Hi all,
Its been a mad few months. Work, a bought of swine flu, Christmas, then the birth of my 2nd daughter at the en of January - all has kept me away from the blog. That and frustration and a certain amount of apathy resulting from continued media white washing of increasing evidence of the IPCC's failings and the growing evidence that AGW theory, and its associated social programmes, are indeed little more than a grand fraud designed to socially engineer some sort of wealth-restribution to the 3rd world from most of us, and to generate massive wealth for the CO2 traders.
Anyhow, back to business more or less. If you want to follow the climate debacle, the EUReferendum site is you best bet. Now back to the election for this year.
In case any of you missed it, Lord Tebbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Tebbit) has started a blog on the Daily Telegraph site.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/normantebbit/
He has not said a single thing so far that I disagree with - if only he and not Cameron was in charge of the Tories, they might still be worth voting for. Its worth trawling through some of the blogs from the very beginning. He also takes the time to address comments and questions from his readers in subsequent blogs, which I think is a nice touch. Very readable, very accessable.
As for me, I am still firmly aligned with UKIP for the upcoming election. The spectre of Brown winning does not cause much fear in me - Cameron and his shower of centrist green morons will be more of the same in every way that matters - they may cut the debt quicker, but they will continue to lead the UK in a downward spiral socially, internationally, economically and politically. A real conservative government (ie Thatcherite) might present some hope, but Cameron's bunch of muppets do not.
No, if Brown gets in again, his government will fall within a year. By then, the Tories might have ditched Davey boy and put a real conservative in the top spot. UKIP might pick up a seat or two either way, which is fine by me. The best case scenario of course remains a hung parliament with enough UKIP seats present to form a coalition with the Tories based around an EU referendum, but this is pure fantasy on my part.
With regards the Telegraph blogs, I can also recommend
James Delingpole for sarcasm, extreme "rightness", rapid AGW denial, and general humour.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/
Daniel Hannan for an intelligent type of Euroscepticism as well as some pretty balanced general insights. Every day I expect to read about his defection to UKIP - it will happen if Dave proves soft on Europe.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/danielhannan/
Gerald Warner for excellent writing and thorough disillusionment with the party calling itself Tory but acting anything but.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/geraldwarner/
Thats it for now. Again, when you vote in 2 or 3 months time, seriously consider where you are putting your mark. I strongly urge you to vote your conscience, not tactically or tribally. A vote for any given party is not wasted if you actually back them - you are voting for what you believe in. If you do not agree with what Cameron is doing, do not vote for him simply to oust Brown. If you do not agree with the Lib Dems excessive tax schemes and rampant naivite, do not vote for them as a protest. Seriously, excersize your right to vote and do so with some knowledge of whats really at stake, not just "get Brown out" or "keep Brown in".
Tuesday 16 February 2010
Saturday 19 December 2009
Copenhagen - the winners and losers
Been rough as a badgers arse this last week with Swine Flu. Semi-functional now and back "on form". I apologize for not posting the almost daily farcical stories originating from the world of AGW theory/farce and the farcical proceedings in Copenhagen. If you want to catch up, look at EuReferendum or Watts Up With That for the latest.
So, what it boils down to is that there were 4 interests in Copenhagen, only 1 of which has been satisfied.
First up you have the deep Greens who are mortified that the expected deal on the developed world voluntarily returning to the 15th century has not materialized. My heart bleeds for them.
Second, you have the rogue nations of the world taking every oppurtunity to lambast the West/North (depends on the specific rhetoric) and Capitalism for all their ills. Yawn. Get another tune to play already.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/17/2774069.htm?section=world
Of course, these reprehensible swine were supported by the guilt ridden left wing middle class leadership of much of the developed world, now including the US. The tendency to masochism and self destruction is endemic and mind boggling in Western society. But even the latter did not manage (in most cases - the UK being a sad exception) to provide quite as big a slush fund for siphoning off to Swiss accounts as the developing nations were demanding.
Thirdly, the skeptics, who while winning some ground, were also left unsatisfied since a lot of their supositions were proved true by the 4th interest. Incidently, this shameful occurence http://sppiblog.org/news/is-the-european-police-state-going-global serves very well in highlighting the massive hipocracy in this country -a few isolated and minor incidents during the G20 protests in London last summer by our police are held up for investigation and comdemnation, while the far more rigorous and violent response to demonstrations in Philadelphia (G20 a few months later) and Copenhagen get ignored. The UK police are wimps.
The real winners of course were big business. What draft deal was signed was enough to make a lot of people billions, with just enough greenie content to satisfy the moderates and just enough socialist nonsense to satisfy the not-too-greedy few of the developing sphere. Pachauri (railway engineer bossman of the IPCC) himself is a big winner of course since one the the myriad of companies he is intimately involved in looks like it is going to benefit from the slush fund by building coal-powered power stations in India.
Which should finally go to show that so much hype about AGW has been pushed through by agendas other than honest science, and even those agendas seem to have been somewhat let down. The screams of angst from the deep greens as they realise how deeply shafted they have been is somewhat musical to my ears.
So, what it boils down to is that there were 4 interests in Copenhagen, only 1 of which has been satisfied.
First up you have the deep Greens who are mortified that the expected deal on the developed world voluntarily returning to the 15th century has not materialized. My heart bleeds for them.
Second, you have the rogue nations of the world taking every oppurtunity to lambast the West/North (depends on the specific rhetoric) and Capitalism for all their ills. Yawn. Get another tune to play already.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/17/2774069.htm?section=world
Of course, these reprehensible swine were supported by the guilt ridden left wing middle class leadership of much of the developed world, now including the US. The tendency to masochism and self destruction is endemic and mind boggling in Western society. But even the latter did not manage (in most cases - the UK being a sad exception) to provide quite as big a slush fund for siphoning off to Swiss accounts as the developing nations were demanding.
Thirdly, the skeptics, who while winning some ground, were also left unsatisfied since a lot of their supositions were proved true by the 4th interest. Incidently, this shameful occurence http://sppiblog.org/news/is-the-european-police-state-going-global serves very well in highlighting the massive hipocracy in this country -a few isolated and minor incidents during the G20 protests in London last summer by our police are held up for investigation and comdemnation, while the far more rigorous and violent response to demonstrations in Philadelphia (G20 a few months later) and Copenhagen get ignored. The UK police are wimps.
The real winners of course were big business. What draft deal was signed was enough to make a lot of people billions, with just enough greenie content to satisfy the moderates and just enough socialist nonsense to satisfy the not-too-greedy few of the developing sphere. Pachauri (railway engineer bossman of the IPCC) himself is a big winner of course since one the the myriad of companies he is intimately involved in looks like it is going to benefit from the slush fund by building coal-powered power stations in India.
Which should finally go to show that so much hype about AGW has been pushed through by agendas other than honest science, and even those agendas seem to have been somewhat let down. The screams of angst from the deep greens as they realise how deeply shafted they have been is somewhat musical to my ears.
Saturday 12 December 2009
Going back to my skeptical roots
Way back when, before I had even heard about the CRU or read anything at all about the science and methodology used to arive at the so called consensus, I had issues with doing anything at all to reduce our emissions when any changes would be irrelevant when compared to the output of CO2 and, more importantly, other pollutants being produced in the developing world, especially China. My visit in 2007 to Hong Kong and Taiwan confirmed this, as did my father in law's visit to Beijing in early 2008.
Now, following all the hoopla and nonsense over the last few weeks and months, I am much more informed (I think anyway) and cynical and skeptical on a whole new level. However, my initial concerns remain valid, and this article from the Wall Street Journal articulates my concerns quite well. Enjoy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574588673072577680.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Now, following all the hoopla and nonsense over the last few weeks and months, I am much more informed (I think anyway) and cynical and skeptical on a whole new level. However, my initial concerns remain valid, and this article from the Wall Street Journal articulates my concerns quite well. Enjoy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574588673072577680.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Friday 11 December 2009
A Lord's Eloquence
Lord Turnbull hits the nail on the head...
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/91208-0010.htm#091208120000023
Speech in the House of Lords 8th December 2009
Lord Turnbull: My Lords, on first reading the Committee on Climate Change's latest progress report, I found it an impressive document. It was broad in scope and very detailed. But the more I dug into it the more troubled I became. Below the surface there are serious questions about the foundations on which it has been constructed. There are questions in four areas-the framework created by the Climate Change Act 2008, the policy responses at EU and UK level, the estimate of costs and finally the scientific basis on which the whole scheme of things rests. I will consider each in turn.
Unlike many of those involved in the climate change field, I have no pecuniary interest to declare, but I am a founder trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which seeks to bring rationality, objectivity and, above all, tolerance to the debate.
I have long been in the camp of what might be called the semi-sceptics. I have taken the science on trust, while becoming increasingly critical of the policy responses being made to achieve a given CO2 or global warming constraint. First, let us look at the Climate Change Act, which has been highly praised, even today, as the most comprehensive and ambitious framework anywhere in the world-a real pioneering first for the UK. However, it has serious flaws. It starts by imposing a completely unworkable duty on the Secretary of State to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, even though many of the actions required lie outside his control. It would have been better, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and I argued, for the duty to be connected to what the Secretary of State can control, such as his own actions and policies, and not the outcome, which he cannot.
In the Act's passage through Parliament, the target was raised from 60 per cent to 80 per cent, with little discussion of its costs or feasibility. It is a simple arithmetic calculation to show that if the UK economy continues to grow at its historic trend rate, we will need, only 40 years from now, to produce each £1,000 of GDP with only 8 per cent of the carbon we use today. That is a cut of 90 per cent. Many observers think that this is implausible. A recent report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers reported that the rate of improvement in carbon intensity/productivity would need to quadruple from the 1.3 per cent achieved in the five years up to the recession to around 5.5 per cent. It would need to be even higher at the end of the period to make up for what the noble Lord, Lord May, calls falling behind the run rate.
Professor Dieter Helm has pointed out that the measurement system used in the Kyoto framework and in the UK's carbon accounts is a misleading guide to what is really being achieved. The carbon accounts use the territorial method-that is, the emissions from UK territory. In this way, the UK is able to claim that CO2 emissions have been reduced, but that is a misleading way of measuring a nation's carbon footprint and its impact on the world. It should include the carbon in its imports. If this was done it would show that we are going backwards, since we would be forced to take responsibility for the manufacturing that we have outsourced to such countries as China but are still consuming. The current method is, of course, politically very convenient as it allows us to label China as the world's largest emitter. The embedded carbon calculation is, I accept, far more complicated, but it is far more honest.
Another flaw in the framework is that the targets are unconditional. It is a legal duty, irrespective of what other countries achieve. Some, including me, argue that there should be two targets: one of which is a commitment, and a higher one which we will argue for internationally but only undertake as part of an agreement. Ironically, this is precisely the approach that the EU is taking with its 20 per cent reduction target by 2020, which would be raised to 30 per cent as part of an international agreement. The danger is that by going it alone we could face a double whammy, paying for decarbonising our own economy, yet still having to pay for the costs of raising our sea defences if others do not follow suit.
Secondly, let us consider the specific policies that have been adopted. Current EU policy follows two inconsistent paths. On the one hand, the ETS seeks to establish a common price for CO2, against which various competing technologies can be measured. The market share of each is determined by the relative costs. This is attractive to economists, since it allows the cost per tonne of CO2 abated to be equalised at the margin, thereby ensuring that the cost of achieving any CO2 target is minimised. The problem is that, despite its theoretical attractions, the ETS is failing. It provides no clear signal on the price of carbon on which investors can base their decisions. The committee, in this report, estimates that the ETS CO2 price in 2020 will be around €22 per tonne. The committee has rightly identified the central contradiction in its own report: the carbon price will be too low and too uncertain to stimulate the low-carbon investments needed to validate the committee's projections.
At the same time, the EU is following a different approach under its 20:20:20 plan-to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 by 2020, with 20 per cent of energy coming from renewables. In this way, it predetermines a market share for a technology-renewables-rather than letting the merit order decide. The danger is that in pressing to achieve this target, which implies that over 30 per cent of electricity generation will come from renewables, some renewables capacity will be created which will be more expensive than other responses.
There is also a lack of clarity about the true cost of wind power, once we factor in the cost of retaining a large amount of underutilised conventional capacity, and the extension of the grid. The noble Lord, Lord Reay, has said more than enough on that so I do not need to follow that line of argument.
There is illogicality in the treatment of nuclear energy in the climate change levy. It is ridiculous that nuclear power, as a low-carbon source, is still in the taxable box. For 50 years, a major experiment has been conducted just 20 miles off our coast. France has generated three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power. The French believe that it has been a huge success, delivering electricity which is secure, cheap and stable in price. France's carbon intensity is 0.3 of a tonne per $1,000 of GDP, compared to 0.42 in the UK, 0.51 in Germany-so much for it being a market leader-and 0.63 in the US. However, the French option has barely been considered in this country.
As part of the EU plan, 10 per cent of road fuel is mandated to come from biofuels, but by the time this was enacted the credibility of first-generation biofuels had collapsed. Finally, our policy framework lacks balance. It is almost exclusively focused on mitigation through CO2 reduction, The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has argued for what it calls a MAG approach, with effort being committed not just to mitigation but to adaptation and geo-engineering.
Thirdly, there is the issue of cost. All we had to go on at the time when the target was set more ambitiously was the estimate by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, of 1 per cent of GDP. Many people were sceptical at the time and probably even more are now, including, it seems, the noble Lord, Lord Stern, himself. It was reported in the press last week that he now thinks that it might be 2 per cent, but could rise to 5 per cent. I hope he will clarify this when he speaks to us shortly.
In the document that we have before us, the committee says that it previously estimated that costs in 2020 would be about 1 per cent of GDP. That is consistent with its view that it might get to 2 per cent by 2050. In the new report it simply reaffirms the 1 per cent figure in just one paragraph in 250 pages. That is it. I have to say to the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, that I do not think that that is adequate. It is difficult to relate these figures to what we are observing on the ground about the difficulties and costs of bringing on stream different technologies such as offshore wind and CCS.
One of the problems bedevilling the debate is the lack of transparency over the huge cross-subsidies that are being created by the renewables obligation and the regime for feed-in tariffs. There is no assurance that their extent is commensurate with the benefits in CO2 abated. My electricity costs me 11p per kilowatt hour. If I erected a wind turbine, I could sell the power I produced to the grid for a whopping 23p. I think I would go out and buy a gizmo which linked my inward meter to my outward meter. That excess cost is averaged over the bills of consumers as a whole, but how much is it in total, or for individual consumers? Here I differ from the noble Lord, Lord May. The whole issue of cost must be given far more attention. The Government cannot ask people to make radical changes to their lifestyle without being more open about the costs that they are being asked to bear.
I accept that "do nothing" is not the right option. Some measures, such as energy efficiency, heat recovery from waste and biomass, and stopping deforestation are probably justified on their own merits. More nuclear power which, in turn, would open the way for electrification of our transport fleet would enhance security of supply. Other measures may be justified as pure insurance, given the uncertainty that we face. But what is badly needed is a consistent metric that allows us to judge whether any given objective is being achieved at minimum cost. The recent book by Professor MacKay, the newly appointed scientific adviser at DECC, provides an excellent starting point. I also very much welcome the intervention by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, debunking the waste hierarchy and the act of faith that that embodies.
There is the issue of the science, which I had previously taken as given; but many people's faith is being tested. We are often told that the science is settled. I suppose that is what the Inquisition said to Galileo. If so, why are we spending millions of pounds on research? The science is far from settled. There are major controversies not just about the contribution of CO2, on which most of the debate is focused, but about the influence of other factors such as water vapour, or clouds-the most powerful greenhouse gas-ocean currents and the sun, together with feedback effects which can be negative as well as positive.
Worse still, there are even controversies about the basic data on temperature. The series going back one, 10 or 100,000 years are, in the genuine sense of the word, synthetic. They are not direct observations but are melded together from proxies such as ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings.
Given the extent to which the outcome is affected by the statistical techniques and the weightings applied by individual researchers, it is essential that the work is done as transparently as possible, with the greatest scope for challenge. That is why the disclosure of documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit is so disturbing. Instead of an open debate, a picture is emerging of selective use of data, efforts to silence critics, and particularly a refusal to share data and methodologies.
It is essential that these allegations are independently and rigorously investigated. Naturally, I welcome the appointment of my old colleague, Sir Muir Russell, to lead this investigation; a civil servant with a physics degree is a rare beast indeed. He needs to establish what the documents really mean and recommend changes in governance and transparency which will restore confidence in the integrity of the data. This is not just an academic feud in the English department from a Malcolm Bradbury novel. The CRU is a major contributor to the IPCC process. The Government should not see this as a purely university matter. They are the funders of much of this research and their climate change policies are based on it.
We need to purge the debate of the unpleasant religiosity that surrounds it, of scientists acting like NGO activists, of propaganda based on fear, for example, the quite disgraceful government advertisement which tried to frighten young children-the final image being the family dog being drowned-and of claims about having “10 days to save the world”. Crude insults from the Prime Minister do not help.
The noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, and their eminent colleagues on the CCC have a choice. They can take the policy framework as given, the policy responses as given, the costs as given, and the science as given, and then proceed to churn out more and more sophisticated projections, or-as I hope-they can apply the formidable intellectual firepower they command and start to find answers to many of the unsolved questions
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/91208-0010.htm#091208120000023
Speech in the House of Lords 8th December 2009
Lord Turnbull: My Lords, on first reading the Committee on Climate Change's latest progress report, I found it an impressive document. It was broad in scope and very detailed. But the more I dug into it the more troubled I became. Below the surface there are serious questions about the foundations on which it has been constructed. There are questions in four areas-the framework created by the Climate Change Act 2008, the policy responses at EU and UK level, the estimate of costs and finally the scientific basis on which the whole scheme of things rests. I will consider each in turn.
Unlike many of those involved in the climate change field, I have no pecuniary interest to declare, but I am a founder trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which seeks to bring rationality, objectivity and, above all, tolerance to the debate.
I have long been in the camp of what might be called the semi-sceptics. I have taken the science on trust, while becoming increasingly critical of the policy responses being made to achieve a given CO2 or global warming constraint. First, let us look at the Climate Change Act, which has been highly praised, even today, as the most comprehensive and ambitious framework anywhere in the world-a real pioneering first for the UK. However, it has serious flaws. It starts by imposing a completely unworkable duty on the Secretary of State to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, even though many of the actions required lie outside his control. It would have been better, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and I argued, for the duty to be connected to what the Secretary of State can control, such as his own actions and policies, and not the outcome, which he cannot.
In the Act's passage through Parliament, the target was raised from 60 per cent to 80 per cent, with little discussion of its costs or feasibility. It is a simple arithmetic calculation to show that if the UK economy continues to grow at its historic trend rate, we will need, only 40 years from now, to produce each £1,000 of GDP with only 8 per cent of the carbon we use today. That is a cut of 90 per cent. Many observers think that this is implausible. A recent report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers reported that the rate of improvement in carbon intensity/productivity would need to quadruple from the 1.3 per cent achieved in the five years up to the recession to around 5.5 per cent. It would need to be even higher at the end of the period to make up for what the noble Lord, Lord May, calls falling behind the run rate.
Professor Dieter Helm has pointed out that the measurement system used in the Kyoto framework and in the UK's carbon accounts is a misleading guide to what is really being achieved. The carbon accounts use the territorial method-that is, the emissions from UK territory. In this way, the UK is able to claim that CO2 emissions have been reduced, but that is a misleading way of measuring a nation's carbon footprint and its impact on the world. It should include the carbon in its imports. If this was done it would show that we are going backwards, since we would be forced to take responsibility for the manufacturing that we have outsourced to such countries as China but are still consuming. The current method is, of course, politically very convenient as it allows us to label China as the world's largest emitter. The embedded carbon calculation is, I accept, far more complicated, but it is far more honest.
Another flaw in the framework is that the targets are unconditional. It is a legal duty, irrespective of what other countries achieve. Some, including me, argue that there should be two targets: one of which is a commitment, and a higher one which we will argue for internationally but only undertake as part of an agreement. Ironically, this is precisely the approach that the EU is taking with its 20 per cent reduction target by 2020, which would be raised to 30 per cent as part of an international agreement. The danger is that by going it alone we could face a double whammy, paying for decarbonising our own economy, yet still having to pay for the costs of raising our sea defences if others do not follow suit.
Secondly, let us consider the specific policies that have been adopted. Current EU policy follows two inconsistent paths. On the one hand, the ETS seeks to establish a common price for CO2, against which various competing technologies can be measured. The market share of each is determined by the relative costs. This is attractive to economists, since it allows the cost per tonne of CO2 abated to be equalised at the margin, thereby ensuring that the cost of achieving any CO2 target is minimised. The problem is that, despite its theoretical attractions, the ETS is failing. It provides no clear signal on the price of carbon on which investors can base their decisions. The committee, in this report, estimates that the ETS CO2 price in 2020 will be around €22 per tonne. The committee has rightly identified the central contradiction in its own report: the carbon price will be too low and too uncertain to stimulate the low-carbon investments needed to validate the committee's projections.
At the same time, the EU is following a different approach under its 20:20:20 plan-to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 by 2020, with 20 per cent of energy coming from renewables. In this way, it predetermines a market share for a technology-renewables-rather than letting the merit order decide. The danger is that in pressing to achieve this target, which implies that over 30 per cent of electricity generation will come from renewables, some renewables capacity will be created which will be more expensive than other responses.
There is also a lack of clarity about the true cost of wind power, once we factor in the cost of retaining a large amount of underutilised conventional capacity, and the extension of the grid. The noble Lord, Lord Reay, has said more than enough on that so I do not need to follow that line of argument.
There is illogicality in the treatment of nuclear energy in the climate change levy. It is ridiculous that nuclear power, as a low-carbon source, is still in the taxable box. For 50 years, a major experiment has been conducted just 20 miles off our coast. France has generated three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power. The French believe that it has been a huge success, delivering electricity which is secure, cheap and stable in price. France's carbon intensity is 0.3 of a tonne per $1,000 of GDP, compared to 0.42 in the UK, 0.51 in Germany-so much for it being a market leader-and 0.63 in the US. However, the French option has barely been considered in this country.
As part of the EU plan, 10 per cent of road fuel is mandated to come from biofuels, but by the time this was enacted the credibility of first-generation biofuels had collapsed. Finally, our policy framework lacks balance. It is almost exclusively focused on mitigation through CO2 reduction, The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has argued for what it calls a MAG approach, with effort being committed not just to mitigation but to adaptation and geo-engineering.
Thirdly, there is the issue of cost. All we had to go on at the time when the target was set more ambitiously was the estimate by the noble Lord, Lord Stern, of 1 per cent of GDP. Many people were sceptical at the time and probably even more are now, including, it seems, the noble Lord, Lord Stern, himself. It was reported in the press last week that he now thinks that it might be 2 per cent, but could rise to 5 per cent. I hope he will clarify this when he speaks to us shortly.
In the document that we have before us, the committee says that it previously estimated that costs in 2020 would be about 1 per cent of GDP. That is consistent with its view that it might get to 2 per cent by 2050. In the new report it simply reaffirms the 1 per cent figure in just one paragraph in 250 pages. That is it. I have to say to the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, that I do not think that that is adequate. It is difficult to relate these figures to what we are observing on the ground about the difficulties and costs of bringing on stream different technologies such as offshore wind and CCS.
One of the problems bedevilling the debate is the lack of transparency over the huge cross-subsidies that are being created by the renewables obligation and the regime for feed-in tariffs. There is no assurance that their extent is commensurate with the benefits in CO2 abated. My electricity costs me 11p per kilowatt hour. If I erected a wind turbine, I could sell the power I produced to the grid for a whopping 23p. I think I would go out and buy a gizmo which linked my inward meter to my outward meter. That excess cost is averaged over the bills of consumers as a whole, but how much is it in total, or for individual consumers? Here I differ from the noble Lord, Lord May. The whole issue of cost must be given far more attention. The Government cannot ask people to make radical changes to their lifestyle without being more open about the costs that they are being asked to bear.
I accept that "do nothing" is not the right option. Some measures, such as energy efficiency, heat recovery from waste and biomass, and stopping deforestation are probably justified on their own merits. More nuclear power which, in turn, would open the way for electrification of our transport fleet would enhance security of supply. Other measures may be justified as pure insurance, given the uncertainty that we face. But what is badly needed is a consistent metric that allows us to judge whether any given objective is being achieved at minimum cost. The recent book by Professor MacKay, the newly appointed scientific adviser at DECC, provides an excellent starting point. I also very much welcome the intervention by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, debunking the waste hierarchy and the act of faith that that embodies.
There is the issue of the science, which I had previously taken as given; but many people's faith is being tested. We are often told that the science is settled. I suppose that is what the Inquisition said to Galileo. If so, why are we spending millions of pounds on research? The science is far from settled. There are major controversies not just about the contribution of CO2, on which most of the debate is focused, but about the influence of other factors such as water vapour, or clouds-the most powerful greenhouse gas-ocean currents and the sun, together with feedback effects which can be negative as well as positive.
Worse still, there are even controversies about the basic data on temperature. The series going back one, 10 or 100,000 years are, in the genuine sense of the word, synthetic. They are not direct observations but are melded together from proxies such as ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings.
Given the extent to which the outcome is affected by the statistical techniques and the weightings applied by individual researchers, it is essential that the work is done as transparently as possible, with the greatest scope for challenge. That is why the disclosure of documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit is so disturbing. Instead of an open debate, a picture is emerging of selective use of data, efforts to silence critics, and particularly a refusal to share data and methodologies.
It is essential that these allegations are independently and rigorously investigated. Naturally, I welcome the appointment of my old colleague, Sir Muir Russell, to lead this investigation; a civil servant with a physics degree is a rare beast indeed. He needs to establish what the documents really mean and recommend changes in governance and transparency which will restore confidence in the integrity of the data. This is not just an academic feud in the English department from a Malcolm Bradbury novel. The CRU is a major contributor to the IPCC process. The Government should not see this as a purely university matter. They are the funders of much of this research and their climate change policies are based on it.
We need to purge the debate of the unpleasant religiosity that surrounds it, of scientists acting like NGO activists, of propaganda based on fear, for example, the quite disgraceful government advertisement which tried to frighten young children-the final image being the family dog being drowned-and of claims about having “10 days to save the world”. Crude insults from the Prime Minister do not help.
The noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, and their eminent colleagues on the CCC have a choice. They can take the policy framework as given, the policy responses as given, the costs as given, and the science as given, and then proceed to churn out more and more sophisticated projections, or-as I hope-they can apply the formidable intellectual firepower they command and start to find answers to many of the unsolved questions
Wednesday 9 December 2009
Today's tidbits
Not going to launch into a long one today - couple of interesting bits though...
First up, seems as if there is trouble in Copenhagen - for those seeking a deal anyway. Looks as though the developed world is perhaps not quite as suicidal as we thought and is seeking more from the developing world than the latter is prepared to offer up. Good times for those of us praying for a total collapse of this international tax/wealth redistribution seminar.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text
And here is what they are all so upset about
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-change
There are rumours floating about that the developed countries were not alone, and that the developing world also have a secret agenda, probably symbolised by China pushing for much bigger pledges of reduction in the US. All in all chaos and dissent is good for us who do not relish the massive upheaval all of this nonsense is going to cause.
I also came across this
http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/
Take a look at the people who signed it. A much much more credible document than the discredited Oregon Petition. Hopefully it will gather more momentum. Definite proof that the skeptics are not all right wing head jobs like myself.
First up, seems as if there is trouble in Copenhagen - for those seeking a deal anyway. Looks as though the developed world is perhaps not quite as suicidal as we thought and is seeking more from the developing world than the latter is prepared to offer up. Good times for those of us praying for a total collapse of this international tax/wealth redistribution seminar.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text
And here is what they are all so upset about
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-change
There are rumours floating about that the developed countries were not alone, and that the developing world also have a secret agenda, probably symbolised by China pushing for much bigger pledges of reduction in the US. All in all chaos and dissent is good for us who do not relish the massive upheaval all of this nonsense is going to cause.
I also came across this
http://www.copenhagenclimatechallenge.org/
Take a look at the people who signed it. A much much more credible document than the discredited Oregon Petition. Hopefully it will gather more momentum. Definite proof that the skeptics are not all right wing head jobs like myself.
Tuesday 8 December 2009
Mind Blowing in its implications
There is a lot in the papers, mainly warmist scaremongering and backside covering. There is also a lot of distraction going on by the vested interests regarding the CRU emails. Last week it was all a "Russian plot". This week the illegality of the apparent 'hacking' is being used as a diversion - if the emails and code were 'stolen' we don't really have to try and explain everything that they show do we? Disingenuous but effective since the main stream media is lapping it up and singing from the same hymn sheet - and even going further in some cases, reporting that the Met office this morning said that the "noughties" have been the warmist decade on record - misleading since that is only based on UK readings and could easily be taken for a global trend (which it is not).
But far and above the daily grind of annoyance and bovine excrement coming our way, there is something very dark and dubious happening over the pond.
The Sainted One Barack Obama (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) has had a plan for a while now - and its coming to fruition. Not only has his healthcare programme stalled in the Senate (which is actually a pity - I do think that the US needs to reform is public health service), but the senate has also been stalling his initiatives on controlling CO2 emission. You see, that is the beauty of the American governance system - its a balance between the Executive (The Sainted One, may he live forever and save us all from ourselves), the legislature, and an independent judiciary in the form of the Supreme Court. No single body/person has massive power over the others - in theory anyways, and certainly as intended by the founding fathers. Of course, over the years, especially since Lincoln, the executive has slowly gathered more and more power and now is, at the very least, first amongst equals.
But Congress and the Senate (the legislature part of the tripod) can still block the crazier initiatives of any given president - unless there is extenuating circumstances. Or a back door. The Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) has created this back door.
When a number of federal agencies were created, certain perogatives and powers were devolved to them. In the case of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one of these powers was to rule what exactly constitutes pollution, and a mandate to impose federal controls over pollutants without direct legislative approval. With presidential encouragement, the EPA has just declared CO2 a pollutant following a 2 year old Supreme Court decision that CO2 production falls under the existing legal umbrella of the Clean Air Act. BOOM! The Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) has neatly sidestepped the legislative inhibition to his personal green initiatives and handed the notoriously warmist EPA the ability to enact just about any insane controls over CO2 production that it wants to.
A 30% blanket reduction over the next five years? Done. Fines and legal action against industry? Done. Enforced controls on automobiles? Done. Cap and trade? Done. Individual fines? Done. Mandatory house and lifestyle alteration? Done. In a single move, the EPA has grabbed for itself more power to directly influence day to day lives than ANY law enforcement or other federal agency. That the Supreme Court made the decision to allow this to happen before The Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) ascended to his office is even more frightening. Thats 2 out of 3 parts of the tripod contributing to the largest single centralization of power in the United States since FDR and the New Deal back in the 1930s.
What does this mean for the rest of us? Bad things basically. With Obama now able to promise all sorts of green goodies in Copenhagen, it might allow China and India to be brow-beaten into submission and some sort of disaterous global agreement that will see wealth redistribution and social engineering and realignment on a massive scale. A socialist's utopian dream. An internationalist's wet dream. The last real hope for some level of sanity in the world to remain was American refusal to bow to external pressure - redneck intransigence and libertarian stubborness was the only thing that had the potential to stop the madness.
Of course, America being America, there will be huge numbers of legal challenges on this ruling. At its basis, since CO2 is actually essential for life it cannot really be considered a pollutant as such, and since the amount of CO2 that mankind actually puts into the atmosphere is infinitessimally small and would be inconsequential even if global warming was man made hopefully sanity and the system of checks and balances in US governance will be restored. But the damage might have already been done by then.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/07/the-epa-co2-regulation-dec-7th-2009-a-day-we-will-not-soon-forget/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1260139 ... TWhatsNews
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199879.php (a blog that has a subscriber WSJ article cut and pasted)
In semi-related news, while reading the Evening Standard last night on the commute home, I noticed this article.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23780531-uk-to-drop-out-of-top-10-economies-2015.do
Great news isn't it? Less than 6 years and we will have a smaller economy than Canada for goodness sake. From number 4 in 2005 to out of the top ten in less than a decade. This is the true legacy of Labour - a badly managed economy resulting in massive debt, poor resilience and poor competitiveness. High taxes, banker bonus caps, even more debt, slavery to the EU and its non-anglosaxon 'continental' system (I love Sarkozy at times, but he can also be an arse) - everything seems designed to make the UK far less than it was. There will a brain drain to more affluent countries, exacerbating the problem. The decline has been pretty solid since the end of WW1 with regards Britains place and power in the world - but WOW has it spead up since Labour took over in the 90s. They should all be impeached and shot for what they have done to this country economically, not to mention the consequences from their social engineering, apologism, immigration, and education programmes. Bastards.
Not that the blue/greens under Davey boy will be any better - the only hope is to cut ourselves loose from international inhibitions (the EU, whatever hairbrained bollocks they dream up in Copenhagen regarding CO2) and set about systematically fixing this shattered shell of a once admirable nation. Yes, that means vote UKIP. Its a slender, possibly imaginary hope, but its the only one that we have.
More links about the economy rankings
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/sean-ogrady-uk-economy-to-drop-out-of-worlds-top-10-1835493.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233670/CEBR-Report-Britain-set-slump-outside-worlds-10-leading-economies-2015--India-Russia-Canada.html
Enjoy.
But far and above the daily grind of annoyance and bovine excrement coming our way, there is something very dark and dubious happening over the pond.
The Sainted One Barack Obama (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) has had a plan for a while now - and its coming to fruition. Not only has his healthcare programme stalled in the Senate (which is actually a pity - I do think that the US needs to reform is public health service), but the senate has also been stalling his initiatives on controlling CO2 emission. You see, that is the beauty of the American governance system - its a balance between the Executive (The Sainted One, may he live forever and save us all from ourselves), the legislature, and an independent judiciary in the form of the Supreme Court. No single body/person has massive power over the others - in theory anyways, and certainly as intended by the founding fathers. Of course, over the years, especially since Lincoln, the executive has slowly gathered more and more power and now is, at the very least, first amongst equals.
But Congress and the Senate (the legislature part of the tripod) can still block the crazier initiatives of any given president - unless there is extenuating circumstances. Or a back door. The Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) has created this back door.
When a number of federal agencies were created, certain perogatives and powers were devolved to them. In the case of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one of these powers was to rule what exactly constitutes pollution, and a mandate to impose federal controls over pollutants without direct legislative approval. With presidential encouragement, the EPA has just declared CO2 a pollutant following a 2 year old Supreme Court decision that CO2 production falls under the existing legal umbrella of the Clean Air Act. BOOM! The Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) has neatly sidestepped the legislative inhibition to his personal green initiatives and handed the notoriously warmist EPA the ability to enact just about any insane controls over CO2 production that it wants to.
A 30% blanket reduction over the next five years? Done. Fines and legal action against industry? Done. Enforced controls on automobiles? Done. Cap and trade? Done. Individual fines? Done. Mandatory house and lifestyle alteration? Done. In a single move, the EPA has grabbed for itself more power to directly influence day to day lives than ANY law enforcement or other federal agency. That the Supreme Court made the decision to allow this to happen before The Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) ascended to his office is even more frightening. Thats 2 out of 3 parts of the tripod contributing to the largest single centralization of power in the United States since FDR and the New Deal back in the 1930s.
What does this mean for the rest of us? Bad things basically. With Obama now able to promise all sorts of green goodies in Copenhagen, it might allow China and India to be brow-beaten into submission and some sort of disaterous global agreement that will see wealth redistribution and social engineering and realignment on a massive scale. A socialist's utopian dream. An internationalist's wet dream. The last real hope for some level of sanity in the world to remain was American refusal to bow to external pressure - redneck intransigence and libertarian stubborness was the only thing that had the potential to stop the madness.
Of course, America being America, there will be huge numbers of legal challenges on this ruling. At its basis, since CO2 is actually essential for life it cannot really be considered a pollutant as such, and since the amount of CO2 that mankind actually puts into the atmosphere is infinitessimally small and would be inconsequential even if global warming was man made hopefully sanity and the system of checks and balances in US governance will be restored. But the damage might have already been done by then.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/07/the-epa-co2-regulation-dec-7th-2009-a-day-we-will-not-soon-forget/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1260139 ... TWhatsNews
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199879.php (a blog that has a subscriber WSJ article cut and pasted)
In semi-related news, while reading the Evening Standard last night on the commute home, I noticed this article.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23780531-uk-to-drop-out-of-top-10-economies-2015.do
Great news isn't it? Less than 6 years and we will have a smaller economy than Canada for goodness sake. From number 4 in 2005 to out of the top ten in less than a decade. This is the true legacy of Labour - a badly managed economy resulting in massive debt, poor resilience and poor competitiveness. High taxes, banker bonus caps, even more debt, slavery to the EU and its non-anglosaxon 'continental' system (I love Sarkozy at times, but he can also be an arse) - everything seems designed to make the UK far less than it was. There will a brain drain to more affluent countries, exacerbating the problem. The decline has been pretty solid since the end of WW1 with regards Britains place and power in the world - but WOW has it spead up since Labour took over in the 90s. They should all be impeached and shot for what they have done to this country economically, not to mention the consequences from their social engineering, apologism, immigration, and education programmes. Bastards.
Not that the blue/greens under Davey boy will be any better - the only hope is to cut ourselves loose from international inhibitions (the EU, whatever hairbrained bollocks they dream up in Copenhagen regarding CO2) and set about systematically fixing this shattered shell of a once admirable nation. Yes, that means vote UKIP. Its a slender, possibly imaginary hope, but its the only one that we have.
More links about the economy rankings
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/sean-ogrady-uk-economy-to-drop-out-of-worlds-top-10-1835493.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1233670/CEBR-Report-Britain-set-slump-outside-worlds-10-leading-economies-2015--India-Russia-Canada.html
Enjoy.
Monday 7 December 2009
A Climategate Catch Up
Hi all,
Climategate has not quietened down this last week - if anything more and more is being revealed as IT specialists plumb the depths of the code, hidden in which are apparent discrepancies that make the emails seem 'not that bad at all'. Its all a bit beyond me, thanks to my being semi-computer literate at best, but overall the case for evidence of malfeasance at the CRU grows - hopefully the inquests launched by various bodies, including the University of East Anglia, are not brow beaten into a whitewash. I won't hold my breathe in hope of this of course.
And of course, today is the day that 100 world leaders and thousands of delegates start prattling on in Copenhagen about how to re-engineer our countries and economies, ostensibly to limit CO2, but in reality as some sort of wishy-washy do-gooder initiative to redistribute the wealth from the decadent developed world to the poor, exploited and victimized developing one. If you doubt this, just have a gander at the home page at http://green-agenda.com/index.html - its a list of quotes from people influential in the AGW/Environmentalist community as well as some people who have had influence on all of us through positions at the UN. Scary reading.
Hopefully nothing that Obama the Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) agrees to will be ratified in the congress or senate in DC – the only hope for Western Civilization at all is that the Americans remain intransigent rednecks stubbornly resisting the namby-pamby exhortations of Eurotrash guilt ridden at the thought of their colonial past and current relative prosperity. And yes, in this definition I include the angst consumed British intelligentsia and left, who are largely middle class or privileged and feel very bad about being so.
On to some links. As usual, my first port of call on a daily basis to feed my EU and AGW fires is the most excellent www.eureferendum.blogspot.com – the blogger (the scary perceptive Richard North) has a great handle on things, and benefits from having established himself as a creditable hub of information. All of these links were originally posted there in posts going back the last few days – since a lot of what is out there on a daily basis is repetition or clarification of the Climategate scandal, its worth waiting a few days between rants to gather more ammo.
Lets start with two great clips on Youtube. The first is an excellent summary of what is going on by Rex Murphy of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Canada seems to be in the front rank of response to Climategate as well as taking a position unique for a generally liberal nation in not bending over and grasping ankles for Copenhagen. Those Alberta tar fields and the billions of barrels of oil sitting there might have something to do with that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIEQqLokL8&feature=player_embedded
This next clip is from the awesome Vaclav Klaus, he of resistance to the Lisbon Treaty fame and probably the political leader I respect most in the world right now. Pity Cameron sold him down the river over the Lisbon Treaty. Klaus also has his head screwed on about AGW as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGm-z-kB_s&feature=player_embedded
Here is an interesting link regarding the financial security of investing in “green” technologies now that Climategate has happened. Personally I don’t think its 100% on target – the vested interests and big business onside with the fraud will still make money on it – Big Tobacco strung people along with false science for years, the AGW camp will do the same. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/the-buy-side/dont-let-climategate-melt-down-your-portfolio/article1389653/
If you are after some real scientific and in depth analysis of what exactly was meant in the infamous “hide the decline” email, here it is. A bit above my head, but I get the gist I think. I understood enough to recognize that the blithe denials of the warmists asked to comment on it are misleading to say the least. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html
Aaaaa Christopher Booker. A legend. Sunday the 29th of November’s article was awesome and caused some controversy over apparent Google collusion in suppressing it, this week’s is good as well (and apparently not hidden by Google). A bit more specific, it targets Michael Mann’s tree ring analysis, which is tied in with the general Climategate furor – its interesting but not as ‘get-the-blood-pumping-in-fury’ stimulating as the one before. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6738111/Climategate-reveals-the-most-influential-tree-in-the-world.html.
Eureferendum’s Richard North and Booker are old colleagues (they have written several books together) and EUref has some good expansion on the article. http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/most-influential-tree-in-world.html
I love this next link. Its always the warcry of the warmists that skeptics are financed by big business, especially that nasty boogie man Exxonmobil, even when the financial numbers of this backing are ludicrously small compared to the amount of funds being poured into the AGW camp by various governments and NGOs. Case in point, the possibly criminal Phil Jones (send him down for subverting FoI requests!) is certainly not doing badly by toeing the line and building up the climate catastrophe. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6735846/Climategate-professor-Phil-Jones-awarded-13-million-in-research-grants.html
In response to Climategate, several warmist commentators have pointed to real evidence of global warming being more than enough to eclipse the misdeeds of some politicized scientists. They often point to glaciers melting and disappearing. Yeah. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8387737.stm
Of course, if the science is settled and, as is asserted, the other 2 major data sources/dumps for the AGW models in the US are not compromised by the CRU debacle (arguable since the field is incestuous in the extreme and much of the world-wide data has been influenced or sourced at the CRU), then there would be no need to look at the data again right? The science is solid and settled right? Right? Then why is the UK met office, a co-conspirator to the AGW fraud, publically saying that it is going to do this? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece
Hopefully that will catch you up to whats going on, more or less. I expect lots more over the next two weeks as the Copenhagen farce continues, with daily scare stories in the papers and tear-streaked politicians waxing lyrical about how this is our last chance…
Climategate has not quietened down this last week - if anything more and more is being revealed as IT specialists plumb the depths of the code, hidden in which are apparent discrepancies that make the emails seem 'not that bad at all'. Its all a bit beyond me, thanks to my being semi-computer literate at best, but overall the case for evidence of malfeasance at the CRU grows - hopefully the inquests launched by various bodies, including the University of East Anglia, are not brow beaten into a whitewash. I won't hold my breathe in hope of this of course.
And of course, today is the day that 100 world leaders and thousands of delegates start prattling on in Copenhagen about how to re-engineer our countries and economies, ostensibly to limit CO2, but in reality as some sort of wishy-washy do-gooder initiative to redistribute the wealth from the decadent developed world to the poor, exploited and victimized developing one. If you doubt this, just have a gander at the home page at http://green-agenda.com/index.html - its a list of quotes from people influential in the AGW/Environmentalist community as well as some people who have had influence on all of us through positions at the UN. Scary reading.
Hopefully nothing that Obama the Sainted One (may he live forever and save us all from ourselves) agrees to will be ratified in the congress or senate in DC – the only hope for Western Civilization at all is that the Americans remain intransigent rednecks stubbornly resisting the namby-pamby exhortations of Eurotrash guilt ridden at the thought of their colonial past and current relative prosperity. And yes, in this definition I include the angst consumed British intelligentsia and left, who are largely middle class or privileged and feel very bad about being so.
On to some links. As usual, my first port of call on a daily basis to feed my EU and AGW fires is the most excellent www.eureferendum.blogspot.com – the blogger (the scary perceptive Richard North) has a great handle on things, and benefits from having established himself as a creditable hub of information. All of these links were originally posted there in posts going back the last few days – since a lot of what is out there on a daily basis is repetition or clarification of the Climategate scandal, its worth waiting a few days between rants to gather more ammo.
Lets start with two great clips on Youtube. The first is an excellent summary of what is going on by Rex Murphy of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Canada seems to be in the front rank of response to Climategate as well as taking a position unique for a generally liberal nation in not bending over and grasping ankles for Copenhagen. Those Alberta tar fields and the billions of barrels of oil sitting there might have something to do with that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIEQqLokL8&feature=player_embedded
This next clip is from the awesome Vaclav Klaus, he of resistance to the Lisbon Treaty fame and probably the political leader I respect most in the world right now. Pity Cameron sold him down the river over the Lisbon Treaty. Klaus also has his head screwed on about AGW as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGm-z-kB_s&feature=player_embedded
Here is an interesting link regarding the financial security of investing in “green” technologies now that Climategate has happened. Personally I don’t think its 100% on target – the vested interests and big business onside with the fraud will still make money on it – Big Tobacco strung people along with false science for years, the AGW camp will do the same. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/the-buy-side/dont-let-climategate-melt-down-your-portfolio/article1389653/
If you are after some real scientific and in depth analysis of what exactly was meant in the infamous “hide the decline” email, here it is. A bit above my head, but I get the gist I think. I understood enough to recognize that the blithe denials of the warmists asked to comment on it are misleading to say the least. http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html
Aaaaa Christopher Booker. A legend. Sunday the 29th of November’s article was awesome and caused some controversy over apparent Google collusion in suppressing it, this week’s is good as well (and apparently not hidden by Google). A bit more specific, it targets Michael Mann’s tree ring analysis, which is tied in with the general Climategate furor – its interesting but not as ‘get-the-blood-pumping-in-fury’ stimulating as the one before. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6738111/Climategate-reveals-the-most-influential-tree-in-the-world.html.
Eureferendum’s Richard North and Booker are old colleagues (they have written several books together) and EUref has some good expansion on the article. http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/most-influential-tree-in-world.html
I love this next link. Its always the warcry of the warmists that skeptics are financed by big business, especially that nasty boogie man Exxonmobil, even when the financial numbers of this backing are ludicrously small compared to the amount of funds being poured into the AGW camp by various governments and NGOs. Case in point, the possibly criminal Phil Jones (send him down for subverting FoI requests!) is certainly not doing badly by toeing the line and building up the climate catastrophe. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6735846/Climategate-professor-Phil-Jones-awarded-13-million-in-research-grants.html
In response to Climategate, several warmist commentators have pointed to real evidence of global warming being more than enough to eclipse the misdeeds of some politicized scientists. They often point to glaciers melting and disappearing. Yeah. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8387737.stm
Of course, if the science is settled and, as is asserted, the other 2 major data sources/dumps for the AGW models in the US are not compromised by the CRU debacle (arguable since the field is incestuous in the extreme and much of the world-wide data has been influenced or sourced at the CRU), then there would be no need to look at the data again right? The science is solid and settled right? Right? Then why is the UK met office, a co-conspirator to the AGW fraud, publically saying that it is going to do this? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6945445.ece
Hopefully that will catch you up to whats going on, more or less. I expect lots more over the next two weeks as the Copenhagen farce continues, with daily scare stories in the papers and tear-streaked politicians waxing lyrical about how this is our last chance…
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