Earthquake moved entire city 3 metres to the west

The earthquake which struck Chile last month moved the entire city of Concepcion more than three metres to the west, say Chilean and US scientists.

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Andrew Bolt fears his infatuation with Julia Gillard will end in tears

He's probably right. But I can't help being a fan of Ms Gillard too. She's everything K R Puff'n'Fluff isn't and more.

He writes:
I can hardly criticise Jones for so rashly losing his heart to a woman from Labor’s Left who once championed an ideology that should freeze the very blood in his veins.

I mean, guess which conservative wrote this of Gillard two years ago: “I have nursed a secret passion for Julia Gillard ... She has the mouth of Paul Keating, but the eyes of Megan Gale, and the one just enhances the other.”

Yes, sorry about that. I’ll mop it up.
But Jones and I aren’t alone among conservatives falling for a politician whose choice of books now suggests she’s readying to take over from the increasingly friendless Kevin Rudd.

Here, for instance, is the Sydney Morning Herald’s Miranda Devine: “(Gillard) spoke so much sense in her speech, and answered questions with such verve and wit, that reporters leaving the Press Club could do little more than shake their heads in admiration.”

The rest here http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_why_the_right_loves_this_lady_of_the_left/

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Julie's death stare

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Paul Ehrlich's 40 year career of being wrong about everything

I was reading Ed’s piece on the apparent attempt by “human-caused global warming” partisans at the National Academy of Sciences to attack their detractors (via the NYTimes, naturally, rather than via actual science or anything), and I came across this bit here (emphasis added):

“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Paul Ehrlich.  Leading the attack.

Ladies and gentlemen, this battle may be over.

Ehrlich started his academic career as an entomologist, an expert on Lepidoptera – butterflies.  But in 1968 he wrote one of the biggest best-sellers in the history of pseudo-scientific literature, The Population Bomb.  In it, Ehrlich reprised the work of Thomas Malthus, arguing that population growth would eventually, inevitably lead mankind to three choices:  Stop making new humans, stop consuming resources, or starve to death.  The book started ”The battle to feed all of humanity is over … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” 

The rest here http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/07/ehrlichs-lifetime-of-hot-air/

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Dinosaur's oldest relative found

Asilisaurus kongwe was a very close relative of the dinosaurs Scientists have discovered a dinosaur-like creature 10 million years older than the earliest known dinosaurs.   Asilisaurus kongwe is a newly discovered herbivore that lived during the middle Triassic period - about 245 million years ago.   The scientists say that its age suggests that dinosaurs were also on the Earth earlier than previously thought.   They described their findings in the journal Nature.   The study was led by Dr Sterling Nesbitt from the University of Texas at Austin in the US.   He said: "This new evidence suggests that [dinosaurs] were really only one of several large and distinct groups of animals that exploded in diversity in the Triassic period, including silesaurs [like this one], pterosaurs, and several groups of crocodilian relatives." Asilisaurus stood up to 1m tall and walked on all fours Full story here

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Dying of dehydration in a hospital ward

Because government run health care has to be better Andrew Bolt: Absolutely astonishing: A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital. Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help. They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control. The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.... Sources (in a coroner’s office) say they are investigating the possibility of a corporate manslaughter charge against St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London.

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Guess how much this prefab school library cost?

Bloody hell. There probably was an argument for some stimulus spending that was well thought out and well targetted, so as to increase the long term productivity of the country, and thus help to justify the fact that it has been largely done with borrowed money that we are collectively going to have to pay back with interest. Instead, we got this - Andrew Bolt Sunday, March 07, 2010 at 08:49am   How much would you pay for this apparent pre-fab, do you think? $100,000, maybe? Perhaps $150,000, tops?   Now read this: At Stuarts Point Public School, a $931,000 library has been chocked using bricks and wood, which parents consider to be a safety issue. Nearly $1 million?????? For that?   Good god. I’d say the $16.5 billion shovelled out by Kevin Rudd on the Building the Education Revolution may have wasted even more of your money than his mad insulation scam.   More here: FOUR schools have joined forces to protest their dissatisfaction at work undertaken on their grounds as part of the federal schools stimulus building program. The schools claim some of the costs for parts of the buildings were more than 10 times the standard market rates and some of the workmanship is unsatisfactory. Representatives from Mid North Coast public schools - at Willawarrin, Eungai, Stuarts Point and Scotts Head - met their local MP and Nationals Leader Andrew Stoner last week to discuss their concerns after being ‘’stonewalled’’ by the NSW Department of Education. Eungai Public School had been allocated $850,000 for a new two-room classroom under the federal government’s Building the Education Revolution scheme (BER). It has been told it is now over budget and will not receive other items it had been promised, such as air-conditioning, interactive whiteboards and covered walkways. (Thanks to reader CA.)   UPDATE By contrast, Timberline is offering to build this home for less than $79,000 (verandah, plans, certificates and council fees extra):     UPDATE 2 Ezyhomes will build something vaguely similar to that library at Stuart’s Point, only much bigger, with a toilet, bathroom and kitchen included and an easily adapted floorplan for $219,000 - less than a quarter of the price:   (Thanks to reader janey has moved.)   UPDATE 3 Reader Dracula shops for quotes: Australian Construction Handbook – Edition 26 – 2008 Cost per Square Metre – Primary School – Single Story Adelaide - $1255.00 - $1355.00 Brisbane - $1290.00 - $1390.00 Melbourne - $1270.00 - $1370.00 Perth - $1140.00 - $1225.00 Sydney - $1215.00 - $1305.00 Say Average Cost $1300.00 per mtr. Sq. At $931,000.00 the building (at Stuart’s Point) should have been 716 mtrs. sq. or 27 metres long x 27 metres wide. Looking at the picture of the building I would estimate it to be 10 mtrs x 8mtrs or 80 sqm. mtrs. Amounting to a cost of $11,637.00 per mtr squared. That’s $10,337.00 per square metre over the average national cost. What a rip off.

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The scales begin to fall from Michelle Grattan's eyes

Better late than never I suppose. All of this was clear and obvious to anyone bothering to look before the last election. Andrew Bolt: Given the Left-leaning Michelle Grattan is the author, this must count as one of the most devastating insights yet into power-obsessed, mendacious, reckless, trivial, unfocussed and grandiose prime ministers this country has had the misfortune to entrust its savings to. True, Grattan fails again to draw the conclusions demanded by her evidence, but here’s just some of the most damning of it: A FORTNIGHT after Kevin Rudd re-appeared this year in his once-regular spot on Seven’s Sunrise, host ‘’Kochie’’ confronted him with an unpalatable truth. ‘’In all honesty,’’ he said, ‘’we get lots of viewers saying ‘we preferred the Sunrise Kevin Rudd to the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’.’’… Even at a personal level Rudd can be hard to read. A long-time acquaintance, listening to his recent mea culpa, wonders, ‘’Is this a decent character who suddenly finds the work hard, or is it the ultimate in spin?’’ The man’s inclined to give Rudd the benefit of the doubt. But thinking back on their association, he muses, ‘’All the time I ask myself, is this my friend or am I being used?’’… ‘’Rudd is a victim of his own hyperbole,’’ says social researcher Hugh Mackay - whether it’s about the summit, the apology to the stolen generations (only modest progress has been made on benchmarks of indigenous advancement), climate change, even the GFC. ‘’The mea culpa is in the same mould - hyperbolic.’’ ... This government is outfitted in a verbal uniform. The daily dress is set in what are known as ‘’round the worlds’’ - ‘’lines’’ sent to those who are doing media. It is said that the day after Therese Rein was reported as losing a lot of weight, the ‘’round the world’’ contained a helpful prompt, based on comments Rudd had made, to the effect, ‘’Doesn’t Therese look great?’’...It all started to sound like a spoof on China’s Cultural Revolution.... Further, Rudd’s consistency when faced with a ministerial crisis was tested - and found wanting. He described Environment Minister Peter Garrett as a ‘’first-class minister’’, who had met the core measures of ministerial responsibility. ‘’I stand by the minister as I did last week, as I will do next week.’’ It sounded clear enough. But before last week was out, Rudd had sliced away from Garrett control over insulation and other parts of energy efficiency, and declared it was no good sugar-coating the demotion.... Rudd explains his U-turn by denying it. ‘’The position was completely consistent,’’ he insists.... WHILE the GFC was a special circumstance, more generally Rudd has greatly downplayed the role of cabinet compared with the Howard or Hawke governments. ‘’Cabinet is not a place of long discussion about policy,’’ says one senior government man. ‘’It’s a tick-and-flick exercise of the Strategic Priorities and Budget Committee and, to a far lesser extent, of the Expenditure Review Committee.’’… All this year, Rudd has been flat-out on the health and hospitals policy. Yet ministerial sources say the full cabinet has had little role… Cabinet did not see the final outcome until just before it was announced by Rudd at the National Press Club on Wednesday… ‘’You’ve just got to hope that someone is checking what is going on,’’ said one minister, speaking before the announcement of this major decision.... Apart from the massive stimulus package being a tick-and-flick exercise, so was the multi-billion broadband project. .. The hospitals policy has been an example of Rudd’s personal ‘’sleeves rolled up’’ style. He may be rolling them up too far. He personally did 21 of the government’s more than 100 consultations with hospitals, health groups and citizens around the country. One senior Labor source says it is an example of the PM’s ‘’Kevin everywhere’’ mentality… At the start of an election year, his staff are already drained. One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, Rudd was out of town and it was uncertain whether he would return to Canberra that afternoon. Suddenly, a great whoop was heard from staff in his Parliament House office. They had just heard that the boss was not coming back that day.

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Frozen vegetables 'more nutritious than fresh vegetables', says report

I suppose that produce purchased from most farmers' markets wouldn't be relevant here, on the assumption that it has indeed been harvested recently. And while the research has been paid for by a producer of frozen food, the argument strikes me as sound. So fresh food is better if it is really fresh. From the Food & Health Skeptic: The health freaks and "organic" devotees won't like one bit of this Up to 45 per cent of important nutrients are lost in fresh vegetable by the time they are consumed. It can take up to two weeks for fresh produce to reach the table from being picked although the survey found that 80 per cent of shoppers thought the fresh vegetables in supermarkets were less than four days old. Produce which is frozen soon after being picked with have more nutrients sealed in, scientists from the Institute of Food Research claimed. Meanwhile after 16 days green beans have lost 45 per cent of nutrients, broccoli and cauliflower 25 per cent, garden peas up to 15 per cent and carrots 10 per cent. The research was carried out by the Institute on behalf of Birds Eye the frozen food manufacturer. Nutritionist Dr Sarah Schenker said: "The nutritional content of fresh vegetables begins to deteriorate from the minute they are picked. This means that by the time they end up on our plate, although we may think we're reaping the vegetable's full nutritional benefits, this is often not the case." The Torygraph Interesting comment in the same issue of the Food & Health Skeptic about the recent Vioxx decision. Maybe not quite the simple evil drug company peddling a dangerous product as it has been presented. If he's right, the court's decision may not survive any appeal. I have never been happy with the attack on Vioxx. It has focused mainly on "ad hominem" accusations against the company rather than on the medical evidence. Let me summarize that evidence briefly: Less that one half of one percent of people taking Vioxx get heart attacks and most of them are in frail health anyway. But that tiny rate of heart attacks is still 2 to 4 times greater than the rate observed with some other Cox2 inhibitor drugs. And here is the kicker: Even though Vioxx takers get more heart attacks, they DON'T DIE of them at a rate higher than that seen among patients on other Cox2 inhibitors. The fact is that all Cox2 inhibitors have troublesome side-effects but the side effects differ somewhat. So patients and their doctors should have a choice: A patient not doing well on one Cox2 inhibitor might do well on Vioxx. But that option has now been taken away. A patient might well have been ready to accept the slightly elevated risk of a non-fatal heart attack in order to have their arthritic pain relieved without other side-effects.

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Celebrate Human Achievement Hour 27 March 2010 as Earth Hour runs out of steam

Andrew Bolt: The organisers of Earth Hour, to be held this year on March 27, adveritse the resolution of warming worriers: With 579 cities, towns and municipalities and 77 countries and regions across every continent already signed up to this year’s ‘lights out’ event, Earth Hour is set to show the world that a resolution to the threat of global warming is possible through collective action. What, only 579 cities signed up so far? Seems that resolutiuon may actually be fading fast, given their target: Earth Hour 2010 aims to reach one billion people in more than 1,000 cities encouraging them to cast their vote for the earth by turning off their lights. In fact, it’s a massive drop on last year’s numbers: 88 countries and 4,088 cities participated in Earth Hour 2009, ten times more cities than Earth Hour 2008 had... (Thanks to Observer of Wodonga.) UPDATE Or, suggests Senator Cory Bernardi, you may choose on that date and time to help him celebrate something much more important: The Conservative Leadership Foundation has launched a campaign to recognise and celebrate “Human Achievement Hour” . During Human Achievement Hour, people around the world will be recognising the incredible accomplishments of the human race. Originally conceived by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2009, Human Achievement Hour coincides with the earth hour campaign but salutes those who keep the lights on and produce the energy that makes human achievement possible. UPDATE 3 Let them eat carbon credits: The British Government, as revealed by the EU’s Official Journal, has allocated £60 million of taxpayers’ money to be spent on buying carbon credits from the Third World for the use of government buildings and other official purposes – so that our civil servants can continue to benefit from the CO2 emissions needed to keep their offices warm and lit. The Government has contracted to buy these credits, mainly available from China and India, through 10 British and foreign companies… The net result of all this trading and jiggery-pokery is that, after billions of pounds and dollars have changed hands, with a hefty commission for those bankers and other carbon traders along the way, there is no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions whatever. But at least our political class can continue to work in warm offices and fly righteously round the world on our behalf – while the rest of us foot the bill.

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Was Louis Nowra being fair to Germaine Greer or not?

Andrew Bolt: Nowra is probably right about The Female Eunuch, but this cheap shot at Germaine Greer is not just cruel, but, worse, irrelevant: ...she looks like a befuddled and exhausted old woman. She reminded me of my demented grandmother... Just a few words, but all it takes to make me doubt the judgement of the man who wrote the other 4100. UPDATE Rick Feneley: All that said, Nowra’s essay is a great read, a brutal but thoughtful and sometimes fair critique of The Female Eunuch and of Greer: the daughter embittered by her narcissistic mother’s emotional abuse; the powerful polemicist who inspired women to leave their husbands but who wrote off gays as ‘’faggots’’; the fantasist who reckoned mothers could live in farmhouses in Italy where a revolving door of friends, relatives and local peasants would care for their children; the acid-tongued mauler of other prominent women; the woman who imagined herself as the wife of the Bard (’’I’d f--- Shakespeare except that he especially asked that his bones not be disturbed’’); the author of ‘’dull and graceless’’ and ‘’increasingly daft’’ prose; the attention seeker on Celebrity Big Brother; and, ultimately, the ‘’irrelevant noise of a shock jock few people listen to any more’’.

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We need real science, not green evangelism

An editorial from this morning's The Weekend Australian: Hyperbole erodes credibility IN serious debates, nothing demolishes credibility as readily as inconsistency and exaggeration. Many Australians, therefore, will find it baffling that six state governments are working off four different sets of figures for the sea-level rises they expect to be caused by climate change. The projected rises vary from 38cm in Western Australia to 80cm in Queensland and Victoria and 90cm in NSW, creating confusion for councils and developers. Fortunately, all fall far short of the 6m rises predicted by Environment Minister Peter Garrett and scientist Tim Flannery's doomsday scenario of 80m rises. But you don't have to be a climate change sceptic to realise they can't all be right. On balance, it is prudent to give the planet the benefit of the doubt by putting a price on carbon, preferably through a market-based emissions trading scheme in concert with other industrialised nations. That does not preclude debate, however, on both the science and economics of climate change. Indeed, the hallmark of good scientific practice demands that assumptions be challenged and tested. Solid science also demands sound observation tempered with a degree of common sense. Empirical evidence deserves more weight than the apocalyptic forecasts of famine, epidemics, cyclones, mass migration and fresh water shortages envisaged by social economist Clive Hamilton in his dystopian tome Requiem for a Species. One of the most disturbing aspects of the debate is the rise of green totalitarians, who have tried to silence those with different viewpoints. Their intolerance does not stop at the sceptics. Commentators such as Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, who accept the theory of man-made climate change but believe mitigation is expensive and ultimately futile, arguing instead that resources would be better invested fighting disease and malnutrition, are also granted heretic status. Nor is it reasonable, as some activists do, to attribute every drought, flood, storm, hot day and even unseasonal snowfall to man-made greenhouse emissions. After reporting on many a cyclone, drought and flood, the only firm conclusion we can draw from the weather is that there is plenty of it. Senior scientists from Britain's Met Office Hadley Centre, Edinburgh University, Melbourne University and Victoria University in Canada are warning there is a 95 per cent chance that man is to blame for global warning. The group assessed more than 100 recent peer-reviewed scientific papers and it remains to be seen which of the lines drawn on computers by scientists and regional planners prove accurate. Who knows, they may be right. But after the Copenhagen shambles, IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri's alleged conflicts of interest and the fabricated propaganda of the University of East Anglia emails, proponents of climate change action need to rebuild credibility. Politicisation of science and inflated claims of certainty have badly damaged their case: it's time to put down the megaphone.

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Did Peter Garrett try to warn Rudd and the cabinet?

Gavin Atkins warns of yet another possible rort in the $2.45 billion insulation fiasco: Some established insulation businesses in Australia have scammed thousands of dollars from Australian taxpayers by claiming to have insulated homes as part of the Rudd Government scheme – but the jobs were completed anything up to two or three years ago. A Sydney builder - who wished to remain anonymous - told Asian Correspondent that he knew of existing insulation businesses that have filled out the paperwork to claim $1,200 for each job under the Rudd Government’s Energy Efficient Homes Package, despite the fact that they performed the work at the houses well before the disastrous scheme was implemented. UPDATE Jack the Insider says Peter Garrett tried to warn Rudd: It is a matter of record that Minister Garrett alerted his cabinet colleagues to the inherent problems of the home insulation scheme on at least one occasion and we can only presume did so to deafening silence by way of response or if any verbal response was made it seems to be of the “don’t tell me your problems” variety. Andrew Bolt And really, the operative word here is inherent. Plus, there's a lot of wailing about what has befallen the insulation industry now, but think it through for a moment. Imagine the scheme was proceeding as planned. After a while, just about every existing home owner who could be arsed would have had free insulation put into their roof. What then for the industry? How much work would be left for all of the businesses that had flocked to it? Not much. Sooner or later there would have to be a very nasty correction where most of them would end up going out of business and a lot of people out of work. A perfect little example of what happens when governments decide to give out subsidies - the price signal gets distorted, (and remember that essentially prices are information, so if prices are artificially inflated or deflated the information gets scrambled), and the market becomes unbalanced. And the inevitable correction - the chickens coming home to roost - will arrive sooner or later.

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Paul Conti's Mariginiup Shiraz. Get it while you can.

In fact, get anything they make sourced from fruit grown at the Mariginiup block while you can.

Was speaking to Jason Conti at their Woodvale cellar door on the weekend, and that block's days are numbered.

Which is a shame, because the 2008 Shiraz, which I'm drinking right now, is pretty damn good. I reckon it'll be drinking better in 12 months time, but there is a lot to like right now.

In a hypothetical universe somewhere far, far away, I might leave the third of bottle that is left until tomorrow and finish it off when it has really opened up.

But screw that.

Sadly though, the block that also produces the Grenache & Shiraz blend (which is also very nice drinking), tawny and white ports and the Reserve Muscat is being engulfed by suburbia and they know it is only a matter of time before they will have to sell it for redevelopment.

My boss says that many of the new residents are so-called tree changers who you would think would like the idea of vineyards in their midst. Except of course that tree changers also tend to have hippyish tendencies and will imagine all kinds of ailments and rashes should the vines have to be sprayed for anything.

So the writing is on the wall as they say, even if, unlike King Belshazzar, the Contis can interpret the omen unaided.

Apparently there is already some doubt about whether the Reserve Muscat will be made anymore.

You know, why more people don't drink our amazing Australian fortified wines is a fucking mystery that you would need a diviner to solve. It's certainly got me beat.

The unbelievable flavours, unbelievably complex and concentrated at their best, provide world class drinking almost without equal.

Many would actually complement ripened cheeses, but who thinks of this matching these days? Idiots!

So a vinous treasure continues to whither on the vine before our very eyes (he says, while using those eyes to look longingly at his opened bottle of Talijancich Liqueur Verdelho).

Still, Contis have other vineyards on which to grow their grapes.

You can view their wines here http://www.paulcontiwines.com.au/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

There's a restaurant that has a set menu lunch Wednesday to Friday and a la carte dinner Tuesday to Saturday.

http://www.paulcontiwines.com.au/Restaurant/About/tabid/71/Default.aspx

You can also sign up to their newsletters here http://www.paulcontiwines.com.au/ManageNewsletterSubscription/tabid/140/Default.aspx

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The Guardian: "Sceptics have valid points and we should take them seriously and respect them."

As Anthony Watts says, this does seem to represent a "sea change" in climate journalism.

While this started out as a suggestion from him to the Guardian's James Randerson that "if the Guardian truly wishes to engage climate skeptics" it would stop using the derogatively term deniers to describe them.

It appears that this has been discussed within the newspaper's environment team and it has gone public with the outcome.

We have been discussing such terminology, and some of my colleagues have suggested that Guardian style might be amended to stop referring to “climate change deniers” in favour of, perhaps, “climate sceptics”.

The editor of our environment website explains: “The former has nasty connotations with Holocaust denial and tends to polarise debate. On the other hand there are some who are literally in denial about the evidence. Also, some are reluctant to lend the honourable tradition of scepticism to people who may not be truly ’sceptical’ about the science.” We might help to promote a more constructive debate, however, by being “as explicit as possible about what we are talking about when we use the term sceptic”.

Most if not all of the environment team – who, after all, are the ones at the sharp end – now favour stopping the use of denier or denialist (which is not, in fact, a word) in news stories, if not opinion pieces.

The Guardian’s environment editor argues: “Sceptics have valid points and we should take them seriously and respect them.” To call such people deniers “is just demeaning and builds differences”. One of his colleagues says he generally favours sceptic for news stories, “but let people use ‘deniers’ in comment pieces should they see fit. The ’sceptics’ label is almost too generous a badge as very few are genuinely sceptical about the science but I think we have to accept the name is now common parlance.”

As Anthony also says, the Guardian should be applauded for this and the gesture reciprocated.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/02/sea-change-in-climate-journalism-the-guardian-and-the-d-word/

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Video for OK Go's This Too Shall Pass. NO! Not THAT one, THIS one!

I think this has only just been released. So far, I've only seen the marching band film clip on TV.

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Green fuels cause more harm than fossil fuels, according to report

Using fossil fuel in vehicles is better for the environment than so-called green fuels made from crops, according to a government study seen by The Times.

The findings show that the Department for Transport’s target for raising the level of biofuel in all fuel sold in Britain will result in millions of acres of forest being logged or burnt down and converted to plantations. The study, likely to force a review of the target, concludes that some of the most commonly-used biofuel crops fail to meet the minimum sustainability standard set by the European Commission.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7044708.ece

Yet again, another example of what happens when governments intervene in the market by way of subsidies - unintended consequences abound!

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This sort of madness has been building for some time

From Tim Blair:

Global warming claims its first victims:

A seven-month-old baby girl survived three days alone with a bullet in her chest beside the bodies of her parents and toddler brother.

Argentines Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their children before killing themselves after making an apparent suicide pact over fears about global warming.

Their son Francisco, two, died instantly after being hit in the back.

(Via Cal)
UPDATE:

A letter was found on a table expressing the couple’s anger at the government for not responding to the environmental crisis.

This sort of madness has been building for some time.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/inconvenient_deaths/

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The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science

Willis Eschenbach replies to Professor Judith Curry, from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, following part two of her series On the Credibility of Climate Research published at the Watts Up With That? blog.

As he says, she at the very least deserves credit for opening engaging climate sceptics in honest debate. (And even more credit to Watts Up With That? for allowing her to post there. Compare the space it is prepared to give to people who disagree with it, so as to foster debate, to that given by blogs such as Real Climate, where moderation means that you can't even have a comment published that challenges its house position, no matter how politely and calmly put.)

But he is not prepared to let her be absolved for the failure of the climate science community to stand up against the long standing anti-science practices of too many of its most prominent members.

Here's an excerpt from his post Judith, I love ya, but you’re way wrong …

The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science. The solution is for you establishment climate scientists to police your own back yard. When Climategate broke, there was widespread outrage … well, widespread everywhere except in the climate science establishment. Other than a few lone voices, the silence there was deafening. Now there is another whitewash investigation, and the silence only deepens.

And you wonder why we don’t trust you? Here’s a clue. Because a whole bunch of you are guilty of egregious and repeated scientific malfeasance, and the rest of you are complicit in the crime by your silence. Your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes.

And you still don’t seem to get it. You approvingly quote Ralph Cicerone about the importance of transparency … Cicerone?? That’s a sick joke.

You think people made the FOI (Freedom of Information) requests because they were concerned that the people who made the datasets were the same people using them in the models. As the person who made the first FOI request to CRU, I assure you that is not true. I made the request to CRU because I was disgusted with the response of mainstream climate scientists to Phil Jone’s reply to Warwick Hughes. When Warwick made a simple scientific request for data, Jones famously said:

Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?

When I heard that, I was astounded. But in addition to being astounded, I was naive. Looking back, I was incredibly naive. I was so naive that I actually thought, “Well, Phil’s gonna get his hand slapped hard by real scientists for that kind of anti-scientific statements”. Foolish me, I thought you guys were honest scientists who would be outraged by that.

So I waited for some mainstream climate scientist to speak out against that kind of scientific malfeasance … and waited … and waited. In fact, I’m still waiting.

Read it all here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/25/judith-i-love-ya-but-youre-way-wrong/

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Wild Colonial Boy a lesson for the Tories

THE British Tories are in a state of finger-gnawing nerves. With Gordon Brown's Labour government in terminal meltdown, the Conservatives should be on course for a landslide victory at this year's general election.

In fact, their poll ratings have dropped dangerously into hung parliament territory.

While some believe the quirks of Britain's electoral systemmay deliver the Tories victory in the end, there is no doubt that they are losing support overall.

The lesson they surely need to learn is staring them in the face in Australia. This is the remarkable rise of Tony Abbott, on the apparently improbable platform of opposing man-made global warming theory and the policies this entails.

Indeed, that Abbott is snapping at Kevin Rudd's heels demonstrates a crucial lesson for conservatives everywhere.

This is the truly astounding fact that a conservative will most likely win power by remaining unambiguously true to conservative principles.

Full article here http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/wild-colonial-boy-a-lesson-for-tories/story-e6frg6zo-1225835818040

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