Those deluded souls - by Richard... Saturday, December 05, 2009

Those deluded souls - by Richard... Saturday, December 05, 2009

And so, the considered opinion of The Independent is that "Climategate" is a "distraction".

But it agrees that the accusations "have to be addressed seriously", and not only "because they open the way for those deluded souls who still deny there is a man-made aspect to global warming to press their case with extra vigour." The real concern is that "the selectively published emails threaten to undermine public trust in the good faith of climate scientists."

No concern, then, that the "climate scientists" might be a bunch of self-serving crooks?

And my, aren't the warmists being free with their compliments? From "assholes" to "...behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics" and outright "criminals", us “deniers” have now become "deluded fools".

They really don't like us, do they? I think we’ll have to stop being so nice to them.

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Three years to wait? - by Richard...

The Met Office, we are told, plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data "after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails."

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012 ... by which time, we will be very firmly and obviously in the grip of the cooling cycle which has already started. So, are they going to delay the Copenhagen slugfest until the results are in? And what happened to "the science is settled"? Come to think of it, why are they checking at all when the science is robust?

The government, incidentally, is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics. It is a bit late for that - the genie is already out of the bottle.

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Permission to doubt - by Richard...

What, in effect, "Climategate" has done is give "permission" for people to doubt the climate change orthodoxy. American Thinker needed no such encouragement, but it does mean that its questioning of the accuracy of CO2 data collection will perhaps get a larger readership than otherwise it might have done.

Problems in the collection of atmospheric CO2 data parallel other absurdities in the global warming fraud, it says. The US NOAA openly admits to producing a CO2 record which "contains no actual data." NOAA temperature stations sited in ways that artificially inflate temperatures have been exposed over the past two years. CO2 observatories have similar flaws. Two of the five NOAA "baseline" stations are downwind from erupting volcanoes. All five are subject to localized or regional CO2 sources.

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Not enough support? - by Richard...

The shock announcement of the mothballing of the Redcar Corus steel plant – with the loss of 1,700 jobs - hasThe Times reporting the chief executive of the firm tearing into the government.

This is Kirby Adams, who complains that Whitehall, while trying to restore Britain’s financial sector to health, had failed to do enough for the manufacturing and construction sectors in which Corus's customers operated. According tp the newspaper, though, Adams "admits" that it would have been very difficult for the government to support the firm directly "due to EU rules on state subsidies." 

However, this did not seem to be a problem for the company's IJmuiden steelworks in the Netherlands, purchased in 1999 when it took over the Dutch company Koninklijke Hoogovens. Only at the end of last month did the company announce a €20 million project to build a "ground-breaking new pilot plant", with €15 million funding from the EU and the balance from the Dutch government.

The 60,000 tpa Hisarna pilot plant will harness a new process that makes possible the production of liquid iron from virgin raw materials in just a single step, eliminating two of the three production steps required in blast furnace iron making, thus making the plant one of the most efficient in the world.

That, of course, leaves the Redcar plant out on a limb, saddled with the increasing costs stemming from EU and UK rules aimed at reducing live-giving carbon dioxide emissions, making the plant overly expensive to run and thus uncompetitive against the hi-tech Dutch plant and the rest of the plants owned by the parent group, India's Tata Steel.

The claimed reason for the closure of the Redcar plant is " over-capacity" in the industry, with Tara producing more than 28 million tons a year, employing approximately 80,000 workers across four continents. Strangely, though, this problem does not apply to the Indian plants (one pictured).

There, the industry is set to expand from its 2007 base of 53.10 million tons to 124.06 million a year by 2011-12 and to nearly 293 million tons annually by 2020.

Massive investment is required to see this expansion through, but as new plants will replace units with higher emissions per ton of steel produced – although they will still produce more emissions than comparable European plants – they will qualify for "Clean Development Mechanism" funding, plus "green" loans and grants which Mr Brown is so kindly set to negotiate at the Copenhagen summit.

So, when the Redcar plant workers, and all workers from the suppliers and service enterprises, can celebrate their job-free status for Christmas, they can at least be comforted by the fact that EU funds – to which they have contributed – will keep their Dutch colleagues in work, while Mr Brown's largess will be set to employ ever larger numbers of Indian workers, all in the name of saving the planet.

Much of that will come out of Mr Brown's £800 million annual splending spree, on top of the £800 million annual aid we give to India to relieve "poverty" (thus enabling India to maintain a standing army of 1.2 million men - to say nothing of its space programme).

Nevertheless, all is not lost. Corus will be keeping some men on, to handle imported Dutch and Indian steel, while Mr Brown has assured the redundant workers that: "There are things like training support which we can offer." Perhaps they can all become home insulation installers.

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Blimey! - by Richard... Friday, December 04, 2009

Big Oil and Little Green Footballs weigh into the "Climategate" debate – on the side of the warmists.

"The CRU theft was a criminal attempt to sabotage the Copenhagen climate summit, and the entire right wing blogosphere is complicit in the crime," says Charles Johnson.

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Making friends - by Richard...

At the end of a Newsnight debate on "Climategate" between Mike Morano and Prof (essional liar) Andrew Watson from UAE, Watson added the comment: "What an asshole" just as the faders went down. He must have thought he was off-air. 

Nelson Fraser had an equally unpleasant experience on Sky News, confronting Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the LSE. And now we haveGordon Brown referring to: "...behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics."

They really go out of their way to make friends and influence people, these warmists.

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A politician's myth - by Richard...

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Disconnect? - by Richard...

The warmists on The Daily Scarygraph ought to read their own newspaper sometime: "Fresh snow across much of Europe has got the ski season off to a promising start as Alpine resorts prepare to open this weekend." And it's snowing in Houston.

Even then, there are still cynics about. Nile Gardiner in The Daily Scarygraph reckons the UN investigation into the IPCC will be a "whitewash". That can't possibly be true. The UN lie to is? Shocking thought!

Thank goodness for the objectivity of The New Scientist. "We can be 100 percent sure the world is getting warmer," it says. And don't worry your pretty little heads about the data: "raw data almost always has to be 'fixed'". Phew! What a relief.

Forgive the confusion though. Biased BBC has a shock for us. It has a video of the BBC's environment correspondent Roger Harrabin saying this:

There is a sort of misapprehension here that we in the media have probably helped to perpetuate: that the science of climate change, all the details, are settled. In fact there's a lot of uncertainty about big areas of the science as to what will happen.

Hadn't somebody better tell Harrabin he's s wrong? Only yesterday, Ed Miliband was saying that "the science is clear and settled." He can't be wrong, surely?

Just to get these silly misunderstandings sorted, Small Dead Animals wants your comments in support of the Railway Engineer. Humour them ... it's the right thing to do.

BTW, does anyone know the forecast for Copenhagen?

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"Deep Climate" - by Richard...

It seems we're agreed on the identity of the "hacker" - aka "Deep Climate". Jail Hansen. You know it makes sense.

The BBC, meanwhile, continues its pathetic attempts at damage limitation and Johann Hari in The Independent wishes the (Mann-made) "global warming deniers" were right. He doesn't really - he's just saying that ... just in case you might have been fooled. "Imagine you are about to get on a plane with your family," he writes:

A huge group of qualified airline mechanics approach you on the tarmac and explain they've studied the engine for many years and they're sure it will crash if you get on board. They show you their previous predictions of plane crashes, which have overwhelmingly been proven right. Then a group of vets, journalists, and plumbers tell they have looked at the diagrams and it's perfectly obvious to them the plane is safe and that airplane mechanics – all of them, everywhere – are scamming you. Would you get on the plane? That is our choice at Copenhagen.

Er ... actually, a "huge group of rent seekers" want you to pay an absolute fortune to climb back into the Iron Age. Would you still get on the plane? 

But hey! Robert Watson in The Guardian says: "The science still points to Copenhagen". So I guess we can all relax.

"The global temperature analysis is robust and the work of the UEA Climatic Research Unit, on the land component, is fully supported by two separate independent analyses in the US at Nasa and Noaa," he says. What is this word "robust"? Is he using a different dictionary from the rest of us?

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Climate Saboteurs - by Richard...

It's the Tories who are "climate saboteurs" – according to Ed Miliban ... he of nappy fame. The Boy's work is falling apart. His little homily on Copenhagen has the potential for being the biggest political mistake in history.

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Free sex for warmists - by Richard...

The answer to "no sex please, we're warmists". Should I tell Booker? He's thinking of going to Copenhagen.

Comment on WUWT: "The ladies of Copenhagen are willing to do something to the delegates one at a time what the delegates want to do to us all at once." The difference is, of course, is that the "ladies" are doing it for free.

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"Very worrying" - by Richard...

"All this is very worrying for us climate rationalists," bleats Will Heaven, who has noted that climate "science" is going party political - shock!

"Science informs, but it doesn't decide," says our Willie. Is there a change of tone here? TheBoiling Frog definitely thinks so.

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Is the debate over? - by Richard...

A long Powerpoint presentation on Mann-made global warming (as .pdf). Good stuff.

Is the debate over? - The loudest Alarmist says the debate is over. However, "It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry", says Burt Rutan. Who he? Look at the presentation.

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This is good! - by Richard...

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Creeping up - by Richard...

Lead item in The Times (online) is the story of railway engineer Rajendra Pachaur promising a "UN inquiry" on Climategate. The issue is definitely creeping up the media agenda. When are we going to hear calls for a postponement of the Copenhagen slugfest though – pending the outcome of the inquiry?

Despite this, at 15:00 hrs, the TWI stood at 9,254 (30,400,000 - 3,285), an increase from this morning's figure of 9,137 (29,400,000 – 3,218), – suggesting that the MSM is not only still way behind the curve (unadjusted, without the 30-year smoothing), but dropping even further behind, as web interest intensifies at an even faster rate.

Delingpole is having fun - as usual – and Booker is, as we speak – preparing another "formidable article" for Sunday. In the meantime, Al Gore – ever in tune with public opinion - is telling us that the Copenhagen targets are "not tough enough" – even though he will not be there in person to make his case.

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Not puzzling at all - by Richard...

"Plans to review permitted alcohol levels for drivers would have no impact on criminally irresponsible individuals who routinely drive while well over the limit," says The Daily Telegraph leader. "It is therefore puzzling that Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, wants to reopen this debate," it then observes.

No it isn't puzzling – it isn't puzzling at all. This is an EU initiative. It goes right back to May 2004 when the EU decided it wanted common drink-driving limits. Only, instead of coming out in the open, it is pushing for each member state "voluntarily" to impose harmonised standards, and only then will it issue a Directive, claiming that this is simply to regularise a position that already exists.

The EU commission is well-aware that bringing out a harmonising Directive at this stage would trigger a huge wave of protest and anti-EU sentiment, so it is working behind the scenes, with a threat that, unless the member states comply "voluntarily" it will push for a new law.

The whole agenda was set out in 2002 (138 pages .pdf) - a project called "ESCAPE", which plans EU-wide traffic law harmonisation and common enforcement standards. The drink-drive limit is only one of the proposals. Standard speed limits, random breath-testing and uniform fines are all proposed.

As always, though, the papers cannot see what id in front of their very eyes – hence the leader writer finding the current government action "puzzling". These people are children when it comes to understanding how our government now works.

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