Saturday, November 27, 2010

ClimateGate leader Phil Jones is 'in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC' and governments

Nov. 28, 2009, Telegraph UK: "The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents (emails) is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics.
  • Their importance cannot be overestimated.
What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC

  • and governments rely –

not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless

  • trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
  • Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the Steve McIntyre , an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself....

  • But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide?...

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which

  • much of the future of the US and world economy may hang.

In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation , rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society –

  • itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause –

is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age."

by Christopher Booker, "Climate Change: This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation" Telegraph, 11/28/09




Monday, November 22, 2010

'Racial profiling: be sure to get my good side'

11/21/10 "It seems as if every day and night on cable TV and every Sunday morning on traditional TV, the political, legal, social, historical, financial and moral debate flares over “racial profiling.”
  • But lost in these debates among wise men and wise women is the practicality of the matter as it relates to the baddest of the bad guys — those we’d most like to keep the hell out, those most worth stopping once they’re here.

What do you think the reaction is to these satellite-delivered American TV racial profiling debates as heard by Islamic terrorists, operating anywhere from Tehran to Toronto? They must laugh their heads off, wonder if we’re all nuts.

  • Surely, they ask: “How, at this point in history, can there be any such debate among our sworn enemies? How much more mayhem can we inflict on them before they realize that we’ve declared war?”
Same with murderous, drug-running and people-running operations in Mexico and Central America. Their primary wholesale delivery depots are in the US. Every time these baddest of bad guys tune in to one of these racial profiling debates they have to be left in stitches:
  • “They’re debating whether, just over the U.S. border, the police should be allowed to ask for identification based on a Hispanic’s — or anyone else’s — suspicious behavior. How funny is that! Why not just send the Welcome Wagon to pick us up at the border!”

The practicality of the debate is lost in a stew of Constitutional applications that reflect “feelings” — whether it’s “fair” to racially profile, whether it’s “nice.”

  • No, it’s not nice, but it’s fair. Consider: No one’s rooting harder for the anti-profilers than the baddest of the alien bad guys!

Funny, those who oppose racial profiling as a violation of inalienable rights, ignore the most open and virulent form of racial profiling as legally practiced within our judicial system.

If a minority crime suspect is arrested and charged, his/her defense team often accuse the cops and the DA’s office with a race-based arrest and prosecution — racial profiling — which may or may not be true.

Yet, in choosing juries, defense teams carefully, conspicuously and without apology select jurors based on race and gender profiling.

  • So it’s considered intolerable that a person be questioned, suspected or arrested if there’s even fractional evidence that he or she was stopped due to a racial profile.
But there’s no problem when the determination of a defendant’s alleged crime becomes, to some small or large degree, a matter of racially profiling the jury that will sit in judgment of the accused.

So race should play no role in the deterrence or the investigation of crime, yet it should play a role in the adjudication of those accused of crimes.

  • Why is that tolerated?

Meanwhile, it’s Sunday. That’s Comedy Day/Night for the baddest of bad guys operating from Yemen to the Yucatan, targeting the wide-open US to do their worst.

  • Sunday’s the day when satellite TV carries those serious debates among American wise people as to whether it’s right for police to stop a person based on fitting the profile of law breakers, because it might hurt their feelings.

“Oh man, that’s rich! Stop, you’re killing me!” Yeah, maybe we can get them to laugh themselves to death."

from NY Post by Phil Mushnick, 11/21/10, "Racial profiling-be sure to get my good side"






Saturday, November 13, 2010

10 year old boy caned for possible non-Islamic food in "moderate" Islamic country of Malaysia

11/10/10, Ten year old boy caned in Malaysia for bringing non-Islamic food to school for his lunch. This is one of the supposedly 'good' 'moderate' Islamic countries.


via Weasel Zippers

Friday, November 12, 2010

Growth slows across Europe in 3rd quarter, Spain abandons dozens of jobs projects. Soros has to be thrilled

11/12/10, BBC, "Growth slows in Europe's leading economies"

"The pace of economic recovery has slowed in Europe's major economies, according to official estimates.

Germany, Europe's largest economy, has seen a sharp slowdown in the third quarter,

  • with growth of 0.7% compared with the record expansion of 2.3% it reported in the previous three months.

In France, GDP grew by 0.4% between July and September, compared with growth of 0.7% in the previous quarter.

  • The 16 eurozone members grew 0.4% on average, down from 1% growth before.

Italy also saw its rate of recovery decline, to 0.2% from 0.5% in the second quarter."...

March 27, 2009, Bloomberg: "Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide.

For every new position that depends on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear, according to a study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid."...

  • (There is no such thing as a 'green job,' as most know. ed.)

11/11/10, "The government has

  • suspended dozens of road and rail projects and cut civil servants' wages as

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Communists in India burn Obama in effigy



"Activists from the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI-ML) shout slogans as they burn an effigy depicting U.S. President Barack Obama during a protest in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad November 8, 2010" Reuters photo

via Weasel Zippers