Le GIEC est mort - by Richard... Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Le GIEC est mort - by Richard... Tuesday, February 02, 2010

In Le Monde today - Le GIEC est mort, vive le débat! par Drieu Godefridi.

I rather like the idea of the IPCC being called the "GIEC" (Groupe d'experts intergouvernemental sur l'évolution du climat) in France – pronounced "GEEK", it sort of brings it home to you what we are dealing with, especially when Pachauri becomes Chef de GIEC.

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Death wish - by Richard...

Lord Stern as a Tory advisor? There can be no other explanation – the Tories want to lose the next election. We will be happy to assist them in that endeavour, although from the look of it, they need very little help.

It is also covered in The Daily Telegraph - absolutely unbelievable ... just as the whole global warming scam is falling apart, the Tories re-affirm their commitment to it. You could not have better evidence that the hierarchy is completely out of touch with events.

At least in the United States, the Republicans (some of them) are beginning to stir, beginning to recognise that climate change is a major political issue - although the US media have yet to rise from their slumber. But here, with the media increasingly hostile to the scam, the Cameron tendency is living in a world of its own. I do not think I can every recall a time when the "disconnect" has been greater.

A political party has been reborn: ABC - Anyone But Cameron. You can't say "Conservative". By no stretch of the imagination is Cameron a Conservative.

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Climbing down - by Richard...

If Sir David King had that mysterious quality of prestige yesterday, he has a whole load less of it today.

The Guardian (again!) does the honours, recording Sir David pontificating that: "The operation looked amazingly efficient and amazingly sophisticated. It looks very much like an intelligence operation."

But, the paper says coyly, "it emerged that he had been misinformed about key facts." Misinformed? The man was talking out of his rear end, from a standpoint of total ignorance. However ...

One of his grounds for believing a high-powered team of professionals were behind the leak, he said, was that there had been a wide spread of emails going back decades "between very different people". He told The Independent: "The emails date back to 1996, so someone was collecting the data over many years."

But, as UEA confirmed today, all the files and emails were archived on a single backup server on the Norwich campus. Once access was gained, it would have been simple to copy all the material.

That is exactly what Lance Levsen had surmised – and furthermore, Guardian inquiries indicate police investigators have no evidence of foreign intelligence involvement.

Similarly, we are told, the fact that the leaked files were originally posted on a Russian server, and links to them came from servers in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, does not prove the operation was "highly sophisticated".

Computer hackers say that there are simple pieces of software which can divert a file through layers of so-called open proxy servers. One called TOR can be downloaded from the internet. It renders the origin of the message anonymous.

Thus, from the initial days, when the Mail on Sunday was hyperventilating about Russian agents, we see "a marked change of emphasis" on the part of police and information commissioner investigators.

While the University of East Anglia, which had called in the police, talked about illegal hacking and "theft of data", the police now say that they are investigating "criminal offences in relation to a data breach."

There are an awful lot of people going to have to eat their words over this affair, especially R K Pachauri, who has gone along with the rest of the warmists, alleging "theft" and all sorts of dire conspiracies.

For the moment, though, we can be content with the fact that the great Sir David King has made a complete fool of himself – and has been "outed" by The Guardian.

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The para-governmental organisation - by Richard... Monday, February 01, 2010

Autonomous Mind draws attention to the enthusiasm for climate change measures on the part of Big Oil – and Shell in particular. He reminds us that oil companies are making a fortune out of global warming, and are very much part of the consensus.

Meanwhile, John Rosenthal writing in Pajamasmedia puts the WWF under the spotlight, pointing out that the organisation soaks up so much government money – including a small fortune from the EU – that it should no longer be called an NGO. It is a para governmental organisation (PGO).

In July 2007, we came to the same conclusion about Friends of the Earth Europe, which we called a quasi governmental organisation.

That label didn't stick, and I think I prefer PGO. I hope that does catch on. To describe this wholly new form of organisation as an NGO is a misrepresentation.

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Another crack - by Richard...

Fred Pearce, the New Scientist of "Glaciergate" fame (his 1999 article having been quoted by the WWF 2005 paper), is in The Guardian today, with two linked stories, based on an analysis of the "Climategate" e-mails.

The stories can be found here and here, questioning the work done by Jones et al, of CRU fame, on the Chinese urban heat island effect.

The remarkable aspects of these reports are, firstly, that Pearce is a staunch "warmist" who has been in the forefront of hyping up climate alarmism. Secondly, this appears to be the first occasion where an MSM journalist has initiated his own investigation on the "Climategate" e-mails. Thirdly, the stories are published in the temple of "warmism", The Guardian.

Pearce, as one might expect, stresses that the findings do not change the global picture of temperature trends, quoting his source saying, "My interest in all this arises from concern about research integrity, rather than about global warming per se. Jones knew there were serious problems with the Chinese research, yet continued to rely upon the research in his work, including allowing it to be cited in the IPCC report."

This, nevertheless, is another major crack in the dam, a damning indictment of Jones, the CRU and, indirectly, the IPCC. The edifice is tottering.

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The power of prestige - by Richard...

Dominating the front page of The Independenttoday was a hokum story about the "hacking" of the "Climategate" e-mails being the work of a national intelligence service.

The Mail on Sunday tried this on last December, which we challenged at the time, but the most masterful and comprehensive debunking came from Lance Levsen, a network analyst, who posted his arguments on the blog Small Dead Animals.

Levsen then decided that the simplest explanation was that someone at UEA (University of East Anglia) found the incriminating folder and released it to the wild.

The release of FOIA2009.zip wasn't because of some hacker, he decided, but because of a leak from UEA by a person with scruples. In other words, the evidence points to a whistleblower - an inside job - rather than a hacker, and certainly not a national intelligence service.

Against this, one might ask what induced The Independent to dredge up a tired old story, but the explanation is not difficult to find. In its leading article, it refers to the source, "an eminent figure in the climate field, the former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King." The paper continues: 

Sir David is not claiming that he possesses hard evidence to support this assertion. Nevertheless, the lightest word of a man who held a position such as he did is heavy.

And, in that last sentence lies the explanation what is going on, which we see courtesy of a nineteenth Century writer, Gustave Le Bon . Sir David possess the quality to which he gives the name of "prestige". Explaining the effect of this quality, Le Bon goes on to tell us – and I quote in full, given its importance and clarity:

Great power is given to ideas propagated by affirmation, repetition, and contagion by the circumstance that they acquire in time that mysterious force known as prestige.

Whatever has been a ruling power in the world, whether it be ideas or men, has in the main enforced its authority by means of that irresistible force expressed by the word “prestige.” 

The term is one whose meaning is grasped by everybody, but the word is employed in ways too different for it to be easy to define it. Prestige may involve such sentiments as admiration or fear. 

Occasionally even these sentiments are its basis, but it can perfectly well exist without them. The greatest measure of prestige is possessed by the dead, by beings, that is, of whom we do not stand in fear — by Alexander, Cæsar, Mahomet, and Buddha, for example.

On the other hand, there are fictive beings whom we do not admire — the monstrous divinities of the subterranean temples of India, for instance — but who strike us nevertheless as endowed with a great prestige.

Prestige in reality is a sort of domination exercised on our mind by an individual, a work, or an idea. This domination entirely paralyses our critical faculty, and fills our soul with astonishment and respect.

The sentiment provoked is inexplicable, like all sentiments, but it would appear to be of the same kind as the fascination to which a magnetised person is subjected. Prestige is the mainspring of all authority. Neither gods, kings, nor women have ever reigned without it.

The various kinds of prestige may be grouped under two principal heads: acquired prestige and personal prestige. Acquired prestige is that resulting from name, fortune, and reputation. It may be independent of personal prestige.

Personal prestige, on the contrary, is something essentially peculiar to the individual; it may coexist with reputation, glory, and fortune, or be strengthened by them, but it is perfectly capable of existing in their absence.

Acquired or artificial prestige is much the most common. The mere fact that an individual occupies a certain position, possesses a certain fortune, or bears certain titles, endows him with prestige, however slight his own personal worth. 

A soldier in uniform, a judge in his robes, always enjoys prestige. Pascal has very properly noted the necessity for judges of robes and wigs. Without them they would be stripped of half their authority. The most unbending socialist is always somewhat impressed by the sight of a prince or a marquis; and the assumption of such titles makes the robbing of tradesmen an easy matter.

The prestige of which I have just spoken is exercised by persons; side by side with it may be placed that exercised by opinions, literary and artistic works, &c. Prestige of the latter kind is most often merely the result of accumulated repetitions.

History, literary and artistic history especially, being nothing more than the repetition of identical judgments, which nobody endeavours to verify, every one ends by repeating what he learnt at school, till there come to be names and things which nobody would venture to meddle with.

For a modern reader the perusal of Homer results incontestably in immense boredom; but who would venture to say so? The Parthenon, in its present state, is a wretched ruin, utterly destitute of interest, but it is endowed with such prestige that it does not appear to us as it really is, but with all its accompaniment of historic memories.

The special characteristic of prestige is to prevent us seeing things as they are and to entirely paralyse our judgment. Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects.

The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by their prestige.

And there we have it. If you have "prestige", like Sir David, you can get away with talking any old tosh, and still be revered. If, like Lance Levsen, you have enormous experience and knowledge, produce a brilliant analysis and come to the best and most reasoned conclusion possible, but lack that essential "prestige", you will be ignored.

"The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by their prestige," writes Le Bon. And that is why the IPCC and Dr Pachauri get away with it ... they too have "prestige".

That is why the likes of Anthony Watts and the many others who are attacking the science cannot prevail. Theirs is a necessary but not sufficient endeavour. This is not about science but "prestige". Their own "prestige" is trumped a thousand-fold. The only sure way to destroy the scam is to rob the players of that vital quality, their own "prestige".

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Follow the money - by Richard...

This time, make the link with the BBC. Biased BBC spills the beans.

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