those so-called investigations.

"It's only just begun", as the old song has it!

 

Scare stories to yawn at!

Funny, isn't it, well, not hilarious funny, I mean, peculiar funny, how the Great Experts of the World keeping issuing these dramatic reports telling us, in essence, that the end of the world is nigh.  And yet . . . and yet . . . they do have the naughty habit of missing out the good bits.

I am grateful to Indur M. Goklany writing in WUWT for spotting a rather large ommission in the recent Shlock-Horror report from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) on the subject of extreme weather events.  To the unwary they do seem to be not just increasing in numbers but also in ferocity with a mounting death toll as a result.  That false feeling, of course, is due to the changes in international news coverage in this electronic age.  So, here, courtesy of Mr. Goklany, is a Shlock-Smiley report in graphic form showing that the number of deaths from severe weather events has fallen not risen:

'Who'da thunk it'?  Well, no-one, actually, if you relied on the IPCC report because they didn't bother to put it in!  Why am I not suprised?  I should add, of course, that none of that is the slightest comfort to those whose lives have been shattered by such calamities.

Deliberately missing out important bits of good news seems to be a habit with the IPCC.  For instance,you would think it important in a report on the impacts of climate change on agriculture to include the latest figures on agricultural yields.  Shrivelled up next to nothing, you might suppose.  Wrong:

Heavens to Betsy (or you might prefer a shorter more explicit version), if world yields are shooting up the graph why are people starving?  Ah, well, at that point you need to go to the "Governmental" part of the IPCC in which you will find the biggest collection of thieves, murderers, perverts and crooks outside of Broadmoor because, of course, it is politicians who cause spurious shortages.  Take the Hungarian dwarf, for example, although to be fair he is but one amongst many, he would throw the biggest hissy-fit you have ever seen if European protectionist tarrifs on agricultural produce were removed and exposed his pampered farmers to the real world and thereby allowed poor African farmers to earn a crust.

 

It's nice to know that the Kennedy family tradition runs on

That's a tradition of graft and corruption, of course, which began with good ol' Joseph P. Kennedy who by a variety of means both fair and foul managed to become one of the richest men in America.  Then there was his son, Edward 'Ted' Kennedy, a man who couldn't draw a straight line if he tried, and not just because he always had a glass in one hand and a dame in the other!  And now today we have Robert Kennedy Jnr., the nephew of President Kennedy who, according to Breitbart, has his hand in Obama's back pocket, or to be precise, the American tax-payers' back pocket.

Kennedy Junior owns a company called BrightSource which, if it operated as its name implies as being a source for huge amounts of Federal cash, would be very 'bright' indeed.  However, like all the best scams around today, BrightSource is a solar panels company, you know, folks, the people who assure you that sunlight is free and all they need is a few zillion bucks to make it pay!  According to a book, written by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer:

In 2010, BrightSource, whose largest shareholder is Kennedy’s VantagePoint Partners, was up to its eyes in $1.8 billion of debt obligations and had lost $71.6 million on its paltry $13.5 million of revenue.

So how lucky was Kennedy when one of his partners, Sanjay Wagle, was instrumental in 2008 in raising 'loadsa' money for Obama's election fund?  Then, guess what?  In 2010 the Good Fairy touched Mr. Wagle on the shoulder with her magic wand and, lo and behold, he was appointed by the White House to the Dept. of Energy advising on - yes, you guessed - energy grants! 

Ironically, in 2008, Kennedy wrote a CNN article praising Obama as reminiscent of his famous father and uncle.  The article, titled “Obama’s Energy Plan Would Create a Green Gold Rush,” proved prophetic. However, the “green gold rush” came in the form of $1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money flowing into the pet projects of rich venture capital investors like Kennedy, not average citizens.

Now I'm not one to rub it in to my 'cousins over there' but could I just repeat that amount - $1.4 billion - that's, er, - $1.4 billion, in case you didn't see it first time round because your eyes had welled with tears!  Still, my American readers can console themselves that it was money going into "a green jobs creator".  Indeed, it was but using the very best employment figures offered by the company it works out, a ccording to Breitbart, at about $1 million per job!

Look, it's no good you brandishing that Colt .45 at me, you voted these rascals in, and, to be honest, I've got my own problems with this lot 'over here'!

 

An amusing interlude

Yesterday I received in my personal e-mail box this peremptory demand from a stranger:

What is your educational background and what do you do for living? Simple questions not answered by you anywhere that I have read.

To which I replied, not unreasonably I think:

Why do you want to know and who’s asking?

Back he came again with this:

I am asking because it isn't on your blog where it should be to allow people to judge if you might have any expertise in what you claim to know about.  Who I am doesn't matter until I make a claim.

Given the hectoring, arrogant, unpleasant tone I instantly guessed where he was from!  You see, I have been undertaking a bit of cut and thrust with the 'Warmers' over at Deltoid.  Of course, as regular readers here well know, I frequently mention my appalling scholastic record and the fact that I have had more jobs than most of you have had hot dinners and that my final refuge was the second-hand car trade.  And as it happens, I am pretty sure I mentioned it over at Deltoid in previous exchanges.  Anyway, I responded thus:

Ah, I suspect you are a young man, or at least, one of the new style ‘gentlemen’ who discount such minor matters as courtesy and good manners.  You suppose that you can barge, unasked, into my ‘In-box’ demanding personal information and expect an instant and full reply.  Sorry!  However what you can expect is my usual response to people with no manners – fuck off!  Come back when mummy teaches you to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

Somewhat stuck for words and lacking one of those pithy three-word slogans which is an absolute requirement for the 'youf' of today, he offered this final, pathetic sally:

I will assume you have very little education from your response and what you have gleaned is little. A good "fail" student on a pass fail basis.

Oh God, re-reading that last bit, a dread thought occurred - please, please, don't tell me this pig-ignorant moron is actually a teacher!

 

'Krugmania': we all suffer with it to a greater or lesser extent

Two fascinating essays over at the Cafe Hayek by Russ Roberts, in order, here and here.  Economic buffs can skip the rest of this paragraph but for the benefit of those who happily avoid economics on the sensible basis that not only is it the "dismal science" but also the incomprehensible science, let me tell you that Paul Krugman is a distinguished economist and Nobel prize winner who writes for the NYT, and that Mr. Roberts is a terrific economics swot at various universities who also writes for the MSM.  I should also add the critical information that Mr. Krugman is a Keynesian who believes that governments hold the key to all macro-economic problems.  (Just to confuse matters, well this is economics, there are those who would maintain that Keynes's views were rather more nuanced than that.)  On the other hand, Mr. Roberts is an 'Austrian' - no, no, not by nationality, he is a follower of the 'Austrian school' of economic philosophy which is exemplified in the works of Friedrich Hayek and which can be (very) roughly summed up as 'almost everything a government does in the economic field is "A Bad Thing"', to use the old Sellars & Yeatman phrase. Thus, you can see that Messrs. Roberts and Krugman approach our current economic woes from directly opposite directions.  Well, it was ever thus in economics!

However, Mr. Roberts's two articles have a very much wider scope than just mere economics.  In them he suggests that the differences between himself and Mr. Krugman are ideological, that is, that they stem not so much from a strictly analytical and scientific basis but from their differing 'worldviews'.  He doesn't say this but I will, economics is like a number of other subjects which pretend to be scientific but are really only what I call 'semi-science'.  In other words, the conclusions you come to depend to a great extent on where you started from.  As Mr. Roberts puts it:

But the key point I was trying to make when invoking ideology, is that Krugman and I and most economists have a worldview. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not an indictment or a criticism. It’s simply true. That worldview may be based on casual observation, various principles that make sense to us about how the world works, facts of various kinds, and more statistically sophisticated forms of evidence.

That, I believe, is absolutely spot on and can be applied to any number of other 'semi-sciences' such as global warming, Darwinism and so forth.  Mr. Roberts goes on:

We come to these views in various ways. They are part of our experience, our upbringing, our education, our thinking, and our observations of the world around us. They are inevitably philosophical and ideological at least in part and often in whole. We use these worldviews to filter and understand new information and process that information accordingly. That is not the way most economists or social scientists or even plain scientists think of themselves. They think of themselves as truth-seekers. (Journalists, by the way, have a very similar disconnect between how they view themselves and how I suspect they actually behave.) Truth-seekers look at the facts, allegedly uninfluenced by prior biases, philosophies, theories, and ideologies.

My emphasis above, and examples of what Roberts says can be seen on any of the global warming sites.  He continues:

My claim is that this image of ourselves as pure truth-seekers is a fantasy. Facts don’t speak for themselves. We have to have some kind of worldview to interpret the facts, to filter them, to process them, to organize them. We all suffer from confirmation bias. Facts that challenge our worldview tend to be ignored, minimized, or dismissed as irrelevant.

Ouch!  That certainly applies to me.  It also, I think, applies outside of 'semi-science' even, or especially, into the world of politics.  I have remarked before, in considering the various candidates for the Republican nomination, that so-called intellectual knowledge, or experience in high government office, is not the criteria by which they should be judged.  It is their underlying 'worldview' which is critical, all else flows from that.  We have, according to the (dim) lights of MSM commentary a university-educated intellectual in the White House today and bar a small minority he is generally reckoned to be an outstanding failure as a president.  The reason, in my opinion, is obvious, his entire 'worldview' is skewed in the wrong direction, and therefore, as sure as night follows day, his actions will prove to be disasterous.  It is also why I instinctively draw towards the likes of Sarah Palin and Herman Cain, because their 'worldview' is, in my opinion, clear-eyed and, on the whole, accurate and on that fairly firm base of relative reality they can be trusted to operate and re-act to 'unknown unknowns' in a sensible manner.  Mitt Romney (and also I suspect Rick Perry), of course, has no 'worldview' beyond getting his arse into the Oval Office armchair.  That is not to disqualify him from the job but one cannot do other than harbour considerable doubts.

I urge you all to read Mr. Roberts's two articles and then apply them to a wider 'worldview'!

 

OK, enough of the science, already, my head hurts!

Honestly, Doctor, everywhere I go these days I am pursued by science and it's not fair because I gave all that up when I was sixteen and failed my exams!  But it won't leave me alone; if it isn't neutrinos whizzing past me faster than the speed of light then its news that the universe is expanding at an even faster rate than first thought. It's giving me a headache and on top of that I'm back into all that wave/particle duality stuff, and really, Doctor, I don't care, I mean, I'm not prejudiced, if these, er, thingies want to swing both sides of the street, it's OK with me.  What goes on in the privacy of a scientific laboratory is their business not mine provided they don't frighten the horses!

Alright, I'll calm down and try and explain.  As I indicated a few posts back I have returned to The Dancing Wu Li Masters, a superb primer for science dummies attempting (Health Warning: Do Not Try This Alone!) to grapple with the craziness of quantum mechanics.  I have reached the dreaded 'two slit experiment' which, I recall from 30 years ago, blew my mind then and has done so again today.  Being a lifetime party-pooper, I will attempt to summarise it for anyone who has enjoyed an untroubled life so far, after all,why should I suffer on my own?

Back in 1802, some science swat shone a lamp at a wall into which were cut two slits.  He measured the results that appeared on a back wall behind the slitted one.  He found that if he kept one slit shut the result, unsurprisingly, was a well-defined square of light on the 'receiving' wall.  If he opened both slits, the result was a pattern of bright, semi-bright and dark stripes because the waves of light having passed through two slits they then interfered with each other on the far side, either re-inforcing each other, or cancelling each other out, or half and half, depending on their state when they collided.  Again, that's perfectly normal, the swats call it refraction and you can see it operating if you throw two pebbles into a pond and watch the ripples when they meet.

So, that was that, it had been proved without any doubt that energy (light) went about its business in waves and God was in His heaven and all was well with the world - end of story.  But this is science and there is never any end to it!  Nearly a hundred years later, in marched Herr Prof. Planck who, instead of planning WWI, had been interfering with little particles called electrons which surround the central core of an atom.  He found that if you gave them a dose of energy (say, heat) they became very, er, energetic and would glow (with light, that is, not pleasure, do behave yourselves!) but as the heat was removed and they calmed down they would give back the energy they had received in the form of light.  Very decent of them, you might think, but Planck noticed, to his personal irritation, I gather, that when they gave back their light it came in the form of specifically-sized quantities, not in continuous waves!  I assume that Planck then suffered with a headache of his own because now it looked as though light was not a wave after all but a series of quanta, or particles, a bit like a stream of bullets.  They called these light particles - photons.

So the science swats then went back to the double slit experiment.  They checked that if you switched on a light source with first one slit open, then two slits open, the results of the old experiment repeated itself.  However, if you used the latest gadgetry which allowed you to fire photons one at a time something very strange happened.  If you kept one slit shut and fired a photon through the other slit, you could mark the exact place it hit on the photon-sensitive plate at the rear.  You could do this several times and each time the photon would hit exactly the same place.  But then, without altering anything else, if you opened the second slit and pulled the trigger you would know, by comparison with the plates used in the wave defraction experiment, that the photon would hit one of the dark (non-light) areas.  However, when the plate was checked it was found that the photon had, so to speak, altered course and hit somewhere else in a bright area where it was 'allowed' to hit!  The question then arose, and with it my headache, how did the bloody photon 'know' that the second slit was open so that it could alter its trajectory? 

Answers on a postcard, please, to the Royal Society, not me because I'm off to take a paracetamol and have a lie down!  However, I can give you a clue.  Apparently, and it's obvious really (he muttered, giggling, as he played with his yo-yo), light is both a wave and a particle, all at the same time, and which is which depends entirely on how you look at it!  In other words, there is no objective reality, we make 'reality' when and how we look at things.  (Sorry, how's your head  . . . ?)

Now for some good scientific news!  You will remember -  you better or else! - that a few posts back I drew attention to the rather obvious and mundane fact that Al Gore is a lying liar.  He recently took over a TV station for a long dissertation on his fanatical beliefs concerning CO2 and global warming.  In his film there was one particular experiment that was shown in which two jars, each containing thermometers, were heated.  One jar had normal air in it, the other was filled with CO2.  The film then 'showed' the CO2 thermometer racing up like a rocket in comparison to the other.  The incomparable Anthony Watts of Watt's Up With That? put that particular film sequence through a forensic grinder and showed without doubt that huge chunks of it were 'photoshopped', or, faked, as we might call it!  However, Watts has now gone even further and, in the very finest traditions of good science, has attempted to replicate Gore's experiment.  Without, of course, any help from the programme makers he has managed to buy exactly the same kit that was used and, following their assertion that:

You can replicate this effect yourself in a simple lab experiment

that is exactly what he tried to do because, as Al Gore himself said,

The deniers claim that it’s some kind of hoax and that the global scientific community is lying to people,” he said. “It’s not a hoax, it’s high school physics.

The dismal, from Gore's point of view, result is summed up by Watts: 

Thus, the experiment as designed by Mr. Gore does not show the greenhouse effect as we know it in our atmosphere, it does show how heat transfer works and differences in heat transfer rates with different substances, but nothing else.

Anthony Watts closes his deconstruction of Gore's non-science thus:

Mr. Gore’s Climate 101 experiment is falsified [my emphasis] , and could not work given the equipment he specified. If they actually tried to perform the experiment themselves, perhaps this is why they had to resort to stagecraft in the studio to fake the temperature rise on the split screen thermometers.

The experiment as presented by Al Gore and Bill Nye “the science guy” is a failure, and not representative of the greenhouse effect related to CO2 in our atmosphere. The video as presented, is not only faked in post production, the premise is also false and could never work with the equipment they demonstrated. Even with superior measurement equipment it doesn’t work, but more importantly, it couldn’t work as advertised.

"Falsified"!  Key word, that!  Absolutely deadly when used in a scientific context.  As soon as I read it my eyes flickered towards the various volumes of Karl Popper's work on my bookshelf but I dare not re-open any of them lest my headache turns into a migraine!  Please read Watts's piece, and if you have children, let them read it, too, because it is a perfect example of the scientific method in action.

 

The mighty University of South Carolina is as thick as the Gorran Primary School

A few days ago I wrote, with my usual cruelty (God, I hate little kiddie-winkies!), about the Gorran Primary School whose 'grown-ups' are so thick they need to go back to school, er, but not the one they actually run!  I described how they blew £55k building a wind turbine which, in effect, 'crashed and burned'.  Laughable, or weepable if you were one of the mugs who contributed to the £55k, even so they have been outdone in the 'stoopids' department by the mighty University of South Carolina (USC) - well, they always do it bigger and better 'over there' even when it comes to 'stoopidity'.  Anthony Watts points to a report in The State newspaper which only managed to obtain its information under FOI demands.  Their reporter, Wayne Washington, describes it thus:

On June 28, 2009, an explosion rocked the biomass-fueled power plant on the campus of the University of South Carolina.

The force of the blast sent a metal panel some 60 feet toward the control office of the plant at Whaley and Sumter streets, according to documents obtained from USC by The State newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Well, you might think, that could happen anywhere anytime, you know, 'shit happens' as they say 'over there', or, 'best laid plans of mice and men' as we (rarely) say 'over here', and all that sort of thing.  Wrong!

USC, whose officials touted the plant “as the cat’s meow” before its startup in December 2007, closed it in March of this year after it had been shut down more than three dozen times. [My emphasis]  In one two-year period, the plant only provided steam – its purpose – on 98 out of 534 days , according to a USC review.

The prime mover behind this less-than-great Green idea was the faculty president, the late Andrew Sorenson.  He died this year and a quick read of his obits, once you dig beneath the platitudes, is that he was one of those get-rich-quick progressive operators who slither through the jungle of academia like snakes.  Always on the right, that is to say, Left, side of all the current movements of his day, he was active in the black community, in AIDS research and, as we have seen, in Greenery.  But all the way through his own personal interests were never far behind, as his obit in The State indicates:

Working with the Guignard family, major landowners in Columbia, to jointly plan development of a 500-acre swath of riverfront property in downtown Columbia.

Sorensen made his mark another way. In 2002, when he was hired, his salary from public and private sources was higher than any other USC president in history — $420,000 a year in addition to free university housing in the president’s mansion. By the time he left office, Sorensen made $550,877 a year.

After he retired, Sorensen continued to earn big money. He made a combined $446,000 per year from USC and the Greenville Hospital System as he worked to put together a deal between the university and the hospital system that would expand USC’s medical education program in Greenville.

Meanwhile, the Great Green (Dollar) Eating Machine which cost in the region of $55 million now resembles the set of one of those Hollywood apocalypse movies:

Now sitting idle, with spider webs and a thin film of dust replacing a plant’s hard-hat hustle and bustle, the biomass plant stands as a monument to the university’s failed push toward new, “green” technology, inadequate oversight and naïveté, some of its own officials acknowledge in internal documents.

The plant blemishes the legacy of the late Andrew Sorensen, the beloved, bow-tied president who was in charge of USC when the plant was conceived and constructed. And it also raises questions about whether USC’s revised system of oversight will be able to prevent future instances of idealism gone wrong that marred the biomass project from the beginning.

After pausing to ask ourselves, seriously, whether our government should have powers to shoot on sight any Greens seen within a 10-mile radius of a government department, let us, in the light of the USC's  stupendous $55 million effort, return to the the Gorran Primary School and their pathetic waste of a mere £55 thousand.  In considering their annual school report, I feel that only that classic summary, with which I, personally, am all too well-aquainted, will fit their efforts: Could do better! 

But from which orifice are Lord Turner's own carbon emissions extruded?

I refer to Lord Turner, a prize humbug and hypocrite of such proportions that he should be bottled in formaldehyde and put on display in The Tate Rubbish Modern Gallery.  This is the man who, as chairman of the appropriate committee, purports to advise the government on climate change.  He is also, and the bankers must struggle to keep a straight face, chairman of the Financial Services Authority.  Amongst much of the bullshit advice he has proffered on the subject of cutting carbon and thus saving the world is the idea that air travel should be rationed!

Anyway, this prize example of what might be called 'The Great and Good', or, 'A Total Wanker', you choose, insists that he must always travel first class on airlines although on occasions, out of necessity and, of course, his keen sense of duty, he is prepared to fly business class.  He averages £4,500 a month on this type of air travel and over 15 months has claimed £66,000.  As it happens, his deputy at the FSA has claimed for the same period a mere £12,000 not least because in Europe he tends to fly economy.

Well, you all know the proper D&N response should you see Lord Turner lurking in the first class lounge at some airport, altogether now - "Show us your willy!"

 Hat Tip to the Telegraph but I cannot find a link

This taught the little kiddie-winkies a good lesson

In fact, several good lessons!  I refer to the Gorran Primary School somewhere in the depths of Cornwall and I am obliged to Anthony Watts for the information.  Apparently, in 2008 this school, which is obviously run by, shall we say, intellectually-challenged governors led (by the nose) by a dimwit head teacher, Matthew Oakley, decided to instal a hefty wind turbine to supply all the school's energy needs and thus save the school £5,ooo a year.  Of course, in the nature of things the school had to ante-up £55,000 to buy and instal this magical marvel which, indeed, they managed to do.  Great self congratulation and mutual back-slapping then ensued and, according to some reports, in telling the story the BBC nearly had a corporate orgasm!  The little kiddie-winkies, of course, were mightily impressed with their wise grown-ups and by the time the turbine had been installed they were all well and truly hooked on 'Greenery' and the like.

So it's all a bit of a pity, really, that, as The Daily Telegraph reports, the whole idealistic dream has turned into an all too realistic nightmare:

But soon after being installed the wind turbine became faulty and after a few months seized up - showering the school's playing field with debris.

Since then the school has been locked in a battle with suppliers Proven Energy which has now gone into administration leaving the school with little hope of any money being returned - and a pile of scrap in their field.

'Who'da thunk it?'  Er, well, me, and probably you, too, if you're a regular reader of this blog.  Anyway:

Sue Hawken, chair of the school governors, said:"It has been an absolute nightmare from start to finish. "We've put a claim in but realistically I don't expect to get a single penny from this company.

"Unbeknown to us, the 15 kilowatt turbine that Proven Energy installed was completely unproven technology that never really worked.

She obviously never bought a second-hand car from me back in the day!  Even so, as 'stoopids' go, Ms. Hawken and her colleagues have obviously reached Olympic standards in 'stoopidity' because the story ends thus:

The school says it will look at solar panel as an alternative in the future.

What the little kiddie-winkies think of their grown-ups is not reported but if they are anything like my day their suspicion that adults are idiots will have hardened into certainty, and with a bit of luck none of them will ever believe all that 'Greenery' crap ever again.  So you see, it's an ill-wind that blows no-one any good - and also blows down a wind turbine!

 

Inhofe we trust!

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is the scourge of the 'Warmers' and at last he has found the path first cleared by the redoubtable Anthony Watts of whom I wrote in admiring terms only a few days ago.  He it was who enlisted the help of volunteers all over the USA to check the weather stations upon which teh 'Warmers' relied for their assertion that the globe was heating up.  Now Sen. Inhofe, Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has published a report he commissioned from the Government Accounting Office which confirms all of Watts's cricisms:

This report quantifies lingering questions concerning proper siting of weather stations, finding about 42% of the active USHCN stations in 2010 did not meet one or more of NOAA’s siting standards. GAO says the two standards most commonly unmet are “distance to obstructions [such as buildings and trees] and distance to extensive concrete or paved surfaces.”

Additionally, the report notes, “NOAA does not centrally track whether USHCN stations adhere to siting standards…nor does it have an agency-wide policy regarding stations that don’t meet standards.” The report continues, “Many of the USHCN stations have incomplete temperature records; very few have complete records. 24 of the 1,218 stations (about 2 percent) have complete data from the time they were established.” GAO goes on to state that most stations with long temperature records are likely to have undergone multiple changes in measurement conditions.

You couldn't make it up - well, 'Warmers' do!

(Must go, I am summoned for lunch!)

 

Watts up Al Gore!

Many years ago when I started this blogging lark I was immediately drawn to the Anthropological Global Warming (AGW) campaign which was producing enough heat of its own accord to warm up the earth!  I had no strong views for or against although my cynicism (rather than scepticism, which came later) was on full alert because at my age one has learned the hard way to treat 'experts' with caution especially the more foam-flecked and eye-ball swivelling they appear.  Anyway, I started cruising round the various blogs, the vast majority of which were, so to speak, 'true believers'.  However, there were some doubters and one I came across and immediately took to was Anthony Watts's site Watts Up With That?  At the time he was conducting, with the help of volunteers from all over the USA, detailed and personal inspections of the temperature recording stations upon which the 'Warmers' were basing their 'science'.  It quickly became apparent that, like just about everything else in modern life, huge changes had occurred around these stations which might have begun their existence in rural countryside but were now surrounded by concrete and tarmac and office windows all of which reflected and increased the ambient temperature.  To re-use a tired expression, most of them were 'not fit for purpose'.  Immediately my insipient scepticism hardened into downright suspicion.

Last year, as 'evey fule do know', including and especially the 'fules' at East Anglia University, the whole AGW faith took an almighty hit below the waterline when hundreds of the e-mails circulating between the 'scientists' concerned were hacked and published.  My worst suspicions confirmed I rather lost interest which was naughty of me because one should never underestimate the sticking power of little people with a fanatical belief who have been encouraged in their madness by both Big Business and Big Politics.  And talking of which, the unlovely figure of Big ex-Vice-President Al Gore hoves into view.  This man has made a fortune from technology supplied to alternate energy producers who have been in receipt of massive government handouts 'over there'.  So he receives the tax-payers' dollars at one remove.  The other week, he was given 24 hours of prime TV time to pump out his propaganda and 'prove' that AGW is a 'clear and present danger'.  At this point, re-enter the redoubtable Anthony Watts to apply his fearsome forensic skills on one particular example of what turned out to be a 'lying lie' from a 'lying liar'!

In the film, Gore purports to show a very simple experiment which he, himself, describes as "high school physics" with the implication that his younger viewers could easily replicate in their school labs.  It involves two glass jars being heated.  They both contain thermometers but one is filled with ordinary air whilst the other is filled with CO2.  There then follows a shot of the two thermometers with one climbing rapidly faster than the other - and you can guess which one that was!  Watts remained unconvinced and decided, in the highest traditions of the very best of science, to try and replicate it.  He was minded to do this because, as an ex-TV man himself he was deeply suspicious about the sequence of film showing the two thermometers.  I will not attempt to paraphrase his disection of Gore's jiggery-pokery but instead urge you to read it yourself, or, if you are non-technical like me, then skim-read it because all will be quite clear.  Apart from anything else it will remind you that whilst a picture might be worth a thousand words it's only because it can lie just as well!

And talking of thermometers brings me on to, er, thermometers!  Well, these 'thingies' are a bit more complicated than the glass tube that 'Nursie' sticks in your mouth but they do a similar job for scientists measuring so-called 'greenhouse gases' in the atmosphere.  Alas, these instruments upon which the AGW 'Warmers' have been relying turn out to be about as much use as Watts's weather stations surrounded by concrete.  The Climate Realists site has the details:

Researchers from Canada, USA, Mexico and Britain this week announce a startling discovery that destroys 20 years’ of thinking among government climatologists.

Climate scientists had long believed infrared thermometers measured thermal radiation from the atmosphere and assumed it was 'proof' of the greenhouse gas effect (GHE). Their assumption was that infrared thermometers (IRT’s) were measuring ‘back radiated’ heat from greenhouse gases (including water vapor and carbon dioxide). But damning new evidence proves IRT's do no such thing.

Now a world-leading manufacturer of these high-tech instruments, Mikron Instrument Company Inc., has confirmed that IRT’s are deliberately set to AVOID registering any feedback from greenhouse gases. Thus climate scientists were measuring everything but the energy emitted by carbon dioxide and water vapor.

Read it and weep - with laughter!

 

Hague is vague!

Regular readers will know that for some time now I have been wondering if anyone in what is laughingly known as 'our government' is doing any strategic thinking on what Britain should be aiming for when the EU collapses which is increasingly looking like a dead cert.  'Dim Dave' certainly isn't thinking that way as, according to The Daily Mail, he made clear this week when pressed on a referendum, the idea of which has succeeded in raising over 100,000 e-votes and thereby qualifies for debating time in the Commons - don't hold your breath!:

Mr Cameron insisted there was 'no case to answer' on membership, adding: 'I want us to be influential in Europe about the things that matter to our national interest - promoting the single market, pushing forward for growth, making sure we get lower energy prices.'

My emphasis in the quote above allows me to deviate for a moment and dwell on the idiocy of those words from a man who has allowed the 'Lesbian-straightener' (aka: Chris Huhne) to give away zillions of our cash to various 'renewable energy' spivs!  Y0u think your energy bills have gone up too much?  Stick around, kiddoes, you ain't seen nuttin' yet' adnd you haven't even been able to enjoy all that Global Warming it's supposed to deal with!  But I digress. 

In considering Hague's words as reported by The Daily Telegraph:

Mr Hague suggested that Britain might do better by setting itself apart from the continent in the same way that it had done over the issue of the single currency.

one must apply the sort of skills once used by Kremlinologists, you know, those academic 'experts' who completely failed to foresee the collapse of communism, in order to parse his words carefully and try to elucidate exactly what he said and why he said it.  Um . . . er . . . OK, I give up!  Whatever, or why ever, he said what he said is and will remain forever an enigma - until he actually does something!  And the fact of the matter is that he will do nothing whilst 'Dim Dave' is in No 10.

Thus we have the sight and sound of a politician spouting meaningless hot air rather like my kettle when it boils.  So, no change there, then!

The outlook for global warming - cloudy!

Regular readers may have noticed that the subject of HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) and their bizarre claims and predictions concerning man-made global warming has almost disappeared from these distinguished columns in the last year.  The reason is simple.  The whole scam, the entire Alice in Wonderland phantasy, the complete cockamamie idiocy of the entire theory has been exposed for what it is.  It now stands naked and solitary, the object of mirth and ridicule.  Of course, it still lives.  This giant, bloated body of self-deception and arrogance will not be easily disposed of, but it's definitely on its way out, it's only a matter of time, and in a few years we shall look back on it all and smile that we ever fell for such nonsense.

The latest dagger to the heart of the beast has been wielded by a Dane, Henrik Svensmark, who has propounded the idea for years that the sun's rays are critical in the formation and nature of clouds. After years of delay and obfuscation CERN finally managed to conduct experiments which, to their own acute embarrassment, turned out to confirm Svensmark's hypothesis at the particle level.  The results have been published but with Svensmark himself relegated to one tiny mention and the boss of CERN forced to issue a statement saying, in effect, please, everyone, don't get us mixed up in the global warming warfare!

However, Svensmark's propositions need to be investigated further because if he is right and it is cosmic rays that have far and away the greatest effect on global temperatures then all that nonsense about carbon can be ditched along with the idiots who proposed it and the politicians (for example, Al Gore, 'over there', and the 'Lesbian Straightener', 'over here') who supported them and shovelled shed-loads of our money in their direction.

Of course, we must not become too excited by these experiments which take place at particle level.  There are series of much more complex experimental steps to be taken before we can definitely take it that the suns rays, or lack of them, effect our cloud cover and thus our climate.  However, there has been a little nudge and wink from the 'man in the sun' over the last very few years because sun spot activity has dwindled almost to nothing and, coincidentally, I'm sure(!), we have suffered one rotten cool summer after another due to fairly constant cloud cover.

I have said it before and at the risk of being even more tedious than usual I will repeat it again, it is global cooling which is our immediate problem.

ADDITIONAL:  This from The Mail:

According to the Met Office, the UK’s average temperature from June 1 to August 15 was only 13.9c (57f), the lowest in 13 years.

But temperatures in central England – between London, Manchester and Bristol – have averaged 15c (59f), the worst since 1993.

 

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100102296/sun-causes-climate-change-shock/

http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/08/cloud-1-nm-aerosol-particles-increased.html

http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-ray-action/

"Im Laufschritt MARSCH! HALT! Über DREHEN!"

Roughly translated that's German for "Quick MARCH!  HALT!  About TURN!"  If any of you clever-clog German language swots spot an error, don't tell me, tell Google Translate - verstehen?  Right!

I fall into Germanic mode because they always seem so tremendously organised and efficient compared to this shambolic 'septic Isle'.  So (or zo, if you prefer) it is always such a comfort when, from time to time, it becomes obvious that they are ruled by utter dimwits just as we are.  Do you remember a few months ago when the Jap nuclear station starting fizzing and everyone ran around in circles crying that the endof the world is nigh but practically no-one died as a result?  Well, 'Kaiserin' Merkel was one of them and in her panic she made a grand announcement that all of Germany's nuclear power stations would be closed down and phased out and that energy needs would be supplied by (Russian!!) natural gas together with windmills and solar-panel farms.  The existing coal-fired power stations would also be phased out gradually over time.

Guess what, or, erraten was, as we German-speakers say (God, I love that Google translator), now that the experts have looked at the likely outcome it appears almost certain that at least one, and possibly two, nuclear stations will have to be switched on again in the winter.  You see, no-one told the 'Kaiserin' that when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine none of those useless contrivances actually work.  In addition, die Experten have decreed that a huge dollop of the tax-payers' money set aside to build all those devices that don't work, because no-one would lift a screw driver to make one without a government subsidy, has had to be diverted to build some new coal-fired stations.  Mein Gott!  I am reliably informed that the German Green party first turned red, then purple and moved into such a critical condition that they had to be switched off to avoid danger to their fellow citizens! 

May I say clearly to my German friends that I commiserate with them in their difficulties without the least hint of triumphalism.  You have the 'Kaiserin', we have the 'lesbian straightener', both as utterly useless as the stupid machines they think will save the planet.

Read all about it here, and here.

 

That about sums it up - and I do mean sums!

I have been saving this one for you - no, no, not out of consideration for you but for me!  Written by a Lord, no less, it has lain undisturbed in my 'Blog Feeder' file because I took one look at all the sums (or mathematics, if you want to be posh) and decided to work it up as a post - tomorrow.  And we all know about the constant non-appearance of 'tomorrow'!  Anyway, with my usual selfless dedication - no cheques, please, just cash in the usual plain envelope - I have summoned up my energy and decided to concentrate on the literary part of his Lordship's original paper to give you the flavour of the thing, and let you swots go and check his mathematics for yourself.

The particular Lord I have in mind is the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley who has written an excellent essay for the equally excellent blog, Watts Up With That.  In it, his Lordship describes a 'cutesy-wootesy' little scheme in some dump called Oldbury - north of the M25 so barely worth consideration but even so - in which all the little kiddie-winkies at some primary school were presented with their very own wind-turbine and told that they were thereby saving the planet.  This little 'toy' cost - wait for it and brace yourselves - £5,875 ($9694)!  But, hey, we're saving the planet, kids, so what the hell!

 

Alas, his Lordship, a real party-pooper if ever there was one, has committed the unforgiveable sin in HAF (Hot Air Fanatic) circles by actually doing the sums:

In the first full year of the Oldbury White Elephant’s 20-year life it generated a gratifying 209 kilowatt-hours of electricity – enough to power a single 100-Watt reading-lamp for less than three months. The rest of the year you’ll have to find something else to do in bed.

Gross revenue for the year, at 11p (18 cents) a kilowatt-hour, was, um, almost £23 ($40). Assuming that there are no costs of finance, insurance or maintenance, and after subtracting 20 years’ revenue at last year’s rate, the net unamortized capital cost is £5,415.20 ($8,900).

Not content with knocking the top of the kiddies' ice creams and popping their balloons, Lord 'Gradgrind' gets down and dirty:

How much “global warming” will Jumbo the Albino forestall? While it is in operation, it will generate 209,000/365/24 or almost 24 Watt-hours per hour on average: just about enough to drive an electric toothbrush. 

Mean UK electricity consumption, according to the Ministry of Transparency, is 43.2 GW. Electricity contributes one-third of UK carbon emissions, and the UK contributes 1.5% of world emissions. So the proportion p of global carbon dioxide emissions that the Worthless Windmill will forestall is 24 / 43,200,000,000 / 3 x 0.015, or 2.76 x 10^–12, or, as Admiral Hill-Norton used to call it, “two-thirds of three-fifths of b*gger all”. Skip the next few paragraphs if mathematics makes your head hurt.

My head is hurting so I will skip quickly to the end where his Lordship sums up the whole wind-turbine/global warming scam in his usual elegant style:

So there you have it. After the biggest and most expensive propaganda campaign in human history, leading to the biggest tax increase in human history, trying to stop “global warming” that isn’t happening anyway and won’t happen at anything like the predicted rate is the least cost-effective use of taxpayers’ money in human history, bar none – and that’s saying something.

The thing about gesture politics is that the politicians (that’s us) get to make the gestures and the proles (that’ll be you) get to get the bill.

Read the whole thing - and weep!

Then watch the 'lesbian-straightener' on the news today as he unveils his Big Idea for stopping global warming - and try really hard not to top yourself!

 

Highly qualified, peer-reviewed, expert codswallop!

I know, I know, from time to time I have printed these sorts of embarrassing howlers before but, honestly, each time I come across them I simply cannot refrain.  It's like passing a crippled beggar, the instinct to give him a quick kick is nigh on irresistible!  So here are 15 more absolutely definite and authoritive forecasts for the future made on Earth Day 1970:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”  • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”  • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”  • Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” • Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”  • Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”  • New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”  • Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Source: Reason.com

Oh dear, what an embarrassment that last quote must be for Kenneth Watt, the well known dip stick ecological forecaster, if, that is, he is capable of feeling embarrassment.  And how embarrassing is it to all those HAFs who, since that was written, have been so busy telling us that the world is getting warmer?  Finally, in the future will you be able to face any doom-laden expert without shouting, "Show us your willy"?  Regular readers will not be surprised to know that I nicked all those quotes from those rascals at IHTM.

Little Georgie Moonbat is my new hero

Me?  A hypocrite?  How dare you?  Look, I know that from time to time I have hurled some ruderies at little 'Georgie Moonbat' but I am a tolerant man always prepared to give people the benefit of the doubt and ready to extend the hand of friendship even to a Left-wing pillock a tribune of the people like little Georgie.  Especially when he puts his boot into the likes of Helen Caldicott, a loony lady of ultra-Left wing dottiness and, even worse, an Australian - need I say more?  This woman's anti-nuclear fervour is of such high voltage proportions she almost glows in the dark!  Anyway, little Georgie, totally unafraid of the great, hulking, Aussie amazon has executed as neat a slice 'n' dice operation on her as you could wish to read - and you really should wish to read it!  With forensic skill he exposes her complete lack of creditable sources to support the claims she makes against the nuclear industry and the supposed effects of the well-known accidents which have occurred in recent times.  Now, if he could do a similar hatchet job on 'Huhne the Lesbian Straightener' then I might even consider buying The Guardian.  (Ooops, steady on, but I only said "consider".)

Oh, no! Am I really in agreement with little Georgie 'Moonbat'?

Tell me it ain't so, surely there has to be a way out, an alternative, anything will do, anything at all except the dread thought of being in bed (so to speak) with little Georgie 'Moonbeam'.  Oh God, 'there is no alternative'! 

I had better explain but first let me draw your attention to an excoriating post by Richard North (who else?!) entitled Barriers to Understanding in which he tears into the media for their wildly simplistic and sensational, to say nothing of their blithe and almost totally ignorant, coverage of the Japanese nuclear power station story.  If I had a fiver for everytime they use the word "meltdown" I could afford to build myself a nuclear shelter! 

Two things have intervened in the media coverage of the Japanese nuclear plant crisis to make it misleading to the point of incomprehensible.

The one is the frequent use of the Chernobyl disaster as a comparator, where there are absolutely no comparisons with the incident at Fukushima. The second is the childish refrain of "meltdown" by scientifically and technically illiterate journalists, who seem to be incapable of understanding what is happening, yet seem determined to spread their own incomprehension far and wide.

I had better confess that you could not write down what I know about the workings of a nuclear power station on the back of a postage stamp because I know nothing!  However, what I do know with absolute certainty is that the number of deaths caused by nuclear power as opposed to coal or gas is miniscule.  As today's Spectator (no link yet) points out, the scare-mongering does not fit the facts to hand:

Such hyperbole ignores how surprisingly well Japan's nuclear power stations have held up so far.  Despite one of the most ferocious earthquakes in recorded history and a 30ft wave, a handful of old nuclear reactors have remained largely intact and released only small quantities of radiation into the environment.

Even so, the 'Greenie' maggots have come crawling out of the woodwork to inveigh against the whole concept of nuclear power.  But not so, little Georgie Monbiot, in The Guardian who makes his position clear:

"What disaster?", you may ask. The decision taken today by the Chinese government to suspend approval of new atomic power plants. If this suspension were to become permanent, the power those plants would have produced is likely to be replaced by burning coal. While nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong. The only safe coal-fired plant is one which has broken down past the point of repair.

Well, setting aside his antipathy to coal, at least he sees the advantages of nuclear power:

Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally.

And when they do go wrong the death toll is minimal: none at all at Three Mile Island, and a total of 43 from Chernobyl.  Compare that to the coal mining industry in just China alone where, according to Wiki, some 20,00 miners a year are killed.

Perhaps, 'Field Marshal' Cameron should stop playing with his toy tanks and instead start thinking how he can get us unhooked from our fix on middle east oil and Russian gas.  I suggest he starts with some new nuclear power stations - fast!

 

California dreamin' - or is it a nightmare?

Odd coincidence but no sooner had I finished my fist-shaking at 'Greenie-eco-warmers' below when I came across an article by the estimable George Gilder, a copy of whose excellent book, Wealth & Poverty, sits on my book-shelf as I write.  In The American Spectator he writes of what I would categorise as the biggest suicide note in history, that is, the decision by the people of California not to repeal the Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act.  As Gilder emphasises:

Passed in 2006, AB 32 ordained that the state economy be ratcheted back to 1990 levels of so-called greenhouse gases by 2020, a 30 percent drop, and mandated an 80 percent drop by 2050.

You may need to read that several times for the full horror to sink in.  And if that fails to leave you imitating a character from a Bateman cartoon, then a description of the current condition of the Californian economy will:

California's Treasurer Bill Lockyer has a bridge he wants to sell you. No, he is not putting the Golden Gate on the market. That would actually find buyers. He is trying to foist a "bridge loan" on the country that in effect would require us to buy the entire state.

Shuffling off the streets of Sacramento into the bond market a few weeks ago seeking to raise some $14 billion in so-called "revenue anticipation notes," Lockyer is offering notes that can be repaid only by future revenue anticipation notes, in a delusional statewide recycling binge of bonds on bonds.

Since the state at the same time officially projected $20 billion annual deficits for the next six years (Governor elect Jerry Brown says $28 billion in 2011), the end of this road is another of those bridges to nowhere that politicians believe stimulate an economy but ordinary people prefer not to drive on or off. So now Lockyer is following up with a drive to get the federal government to guarantee California's debt against default, which means the taxpayers will have to be the ulti-mate buyers.

I am tempted to wonder if Boris has considered flogging off London Bridge!  To put Gilder's words in plain English, the Golden State is leaden, it's broke, skint and lacks even the proverbial pot to piss in!  How could that happen to the most incredibly successful State in America, a centre of high-tech excellence which produced a seemingly never-ending supply of innovative, scientific gadgetry in the fields of computers, medicine and defence which kept the USA hugely prosperous and safe?  What happened is simple to explain - the 'Greenie-eco-warmers' took over the place!  According to Gilder, even the previously hard-nosed venture capitalists who had made fortunes backing revolutionary scientific advances which led to companies like Google, Apple, Sun, Applied Materials, Amazon and a host of others, went soft and soppy having made their billions:

 Most of the donors seem to have suffered a midlife muddle of plethoric wealth and quixotically set out to save the planet at the expense of the U.S. economy.

No doubt they retained a residual greed which made them light up when the likes of Al Gore hinted at the prospect of all those Government subsidies which would come their way:

The Green gaggle of venture geniuses in California are simply out of their depth in a field they do not understand. All these venturers made their fortunes in digital information technologies. As MIT professor Eugene Fitzgerald, a microchip and solar innovator, writes in his new tract, Inside Real Innovation, "Early stage investors hoped that energy would be the same as the semiconductor-PC-information technology sector but alas… there will be no new form of energy analogous to the birth of the transistor or integrated circuit… that offers very dramatic performance gains… without breaking the laws of thermodynamics."

The stench of burnt fingers is beginning to arise:

From the sublime to the bathetic, Kleiner [one of the biggest of the venture capitalists who formerly created such enormous wealth and innovation] is now moving on to such politically dependent firms as MiaSole, Bloom Energy, Amyris Biofuels, UpWind Solutions, and Segway. Many have formidable technology and employ thousands of ingenious engineers, but they are mostly wasted on the pursuit of ambient pork and pelf. Other venturers plunged into solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which received some $500 million in federal subsidies and a campaign visit from Barack Obama before slipping toward bankruptcy last fall, laying off some 17 percent of its work-ers, closing a major new plant, and giving up on half of its 2,000 projected green jobs. Many of these green companies, behaving like the public service unions they resemble, diverted some of their government subsidies into the AB 32 campaign for more subsidies.

Sometimes the folly of Man passeth all understanding!  However, if you read Gilder's piece in full you might at least grasp one whopping big example of it.  My emphasis in the quotes above.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day

I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day

Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Oh, I got down on my knees
And I pretend to pray

You know the preacher likes the cold
He knows I'm gonna stay
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day

All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day

If I didnt tell her
I could leave today
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day

(California dreamin')
On such a winter's day
(California dreamin')
On such a winter's day

You can listen to the Mommas and Poppas singing their song here:

 http://www.links2love.com/love_lyrics_206.htm

 

'Greenie-eco-warmer' mass murderers show the SS how it should be done!

I'm obliged to the leader in this week's Spectator (no link yet) which reminds us that the global freezing we and the rest of the northern hemisphere have suffered this winter is likely to end in tears, well, it will do if you are upset by the sight of countless numbers of African children with large heads, bulging eyes, swollen bellies and stick-like arms and legs slowly starving to death!  The 'Speccie' reminds us that China, the world's largest wheat producer, is suffering a catastrophic harvest due to an ultra severe winter drought and we in Britain are already feeling the effects as the price of food stuffs begins to climb even higher.  The Chinese, apparently, have set aside a fund of a billion dollars in order to snap up whatever wheat is available anywhere in the world in order to keep the lid on their own people and their possible anxieties. 

However, the amount of wheat available elsewhere is severely diminished because of the efforts of the 'Greenie-eco-warmers' who have badgered various governments into switching agricultural production into biofuels, for example, a quarter of all grain production in the States now goes to ethanol distilleries.  So remember, when you next hear some 'Greenie-eco-warmer' telling you that biofuels are economically neutral and the price of bread and similar foodstuffs goes rocketing up, it is partly a direct re-action to the loss of wheat resources.  'Over here', despite 'Dave' telling us that he's going to resist all those Brussels' diktats, we must obey the edict of Brussels that biofuels constitute 10% of British transport fuel by the end of this decade - or else!

Of course, in the relatively prosperous west we will moan and groan as the price of food goes up but we'll manage, but in places like Africa they will moan and groan - and die, slowly, painfully, first the babies, then the old people and then the mature adults.  Still it's not all bad, eh?  At least our lorries will be carbon-reduced, so that's alright, then.  And the 'Greenie-eco-warmers' will be happy because they reckon there are far too many people on earth anyway so if the odd billion starve to death, well, it's an ill wind and all that sort of thing.  You see, that's where the SS went wrong, they took direct action, like gassing and burning 6 million Jews, and thus suffered the direct re-action when people noticed.  'Greenie-eco-warmers' have learned the lesson.  Their method is to keep their actions at several removes from the results and hope that no-one notices.

 ADDITIONAL:  I just came across this in an article by George Gilder in The American Spectator (see post above):

Matt Ridley makes the argument cogently in his superb book The Rational Optimist: "Roughly 5 percent of the world's crop land has been taken out of growing food and put into growing fuel (20 percent in the United States).… Not even Jonathan Swift would dare to write a satire in which politicians argued that… it would somehow be good for the planet… to give up food-crop land to grow biofuels...thus driving up the price of food for the poor [who] spend 70 percent of their in-comes on food. In effect, American car drivers were taking carbohydrates out of the mouths of the poor to fill their tanks."

 

Green = black = red

Here's a nice picture:

Doesn't that look lovely and, well, green, in every sense of the word.  It's the sort of image that gets Chris Huhne, our, er, distinguished Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, really excited.  And now that he has succeeded, I assume, in 'straightening' out his lesbian mistress, a very exciting task in its own right, he is in need of fresh invigoration and apparently, so I am informed, these tall, phallic-looking windmills get him going like nothing else.  Well, in these private matters one must strive to be tolerant.  However, there is a public side to these bright, shiny, 'green' windmills which few know about, and people like Huhne definitely do not wish to know about.  It is what one might call the black side:

The Mail, which people like Huhne tend to despise, tells the story of this black lake which is to be found in Baotou in inner Mongolian China.  In this particular part of China there is deposited something like 90% of the world's rare elements many of which are required by the manufacturers of those squeaky-clean-green machines above.  As The Mail tells it:

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

"What's it all about, Alfie?"  Well, neodymium, actually!

Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which, thanks to its tetragonal crystal structure, is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism, and the stronger the magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. It’s been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time – hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has neodymium really come to prominence, for use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use 4,400lb of neodymium-based permanent magnet material. (My emphasis)

And, of course, 'there will be blood', red blood, much of it coughed up from the rotting lungs of local people who have seen their once fertile farmland turned into a stinking brew of deadly chemicals:

People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found. 

Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.

Regular readers will know that I rarely allow any chance to escape me of reminding you all of Auberon Waugh's advice when faced with a politican on a soap-box, that is, to shout out loudly "Show us your willy!"  But in the Right dis-Honourable Chris Huhne's case I suggest a variation, come on now, altogether, as loud as you can:

"Show us your lesbian straightener!"

A consumation devoutly desired and now relished

That's another of the good things about growing old, if you're lucky you live long enough to see the apparently unstoppable expansion of great, man-made, 'intellectual' constructions built on the ages-old, human mixture of avarice, conceit, stupidity and cupidity, first a crack here and there as the irritating moles in the basement undermine the foundations, and then the cracks developing into fissures, and finally, the glorious sight of the whole thing crashing down.  Even better, there is the delicious and delightful joy to be had as survivors of the wreckage clamber out, either dazed or demented, and after taking a quick, panicked look at the remains of their giant theory and unable to face life without it, they clear their throats and try to sing the old songs all over again - but no-one is listening!

Undoubtedly the biggest and best example of this came about with the fall of communism.  One only has to point at the Chinese elephant which, in a matter of two or three decades has ditched Marx, Engels and Trotsky over-board and taken on the main tenets of capitalism.  No-one, anywhere, outside of an asylum, or some tiny, cranky sects takes Marxism seriously anymore.  For example, you have to go to Dave Osler's site to read the daftest most futile heading to a blog-post I have ever seen:

Egypt: what is the class nature of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Osler is not an unintelligent chap, but unfortunately he is just locked in a 1960s to '80s time-warp as he clings desperately to his faith (I use the word advisedly) that class analysis will provide a Marxian answer, like a survivor from the Titanic desperately clutching at a piece of wreckage.

Another 'intellectual' train wreck which, to misquote darling Oscar, you would need a heart of stone not to split your sides laughing at, is the collapse of the Great Global Warming Construct!  Only about a year ago that particular edifice of the mind (or imagination) towered over all of us.  And then, suddenly, another of those naughty moles chewed his way into the e-mails of the CRU and - stand back! - down it came like the twin towers in New York!  I have lost count over the last few months of the number of opinion polls which show that belief in global warming is disappearing a hell of a lot faster than arctic ice - which, incidentally, is now growing again!  This scepticism, or to be precise, this shift in public opinion which the politicians watch like a hawk, now seems to have reached the White House.  According to CNS News:

The abrupt resignation of Carol Browner, President Barack Obama’s global warming czar, and the omission by Obama of global warming from his State of the Union speech on Tuesday could mean that the White House has given up on global warming, according to climate change analysts.

Our very own Met Office, caught flat-footed in a lie, and a useless, incompetent lie, to boot, by the ever-vigilant Autonomous Mind, is obviously 'not fit for purpose'.  To be incompetent is one thing, to be dishonest is another.  Autonomous Mind, pays tribute to another 'mole' Katabasis whose FoI request got through first, sums it up thus:

A look at the information makes clear there is nowhere left for the Met Office to hide.  The Met Office has been caught ‘cold’ lying about its winter forecast in a disgraceful attempt to salvage its reputation.  Its claim that it forecast the cold start to the winter lays in tatters thanks to an exchange of emails between the department and the Cabinet Office.

As a result the Met Office is completely discredited.  Also utterly discredited is the BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin . . .

You can pursue the story concerning Harrabin over at AM's place.  In the meantime, "Rejoice, rejoice" as someone once said, because now, like kids in the blitz, we have another pile of rubble to play in.

ADDITIONAL:  Blimey!  Another of those creepy coincidences.  No sooner had I finished this post with its somewhat historical tone when an E-pal sent me this by Billy Joel and set to some evocative pictures by Ye Li.  Worth watching - and listening -particularly if you are of a certain age!

http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html