DUFF & NONSENSE!

The Sunday Rumble: 28.4.13

Grovelling apologies:

Sorry - sorry - SORRY!  OK?  I'm really sorry!  On Thursday, with all the computer expertise for which I am famed the length and breadth of, er, this room, I carefully composed a brief but elegantly worded post informing you of my absence.  Just to prove it, here it is:

London calling!

Well, it's calling me, at any rate, on personal business and theatre business on Friday and Saturday.  I will get home in the wee small hours of Sunday morning so you can expect a Sunday Rumble - but not too early!

Having written it I then saved it as a 'draft' ready to publish on Thursday night before my departure early Friday morning.  And yes, you are quite right, there it stayed in my 'Draft' box unpublished until now, and whilst I think 200x lines is a bit on the steep side of course they will be completed and handed in on Monday morning!  There is nothing more irritating than regularly visiting a gossipy blog which suddenly stops dead without warning and you are forced to keep clicking back on it to see if it has started up again.  Those of you hoping that this one was indeed dead and buried must delay your celebrations - I have returned!  My usual Sunday rumbles will commence a little later.

Sam Walters, The Orange Tree Theatre:  Part of the theatre business that occupied me yesterday was a visit to The Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond to listen to a talk by Sam Walters, its founder and manager.  At one stage he described himself as 'a jobbing director' which was absolutely accurate but under-stated the breadth and width and depth of his theatrical experience, and his total and absorbing love for it all.  He was entertaining, shrewd, enthusiastic, slightly disorganised but through it all you could positively feel the drive behind the man which led him to start with a theatre in a room above a pub and which has now moved to a room next to a pub and which provides a small theatre in the round.  Being so close to the metropolis, and given his lifetime of friendships in theatre, he frequently attracts top class actors to his tiny performing space.  Plus, I suspect, his obviously tremendous charm plays its part in getting the 'luvvies' to work there.  Well worth a visit for any of you metro theatre lovers. 

'Enemies of the Earth':  Regular readers will know that under my strict accuracy policy that has long been my re-arrangement of the name 'Friends of the Earth'.  It appears I am not alone.  'Bishop Hill' attended a seminar given by some cove called Pascal Bruckner - yeeees, quite! - and he jotted down the main points that came across:

• The idea of catastrophe has replaced the idea of progress
• Racial minorities, women and slaves have been replaced as principal victims
  by Mother Earth
• Fear has become something to be desired.
• We are being transformed into children, ready to obey the orders of an
  enlightened elite.
• Friends of the earth have become the enemies of mankind
• Environmentalism is universal but "end of the worldism" is purely western.
• Environmentalism is about keeping the world for the bobos (bohemian
  bourgeois)

Sound fella, that Bruckner despite, or perhaps because of, his formidable name!

"Bye Bye Miss American Empire":  Continuing my secessionist agitprop, there is a review in The American Spectator of an interesting book which looks in detail at the myriad groups of what they call 'seceshers'.

Some seceshers, like those in West Kansas and New York City seek to form their
own states. Others, (Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, Vermont and the old confederacy)
long for complete independence.

Apparently their chances are minimal to zero!

It’s a cliché to say that lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for,
but that doesn’t make it any less true. And, as Kauffman reminds us, “I know:
Breaking away is impossible. Quixotic. Hopeless. So was dancing on the Berlin
Wall.”

These are Kauffman’s kind of people, the kind who hesitate to say the Pledge
of Allegiance, not because of the phrase “Under God,” but because of the word
“indivisible,” which clangs on the ear like a cell door. Self-government
dreamers, small-is-better believers, localist underdogs and home grown patriots.
How can you not love them?

Someone is to blame!  But I don't expect they ever will be, except, perhaps, by the historians eventually.  I refer to the somewhat dismal record of the British army in recent times.  There is a truly dispiriting article in Commentary Magazine remarking on what looks like a total cock-up in Camp Bastion, the British base in Afghanistan, in which an unguarded perimeter was attacked and two US marines killed and six Harrier jump-jets destroyed.  The writer, Max Boot, reminds his readers of the shambles in Basra after Iraq II when the Brits, full of supposed expertise in urban counter-insurgency gained from the Malaya campaign onwards, more or less handed the entire city over to the gunmen and eventually the American s had to go in and clear up after us!  Too, too, embarrassing - but no-one in command has been blamed!

 

 

Related articles

The Breadwinner, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, review

The Man Who Pays the Piper, Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, review

Pascal Bruckner's opus: 'The idea of catastrophe has replaced the idea of progress' - 'Racial minorities, women and slaves have been replaced as principal victims by Mother Earth'

The Bank Holiday Rumble: 1.4.13

Bank Holiday Mondays always feel like Sundays so I am continuing the Sunday Rumble format in which I will, from time to time during the day, ejaculate - look, I do the jokes round here! - sundry thoughts as and when they stumble into my mind.  That means they will not be the usual beautifully crafted, highly intelligent, literate posts you expect on a normal day - and I won't tell you lot again! 

  

The car washer test:  There seems to be a great deal of fuss being made about Ian Duncan-Smith's so-called welfare 'reforms'.  He has admitted publicly that they will not save a penny which, given that most politicians are lying liars by definition, gives me some small hope.  However, what Duncan-Smith does claim is that his 'reforms' will manage the money more sensibly.  I will offer you all, free of charge 'cos I'm generous like that, a simple test as to the efficacy of these 'reforms'.  I make regular use of one of those car valeting services you see everywhere around these days, and yes, it is because I'm a lazy git who doesn't like getting his hands wet!  I very much admire the boys and girls who work there, and do so with incredible energy in all weathers.  I always make a point of asking where they come from.  The answers cover just about every country in Eastern Europe.  The only country never, not ever, mentioned is England!  And how many Brit 'youfs' and 'youfettes' are in receipt of unemployment benefit, I wonder?  When I see Brits working at these places I shall know that the 'reforms' have worked.

 

I told you, didn't I?  A few days ago I provided you all with an audio link to a very shrewd American businessman who, apart from wanting to sell you his services, also spelled out exactly and precisely why the USA is well on its way to the knacker's yard.  The Americans will owe around $20 trillion by the time Obama ends his reign and they will be utterly dependent on being able to borrow at the cheap rates they enjoy today because their dollar is still the reserve currency for much of the world's trade.  Alas, that is already ending as more and more countries agree to drop the dollar and use their own currencies.  I remind you of this because today the excellent Zero Hedge site is reporting that China and Australia have just agreed to ditch the dollar as the currency for their trade.  This is all part of a Sino-Russian plan, already well on its way to completion, to form a trade bloc based on energy supplies with the sole aim of excluding the USA and, come to that, any of its usual glove puppets, ie, us!  "The times they are a -changin'."

 

Footie fans: the truly brain dead:  From the comfort of my own armchair with a constant supply of hot tea (courtesy of the 'Memsahib' whose hip is coming along nicely, thank you for asking, she no longer has to drag herself along on the floor which slowed up delivery recently) I have just watched Chelsea beat Man United on a freezing cold day.  I suppose, just, that there is some justification to leave the comfort and warmth of your home, to travel sometimes hundreds of miles at vast expense and to pay ticket prices that will keep sundry "muddy-mettled rascals" in the millionaire styles to which they have grown accustomed, but surely having arrived there must be better things to do than just stand there chanting imbecilic slogans over and over and over again.  Or is it their way of trying to prove to themselves that were they to submit to a brain scan the needle would move - just!

 

So farewell then, David Miliband, and good riddance!  So 'Big' Dave slinks off to America to run a charity for a million quid a year because his sneaky little bro' nicked what he considered to be his political entitlement.  Fair enough, I suppose, but today he also resigned as a director of the 'footie' club in his constituency because they have just appointed an Italian lout as manager who once expressed his liking for fascism.  Well, David was shocked, I tell you, shocked and instantly made his feelings clear by resigning - whilst probably thanking the Lord he would never have to visit Sunderland again.  Of course, had the Italian oaf expressed his support for communism, David would not have turned one of his well-groomed hairs despite the fact that communism has murdered roughly twenty or is it thirty times more millions of people than that dilletante Hitler.  Perhaps the fact that his dear old dad had been a lifetime supporter of Stalin, a proper mass-murderer, had something to do with it.

 

Even The Economist puts global warming in the deep freeze:  Thanks to Roger Simon at PJ Media I learn that the mighty Economist mag has dumped global warming:

OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat
while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly
100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is
about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as
James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes,
“the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

And someone must have opened the windows at their London offices because now they are quoting some Russian eye-ball swiveller predicting the freezing end of the world:

Russian scientist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, of the St Petersburg Pulkovo
Astronomical Observatory, painted the Doomsday scenario saying the recent
inclement weather [in Europe] simply proved we were heading towards a frozen
planet. 

Dr Abdussamatov believes Earth was on an “unavoidable advance towards
a deep temperature drop”. The last big freeze, known as the Little Ice Age, was
between 1650 and 1850.

I may be crap at predicting American elections but I did warn all of you to 'go long' on Long Johns!

 

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The Economist has a climate change of heart

The Economist Has a Climate Change of Heart, Well Maybe

20-year hiatus in rising temps puzzles climate scientists

Your Monday Funny: 18.03.13

Sorry for the delay - again - in your 'Monday Funny', "events, dear boy, events" and, yes, I know that the sight of one of those monstrous and utterly useless windmills falling down is funny in itself but this one has that extra delicious ingredient of unintended irony.  Check the place where this Green icon fell to earth!

 

 

 

Aaaah, Kyoto, of course, simply too, too, as 'the Master' might say!

My thanks to Tallbloke

   

The Sunday Rumble: 17.03.13

Another Sunday rumble, or perhaps 'grumble' is a better word, as I awake to yet more global warming falling gently from an iron grey sky and settling nicely, thank you for asking!  As usual, I shall add to this litany of moans and groans as the day goes on, so if you are actually feeling rather happy today, then read no further!

'And then they came for your bank savings':  So now you know, and you must be deaf, dumb, blind and lacking a sense of smell if you didn't know it already, that to the apparatchiks who run the Berlin-Brussels axis nothing is sacred, least of all your hard-earned savings which you have entrusted to your local bank.  The Cypriots have just found that out - the hard way - with banks closed until Tuesday whilst the authorities rip off up to 10% of their savings.  Of course, they put it about that what they're really after is the untaxed il-gotten gains of various Russian crooks oligarchs who decided that Cyprus with its, er, Mediterranean banking laws was a haven of first resort.  Call me 'Mr. Cynical' but I wonder how much Russian 'moolah' was shifted electronically on Wednesday and Thursday when, in return for a nice bung, various apparatchiks quietly tipped them the wink?

Mother Russia is a murderous old bitch!  When I read Tom Rob Smith's best-selling book, Child 44, I promised myself never to read another book by him on the subject of Russia - well, I didn't have to really because Child 44 nauseated me - not, I hasten to add, that Mr. Smith isn't a first-rate writer, he's terrific!  He seems to capture exactly the fear and loathing that existed within Stalin's Soviet Union in which everyone is seeking either to denounce others, or desperately trying not to be denounced themselves.  Anyway, being a hopeless 'bookaholic' I wasn't too surprised to find that somehow, in some mysterious way - nuffin' to do wiv me, honest guv! - someone had slipped a copy of his book Agent 6 into my shopping bag.  I only reached page 25 and already I could feel the nausea returning - when will I ever learn?  Anyway, I was reminded of this by a review at The Atlantic by Benjamin Schwartz of a book called Moscow 1937 written by Prof. Karl Schlögel:

Schlögel’s book is a fragmentary yet meticulous social history of Moscow in the grip of the Great Terror—the period from the summer of 1936 to the end of 1938, when the already sanguinary Bolshevik regime let loose on itself its apparatus of suppression, purging, in waves, all Soviet institutions and at all levels of society, from the nomenklatura, the highest echelons of administrative, cultural, and scientific life, through the high command of the Red Army, to the engineers and apparatchiks, down to the factory workers and peasants. It is an almost impossibly rich masterpiece. [...]

In this chapter and throughout his book, Schlögel is the master of the chilling counterpoint. He subtly makes clear to readers that the 1936 Directory [the equivalent of our Dictionary of National Biography] is brimming with the names of people destined for the abattoir, and he notes that this edition of the Directory was, perforce, the final one: “No editorial board could have kept pace with the frantic rate at which people were driven from their posts and destroyed while their places were taken by others.” Completed on the eve of the Terror, this last Directory “encapsulates a moment in time in which the accusers and the accused, the perpetrators and the victims, the executioners and the executed of the morrow, still sit side by side.”

Once again, and not for the first time, I fall to my knees and thank the Gods of Good Fortune that I was born English!

There's no fool like an educated fool:  And here I give you - no, no, please, there's no charge and he's all yours - Prof. Geoffrey Miller, not just a fool but a dangerous one, to boot.  In a (thankfully) short article at Edge, this eye-swivelling maniac urges on us the advantages of Chinese eugenics:

There is unusually close cooperation in China between government, academia, medicine, education, media, parents, and consumerism in promoting a utopian Han ethno-state. Given what I understand of evolutionary behavior genetics, I expect—and hope—that they will succeed. The welfare and happiness of the world's most populous country depends upon it.

I cannot be bothered to take up all the hideous nonsense this man writes but I would remind him that there is nothing unusual about "close cooperation in China" because, you stupid, master-race theorist, it's a one party dictatorship in which everyone does what they're told - or else - so if you admire it that much, Prof. Miller, why don't you fuck off and live there!  (Apologies for my language but I haven't read this sort of vile vomit since the late Herr Hitler did us all a favour and topped himself!)

How are your alkenones hanging?  I ask, not that I have the remotest idea what an 'alkenode' is when it's at home, but because some less-than-scientific HAF called Marcott has just published a paper indicating 'The Hockey Stick' of all 'hockey sticks'!  He and his little helpers base their record of galloping global warming in the last century by using ocean core samples as proxies.  Very good, you might think, and quite rightly you will be alarmed at the way that temperatures have rocketed up, up and away such that the end of the world really must be nigh.  Unfortunately, that meddlesome nuisance, Steve McIntyre, decided to take a closer look and - whodathunkit? - it appears that the HAFs concerned altered the dates of some of their data.  This, shall we call it, carelessness with regard to dates had rather a significant result, as this diagram, courtesy of McIntyre's Climate Audit site shows:

 

'Les flics' finally spiral out of action:  Yes, yes, I know it's a rather heavy-handed sub-title but last night Spiral 4 came to an end on BBC4 which is a personal catastrophe for me because the other two women in my life will be no more - unless they bring it back for a fifth serial.  You have days left to watch most of the episodes on your I-Player-thingie (whatever that it is) or perhaps there are DVD sets available.  Most of the time I had only the vaguest idea of what was going on in the series - so no change there, then! -  but I didn't care just so long as my two ladies kept appearing.  First, Caroline Proust whom I hope fervently will one day handcuff me and throw away the key!

 

And then there is the sexiest 'lawyer' I have ever come across - no, I admit, not a hard test - the gorgeous Audrey Fleurot.  Whenever I am in legal trouble, and assuming that Ms. Anna Raccoon is unavailable, then this is the lady I want to defend me - and quite honestly I won't care very much if I lose!

Now I have a problem!  What on earth am I going to do with my empty Saturday nights?

 

Zis iss ein German yoke:  Which probably means you won't get it!  However, as the new Gauleiters of Greater Germany (er, that's Europe to you and me) set about stealing money from people's bank accounts in order to teach them fiscal discipline so that they can be loaned more money - vich zey vill pay back on time viz interest - sorry, that's enough cod German - an article on the DW.de site will give you a smile.  According to the story:

Highly indebted, without access to capital, viewed suspiciously by creditors - . Half the country's debts were canceled 60 years ago this week - the foundation of the "economic miracle." [...]

It was only with the London Debt Agreement of 1953 that the German economy was given room to breathe again, says historian Ursula Rombeck-Jaschinski of Stuttgart University: "One could even argue that the economic miracle would have been impossible without the debt agreement."

Ah, yes, now remind me, what exactly is the German for 'don't do as we did just do as we tell you - or you will be shot'?

 

I am now out of rumbles for today!

 

'Little Georgie Moonbat' done good!

It is, of course, an undoubted fact averred by all men of good sense and discernment that 'little Georgie Moonbat' is a prat!  There is no cause too dotty for George Monbiot, for it is he of whom I write, to espouse with an enthusiasm which almost reaches fanaticism.  In fact, the dottier the cause the better as far as he is concerned.  And yet . . . and yet . . . even a bitter and twisted old reactionary like me has a soft spot in my heart for little Georgie, the greenest of the Green Lefties..  I cannot remember the details but some time back there was a kerfuffle over global warming, I think, and little Georgie reckoned his own side were out of order - and said so!  Just recently, he became 'tired and emotional' (I assume) over the rumours being floated concerning the perfectly innocent and blameless Lord McAlpine and, over-excited, he allowed his tweeting fingers to outperform his brain which led him straight into the welcoming arms of M'Learned Friends acting for the blemished Lord.  Now we learn, courtesy of Guido, that the good Lord instructed his litigators not to take little Georgie to the cleaners but instead to require of him that he carry out three years of charity work.  It is a testament to his inherent good nature - and his self interest - that he has concurred without complaint:

“I accepted the suggestion immediately and without reservation. I feel the
proposed settlement reflects very well on Lord McAlpine, who is seeking nothing
for himself, but wants to see work done which could be of great benefit to
others. I have been prompted by Lord McAlpine’s admirable proposal to do the
right thing – something I should have been doing all along – and I hope very
much that I am able to do it well.”

Let's be honest, we all drop fairly large bollocks from time to time during our lives, but it is how we deal with the consequences that tells the world what sort of a person we are - are you reading this, Chris Huhne?  Anyway, I can only say that I would be prepared to go into the jungle with George Monbiot - even if it is likely that I would kill him after 24 hours!

 

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The Sunday Rumble: 24.02.13

First, a bulletin from the Home Front:  Apologies for the quality and the quantity, as in 'lack of', posts on the blog this week.  I am still trying to get to grips with running the house single-handed.  I am learning, the hard way, that planning is essential but being a bit of a 'spur-of-the-moment fella' I'm finding that hard.  However, to paraphrase the good Doctor, 'an empty plate for dinner concentrates the mind wonderfully'!  Still, I am proud to tell you all that having qualified as a 'whites washer', I have now passed with distinction the test as a 'coloureds washer'.  Amazing what those white boxes that stand around taking up space in the kitchen can actually do!  Equally, my cooking skills have risen above the tin-opening stage they had been stuck at since 1959.  Today is a big test though - roast chicken for Sunday dinner!  Will it fly, I wonder - no, no, not literally - oh, you know what I mean!  My vegetable cooking tends to extremes.  Either they come out of the saucepan sodden, or as hard as when they went in, there is no soppy 'Lib-Dem' middle for me, I am an extremist!  Shopping was tricky to begin with because of my inability to find anything but then I discovered the solution - I simply stop one of those obliging ladies who rush around stacking shelves, compliment her on how attractive the uniform looks on her, and with one of my modest, winning smiles (it always gets 'em - well, it used to, back in the day), own up to being a total male dunce and ask if she could point out to me the actual difference between the meat counters and the vegetable racks. Being nice ladies they invariably end up doing most of my shopping for me!

Must go now, 'er upstairs' is banging on the floor with her crutches, however, I will be adding to this 'Rumble' during the course of the day so please do keep looking in if your social life is utterly bereft!

A legal wet dream:  My, how the lawyers must be rubbing their hands at the thought of the fees likely to accrue over the legal niceties involved in the, er, 'aquisition' and sale of the 'mural' by 'Banksy', the so-called 'street artist', which disappeared from the side of a shop in north London and re-appeared at an auction house in Florida.

 

I have only just seen this photo of the original in situ, as it was, and already that has added yet further legal complications.  Hitherto, I had thought that 'Banksy's form of art was in the creation of murals, that is, painted directly onto the walls of buildings, but from this picture one can see that it must have been painted on some sort of board and then attached to the wall.  At which point, m'Learned Friends, rubbing their hands with glee, will ask who owned the board?  And who gave 'Banksy' permission to paint on it; and who gave permission to fix it to someone else's property; and most important of all, who actually owns the bloody thing - 'Banksy', the artist; or 'John Doe', the owner of the board; or 'Mr. Landlord', the owner of the building - or, possibly, the bloke who thought that 'free art' meant it was free and helped himself to it?!  "M'Lord, I would be obliged if the court could adjourn for several days so that I may consult with m'Learned Friends and thus clock up a few more billable hours - know wot I mean, Judge?!"  As for the 'art', well, in my opinion it is a very highly effective and skilfull piece of agit-prop and anyone taken in by it needs their brain cells rejuvenating.

More rumbles later, as and when . . . !

Dave's song: 

And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I'll say it clear
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain
I've lived a life that's full
I traveled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

I've loved, I've laughed and cried
I've had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
"Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way"

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

Yes, it was my way.

Songwriters: DUPRI, JERMAINE/SEAL, MANUEL LONNIE/RAYMOND, USHER

Well, yes, perhaps the greatest hymn to selfishness ever written but therefore entirely suitable for our prime minister, to say nothing of his chancellor.  The only thing is that I suspect "Regrets, I've had a few" is a great exaggeration!  Of course, he frequently expresses regret, for example, over the Amritsar massacre which happened nearly 100 years ago and for which he cannot be blamed, but that should not be confused with actually feeling regret.  Equally, he 'regrets' nearly four times that number of British people being allowed to rot to death in NHS hospitals over recent years but cannot bring himself to sack the man who was in command at the time, instead he promotes him!  No doubt his chancellor regrets boasting about Britian's AAA-rating from the international credulous credit agencies, one of whom has just stubbed its toe on 'the bleedin' obvious' and downgraded us.  This appeared to have as much effect on 'smoothy' Osborne as a 75mm shell glancing off the glacis of a King Tiger tank!

There will be more . . . later  

 

'Elf 'n' Safety' warning: Beware Falling Jaws!  I will simply re-post a comment I left over at Deltoid, the High Church of the Global Warming Scientology cult:

Oh, no, say it ain’t so!!!

Even Mr. Pachauri, the well-known ‘dhobi-wallah’, ooops, sorry, I mean railway engineer, in charge of the IPCC has admitted that there has been no global warming for the last 17 years! 

Even worse, this rascal had the temerity to suggest that people have the right to question the science, indeed, that questioning was good!

Whodathunkit?!

All I can hear over at the Deltoid site is the sound of severe spluttering which I can't help feeling might, in some obscure way, increase CO2 levels and bring about the end of the world as we know it, or rather, as the HAFs think they know it!  Read more at Anthony Watts' excellent site.

So, are the LibDems a bunch of DOMs?  Well, not all of them, perhaps, but given that they are a political party in receipt of what turned out to be stolen money and which they adamantly refuse to surrender, one is not too surprised that one of their 'grandees' may be a Dirty Old Man.  Still, one must be grateful that this miserable bunch of muesli-eating, sandal-wearing flower-people are able to provide a good laugh from time to time in these frozen Isles as we all shiver under relentless global warming!  The Lesbian-straightener was a class act and one can hardly wait for his final curtain.  True, the smile fades at the thought of that old fatty, Cyril Smith, who was a perve of monstrous proportions.  Now we can all look forward to the sight and sound 'Chubby-cheeks' Clegg dancing on the hot coals of press scrutiny as he rapidly changes his story and tells us that after all, God bless my soul, he did actually know just a teensy-weensy bit about the complaints from those ladies.  In the meantime, the biggest loser in British politics, 'Call me Dave' Cameron, who couldn't land a knockout punch on Gordon Brown, now has the easy task of taking the Eastleigh seat formerly held by a proven liar and law-breaker from a party of perves and DOMs.  Surely, even he couldn't lose that one . . .  could he?

More later

In which the Duff cafe-brasserie-bar-restaurant is awarded 16 Michelin stars:  Yes, well, I'm not one to boast but may I say that tonight's poulet rôti avec les légumes mélangés et des saucisses et pommes de terre au lard were, and I can find no more exact description of this gourmet delight - the dog's wotsits painted gold!  True, the chicken was a little on the tough side which is perhaps why my stars came from the Michelin Tyre Company.  The vegatables were only slightly soggy and the baked potatoes were, well, really baked, if you know what I mean.  The 'Memsahib', with typical British pluck, smiled sweetly all the way through - bit like our sex life now I think about it.  Anyway, my re-education continues!

And now I'm off to read a book and then go to bed because I'm knackered!

 

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The Sunday Rumble: 24.02.13

'Missing' Haringey Banksy pulled from Miami auction at 11th hour

If you seek a true seer then, er, look no further!

Yes, indeed, my predictions for the future are beyond compare.  Alright, so I mis-called a couple of presidential elections but, hey, what does it matter, once they're in office they mostly all turn out to be chumps so who cares who wins!  But when it comes to the really important things, like the future of our planet, then I'm the man who calls it the way it will be.

For example, I have been issuing warnings for absolute ages about those noisy, inconsiderate neighbours across the other side of the Milky Way who keep getting drunk and throwing bits of builder's rubble across at us.  I even, out of the kindness of my heart, offered this new alarmist cause to that sad bunch of derelicts squatting over at Deltoid who continue to cling, like shipwrecked mariners, to the flotsam of their global warming cause.  I do realise, you see, that those sorts of people do have a psychological need for a really alarming end-of-the world scenario to make their otherwise dreary lives exciting - and it's the only way they can pull a bird at a party! 

Anyway, they ignored my kind offer, in fact they sneered at it.  But now, you see what I foresaw!  This week an enormous lump of rock just missed us by a few thousand miles.  In cosmic terms that's closer than a gnat's whisker but the neighbours, irritated by the miss, then sent over a shower of smaller rubble.  Happily, they all landed in Russia - so not all bad, then! - in fact given that Russia is already mostly rubble I'm surprised they noticed.  But never say I didn't warn you!

I have suggested to the sad little Climate Scientologists over at Deltoid that they take up this new alarmist cause in order to save themselves from further embarrasment given that their climate forecasts have proved to be rubbish.  I have even given this new cause a name - Cosmic Rubble Against People, or, CRAP, as it will be known.  Sorry, I didn't quite catch that  . . .

 

 

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Oooops! Apparantly CO2 causes global cooling not warming!

As you lie awake at night wondering how to find the money to pay your heating bill which is that much bigger because you're paying subsidies to the likes of Tim Yeo MP and his company to produce hideously expensive non-carbon energy, I thought you would like to know that all that screeching from the HAFs that carbon emissions were going to boil the globe were, well, hot air, actually!

Here, courtesy of WUWT and one of their regular readers, Mr. Burt Rutan, an aerospace engineer, is a diagram comparing the emissions of 1983 to 1997 against those of 1998 to 2012.  As any 'fule do know', courtesy of China, India and most of south east Asia, the amount of CO2 pumped out has hugely increased, by about a third, actually.  And guess what, the earth has cooled not heated!  

HEALTH WARNING: The essence of this diagram appears to be accurate but the design exaggerates the visual effect!  Read the 'comments' thread at WUWT.

Stand by for the screech of brakes and the sight and sound of the HAFs doing 'a hand-brake U-iee' as the campaign against carbon emissions continues but this time because it is absolutely, and definitely, 'on me muvver's eyes', going to cause global freezing!

In the meantime, sensible people will watch and measure carefully the effects of CO2 emissions but not leap to conclusions about its effects without hard evidence.

ADDITIONAL:  Here's another chart showing the same data:

 

 

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Would you buy a used-car from Prof.Joanna Haigh of Imperial College?

I ask because 'The Tall Bloke' reckons she's a bit dodgy, know wot I mean, John?  Like, you'd need ter check the mileage twice over, see!  Just kidding, I'm sure Prof. Haigh is impeccably honest in her personal dealings but when it comes to a scientific dispute she does need to be watched most carefully.

The other day you may have noticed dear old Boris going off on one of his inconsequential rambles this time on the subject of so-called global warming of which, he intimated, he had some severe doubts.  This provoked Prof. Haigh into dashing off a letter to The Telegraph:

SIR – As a professor of atmospheric physics, at Imperial College London, I’m delighted that Boris Johnson maintains his interest in weather and climate (“It’s snowing, and it really feels like the start of a mini ice age”, Comment, January 21), but he should be wary of drawing generalised conclusions from his observations. He suggests that the cold weather is due to declining solar activity – but the sun is more active now than it has been since 2009, and about the same as it was in 2004 and 1998. What we have is the lovely variability of British weather sitting on top of a long-term global average warming due to greenhouse gas increases. This is not an issue of opinion, but one of basic physics.

We don’t need to invoke mysterious solar particles to understand long-term trends.

Professor Joanna Haigh
London SW7

 

Naughty, Professor Haigh, I can only give you an 'E' for Effort for that one! 

You see, what she has done is to take the top of the very weak and feeble peak of the current sunspot cycle #24 and compared it to a couple of points only halfway up and halfway down on the preceeding cycle #23!  The proper comparison would have been between the peaks of both which would have shown a remarkable drop in activity - which may, or may not, be a factor in global climate.

To paraphrase the learn-ed Professor rather naughtily: 'What we have is the lovely variability of British HAFs sitting on top of a mirage of non-existent long-term global average warming not due very much to greenhouse gas increases'.  Yes, that's more like it!

These 'cli-scies', honestly, it's the way they tell 'em!

 

H/T to Paul Matthews, a commenter on the Telegraph blogs who kept his eye on the pea!

 

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The HAFs are even worse than me at forecasting

This blog stands proudly on the rubble of its forecasting reputation, it being the product of the daft old coot somewhat myopic old gentleman who runs this place!  However, when it comes to getting things hopelessly wrong on a regular basis we have nothing on the peer-reviewed (as they constantly remind us!) prats who constitute what I call the HAFs - the Hot Air Fanatics.  Nobody, surely, needs to be reminded of Paul Ehrlich's daft bet (with Julian Simon) that his even dafter forecast of huge rises in the cost of raw materials would come true over ten years - it didn't but to his credit he paid up.

Then there were the sundry sillies who forecast the end of those nice 'cuddly-wuddly' polar bears.  Back in 2008, Prof. Armstrong of Pennsylvania University, wrote to Sen. Boxer, one of the dippiest Democrat politicians to rise to emminence in la-la-land California:

We found the forecasts of declining polar bear numbers contained in the government’s administrative reports were not the product of scientific forecasting methods. Given the large current population of bears and the upward trend in the population, our findings lead to the conclusion that there is no scientific basis for listing polar bears. Indeed, a reliance on evidence-based forecasting suggests that it is more likely that the polar bear population will increase rather than decrease.

In 2012, as reported by the Global Bet site, Paul Waldie in The Globe and Mail wrote:

“The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.”

Well, as the late Mr. Freddy Mercury put it, "Boom-boom, boom-boom, and another one bites the dust - heh-heh!"  But there are more, as the indefatigable Anthony Watts reports:

“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.

And what, according to yet more experts, is the major problem facing this country today - mass starvation?  Er, no, obesity, actually!

The Limits to Growth (1972) – projected the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and natural gas by 1993. It also stated that the world had only 33-49 years of aluminum resources left, which means we should run out sometime between 2005-2021. (See Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind.

Pity, Ms. Meadows, that you didn't live long enough to see just how daft you were, but then again, you were so daft you could have lived to be a hundred and still failed to notice the elephant in your living room!

Claim: In 1974, the US Geological Survey announced “at 1974 technology and 1974 price” the US had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

Data: The American Gas Association said that gas supplies were sufficient for the next 1,000-2,500 years. (Julian Simon, Population Matters. New Jersey: Transaction Publications, 1990): p. 90.

Heh, that trouble-maker Julian Simon again!  And today, thanks to fracking, the USA is on the way to being self-sufficient in energy.

Claim 1970: “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.” Paul Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970.

Has anyone been more wrong, more often and with greater consistency than Paul Ehrlich?  Anyway, moving closer to home on this snowy, freezing day, here is a report in “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” The Independent. March 20, 2000:

“Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.”
“Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and … are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters–which scientists are attributing to global climate change–produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.”
“London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.” “Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community.”
According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years “children just aren’t going to know what snow is” and winter snowfall will be “a very rare and exciting event.” Interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000.
“David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow.”

What can one say?  Except possibly to ask if Messrs. Viner and Parker have been fired and are today employed on road-gritting duties on our snow-covered highways?  Take that as a 'no', shall I?  Anyway, always positive, let me make a useful suggestion.  Burning Guy Fawkes's effigy every 5th of November is becoming rather pointless because our 'Skool Sistum' no longer teaches any history prior to the 1960s when sex was invented so it means nothing to our kiddie-winkies.  So instead, let's have an 'Ehrlich Day'.  We don't have to burn effigies of him, just have enormous blow-up balloons of him which, as the fireworks go off, we can release into the air and watch him whizz around in circles and deflate as all the hot air rushes out.  Can't wait!

Thanks to WUWT  and the original source David B. Mustard

 

It's no longer 'Warmers' vs. 'Deniers', it's 'Deniers' vs. 'Deniers'!

First the 'Good News'.  That bastion of politically (in)correct thinking, aka, NASA, has taken a gigantic step shuffled forward a tad!  Hitherto it has represented the High Church of the Anthropogenic Global Warming cult with its insistence that global warming was entirely due to man-made production of CO2.  For years they have resolutely turned their backs on that enormous ball of burning plasma in the sky and insisted that it was 'CO2 wot dunnit'.  Needless to say, they now find their backs scorched and blistered and have been forced to turn over.

Sorry, too much sarcasm and too many metaphoricals, so let me get to the point.  The ever-excellent WUWT reports that NASA has concluded a grand meeting of experts in just about every field concerned with the viciously complicated causes and effects of our global climate and finally they have admitted, cautiously and hedged around with various 'ifs', 'buts' and 'maybes', that there may be something in the theory that solar energy, in all its various forms, may have something to do with the earth's climate.

As a result we now have a fascinating and new debate on the pages of WUWT in which the 'usual suspects' in the AGW camp have been totally ignored because they are now irrelevant and instead a ferocious argument has broken out between what I am tempted (and I never resist temptation!) to call the 'Sun Worshippers' and the 'Sun Infidels'.  The latter are led by the stiff and unyielding, Dr. Lief Svelsgaard (a major sun-swot), who refuses absolutely to take any step in any direction without solid scientific proof.  Then there are his opponents who, so they maintain stoutly, keep offering him proofs which, they say, he keeps ignoring.

It's always a shame when friends fall out but at least those scattered remnants of the AGW cult have been put back where they belong - on the outer fringes.  That they have been shoved there by NASA, the spritual home of the likes of James Hansen and Michael Mann, spells doom for them and their potty ideas - at last.  I urge you to read the article and the comments thread, as good an example of controversial science at work as you will see anywhere.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/09/nasa-on-the-sun-tiny-variations-can-have-a-significant-effect-on-terrestrial-climate/#more-77253

"Watch the pea, very, very carefully."

That's the order from the 'Tallbloke' and as I am not particularly tall, I'll just do as I'm told!  And it's worth it because he neatly eviscerates a paper produced by some of the cult leaders of the 'AGW scientology' movement, the likes of Ben Santer, Susan Solomon, Tom Wigley, Julie Arblaster and Peter Stott.  These worthies have produced a paper entitled: ‘Identifying human influences on atmospheric temperature’.  In it, they attempt, quite rightly and admirably, to differentiate between solar influence, man-made influence and "the noise [my emphasis] of internally generated variability" influence as causes of the rise in global temperatures in the latter part of the 20th century.  But now it becomes necessary to watch the pea!

What they have actually done is to conflate outside influences, the sun, etc, with man-made influences so that now the 'anthropological' element of so-called 'Anthropological Global Warming' (AGW) is quietly lost in the 'noise':

The main bone of contention in the climate debate is the question of whether the late 20th century warming was predominantly caused by the more active than average Sun, some longer term modes of internal variability, or by increasing human emission of carbon dioxide. Now the ‘Team’ is trying to conflate the solar influence with human influence and contrast these two entirely different factors with internal natural variability, which they call ‘noise’.

This panicking effort to hide the effect(?) of CO2 is essential because, of course, it is man-made CO2 which the hystericals have pointed at and blamed for causing global warming.  However, in the past 15 to 20 years there has been hardly any warming at all and yet China, India and most of South East Asia has been pumping out CO2 in, literally, eye-watering amounts. If in fact, global variations in climate are simply the result of natural cycles, or, the sun having a bout of acne and throwing out a gale-force of cosmic rays, or whatever, then the political red meat in the AGW movement simply disappears - along with all of their wretched agitators.

The fact that it is their so-called experts who have been forced to own up even as they try to obfuscate the truth is utterly damning.

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It's the solar rays wot dunnit!  Once again this blog was wrong - so no surprise there, then!  In fact, this blog is pissed off with having to keep owning up to errors but then again, no-one in their right mind pays any attention to what is written here, so what's the problem?!  Anyway, my frequent dire warnings and my shaking, accusatory finger-pointing at those nasty little sun spots as being the cause of all our good/bad weather was wrong.  At least, that is according to Dr. Leif Svalgaard, the well-known Scandinavian spelling mistake and the expert of all experts when it comes to solar matters.  He has written an article over at WUWT which I urge you all to read, not least because I don't see why I should be the only one with a headache this Sunday.  It is also worth reading the entire comments thread - just take a handful of paracetamol first - because sundry swots add in their expertise and slowly - very slowly as far as I am concerned - you begin to grasp, not the absolute truth of the matter, but the complexity of it all and the way in which first-class scientists, like Svalgaard, inch their way slowly and carefully towards some tentative conclusions.  One of which appears to be some sort of correlation between cosmic rays emitted from the sun and the formation, or not, of cloud cover on earth which, of course, even a scientific twit like me can see would alter our climate to some extent. 

The '50s: Heaven or Hell?  I grew up during the 1950s in the pleasant county of Surrey.  As a 'family' unit my Mum and I were exceedingly hard-up although I never sensed it at the time because whilst there were never any luxuries equally there were never any shortage of absolute essentials.  So for me, the '50s were heaven, or as near to it as you can get on earth.  Of course, it was a time when public propriety went hand-in-hand with private promiscuity as, according to the  reviews of An English Affair by Richard Davenport-Hines, was the case with the Profumo affair. So no change there, then!  From the reviews I gather that Davenport-Hines was shocked - shocked, I tell you - by the rank hypocrisy of the ruling class to which I can only respond with a yawn.  One only requires a slight knowledge of 'dear Bertie's' efforts to shag for Empire, or, going further back, to the dear old 'Duke of Boot' and his 'heroic' efforts to defeat 'feelthy' French hints that we Brits were not really up to the job whilst on the job!  Anyway, one result of the scandal was that henceforth hypocrisy, that is, the wilful practice of hiding one's sins because of shame, has disappeared and today anyone and everyone is advised to 'let it all hang out' so shame has been banished.  Well, bring back the era of hypocrisy, I say.  (By the way, Profumo once shook my hand and if I had known then where it had been I would never have washed it again!)

Chicago should follow LA:  Let not Mayor Rahm Emanuel put it about that this blog has it in for his 'Windy City'.  Absolutely not, even if the body count last year was at record heights and that in the first three days of this year, five more people were murdered.  Despite all that, this blog is eager to assist the mayor in his valiant efforts to cut the killing - er, he is making efforts, isn't he?  Anyway, eager to be of assistance might I suggest that he begins by introducing strict hammer and club control laws because according to the FBI, no less, more people are killed with those implements than with rifles!  Next, he should begin a vigorous campaign to attract Latinos to his city because according to a city cop with the Los Angeles Police Department commenting on the drop in crime stats in his city, a goodly part of it is due to the influx of Latinos pushing out Blacks.  Ooops, perhaps that was a tad blunt, so allow me to re-phrase it in 'PC-lingo for the cringo', let's just call it a "demographic shift", there, that's much nicer, isn't it?

The Plods get it right and wrong:  I noticed somewhere, I forget exactly where, someone moaning that Scotland Yard were wasting public time and money in putting 30+ officers onto the task of investigating the so-called 'Plodgate case' involving the ex-Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell.  I care nothing either way for Mr. Mitchell whose efforts at the Ministry of Overseas Aid should have led to him being put naked in the stocks in Parliament Square so that we could all pelt him with rotten veg.  However, if - and it still remains an 'if' - there was a concerted effort by a gang (I use the word deliberately) of police officers to 'fit up' a government minister then absolutely every effort should be made to uncover it.  It strikes with deadly accuracy at the very heart of our democracy.  What they should do, is cut down on the ridiculous investigation, now verging on a witch hunt, into various elderly gentlemen (er, well, men, anyway) accused by sundry old biddies of having touched them up as young girls but none of whom, as far as I know, were exactly kidnapped and raped!  I am also slightly miffed that I have not been questioned as yet!  I consider it a slur on my manhood because I certainly spent a considerable amount of time and energy attempting to touch up inappropriately as many young girls as I could get to stand or lie still long enough for me to do it.  Alas, truth will out, and the fact is that the number was distressingly tiny.  'E' for Effort - again!

 

 

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My spot on, dead accurate (honest, guv!) forecasts for the year

My somewhat dismal forecasting results during the year have given rise to a certain amount of criticism from different quarters.  However, I would remind you all that my forecasts for the year as a whole were absolutely spot on:

Old Duff's Almanack 2011  2012

Trouble!

More trouble!

Even more trouble!

Double trouble!

Trouble in the rubble!

 

Pretty damn good, I'd say!  So now it is time to provide you all with a glimpse into 2013:

    Old Duff's Almanack 2011  2012  2013

It will rain!

It will rain some more!

Then some more!

And just when you think it can't rain any more - it will rain!

These particular forecasts are based on the methodology much favoured by climate scientologists, it's called extrapolation.  What you do is take a few carefully controlled observations and then extrapolate them into the future.  Of course, them being swots and all that they cannot be allowed to fail and so if the predictions don't come up as ordered they simply change a few of the observation points.  See, it's dead easy being a climate scientologist.  However, this blog works on much tougher criteria.  My observations are taken daily, every morning, out of my bedroom window - well, you don't expect me to actually go out and get soaked, do you?  It's true that some of the Sunday morning observations are a bit dodgy given my bleary eyes, my thumping headache and the fact that in my confusion I sometimes forget to pull the curtains!  Even so, you may place every confidence in my forecasts and my advice to you all is to go long on galoshes!

ADDITIONAL:  Um, not a good start!  Drew curtains this morning, January 1st, and staggered back under the glare of a pitiless sun - well, we were celebrating last night! - and not a cloud in the sky.  Can it be? . . . is it possible? . . . dare one imagine? . . . can I be wrong?  Perish the thought!  Ah, and now I screw up my eyes against the light and peer through my sun-glasses I detect a few fluffy clouds in the distance - rain before supper, mark my words!

 

My second forecast concerns our beloved coalition government.  It has now passed the halfway mark to the next election and I can absolutely and definitely forecast that:

        a: It will split, or

        b: It will stick together.

You see, this coalition resembles one of those titchy little particles they're always playing about with at the CERN Centre, you know, those ones that have a tremendous force driving them apart but an equal and opposite force glueing them together.  So with our parliamentary 'Gluons' (to give them their scientific name), half the Tory party hates the Lib-Dems and strains to break away but the other half loves them and wants to marry them because they, and their leader, were, are and always will be Lib-Dems at heart but they cannot come out of the closet and say so because they know they will never be elected again and, my dears, they so, so love all those expenses.  As for the Lib-Dems, they hate everyone, all the time, everywhere.  They even hate each other and would like to break away from themselves.  Well, it's what they do!

So, in the immortal words of the late Field Marshal Montgomery, 'I don't want any belly-aching', you have your forecasts for the year and may go forth with every confidence.  In doing so, you are accompanied by my very best wishes to you all for a really boring 2013 - at my age I like 'boring', yes, 'boring' is better than 'interesting; and definitely preferable to 'exciting'!

 

And Chicago hits the Big Five-Oh-Oh!

Well, whodathunkit?  Just as I was giving up on Chicago and beginning to think they had all turned into model, goody-two-shoes, citizen wusses suitable for a model mayor like Rahm Emanuel to rule over them they demonstrated, with three days still to go before year end, the reality behind the ultra-strict gun-control laws operating in Chicago - someone shot the 500th victim of the year!  That's the highest body count since the 512 in 2008.  Way to go, Rahm, baby!

According to the Chicago-Tribune the dreadful murder stats were all the fault of 'global warming'!  Er, well, perhaps not quite that - but almost: 

Largely contributing to the spike was the unusual number of homicides that occurred during the early part of the year, when the city experienced unseasonable warmth.

Well, 'over here' we are used to blaming everything on the weather but I can't remember the murder rate figuring in the usual platitudes.  Mind you, we haven't had any 'global warming' over here for yonks and if it doesn't stop raining soon I might go and murder little 'Georgie Moonbat'!

And talking, as I was in my previous post, about the MSM feeding us pap, there is perhaps more than meets the eye in the tragedy of the Sandy Hook school shooting.  According to one source the family connections of the killer are far more involved than is apparent.  For example, the Honda car used by the killer was not registered to his mother as generally reported but to a petty thief and drug addict with connections to the killer's family. Cue non-stop conspiracy theories from now on!

Thanks to IHTM.

 

The un-true face of an eco-totalitarian

Looks harmless enough, doesn't he?  Nice smile, properly dressed, respectable-looking chap, could be your local choir-master, perhaps.  However, if like me you are an enthusiastic and determined opponent of HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) then - be afraid, be very afraid - because this man, Prof. Pratcunt Parncutt, wants you executed - and I kid you not!  He rates you as being worse, far worse, than that Norwegian mass killer who shot and blew up 77 people:

Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion. Consider the politically motivated murder of 77 people in Norway in 2011. Of course the murderer does not deserve to live, and there is not the slightest doubt that he is guilty. But if the Norwegian government killed him, that would just increase the number of dead to 78. It would not bring the dead back to life. In fact, it would not achieve anything positive at all. I respect the families and friends of the victims if they feel differently about that. I am simply presenting what seems to me to be a logical argument.

But if you are against the theory of Global Warming that makes you guilty of the murder of, er, well, people who are not yet dead, and also those who have yet to be born, you see, you are a 'future killer'!  This is a novel extension of legal theory and it will be interesting, albeit, painfully interesting, to see if it catches on:

GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.

I must confess that as I began to read Prof. Pratcunt's Parncutt's essay I fell about laughing on the assumption that it was a giant, satirical hoax but then, gradually, I began to realise that he meant it:

If my argument is correct, it has clear political consequences. Here is a scenario for what might happen if my argument is broadly accepted, both democratically and politically.

•  
  • The universal declaration of human rights and every national constitution would be amended to include the rights of future generations. Incidentally, that would also make national debts illegal, because they oblige future generations to pay them. Getting rid of national debts would in turn solve an important aspect of the “global financial crisis” (more), which currently belongs to the list of common excuses for not investing money in the prevention of GW.

The proposed legal change would be announced and widely publicized for an extended period before it came into force. During that time, GW deniers would have a chance to change their ways and escape punishment.

The police would start to identify the most influential GW deniers who had not responded to the changed legal situation. These individuals would then be charged and brought to justice.

If a jury of suitably qualified scientists estimated that a given GW denier had already, with high probability (say 95%), caused the deaths of over one million future people, then s/he would be sentenced to death. The sentence would then be commuted to life imprisonment if the accused admitted their mistake, demonstrated genuine regret, AND participated significantly and positively over a long period in programs to reduce the effects of GW (from jail) – using much the same means that were previously used to spread the message of denial. At the end of that process, some GW deniers would never admit their mistake and as a result they would be executed. Perhaps that would be the only way to stop the rest of them. The death penalty would have been justified in terms of the enormous numbers of saved future lives.

 

Apparently, he is "Professor of Systematic Musicology" at the University of Graz.  The coincidence that Austria is the birthplace of psycho-babble and that poor old Pratcunt Parncutt is obviously several sandwiches short of a picnic makes me wonder whether he's actually there to, er, 'take the cure', as it were!  Anyway, his ravings have gone viral on the internet and apparently he has now withdrawn the whole piece and replaced it with something more anodyne.  ("You zee, vee haf vays of making you zane again!")

In the interests of science I have conducted my own little experiment with the mouth-breathers over at Deltoid (pages 2&3).  I pointed out to them that I would not hold them liable for the fact that some loony had attached himself to their cause but it was incumbent upon them to repudiate what the man had suggested.  The silence has been deafening.  Oh, plenty of abuse aimed at me - but no repudiation of 'Pratcunt', not one.  By their inactions shall you know them!

 

Ladies, buy your man a fur-lined jock strap!

And in return, chaps, treat your 'gal' to a fur-lined bra!  I kid you not because the evidence is mounting that the sun is, like me, going for nap.  You may, if you are up to it, read the whole of Anthony Watts's post entitled Our current solar cycle 24 – still in a slump – solar max reached? including the long and, in places, fearfully learn-ed (and often incomprehensible - to me, at any rate) commentary but I can save you the trouble and merely re-iterate my previous warnings to expect a deep chill over the next few years.  Mind you, let me add a quick caveat in the sensible words of the exceedingly intelligent, Willis Eschenbach, a distinguished writer on climate affairs:

No, please, no, no, no. I don’t want anyone sounding the dang alarm regarding ice any more than I want them sounding the heat alarm. I don’t appreciate people SHOUTING ABOUT THE COMING LITTLE ICE AGE any more than I care for people SHOUTING ABOUT THE COMING THERMAGEDDON. Future climates are unknown, get used to it. It might cool down … but then it might not. It might heat up … but then it might not.

Take a deep breath, things are not happening fast. Let’s learn some more about the climate and give up on predictions. If the Little Ice Age cometh, we’ll deal with it. If you want to be forewarned and prepared and corner the market on fur-lined jockstraps in anticipation of future earnings, that’s up to you. Me, I take another tack. Just like with the never-ending threats of global warning, I don’t pay the threat of global cooling any mind until I see actual evidence of a shift, either up or down.

Still waiting …

Climate, as opposed to weather, tends to change (relatively) slowly and steadily, it's never an exact line but gradually a trend appears.  When it does, that is the time to adapt.  In other words we must behave in exactly the opposite way to that indulged in by the 'Warmers' when they mistook a (very) slight rise in temperatures over the second half of the 20th century and rushed around in circles like Cpl. Jones shouting, "Don't panic, don't panic" whilst doing exactly that!

I confess to a complete ignorance on the intricacies of solar science.  My shame is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the actual scientists involved - just like scientists in every field of research - are themselves struggling to come to terms with their discoveries, not least because no sooner do they suggest a theory than someone else discovers something new and, hey-ho, it's back to the drawing-board.  However, I am able to offer you the findings of two truly rigorous, scientific experiments which defy falsification no matter what that old clever-clogs Karl Popper might say!

The first experiment is what I call the LJF measurement.  This is taken at the beginning of November and is a strict measurement of the actual day in which I feel the necessity of wearing my Long Johns!  (Look, stop that sniggering, if you're not going to take this seriously you will all get extra homework!)  In the last two years my LJ Factor began in December, the first time in years that I was forced into them before Christmas - and remember, I am always faced with a barrage of jokes, smirks and general rudery from the 'Memsahib, so I'm not that keen to wear them!  This year, the LJF began - in November!

My second strictly scientific test of changing climate comes from whittling, or non-whittling, to be precise, this being a scientific post and all that.  (Look, I won't warn you again ...!)  Approximately four years ago a friend indulged my idle remark to the effect that I have often wished to take up whittling but lacked suitable knives and wood.  Lo and behold, that Christmas he gave me several pieces of wood, all named, a superb and proper whittling knife, and a billy-basic book explaining the technique to the ignorant and the inept in which I qualified for both with distinction!  Of course, whittling being a messy business the 'Memsahib' insisted that it could only be done outside on the patio and I was to sweep up regularly.  Anyway, that summer I began and you would be amazed at what I produced, I mean, wonderful wasn't the word, darling!  But since then - nothing!  I even mislaid the whittling kit for a time because the last three summers have been so cold, wet and miserable that the last thing I wanted to do was sit outside.

So that's it - quod erat demonstrandum - as the swots always say.  We are definitely into a cool spell.  In the unlikely event of any 'Warmers' wandering in here to tell me that what I have experienced was just confined to the south west of England and has no connection ot the rest of the world, my reply is simple.  Who gives a flying fig for 'the rest of the world'?  All I'm interested in are two critical factors - here and me, that's 'me', as in 'ME, ME, ME'! and the rest of the world can look after itself!

In the meantime, take my advice and buy a scarf if you can't 'man up' enough to wear Long Johns!

 

Meet Micky Mann, the Knobel Peace Prize laureate!

I told you before of my claim for a fair share of the dosh going to those Euro-crooks because the EU has won this year's Peace Prize award.  My claim rests on the fact that I am, albeit somewhat reluctantly, a member of the EU and, dammit, I help pay for the whole rotten edifice.  In addition, I relied on the example set by Prof. Michael Mann of Penn State U. who claimed that he, personally was a Nobel Laureate on the grounds that he, along with several hundred others, did some work for the IPCC which itself did win the prize.  Now, those rascals at National Review, who are being sued by Prof. Mann for defamation of character, have placed the following ad in the Penn State U. student newspaper:

 

Something tells me that this fight is going to get down and dirty before it's finished.  'Peace 'n' Hope' are not helped by Mark Steyn, another defendant in the legal action, who is also a very, very, naughty boy and who wrote this on his blog:

While I wait for Hurricane Sandy to shatter my woodlot into delicatessen-sliced tree-rings, some readers have asked for a progress report on Nobel laureate Michael Mann's* suit against NR. So here's a couple of outside takes: This gentleman compares it to Oscar Wilde's suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, while this analyst compares it to Napoleon invading Russia.

Personally, I think it's more like Oscar Wilde invading Russia, but each to his own. (My emphasis)

Ooooh, goody-goody, this could be even better than the Lesbian-straightener's day in court!

My thanks, again, to Watts.

 

How I won the Nobel Peace Prize

Aha, you didn't know that, did you?  Of course, my innate British modesty forbids me from boasting of it but "truth will out" and the fact is that I'm down up there with the likes of Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, John Hume and David Trimble - I know, I know, but you can't pick and choose your company, it's those soppy Norskis who decide the matter.  Anyway, this year they seem to have got their act together and in their infinite wisdom have chosen me as this year's recipient.  I trust they will not think me ungrateful but despite my frequent 'phone calls since the announcement the cheque has still not arrived.  All I get by way of reply is something that sounds like "Yerdy-burdle-durdle-murdle" which I assume is Norwegian for "The cheque's in the post" which simply will not do!  Of course, the actual name on the prize is the European Union - look, stop that laughing now, this is serious! - but as a prisoner member of this tremendous force for peace - ask any Libyan - I feel I am fully entitled to claim my fair share of it and henceforth I will describe myself as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate - and if there are anymore sniggers from you lot, you will stay in after school!

I do not make this claim frivolously, there is precedent for it from a man - or do I mean Mann? - who stands at the very pinnacle of scientific rubbish learning, I mean, Prof. Michael Mann, he of 'Hockey Shtick' fame.  This poor man has been sorely tried - or is about to be! - by the likes of Mark Steyn, The National Review and The Competitive Enterprise Institute because he has taken out a legal suit against them for denigrating his reputation.  As part of his outrage against this example of  lèse-majesté, Prof. Mann insists that he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner because the IPCC ('International Pirates, Crooks & Con-men) was awarded the prize and he had contributed to their work.  This fatuous claim which has about as much reliability as the 'Hockey Shtick' itself has been absolutely and definitely rejected by the Nobel authorities themselves.

I understand that Mark Steyn has been rushed to hospital with STLS - Severe Traumatic Laughing Syndrome!  I may follow him because, of course, by filing suit Mann has opened himself up to defence claims for full disclosure and all those naughty documents and papers which have so far been kept secret will now have to be publicised.  Read about it all at Watts - such fun!

 

Well, at least we'll be looking at the real culprit as we shiver!

Even the Met Office has agreed, muttering through clenched teeth, that there has been no significant global warming for the last 16 years.  Needless to say, carbon dioxide has been pumping out at increasing levels throughout, so sooner or later the Grand Panjandrums of the IPCC and all the other crooks and/or clowns will be forced to own up.  In the meantime, a truly disturbing picture is beginning to emerge from a direction we should never have ignored in the first place - the sun:

Something strange, very strange, is happening on the sun. On October 8th, NOAA’s Solar Cycle Progression monthly update report came out.  Sunspot activity has dropped off to its lowest point in over 100 years, perhaps to its lowest since the Dalton Minimum of the early 1800s.

The sun is headed into a quiet phase. The evidence is mounting. Sunspot activity is down. Solar flux is down. The sun’s magnetic field is decreasing linearly toward zero by 2026. The long term trend points towards a less active sun.  Solar physicists believe a prolonged period of low solar activity lasting more than one cycle is coming.

This change in the sun’s behavior could have profound long-term implications for climate change over the next several decades.

This quote is from a writer calling himself 'azleader' at a site called Inform the Pundits.  Alas, I don't know any pundits but I do know you, so here goes.  This diagram shows sun spot activity since 1700.  Obviously you will need to treat the earlier measurements with care because they had less sophisticated equipment with which to observe.  However, as you can see from the chart, their observations followed closely the recorded drops - and leaps - in earthly temperarature and climate, as reported at the time.

In a previous post I quoted from The History of British Winters which describes the dreadful winters of the early 19th century which played havoc with harvests and led to great hardship.  Now take a look at the sun spot chart for that period.

'Azleader' continues:

The Maunder and Dalton minimums share something in common. Both are associated with cold periods in Earth’s climate history. The time of the Maunder Minimum is often referred to as the “Little Ice Age“.  It is probably not entirely by chance that the Modern Maximum and another earlier period of high solar activity, the Medieval Warm Period, both correspond to warmer temperatures in Earth’s recent climate history.

In the satellite era it has been found the sun varies in radiant energy from 0.1% to 0.2% over a solar cycle. It is hottest during maximum solar activity. That could be a forcing mechanism driving historical climate change, just like the IPCC says CO2 is today.  It is unknown what the cooling effect of a prolonged period of inactivity might be. Physics cannot yet answer that question, but a long history of anecdotal empirical evidence suggests it does.

So, we must not leap to conclusions but wait patiently for the physics to catch up.  Solar science is in its relative infancy but it is already making great efforts to peer as closely as it can into the sun and its workings.  The general consensus is that the sun is heading for a sustained period of inactivity and will produce a 'cold' period.  Our globe is but a speck in the eye of the mighty sun and if it sneezes we need to watch out and be prepared.

I have said it before but I don't mind repeating myself - oh, you noticed! - cold kills a lot faster than heat!

 

Met Office in a 'multi-decadal oscillation', or a flat spin, as I call it!

Perhaps the only positive advantage to be enjoyed as global warming dies the death in the cold mists, rains and fogs of a new (and totally expected) cooling period is that I no longer bore on about the subject - or at least, not quite so much.  To paraphrase the mighty Python, this global warming is ex-global warming; this global warming is DEAD!

And to prove it, we have no less an authority than the Met Office (and it is difficult to be a lesser authority than that unforecast shower!) who quietly slipped out a press release a couple of weeks ago telling us that global temperatures have remained static for the last 16 years. 

Some eagle-eyed hack at The Mail, no doubt snuffling through their waste-bins late at night, found the so-called press release and published it.  Smelling salts all round at the Met Office and poor old Prof. Jones at East Anglia 'Polytechnic-Night-School' came over all faint.  Since the publicity there has been a sustained soft-shoe shuffle from all concerned as they spun in 180 degrees un-saying their previous declarations that 15 years was long enough to establish a trend, the previous warmer period having lasted 15 years, natch!, and now they are trying to stretch the term required to establish a trend to 17 or even 20 years whilst they all practice sun-dancing in the hope that it gets a bit warmer.

Frankly, I wish them well because I would much rather have a warm globe than a cold one but given their abilities in things like, well, climate science, I don't rate their chances very highly.  Even a piss up in a brewery is quite beyond their abilities.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/15/noaas-15-year-statement-from-2008-puts-a-kibosh-on-the-current-met-office-insignificance-claims-that-global-warming-flatlined-for-16-years/

 

The sun still refuses to put his hat on and come out to play!

Regular readers will know of my long-held scepticism concerning AGW (Anthropological Global Warming).  Partly this arises from the nature of the people propagating it as a theory, and also, my instinct that our, meaning humanity's, effect on global temperatures is the equivalent of me pissing in my local reservoir and worrying about it overflowing!  There is a constantly repeated cliche these days to the effect that some people 'ignore the elephant in the living-room'.  In trying to guess (yes, I call it a 'guess' although the swots prefer to call it a 'theory' because it sounds better) as to what is likely to have the greatest influence on the world's temperature, I would point unhesitatingly at that great, big, bright thing in the sky that we call the sun.  That monstrous creator and discharger of energy in all its forms is the equivalent of not just one elephant, but every elephant and every elephant's near relations, that has ever existed in the history of the world all crammed into your living-room!  The difficulty is trying to decipher the information we have on the sun and its variable states and trying to guess/theorise as to their effects on earth.

One feature has been spotted (pun intended!) and regularly measured for some years and that is the frequency and strength of sunspots which follow a roughly 11-year cycle.  There seems to be a correlation between their behaviour, in the sense of appearance or non-appearance, and subsequent effects on earth.  This whole subject is densely  'swottish' and consequently I can only pick up the very vague gist of it all.  However, in a comments thread to a recent post at the ever-excellent Watts Up With That site, an equally bemused reader begged for someone to provide a synopsis in language that a layman could understand.  Shortly there-after, Mr. Rhys Jagger stepped forward and wrote this superb summary and I for one am deeply grateful to him.  I have only cut his opening, introductory paragraph:

1. The sun has things called sunspots on its surface some of the time and the numbers of them have been shown to oscillate from a minimum through a maximum and back down to a minimum in a cycle whose length varies from cycle to cycle but is usually around 11 years.

2. Due to changes in the sun’s magnetic field, the solar cycles are usually grouped in pairs of ‘odd cycles’ and ‘even cycles’. One pair is called a Hale Cycle which is usually around 22 years.

3. It has been shown that certain features in the global weather patterns show cyclical patterns, some of which are linked to one solar cycle, others to the Hale cycle. There are other ‘footprints’ of shorter or longer duration which are also linked to interactions between solar and lunar variables; solar and big planet variables etc etc.

4. The effect of sunspots is to change the intensity of certain radiation emitted from the sun which reaches the earth. Occasionally, these can be major pertubations when features called ‘Coronal Mass Ejections’ or ‘Flares’ occur. These have effects on radio signals, satellites and other things orbiting our earth, so folks like NASA, the Hubble Telescope guys etc etc monitor these things carefully.

5. People have noticed that every few hundred years the sun ‘goes quieter’ or ‘very quiet’ for a few decades to several decades. These periods are called minima and are usually named after someone. The Maunder Minimum in the Middle Ages was particularly quiet, whereas a smaller minimum occurred in the early part of the 19th century and was called the Dalton Minimum.

6. Although understanding is still far from complete, researchers are now trying to link solar activity, specific solar output to weather patterns, either short-term or long-term. Piers Corbyn of Weather Action Ltd is someone who makes a living out of this, being particularly adept at predicting extreme weather events associated with solar/lunar pertubations several months ahead of time. His method continues to evolve, as he would freely admit both to his subscribers and those who read his website (www.weatheraction.com).

7. In general, also, the fewer the sunspots you get in an 11 year cycle, the greater the likelihood there is of cooling of the earth. Conversely a series of high sunspot cycles, as occurred in the 20th century, is postulated/believed to be associated with a warming climate. The Little Ice Age was associated with the Maunder Minimum, which was the quietest period of sunspot activity in the past 500 years.

8. Researchers are also wondering whether frequencies of volcanoes/earthquakes/tsunamis etc can be linked to the sunspot cycles. There is certainly no official scientific proof of this, but people are looking at it and having attempts at predicting such events. Time will tell whether they are accurate or not.

9. Of course, if scientists could predict how sunspot cycles would pan out a few decades in advance, this would be extremely valuable for mankind if our politicians, financial communities and farmers made good use of such information for the benefit of societies. In particular, if we were able to predict a marginalisation of yield in major growing areas like Canada, the Northern Mid West of the USA, Russia/Ukraine etc due to the onset of a mini ice age, then efforts would surely be made to evolve agricultural production through lower latitudes. It’s by no means clear that we are able to do this yet and it may take 100 years more of detailed research before it does become possible.

10. Really detailed monitoring of the Sun has only become possible in the era of satellites and telescopes and therefore data prior to about 1950 isn’t really as accurate as the measurements since 1979, when the first satellite data started coming through. As a result, true understanding of what sunspots looked like back in the 1700s, 1800s etc etc is never going to be as accurate as scientists would like. Nonetheless, data from 24 cycles of sunspot cycles since the end of the Maunder Minimum is what scientists use for their predictions for the future.

11. Currently, many scientists believe that the current cycle (24) and the next one (25) will be much weaker than those which have preceded them. There is a body of opinion which believes this points to cooling tendencies from the sun, although how any warming of oceans may compensate for that in terms of air temperatures and subsequent land temperatures is less clear. Scientists who believe that solar output is a major contributor to temperature fluctuations on earth are therefore somewhat skeptical about the ‘global warming’ scaremongering going on particular those who postulate increasing carbon dioxide as the major forcing mechanism.

12. It would not be considered ludicrous therefore for politicians to plan for little rise in temperatures for the next 30 years and they should certainly scenario plan for a possibility of significant cooling. Given, however, that the Dalton minimum in the early 19th century only lasted for 2 cycles before solar output increased again, until proven otherwise, it should be assumed that a return to potentially warmer fare may occur thereafter. Politicians will ask scientists, however, to be constantly looking out for signals that the sun may be going into a deeper sleep and they should be planning how to manage a Northern Hemisphere which might become dangerously short of food in the absence of the Sahara not becoming more fertile in response, should a Maunder-style minimum come to pass.

I wouldn’t expect anyone to take this as gospel truth, nonetheless, I reckon it’s probably a fair summary for non-experts and certainly doesn’t say anything which is clearly false.

The care with which Mr. Jagger avoids claiming certitude for what is, after all, still a theory, is excellent.  I, for one, am deeply grateful to him for his superb explanation.

 

The fight of the century - and I don't care if there are 88 years to go!

Coming soon, Mann v. Steyn, in a US court near you - well, they're bound to televise it.  But first, take a brief pause and read Steyn's short article in The National Review which is the red meat likely to be fought over by these two big cats in this latest and bestest 'rumble in the jungle'.  For those, mostly Brit, readers unsure as to exactly what the Sandusky scandal was, it involved the coach of Penn State University's American football team who was, over a period of years, regularly sexually molesting young boys.  The Penn State authorities were informed but refused to act partly, one supposes, because 'over there' college football teams attract big sponsorship deals.

As Steyn reminded us, Penn State still faces yet another potential scandal if, but only if, allegations concerning the work of their very own Prof. Michael Mann, the inventor of the fabulous 'hockey stick' graph, are proven.  There is, perhaps, no more famous icon that Mann's 'hockey stick' which has been seized upon world-wide by the HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) as a proof of their theory that we are all about to 'fry 'n' die' because of global warming - heh, chance would be a fine thing!  These allegations arose because the 'hockey stick' has so far proven to be wildly out in its predictions but also because of the hacked e-mails from that other nest of HAFs at East Anglia University in which sundry 'scientists', including Michael Mann, were writing of "Mike's nature trick", "hide the decline" and so forth.  Penn State conducted their own investigation and found Prof. Mann had acted absolutely properly but, alas, their so-called investigation into Sandusky's activities means that anything they pronounce upon is treated with derision.

It was Steyn's particular derision which has provoked Michael Mann into either a very brave act or a monumental folly - he has decided to sue Steyn and The National Revue.  The critical point is that hitherto, Michael Mann has refused to release certain research papers for scrutiny by the scientific community.  But now, Steyn's lawyers will have the legal right to scrutinise every single document ever produced by Mann including those he has so far wished to keep private.

This could make 'Climate-gate' look like a mere squabble.  Can't wait!

 

Would you follow James Hansen's investment advice?

Not too much time this morning - things to do, people to see - so this post is mostly pictures which, as you probably don't have that much time either, is 'A Good Thing' and also saves you from my deathless prose! 

If you had any doubts, you naughty person, concerning the grave warnings issued for the last 30 years by the not-very-Great and definitely-not-even-very-Good faux climate scientists then these diagrams will confirm your worst suspicions concerning their ability to forecast what tomorrow will be let alone anything further into the future.

You can cut to the chase very simply with this diagram.  The key line is the bright green one which shoots up, up and away and represents Prof. James Hansen's forecast of where global temperatures would be if CO2 was not severely curtailed.  Thanks to all those naughty Chinese and Indians, to say nothing of the lying liars in the west, carbon emissions have increased, not fallen.  The next things to look at are the lines with green dots and pink dots.  They are the 'actual' temperatures recorded by two 'distinguished' American scientific bodies.  Oooops, 'shurely shome mishtake', Dr. Hansen!

Now have a quick glance at how well the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change did in the forecasting game.  The green, blue and red lines are their various forecasts of how boiling-hot it would be if we didn't cut emissions and the orange line is their forecast for what would happen if we went back to the stone age and lived 'clean'.  The pink line is reality - or as near reality as we can get on a global basis!

This final diagram is an illustration of the 'Harmonic Model' of forecasting versus reality.  I would like to offer you a brief description of the 'Harmonic Forecasting Model' but, alas, I don't have the time and anyway, I haven't a clue what it means or how it works.  No doubt some of you math swots will be able to explain.  Anyway, one thing is for sure, it looks a hellava lot more accurate than Hansen's and the IPCC's pathetic efforts, and if Dr. Hansen gives you a tip for the Stock Exchange or the 3.30 at Epsom - spend your money on booze, it will be cheaper in the long run!

 Hat Tip to C3 Headlines.

 

Timing, as in sex and drumming, is everything!

Thus it was that some swot called Prof. Richard Muller announced that whilst hitherto he had been a global warming sceptic now - hallelujah - he was converted!  It was getting warmer and it was all our fault, according to this 'Great Man of Science', and that means me and you!  And this is where timing comes into it because coincidentally at almost the same time Anthony Watts and colleagues published their paper on the reliability of temperature readings at weather recording sites in the USA.  I must confess to a liking for Watts because when, years ago, I began looking into the AGW controversy, his was one of the sites I visited.  Not being of a swot-like tendency myself, it seemed to me that Watts was doing proper science by going round himself, or getting volunteers to go round, and physically check exactly where these supposed warm readings were coming from.  It wasn't glamorous or exciting or in need of a $3 zillion computer, it was just old-fashioned looking, measuring and photographing to provide an accurate physical description of  American weather stations.

Of course, his results then were anecdotal but they were enough for me to decide that the whole global warming kerfuffle was based on the dodgiest of dodgy foundations.  He found that site after site had been 'corrupted' over the last few decades by urbanisation.  What had hitherto been fairly rural sites clear of interference were now surrounded by asphalt, concrete, reflecting windows, air-conditioning extractors and so forth.  Of course, that is just America you might say, but if you can't rely on their figures then how much weight are you going to put into the historical record of, say, Russia or China?

Over the weekend, Watts and his colleagues have published their paper which provides a stringent analytical summary of all the data he and his volunteers gathered together over the last few years.  The result will only come as a surprise to the HAFs (Hot Air Fantics)!  They compared the American weather station sites to a recently compiled ideal template, the World Meteorological Organisation-approved Siting Classification System.  The result is summarised by Watts et al:

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data.

So that's it, folks, all that yadda-yadda about global warming and the fact is that it amounts to an increase of around 0.155C per decade!  Unless, of course, you rely on poorly sited recording stations, or, better still if you are a HAF swot, you fiddle the figures as naughty NOAA does (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration).  Those disrespectful rascals at IHTM sum it up thus:

• Compliant Thermometers (ones in the right places) show a + .155 degrees centigrade per decade temperature rise.
• Non-Compliant Thermometers (like ones next to airport runways, air conditioner exhausts, chimneys or the 90% Watt’s claims suffer from urban heat island effect) show a + .248 degrees centigrade per decade temperature rise.
• NOAA final adjusted (otherwise known as cheating) data show a +.309 degree per decade temperature rise.

So where does that leave poor old Professor Muller, the recent convert to HAFism?  Looking like a novice lover and a crap drummer, in my opinion!

 

The Sunday Rumble 22.7.12

Sorry for the short intermission yesterday:  Actually, it wasn't that short from where I was standing because finally, yesterday, the 'sun put his hat on and came out to play'.  Thus, there was no excuse available to stop me from cutting the grass in the Churchyard which had reached Borneo jungle proportions (That's enough exaggeration. Ed!)  The problem when it gets too lush is that the number of trips back and forth with the wheelbarrow increases according to a strict mathematical algorithm which is far too complex for me to explain to you ignoramuses.  On top of that, my slice of the Churchyard is on the boundary so I have an iron boundary fence with supporting bars jutting out to deal with.  This can only be tidied using a strimmer and if it wasn't the Church's property I would suspect that it had been nicked from an industrial museum.  It takes an inordinate amount of tugs to get the damn thing started.  The language, I regret to say, is most un-Churchlike - but don't tell the vicar!  After that, I had to deal with my own 'rolling acres', well, actually about 0.04 of an acre.  All my lovely flowers, of course, had drowned - no, I mean it, they had taken so much rain water they were literally rotting on their stems.  Needless to say, the bloody, sodding weeds were flourishing like never before.  God moves in mysterious ways - and I wish he wouldn't!

When it comes to fat, smug, mouthy bastards . . .

This one takes some beating.  He is Mr. Tom Watson MP and he was on the radio this morning crowing with delight that my mate 'Rupe' had been forced to relinquish his directorships in the London print media.  What 'Porky' Watson doesn't understand is that Murdoch's connection to The Times and, especially, The Sun, is almost entirely sentimental.  You see, 'Rupe' has the drive and determination and the vision to actually start and run businesses, something Watson couldn't manage in a month of Sundays.  Today, given the change in the whole media world, they cost him a fortune so no doubt he was delighted to have an excuse, finally and no doubt regretfully, to wash his hands of them and concentrate on making money.  Perhaps he'll send 'Porky' Watson a 'Thank You' card.  Incidentally, on the deeply unpleasant subject of the deeply unpleasant Mr. Watson, I wonder if he's still claiming the maximum food allowance of £4,800 pa that he was shown to be doing during the expenses scandal; and also if he and his flat-mate Ian Wright MP are still managing to claim £100k for their flat expenses?

JuliaM provides the best Sunday reading:  This being Sunday I had best start with a confession - I find it hard to read Julia's blog.  No, no, I don't mean that she is a poor writer, quite the contrary, her prose is so crisp it crackles, and she laces straighforward stories from the press with a caustic wit that never fails to crack me up.  But the fact is that her blog is a chronicle of pettifogging blunders and stupidities, usually by those set in power above us (especially the Cocklecarrots) that I frequently require a strong black coffee and an aspirin.  Or to put it another way, I never know whether to laugh or cry!   But of course I do read it regularly and this morning she offers a super link which will take you to 'the news behind the news'.  Definitely worth a visit.

Another Corker Award:  I am just so good to you people, tipping you off regularly on who is the latest talent on the block when it comes to 'pulp fiction'.  Alright, I admit it, sometimes I'm a little behind the times . . . yes, I know, sometimes years . . . alright, even decades . . . but I get there in the end.  Today, courtesy of my local Cancer Research/RSPCA/Heart Foundation/Local Hospice shop (heh, who needs bloody expensive libraries?) I came across John Katzenbach.  Actually it was a two books in one cover omnibus which appealed to the tightwad in me.  The stories were In the Heat of the Summer and The Shadow Man.  The copyright for the first goes back to 1982!  How have I missed him for so long?  Judged on these two tales he invents very original plotlines and then goes on to write them in a very clear literary style.  These are definitely not the usual blood 'n' guts tosh I recommend to you so regularly but seriously good stories seriously well told. 

This one should run and run:  I would actually pay big money for a ring-side seat to this forthcoming heavyweight bout.  No, not boxing but the Godfather of the HAFs, Michael Mann (he of 'hockey shtick' fame), versus, the wielder of the deadliest rapier in the world of journalism, Mark Steyn.  Apparantly, Mann has taken strong exception to an article by Steyn in The National Review which draws attention to, shall we say, the less than stringently ethical behaviour of those in charge of Penn State University over recent years.  In particular, as Steyn points out (as did I a few days ago), when it comes to conducting investigations into the behaviour of its college employees, the Sandusky case indicates that the University authorities worship the dollar a lot more than they do Veritas, the Goddess of Truth.  That leaves Steyn, and me, wondering what strength one can rely on in the investigation of Mr. Mann's scientific activities when he 'invented' the 'Hockey Shtick' which has been the subject of non-stop criticism.  Anyway, the writs are flying so watch this space!

 

'Right, sir, move along, nuthin' to see!'

M' Lord Bishop Hill has been kind enough to publish the Q&A session with Norfolk Constabulary who conducted the investigation into the hacking of the e-mails in the computer belonging to the Climate Research Centre at East Anglia University.  It's not very long for the simple reason that the 'Plod' did not get very far with the investigation, and I don't say that as a criticism because unless you have the resources of the Government Communications Centre at Cheltenham (the spies with ears not eyes!) it is almost impossible to follow the trail of some hacker (or hackers) through the myriad mirrors provided by foreign servers.  And anyway, who cares?  Frankly, they did us all a favour by showing up those lying liars as, er, lying liars, or, even worse considering that they are supposed to be top-notch scientific swots, as hopeless, helpless dopes.  There was one key sentence in the report which is worth pondering upon:

We identified a significant quantity of data that was taken in this way, certainly in excess of that which was subsequently published in the two files in 2009 and 2011. (My emphasis)

So perhaps there is more to come!  Oh, yummy-yummy, can't wait.

 

Now this doesn't shock me at all!

The other day I was shocked by an example of old-fashioned sportsmanship but today I can barely suppress a yawn when I pass on to you the utterly predictable news that all those scary IPCC reports forecasting the end of the world were less useful than a pile of manure even if the stench of rotting faeces was more or less the same! 

Joseph L. Bast at The American Thinker has been reading very carefully a report by something called the Inter Academy Council (IAC - no, me, neither) who have subjected past IPCC reports to rigorous analysis.  You'll never guess what they found:

The IAC reported that IPCC lead authors fail to give "due consideration ... to properly documented alternative views" (p. 20), fail to "provide detailed written responses to the most significant review issues identified by the Review Editors" (p. 21), and are not "consider[ing] review comments carefully and document[ing] their responses" (p. 22).  In plain English: the IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed.

The IAC found that "the IPCC has no formal process or criteria for selecting authors" and "the selection criteria seemed arbitrary to many respondents" (p. 18).  Government officials appoint scientists from their countries and "do not always nominate the best scientists from among those who volunteer, either because they do not know who these scientists are or because political considerations are given more weight than scientific qualifications" (p. 18).  In other words: authors are selected from a "club" of scientists and nonscientists who agree with the alarmist perspective favored by politicians.

Or, to put it another, less academic, way - the whole rotten festering thing is a crock!  Mr. Bast warns that the next IPCC report is already being smoothed and ironed by the usual suspects.  It will be full of 'alarums and excursions' to frighten the children and Mr. Bast asks, not unreasonably:

And on this basis we should transform the world's economy to run on breezes and sunbeams?

(Today, in an act of unprecedented generosity I am taking the Memsahib out to visit some ornamental gardens and then to lunch.  Thus, you lot will have to knuckle down and do some work for a change instead of clicking in here every five minutes for a snigger!  By the time I get back this afternoon I might - well there's always a chance - have thought of something intelligent to write!) 

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Nothing like a bit of Latin to give this sorry old site a spurious air of learning.  The phrase is literally translated as "who will guard the guardians themselves?"  Fortunately (or otherwise) the question does not arise in the shifty, dodgy, underhand world of the higher reaches of  'The Academy' because there do not appear to be any guardians at all!  Frankly, the soft-shoe shuffle and slight of hand executed with such dexterity by people entrusted to lead the brightest and best of our youth into ethical and high-minded excellence would make my old mates in the used-car trade look like saints!

We have already witnessed 'over here' the sight and sound of whitewash being slapped all over the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit who were shown up for the non-scientific rascals they are by leaked e-mails.  Then we had to hold our noses whilst we watched, happily from a distance, Penn State University steam cleaning the odiferous turds off their no-doubt white steps deposited there by Prof. Michael Mann, he of the infamous Hockey Stick - or should that be 'schtick'?  He, like Phil Jones et al from the UEA, duly had a bucket of whitewash tipped over his 'saintly' head despite a string of offences against the scientific ethical code.  But, of course, it was Penn State (sounds like an American prison, doesn't it?) themselves who conducted the 'investigation' a couple of years ago, but now we have the result of another, but this time independent, investigation into how this less than prestigious academy looks into the maloderous activities of  its employees.

The Jerry Sandusky case barely made the media 'over here' but he was the head coach of the Penn State (American) football team and has just been convicted of 45 charges of sexual abuse of young boys including rape and sodomy, offences committed over years.  Needless to say, in the weird, weird world of American academe things like football teams attract absolute 'zillions' in sponsorship and so suspicions and complaints about Sandusky's behaviour were whitewashed into oblivion by the very highest in the university's management regime.  The later investigations showed culpability up to and including the President of the University.

As Rand Simberg points out in a particularly bitter article for Open Market. com, it is obvious that pursuit of the dollar was paramount in the thinking of the University's management.  As he reminds us, Prof. Mann moves in very high and rich circles including sundry heads of state, the United Nations and an ex-Vice President of the USA who has made zillions from government-backed 'Greenery'.  In other words, Michael Mann attracts Big Bucks for Penn State U!  Consequently the myriad questions, doubts and outright accusations aimed at him are very unlikely to be answered by the people who employ him.  Unless, of course, the Sandusky affair prompts the new regime to try honesty for a change. ('Elf 'n' Safety Warning: Do not hold your breath waiting!)

In the meantime, would you want your 'kids' to go to Penn State U?  Thought not!

 

Stop worrying, even if you weren't worrying to begin with!

Well, some people worry, and they worry over the strangest things.  For example, the 'fact' that the Fimbul Ice Shelf is melting has given some people the screaming abdabs!  If you doubt me you should listen outside the high walls which surround the Deltoid HAF (Hot Air Fanatic) site where-in the hysteria is reaching fever pitch.  And, no, I've never heard of the Fimbul Ice Shelf, either, until just now but I am fairly confident that even if I had, I still would not have tossed and turned in bed.

And nor should you because the 'fact' that it is melting is yet another fairy story dreamt up by the HAFs to frighten the children - that's you, in case you're wondering.  This particular ice shelf is down in Antarctica and you will not drop dead from shock when I tell you that the 'fact' that it was melting was not established by means of actually looking and measuring but by that good old stand-by, beloved in HAF circles, the computer model.  And you all know the old saying about computers, brown stuff in, diarrhea out!  Happily some Norwegian scientists actually went and looked, although it beats me why, as a Norwegian living in a frozen wasteland, you would choose to investigate Antarctica when you could, say, check out the Malvinas - but I digress.

According to The Register and the American Geophysical Union these 'Norskies' actually used:

12 tons of hot-water drilling equipment, bored three holes more than 200m deep through the Fimbul Shelf, which spans an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey. The location of each hole was cunningly chosen so that the various pathways by which water moves beneath the ice shelf could be observed, and instruments were lowered down.

Not satisfied with that, those clever 'Norskies' then rode piggy-back, so to speak, on some giant seals in order to look from the bottom up, as it were:

The boffins also supplemented their data craftily by harvesting info from a biology project, the Marine Mammal Exploration of the Oceans Pole to Pole (MEOP) effort, which had seen sensor packages attached to elephant seals. [...]

Normally, getting sea temperature readings along the shelf in winter would be dangerous if not impossible due to shifting pack ice - but the seals were perfectly at home among the grinding floes.

Anyway, the result of all these efforts was:

Overall, according to the team, their field data shows "steady state mass balance" on the eastern Antarctic coasts - ie, that no ice is being lost from the massive shelves there. The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Pheeeew, that's a relief!  You see now how valuable this blog is to you all, saving you from worries you never had - that's what I call real service!  (There is no direct charge for this service but the usual - and generous - contributions in the usual plain, brown envelope will be gratefully received.)

 

And, lo, Lovelock repenteth and there was rejoicing

This, you will not be surprised to know, is old news - well, you won't be surprised if you are a regular reader of this blog!  A couple of months ago, the High Priest of Greenery, James Lovelock, he of the Gaia principle, took a long hard look at all the tons of verbiage produced by his fellow Greens and consigned the lot of it to landfill!  Here is part of what he said as quoted by The Toronto Sun:

“so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”

Oh dear!  Only two days ago I reported that the new, sacred mantra of the 'Wee HAFs' was to be - wait for it  - "sustainable development"!  And now one of their High Prophets has come along and smashed it to bits.  But there was worse to come because whilst he still believed that there was anthropological global warming (well who doesn't?), he had come to realise that the results of it were nowhere near as apocalyptic as the 'Wee HAFs' believed.  He says:

[...] it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.

He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error [my emphasis], as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.

As sly, old George Smiley knew, there's nothing like turning an insider as a means of getting at the 'real deal'!  Lovelock spills some more beans:

Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” [My emphasis]

You may be wondering about my new collective title - 'Wee HAFs' - instead of my usual 'HAFs' (Hot Air Fanatics).  This is a nod in the direction of the 'Wee Frees', a somewhat obscure and tiny Presbyterian sect resident, I'm glad to say, in Scotland.  No doubt my e-pal, 'Glasgie' Jimmy, will elucidate further.  It is said of them that when St. Peter shows you round heaven you will see a stockade with very high walls and St. Peter will ask you to tiptoe and whisper as you pass because the 'Wee Frees' are inside and they think they are the only people in heaven!  This link to a religious sect is deliberate because there has always been a reek of religiosity around the Green movement.  Lovelock - and he should know - puts it this way:

It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”

And the other characteristic of all religious movements is their refusal to countenance, or at least, to only begrudgingly acknowledge, the advance of science.  It is an irony of such delicious magnitude that only I, and the dedicated connoisseurs of irony who regularly read this blog, will truly appreciate, that the fanatical belief of the 'Warmers' that their 'science' is settled is totally unscientific!  (Oh God, I'm clenching my little fists and smacking my lips at that one!)  Again, Lovelock, a scientist himself, spells it out:

Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.” 

So, the next time you see a 'Wee HAF' be nice to him or her.  They're no better or worse than those British Buddhist eccentrics to be seen from time to time in our High Streets, chanting and tinkling their little cymbals.

 

An Orwellian parody

Old George must be laughing in his grave!  An expert on 'political-speak', how he would have enjoyed the slitherings and slidings, the nuances and the contradictions, the downright (or downwrong!) gang-banging of words indulged in by the HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics).  First they told us it was 'global cooling', then it was 'global warming', but then, about a dozen years ago when global temperatures failed to rise much, it was 'climate change'.  The only thing that did rise was the mounting chorus of disbelief, the snorts and giggles of derision and the shouts of 'Show us your willy!' This convinced them that as a rapidly diminishing minority they needed a new slogan and thanks to a report by Hot Air quoting The Washington Examiner I can reveal to you what it is:

In the face of this growing amount of new scientific evidence, environmentalists are not backing down, but changing their rhetoric.

One leader at a meeting related to the Rio +20 conference this week, noting that because conservatives reject the notion global warming, “We don’t use the term climate change anymore. It’s sustainable development.”

"Sustainable development"!  There, remember, you read it here first!  So hang on to your wallets!

 

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?!