The money quote - by Richard... Wednesday, December 09, 2009-

The money quote - by Richard... Wednesday, December 09, 2009-

Still think it's a myth?

Rompuy: "2009 is also the first year of global governance, with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. 

The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet."

Still think it's a myth?

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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Above its station - by Richard...

When you think about it, the Met Office is a trading agency of the MoD, set up originally (and currently) to deliver weather forecasts – many of which it gets wrong. 

Now, this lowly operation – staffed by taxpayer-funded civil servants – is telling us (actually, an international audience of policy-makers) to cut "pollution" from cars and factories at a rate of five percent a year by 2020.

And since when do the weather men have the power and authority to dictate policy? When did this happen?

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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It's the government's fault - by Richard...

One feels, wearily, that one ought to be interested in the pre-budget report, a drama which is being dissected in the British media at this time. Frankly though, the displays in the House of Commons are ephemera. The devil lies in the detail – which will only emerge later.

And the big news from that front – according to the BBC? "More children to get free school meals"! This is what it has come down to. A goverment which once ruled over an Empire is reduced to making statements about free (i.e., taxpayer-funded) meals for school-kids. 

For sure, the political classes prefer to focus on the short-term and the trivia. Events with more complex and longer-term outcomes tend to be given less attention – more so when the consequences are several steps removed from the immediate events. 

Complex and multi-factoral causations are far too difficult for their minds to deal with, so they indulge themselves in their simplistic world view, so often summed up by the simple legend - it's the government's fault (insert name of whatever political party which is currently in the hot seat).

More to the point, we have sussed the politicians. Even the holders of high office are largely play-actors. The real action is off-stage and what matters there is who is pulling the strings, who is really in charge, and what the real agendas are. Thus we search for the puppet-masters and ignore the puppets. 

Only the children are enthralled by the visible display and believe it is real. They watch little Darling, even though he is slave to events totally out of his control – as indeed is Mr Brown. They posture and prance. The claque shout, jeer and applaud, waiting for Mr Punch to deliver his knockout blow and Mr Plod the policeman to take him away.

Meanwhile, the power brokers are in Copenhagen, planning – if they can get their way – to re-shape the economies of the world and to commit vast sums to a malign endeavour which will cause misery around the world and on our own doorstep, the cost of which dwarfs the amount Mr Darling is playing with. But the consequences will not be immediately apparent, and the costs will be deferred and hidden.

Thus they can be ignored by the political classes and, when the effects are felt, the cause of the problem will be simple to diagnose: - it's the government's fault (insert name of whatever political party which is currently in the hot seat).

COMMENT THREAD

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Another dimension - by Richard...

"Archduke Undead – War Cancelled!" Into the Climategate debacle strides the uber-scientist and Time Lord, Doctor Who. That is the only explanation of how the Met Office has tumbled out of its place in the time/space continuum to operate in a dimension in which Climategate has never taken place and scientists remain an unchallengeable priesthood spreading wisdom around the earth.

Gerald Warner at his finest.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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Missed two - by Richard...

Following my commentary on Corus steel, Biased BBC and ShareCrazy tell me that they linked to the post. ShareCrazy tells me that they also published a piece the Monday after Climategate broke (two weeks before this) advising its readers to dump or short carbon stocks. The "green" bubble is beginning to burst, they seem to feel.

My apologies for missing these. Interestingly, though, they do not change the basic premise that the "big hitter" party political sites are struggling with the climate change issue. Not so the "second division", where there is much fine writing and commentary, leaving the "stars" floundering.

Thus, we have sites such as Purple Scorpion, with some astute comments about The Sun, Man in a Shed, who writes about the real sun, Not a Sheep, who picks up on sea levels, and the Daniel 1979 blog who has an interesting tee-shirt. Then there is the entertaining Englishman's Castlewhich has had a number of very interesting observations.

Despite the politicos and their blogging groupies wanting to bury it, therefore, Climategate is not going away. Even the MSM is beginning to catch up. When we first calculated it last week, theTiger Woods Index, it stood at 9693 (28,400,000 - 2,930). 

Now, five days later (at 1 am this morning), it had more than halved, standing at 4015. Google pages have increased to 33,500,000 but MSM stories have soared to 8,343. Many of those stories are knocking copy, but many more are not. Either way, like "hide the decline", Climategate is becoming part of the language.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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The "moderates" attack - by Richard...

Since when have Tim Yeo, Ken Clarke and John Gummer been "moderates"? Raving europhiles all three, they are now attacking climate change sceptics as "flat-earthers" and urging David Cameron to show Churchillian leadership on the issue [of climate change] if he becomes prime minister.

For this the trio, using the Tory Reform Group as cover, gain the label "Tory moderates" fromThe Independent. They have, we are told, "rallied behind Mr Cameron in his battle with Tory MPs, MEPs and grassroots members, many of whom are sceptical about climate change." 

If we have got this right, the Tory mainstream are against the global warming hype while this dire crew is urging the leader to defy the bulk of his own party, and they are the moderates?

However, it is very revealing how, when we see the Right emasculated yet the Left of the party sees no problem in promoting its agenda, without a whisper of criticism from the media.

Yet, when David Davis aired a very much milder opposite view last week, the media were all over him, with The Daily Mail screaming about how he had "gone to war" on Cameron's green crusade.

Once again, therefore, we see the distorted nature of the political debate, where politicians who represent mainstream public opinion are branded "extreme", while left wing politicians (and others) feel free to insult them and those whose views they represent, and they are described as "moderate".

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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So much for the consensus - by Richard... Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Let's see how many newspapers report this. Forget the BBC – it doesn't have a WWF, Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth header. The same goes for little Louise.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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A political contraceptive - by Richard...

Sites linking to our piece on the effect of the EU's emission trading scheme on the closure of the Corus Redcar steel plant have driven our hit rate to a respectable 10,000 page impressions today – small beer by the standards of the big-hitters, but respectable none-the-less.

Of those sites that linked, almost all (that I picked up) were either American or Canadian. These included the WSJ blog, which saw the point immediately, and Craigslist, which also saw the point, remarking that the same could happen under Obama's cap-and-trade

Others were Small Dead Animals, which linked almost immediately the story went up, Michelle Malkin, who seems to be linking semi-permanently to EUREF now (thank you) and National Review.

Of the British sites, there may have been some that we missed (apologies if we have) but the only one we know of is Open Europe, which does not seem to have generated any hits.

Now, please don't get me wrong – what I am about to say is not a complaint, but strictly a neutral observation. In a very small way, the fact that US and Canadian sites have linked, and we have not seen any significant activity from UK sites is another sign – to me anyway – of how climate change in this country has become depoliticised (at least, at a party political level). The party-orientated political sites have opted out.

By contrast, we see massive activity on the US political blogs, where there is a vibrant debate, with many of the political heavyweights involved.

EUREF links, of course, are only one sign. We noted other signs earlier, and that post got a couple of links, one from Iain Dale (thanks) and a very unusual link from Conservative Home. But there has been no significant party political activity about which these sites could report, which has left them in a rather difficult position.

There is most definitely a synergy between politicians, political blogs and, of course, the MSM, and if Right Wing politicians are opting out of the debate – which indeed they seem to be – then we are not going to get any traction on this issue.

How interesting it is, therefore, that potentially one of the biggest assaults on our liberties and wallets in recent history – outside of wartime – is not on the party political agenda in the UK.

But, of course, there is the elephant in the room – otherwise known as the European Union, a guaranteed political contraceptive. Once the dead hand of our government in Brussels gets involved, debate has no chance of fertilisation. While cap-and-trade is a political issue in the US and Canada, we already have it in the UK, courtesy of the EU, and there was never a debate about it before it came in, much less a vote.

That perhaps is the ultimate measure of the degree to which our politics have sunk. The Right is compromised on both the EU and climate change - and has had nothing of interest to say about Climategate. Here, the issues are combined, so all we get is silence, apart from the occasional embarrassed shuffling of feet.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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An attack on science - by Richard...

Clive Crook in The Atlantic has an interesting perspective on "Climategate". 

Criticism based on the leaked or hacked emails (and documents) is not an attack on science, any more than criticising a particular journalist is to attack press freedom, or criticising a particular politician is to attack democracy. Trying to shut down criticism in the name of science is the real attack on science.

Meanwhile, scientist Bill Gray complains about indoctrination from the climate lobby.

The recent Climategate revelations, he says, are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well organized international climate warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years. This conspiracy would become much more manifest if all the e-mails of the publicly-funded climate research groups of the US and of foreign governments were ever made public.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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Failure in Iraq - by Richard...

In another valuable contribution to the remarkably sparse debate on the British occupation of Iraq, MP and former Grenadier Guard Adam Holloway has published a short paper headed, "The Failure of British Political and Military Leadership in Iraq."

Holloway takes the view that the Labour Government has suborned the Armed Forces from the very top to half the way down, creating a system that often enforces what is politically convenient, not what is militarily right. This systemic failure, he argues, began with the invasion of Iraq and continues to this day. This failure, he tells us, continues to prevent us from learning from our mistakes, and is condemning us to repeat them, as we are doing in Afghanistan.

More on Defence of the Realm.