The big climate change fraud - by Richard... Wednesday, December 02, 2009

The big climate change fraud - by Richard... Wednesday, December 02, 2009

The scientific consensus that mankind has caused climate change was rocked yesterday as a leading academic called it a "load of hot air underpinned by fraud", says The Daily Express.

Professor Ian Plimer, we are told, condemned the climate change lobby as "climate comrades" keeping the "gravy train" going. Governments were treating the public like "fools" and using climate change to increase taxes.

He said carbon dioxide has had no impact on temperature and that recent warming was part of the natural cycle of climate stretching over billions of years. "Climates always change. They always have and they always will. They are driven by a number of factors that are random and cyclical."

You would expect Plimer to say such things, and he will have no immediate effect on the scientific community, or the politics. But the fact that this story is on the front page of a national paper is something of a breakthrough. The first glimmer of light.

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Message to the Environmental Movement - by Richard...

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The greenie's not for turning - by Richard...

The Independent is telling us that the Boy Cameron is facing "a growing challenge to his authority from senior members of his own party who say they have doubts about the Conservatives' stance on global warming."

Leading figures including Peter Lilley, the former cabinet minister, Andrew Tyrie and Ann Widdecombe are openly questioning the political consensus on climate change. 

David Davis is also warning that the policy of tough targets to cut carbon emissions, supported by the Boy, is "destined to collapse". He criticises "the fixation of the green movement with setting ever tougher targets, in the face of failure to meet earlier promises". 

He adds: "The ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds – is bound to cause a reaction in any democratic country."

Needless to say, Greg Clark, the shadow energy and climate change Secretary, denies that the supposi-Tories are split, insisting the party's sceptics hold "a minority view". He sees no evidence that their numbers are growing. "On policy, there is an increasingly strong consensus on what needs to be done," he adds.

Cameron's aides deny that the Tory leader would have to water down his "strong personal commitment to green issues," saying that would drive the party's policy. They said all parties had climate change sceptics in their ranks.

So there you are. Never mind about "Climategate". The greenie's not for turning.

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The news we want - by Richard...

Since August last Rupert Murdoch has been ramping up the volume on charging for online news content. 

And he was at it again yesterday, reiterating his belief that internet users will pay for content, saying they would be happy to shell out for "information they need to rise in society". From the beginning, newspapers have prospered for one reason: giving readers the news that they want," he said.

This is from a media mogul whose business lost an eye-watering £2 billion last year, whose Times and Sunday Times newspaper group lost £51.3 million in the year to 29 June 2008 – before even the collapse of Lehman Brothers and recession hit the advertising market.

Nevertheless, one would like to think that Murdoch is right on two counts – that people are prepared to pay for information they need, and that newspapers have prospered for one reason: the have been giving readers the news that they want. 

Therein, we feel, lies Murdoch's problem, which he shares with the rest of the legacy media. They have long ago stopped giving us the information we need, much less what we want. Instead, they have become propaganda organs, pushing their own agendas.

This disease, evident enough in The Times, is glaringly obvious in The Daily Telegraph, which is also losing money hand over fist. Despite there being the clearest of evidence that this paper's readers are hostile to the warmist creed, its output has been given over to promoting the cause, to an almost laughable extent.

Thus, with over 12 million pages on "Climategate", the Telegraph's environment correspondent Louise Gray chooses to visit the issue only now, towards the end of its second week. But even then, hers is only a passing reference, the main thrust of her story being to pick up a small error on Lord Lawson's think-tank website.

That is enough for Gray to write under the triumphal headline: "Climate sceptics get it wrong," as she gleefully announces that the think-tank was "set up in the wake of the 'climategate scandal' that saw scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) accused of manipulating climate change data."

But since Louise Gray is so concerned about accurate reporting, she might like to revisit a story published by her colleague Paul Eccleston on 14 November 2008, also in The Daily Telegraph. This announced: "Himalayan glaciers 'could disappear completely by 2035'", a report based – so we are told – on claims by "Indian climate experts".

However, the Pajamasmedia blog has tracked down the original source of the research on which this claim was based, which found its way into the IPCC 2007 climate change reports. And it turns out that the research was published in a paper by Kotlyakov, V.M., ed., in 1996, entitled "Variations of Snow and Ice in the Past and at Present on a Global and Regional Scale, Technical Documents in Hydrology."

Far from warning about the demise of the glaciers in 2035, though, the authors calculate, on the basis of linear projections of current trends, that the glaciers will disappear by 2350. The figure of 2035 then emerges in the official IPCC documents, explicable only because the IPCC authors misread 2350 as 2035 - a typographical error.

From there, it seems, the lower, erroneous figure has acquired the mantle of fact, by dint of its authoritative provenance and its constant, uncritical repetition in the likes of The Daily Telegraph. Even yesterday our Louise was prattling on about glaciers disappearing, yet never once has she sought to check the source of her claims.

And that really is the problem writ large. The media have stopped giving us the news we want, and are now attempting to feed us with the news they want us to believe. And we ain't buying it – literally or figuratively. Nor will we buy it, for as long as the legacy media treats it customers with such contempt.

More on Your freedom and ours.

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The wages of "Climategate" - by Richard... Tuesday, December 01, 2009

The Associated Press is reporting that Phil Jones, director of the "prestigious" Climatic Research Unit is stepping down "pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change".

We are told by the University of East Anglia authorities that he is to relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

This is the first scientific "casualty" of the Climategate scandal. And, although it may presage a whitewash, the fact that this action has been taken immediately prior to the Copenhagen conference, suggests that the furore is being taken seriously by the university.

The move on Jones follows the dumping of Malcolm Turnbull, the former leader of Australia's Liberal party, and his replacement by Tony Abbott, an avowed climate sceptic. Turnbull is regarded as the first major political casualty of the scandal.

Both these episodes largely vindicate bloggers and the few media commentators who took up the issue, leaving the MSM trailing. One wonders whether the media will now take the issue more seriously.

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The wages of Lisbon - by Richard...

The Tory Boy blog picks up the report that approval for the Boy is declining, the start of the fall coinciding with his sell-out on the EU referendum.

Cranmer gets the point, but it is clear that too many of supposi-Tories don't. The Boy thought he had parked "Europe" with his faux policy – he hasn't. It is coming back to haunt him, and will continue to do so until he addresses it.

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More work needed - by Richard...

In the run-up to the Copenhagen conference the Science Museum, under the logo "PROVE IT!", invited visitors and web users to respond to the following statement with 'count me in' or 'count me out': "I've seen the evidence. And I want the government to prove they're serious about climate change by negotiating a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen."

In the PROVE IT! gallery, 3408 people chose to count in and 626 chose to count out. On the website, 2650 users counted in and 7612 counted out. That makes 6,058 who went for the crap, as against 8,238 who didn't.

That had Prof Chris Rapley, director of the museum - and Professor of Climate Science at UCL – weeping in his cups, telling the media:

More work needs to be done to convince people of the reality of human-induced climate change and of the urgency with which we must agree an international solution. Public organisations, like the Science Museum, have a responsibility to lay out the evidence and open up public discussion.

These warmists have a great deal in common with the supposi-Tories and the EU. If you don't buy their message, never once does it occur to them that they might be wrong. The response to an outright rejection is simply calls to intensify the same message. "They don't understand – we must shout louder", seems to be their thinking.

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