Mann throws Jones under the bus

Shouldn't laugh I suppose. From Watts Up With That? It has started – the infighting begins in the court of public opinion. Climategate: Phil Jones accused of making error of judgment by colleague Here’s an excerpt: One of the scientists to whom the emails were addressed, Professor Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University has moved to distance himself from some of the comments in the emails that suggest scientists did not want the IPCC, the UN body charged with monitoring climate change, to consider studies that challenged the view global warming was genuine and man-made. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, Prof Mann said: “I can’t put myself in the mind of the person who wrote that email and sent it. I in no way endorse what was in that email.” Prof Mann also said he could not “justify” a request from Prof Jones that he should delete some of his own emails to prevent them from being seen by outsiders. “I can’t justify the action, I can only speculate that he was feeling so under attack that he made some poor decisions frankly and I think that’s clear.” Prof Mann then argued however that there was “absolutely no evidence” that he too had manipulated data, while he also said “I don’t believe that any of my colleagues have done that”. Complete story here at the Telegraph: Climategate: Phil Jones accused of making error of judgment by colleague h/t to Kate at SDA

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Socialist Unity and Fictitious Israeli Quotes

Precisely ten minutes after Newman’s last post to that thread, a new post appeared on the Socialist Unity blog entitled, ISRAELI CONFESSIONS. No comments are allowed to this post which contains one item, a video that had been placed on YouTube: It immediately comes to my attention that the quote shown at 1:42 minutes into the video, one allegedly by David Ben-Gurion, is not only false, it is the exact opposite of what Ben-Gurion did say. The video states that Ben-Gurion said “We should remove all Arabs and take their place.” Full post at Harry's Place Would appear that the hard Left is as vilely antisemitic as the hard Right.

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Climatologist Judith Curry: "We need climate glasnost"

AT THE NATIONAL JOURNAL, Neil Munro interviews climatologist Judith Curry about ClimateGate and the IPCC. Excerpt: “We need climate glasnost: openness, transparency, and freedom of information. Scientists who engage in advocacy activities generate lack of confidence in their science, both from within the scientific community and from the public. The public should expect accountability from our major institutions, particularly the IPCC. . . . We need to hear from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academies what they think of this. These are the two institutions that should be the watchdog on all this. This is a black eye on our whole field. We have to defend our field, and show the broader scientific field — the biologists, physicists and chemists — that this is real science, not political science. What a lot of them are thinking… [is that] this is a politically tainted field.” The Instapundit Latest update - the number of search results returned by Google on "Climategate" now stands at 28,300,000.

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Bloody hell, #Climategate results on Google now 28,300,000!

Okay, admittedly this does indicate a slowing of growth in the number of results returned. "Global warming" returns only 11,100,000. However, a search for "climate change" does return 28,400,000 results. So, in still not quite a fortnight, Climategate has almost equalled the total results from years of climate change hysteria. The tipping point has tipped.

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The Copenhagen Post: "Denmark Rife With CO2 Fraud"

From The Clamour of the Times Via James Delingpole First, there were those infamous hacked e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. Now, a mere seven days before the Copenhagen Conference on climate change, this breaking news story takes the breath away. The whole ‘global warming’ shambles is falling apart. Today, The Copenhagen Post declares: “Denmark Rife With CO2 Fraud”: “Denmark is the centre of a comprehensive tax scam involving CO2 quotas, in which the cheats exploit a so-called ‘VAT carrousel’, reports Ekstra Bladet newspaper. Police and authorities in several European countries are investigating scams worth billions of kroner, which all originate in the Danish quota register. The CO2 quotas are traded in other EU countries.” And the fraud may be of massive proportions: “Ekstra Bladet reporters have found examples of people using false addresses and companies that are in liquidation, which haven’t been removed from the register. One of the cases, which stems from the Danish register, involves fraud of more than 8 billion kroner. This case, in which nine people have been arrested, is being investigated in England.” What can one say? We all knew from the start that carbon trading could prove, by its very nature, a crooks’ charter. But such an allegation relating to Denmark, of all places, at the precise moment of the Copenhagen Conference, where such cap-and-trade measures will be at the forefront of debate, must have the Little Mermaid crying so much that sea-levels may indeed rise. Simply staggering! How long can this ‘global warming’ nonsense be tolerated? As Marcellus declares, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

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Jon Stewart: Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented!

He can't quite bring himself to fully face the consequences of Climategate, but this is still devastating to the alarmists nonetheless.

His mockery of some of the excuses being offered for the behaviour revealed by the leaked emails is cutting.

Via Greenie Watch

And the internet phenomenon continues. Around 10:30 last night the numbers of results recorded by Google for a search on "climategate" was 18,500,000.

A few moments ago it was 21,700,000. For a term that has only been around for less than two weeks.

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All men watch porn, scientists find

RESEARCH: All men watch porn, scientists find. Researchers were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with regular users. But their project stumbled at the first hurdle when they failed to find a single man who had not been seen it. “We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn’t find any.” Although hampered in its original aim, the study did examined the habits of those young men who used pornography – which would appear to be all of them. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. UPDATE: Related (well, sort of): Educated Women Are More Easily Sexually Aroused. http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/89370/

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#Climategate hits on Google go from 16,500,000 to 18,500,000 in less than 2 hours

Posted here http://maniraptor.posterous.com/ and here http://straightshooters.blogspot.com/ When Andrew Bolt reported the latest hit count at around 9pm Perth time, it stood at 16,500,000. When I clicked on the link in his post that took you to the Google search result at around 10:20pm, it had already increased to 18,500,000. Was the figure on Andrew's blog a typo, a mistake? I suppose it could be, but if not, then there is a phenomenon happening right now. Actually, even if it was a typo, there's something big happening right now. The term Climategate is less than two weeks old. I think increasingly people have just had enough of being nagged endlessly about climate change. As well, I suspect that they are put off by the whiff of old-fashioned religious puritanism and fanaticism that has come to characterise the modern environmental movement. I note that the latest issue of New Scientist has an article going on about the carbon footprint of coffee. I mean really, where does this wowsering preaching end? In an associated post from Andrew: Brilliant young astrophysicist Professor Nir Shaviv says he’s not surprised at all by Climategate, whether it’s the revelation that data was destroyed to prevent checking, or evidence that sceptics were blocked from publication: (F)rom what I’ve read in blogsphere, the e-mails did not reveal anything I didn’t think was happening anyway (though it may help the general public get a glimpse of that).... An editor of one of the more prominent journals wrote a colleague of mine that ”any paper which doesn’t support the anthropogenic GHG theory is politically motivated, and therefore has to be rejected”. There are many more examples. As I said, these e-mails do not surprise me. They just provide a window to whatever I had thought was happening anyway. Shaviv was also nastily attacked and smeared by RealClimate, exposed in the Climategate emails as an arm of the Climategate conspiracy. But he has known for some time that this warmist bubble would burst: The hysteria surrounding the concept of ‘global warming’ will fade over the years… People will see that the apocalyptic forecasts are not coming true. Today there is no fingerprint attesting that carbon dioxide emission causes a rise in temperature. His own explanation for the warming that stopped in 2001: the effect on cosmic rays on cloud formation.

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#Climategate - a summary

Christopher Monckton writes the first book(let) on Climategate, the greatest scientific scandal in our lifetime. The summary: The whistleblower’s data file revealed, for the first time, the innermost workings of the tiny international clique of climate scientists, centered on the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia, that has been the prime mover in telling the world that it is warming at an unprecedented rate, and that humankind is responsible… He had revealed what many had long suspected: # A tiny clique of politicized scientists, paid by unscientific politicians with whom they were financially and politically linked, were responsible for gathering and reporting data on temperatures from the palaeoclimate to today’s climate. The “Team”, as they called themselves, were bending and distorting scientific data to fit a nakedly political story-line profitable to themselves and congenial to the governments that, these days, pay the bills for 99% of all scientific research. # The Climate Research Unit at East Anglia had profited to the tune of at least $20 million in “research” grants from the Team’s activities. # The Team had tampered with the complex, bureaucratic processes of the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, so as to exclude inconvenient scientific results from its four Assessment Reports, and to influence the panel’s conclusions for political rather than scientific reasons. # The Team had conspired in an attempt to redefine what is and is not peer-reviewed science for the sake of excluding results that did not fit what they and the politicians with whom they were closely linked wanted the UN’s climate panel to report. # They had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors. # They had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures in the paleoclimate. # They had expressed dismay at the fact that, contrary to all of their predictions, global temperatures had not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years, and had been falling for nine years. They had admitted that their inability to explain it was “a travesty”. This internal doubt was in contrast to their public statements that the present decade is the warmest ever, and that “global warming” science is settled. # They had interfered with the process of peer-review itself by leaning on journals to get their friends rather than independent scientists to review their papers. # They had successfully leaned on friendly journal editors to reject papers reporting results inconsistent with their political viewpoint. # They had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase and corrupt science for political purposes. # They had mounted a venomous public campaign of disinformation and denigration of their scientific opponents via a website that they had expensively created. # Contrary to all the rules of open, verifiable science, the Team had committed the criminal offense of conspiracy to conceal and then to destroy computer codes and data that had been legitimately requested by an external researcher who had very good reason to doubt that their “research” was either honest or competent. Andrew Bolt

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Today's cute kitten video

Via the Instapundit http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/

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#Climategate goes front page in Britain

It’s the scandal they couldn’t ignore any long - or certainly not in Britain. This will only become bigger news here, too, once the almost incredible consequences are finally understood.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/climategate_the_news_goes_mainstream/

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Business as usual on our ABC

UPDATE 4
Beverley O’Connor fills in for Jon Faine on Melbourne ABC’s morning show, and it’s politics as usual.
One of her very first interviews is with a NSW gay and lesbian campaigner on how terrible it is that Abbott is against gay-marriage, and is Christian as well. Only in her last question, perhaps prompted by listeners’ texts, does O’Connor remind the campaigner that Kevin Rudd is also a Christian and also against gay marriage. This seems to startle the activist, who up to that point made Abbott seem in a troglodyte class of his own..

Tony Abbott then comes on the line and is greeted with O’Connor playing an entire Labor hit-ad at him before asking him to comment. When did the ABC start an interview with Rudd by playing a Liberal ad? O’Connor asks him if he’s been promoted above his competence.

O’Connor laughs along with a caller who rings up for an extended spray against the “sneak” Abbott that embraces everything from being a “failed priest” and having shifty eyes.

Later she has on veteran Howard-hater Mungo McCallum (who, for instance, has sneered that Howard was an “unflushable turd"). They agree that Abbott was a “thug” and a “hitman”. O’Connor notes that Paul Keating at least had “dignity” - a quality that will have escaped many. By this stage conservative listeners have had enough: the first on air tells the pair to give Abbott a fair go. He is cut off. The second informs McCallum his facts are wrong. No more calls are taken.

McCallum then goes on to praise Rudd for doing great things. His only criticism is that Rudd could have done more, and we must wait for his second term. O’Connor agrees Rudd is believing criticised by some of not giving us all he’d promised. More please!

O’Connor then has on two “spin doctors” who are meant to represent both sides of the political divide. Yet all agree on the need to “do something” on “climate change”. O’Connor suggests those against the emissions trading scheme tend to be those who simply don’t “want to engage”. All agree as well that Turnbull is “divisive”. Turnbull wasn’t?

Again, the first caller to this segment complains about lack of balance, pointing out the program had, with the McCallum interview, sounded like a broadcast from “Trades Hall”. The third caller agrees with the first that Rudd seems insincere. The fifth doubts the global warming science and is cut off.

Does the ABC truly think this kind of political coverage - just one example of thousands we could produce over a year - is fair and balanced? Even its listeners now are complain.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_game_suddenly_changes/

There's more at that link.

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You are allowed to comment on the report you are not allowed to see

From Andrew Bolt:

Here, now, is the latest example of how the Climategate conspiracy suppressed evidence that their data was flawed and faked - which in this case meant temperature rises were exaggerated by not allowing properly for the fact that concreted cities are naturally warmer. Mathametician Douglas Keenan:

Some of the emails leaked in Climategate discuss my work. Following is a comment on that, and on something more important.

In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The emails show that Tom Wigley — one of the most oft-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate — thought my paper was valid. They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to convince the journal editor not to publish my paper.

After my paper was published, the State University of New York — where the research discussed in my paper was conducted — carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed — contrary to the university’s policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report’s release.

But I was not allowed to see the report. Truly Kafkaesque.
The report apparently concluded that there was no fraud. The leaked files contain the defense used against my allegation, a defense obviously and strongly contradicted by the documentary record. It is no surprise then that the university still refuses to release the report. (More details on all of this — including source documents — are on my site.)

My paper demonstrates that by 2001, Jones knew there were severe problems with the urbanization research. Yet Jones continued to rely on that research in his work, including in his work for the latest report of the IPCC.

If you think the IPCC processes are too strict to be corrupted by such disgraceful practices, let Madhav Khandekar show how a mere typo had the IPCC predicting a melting away of glaciers in 30 years, rather than 350:

Predictably, the IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri reacted angrily [to Indian research denying warming was melting Himalayan glaciers] citing the IPCC 2007 climate change reports which asserted that the (Himalayan) glaciers are receding faster than in any other part of the world and if the present rate ( of melting) continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps even sooner is very high if the earth keeps warming at the current rate. ...

First, where did this number 2035 (the year when glaciers could vanish) come from?
According to Prof Graham Cogley (Trent University, Ontario), a short article on the future of glaciers by a Russian scientist (Kotlyakov, V.M., 1996...). estimates 2350 as the year for disappearance of glaciers, but the IPCC authors misread 2350 as 2035 in the Official IPCC documents, WGII 2007 p. 493!

The scale of this scandal grows greater and more bizarre by the day.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/climategate_two_investigated_as_new_coverup_exposed/

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8 'extinct' species found alive and kicking

There is no "extinction crisis" as this article falsely claims.

Which isn't to say that there aren't any plants and animals that are in real trouble and in need of help.

But the oft repeated claim about a modern mass extinction is actually based upon no real world evidence, ie careful surveys looking for actual plants and animals, but rather a mathematical model.

It is on this basis that the transnational money-making racket called Greenpeace says that 20,000 species go extinct every year.

Now, they've been saying that for around 20 years now, so that means something like 400,000 species have supposedly disappeared. However, you'd be hard pressed to put together a list of 20 confirmed extinctions for this time period.

But anyway, it is always good news to see that something thought to be gone forever is still with us.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34152254/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Dreary, depressing and unwatchable Aussie films all John Howard's fault

It's a shame. Nowra actually says something that needed to be said, but then goes into stupid arts wanker mode. The reality is I feel that most of these people hate Australia. I think it is that simple.

If they were reacting to the Howard years, then why react so negatively to a period of sustained economic growth were just about everybody became better off?

Why would any sane person, other than a mollycoddled artist living off of the generosity of that very same government, possibly think that this was a bad thing?

What was so bad about people getting on with their lives and enjoying themselves and providing for their families?

From Andrew Bolt:

Playwright Louis Nowra checks 20 Australian films to see if they could really be as bad as people say:

Nowra writes that Australian films suffer a “monotonous bleakness” and are “so dispiriting that they make Leonard Cohen seem positively cheery” ...

”The consensus was that Australian films were boring, grim and unsatisfying. After watching over 20 films, I had to agree.”...

So far, so much sense. But then Nowra tries to explain this near-uniform grimness - this death of beauty - and either indulges in parody ... or lapses into astonishing stupidty:

Nowra asked himself why films including Last Ride, Lucky Country, Balibo, Beautiful Kate, Van Diemen’s Land and The Combination “suffer from a surfeit of glumness"…

He believes this year’s films are a legacy of the John Howard era. They were developed and financed in the last years of his government and all “express a sense of national impotence”.

“Howard never gave you the sense of enthusiasm and idealism and these films are the last cultural residue of the era… The film and literary people and intellectuals of Australia didn’t know how to deal with Howard so they came out with this bleakness, as if there was nothing they could do any more...”

If Nowra’s theory has any weight, next year’s Australian films will be all-dancing, all-singing festivals of joy unconfined. Can’t wait.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/howard_made_them_lousy_artists/

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Watching the next financial trainwreck coming

JoNova warns:

Sub-prime carbon is coming
Behind the scenes, large financial houses are moving in stealthily. In 2008, carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion and is projected to grow to become a $2-$10 trillion dollar market, or “The largest commodity traded world wide”. The largest. That’s bigger than oil, coal, gas, or iron.

All those trillions invested in hot air. Here’s a smash you can see coming from miles off.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hand_it_to_hustling_gore/

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Himalayan glaciers gone by 2350, not 2035

Apparently there was a typo!

From the Instapundit:

A CLIMATEGATE UPDATE. “Phil Jones tried to hush my paper. SUNY Albany won’t discuss the investigation my paper initiated. And QUB ignored my three FOI requests for their data.”

Plus, A Josh Steiner Moment?
And remember kids: Proofread! Climategate: Imminent Demise of Glaciers Due to … a Typo! “The IPCC has been claiming Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035. The research paper they used concluded 2350.”

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/89308/

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The UN: too much Star Trek; not enough Star Wars

Go to RWDB - JF Beck for the full post: In the original Star Trek Captain Kirk was clearly in charge, running the Enterpise as any captain would a naval vessel. He occupied the central position on the bridge, surrounded by a small number of subordinates, soliciting advice only from Mr Spock, the rest doing strictly as they were told -- Bones would sometimes break away from the medicinal brandy to put in an appearance but he was invariably wrong about everything. Their mission: "to boldly go where no man has gone before." In Star Trek: The Next Generation the Enterprise was run much more democratically. Captain Picard was in charge but the bridge was literally packed with juniors whose advice he actively solicited, always ignoring militaristic idiot Worf (a black Bush with a battering-ram foehead), however. There was even a Ship's Counselor to provide guidance. In this setting Picard functioned more as a wise father figure than an autocratic commander. Very touchy feely stuff for sure but not a realistic means for effectively responding to the many crises confronted -- we're under attack; time for a quick meeting; counselor Troy please accompany me to my quarters so we can discuss this, er, intimately. Their mission: "to boldly go where no one has gone before." Had the show continued to evolve along these lines Star Trek: Totally Ineffective might have resulted, the captain now replaced by a participatory-decision-making-facilitator tasked with achieving crew consensus prior to any action being taken. The Enterprise would be a mini-United Nations and just like the real thing the Enterprise would never make it out of dock, the crew failing to agree on anything. Their mission: "to boldly go nowhere."

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What will the Abbott Opposition look like?

Hat tip to http://twitter.com/G_Parker (deputy online editor at The West Australian) "By 1 vote in the party room Tony Abbott has defeated Malcolm Turnbull to lead the Liberal Party. So what can we expect from his time as opposition leader?" asks Andrew Carr, a PhD student in Canberra on his blog Chasing the Norm. He concludes: It will be easy to over-estimate the radicalness of Abbott as leader, but he will end up earning brownie points from the public for being more moderate than they were lead to believe. I doubt he can win, but he will be a tough leader to beat. Despite his years in the ministry, I have a feeling Australia doesn’t really know Abbott, or will at least give him a honest second look. So expect some volatility and change compared to this weeks polls. (When done here, you should follow that link to check Possum’s excellent breakdown of the post-split polls) Abbott is a very committed, hard working and decent bloke. He spends a lot of his time helping charity/volunteer groups, he keeps himself fit and healthy, and he is passionate about public life and improving the country. Rudd in comparison could come off badly as a nerdy spin machine. That shouldn’t happen given the governments domination, but if Abbott can survive to face a second election he will be a real threat. I’m certainly look forward to this election. For all my political disagreements with Abbott, I rather like the guy. He’ll infuriate, he’ll make the Liberal Party a much more conservative beast, but he will be offering a clear and strongly believed alternative. I certainly think Abbott is one of the most capable, honest and straight politicians in Australia today, irrespective of whether or not you agree with him of a particular issue. And he's been punished by parts of the media for that honesty and lack of spin. Quite frankly, that guy from the Asbestos Diseases Society was performing a stunt for political purposes. As was his right to do and good luck to him. Abbott's sin was to treat him like a normal, ordinary person and not as some pathetic victim. Already you can see parts of the media openly declaring war on him, for instance the Fairfax Media. Do we have the political maturity to handle a politician that says plainly what he is thinking, in contradistinction to the endless and verbose spin doctoring of Kevin Rudd? And I'm not saying people should agree with Abbott, but can we get away from this childish habit of creating a cliched cartoon-cutout version of what somebody says and instead thoughtfully consider it? Just a suggestion.

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#Climategate hits on Google now over 13,000,000 - silence from the ABC (& SBS)

Finally, the Climategate scientists produce a real hockeystick. Meanwhile, Google hits on ”Climategate” now top 13 million, as the outlets such as The Age and the ABC continue to run dead on the greatest scandal in modern science. From Andrew Bolt

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