Where is the evidence? - by Richard... Sunday, June 27, 2010

Where is the evidence? - by Richard... Sunday, June 27, 2010

Booker has taken on board the "Amazongate" developments in this week's column. Interestingly, rather than me, it was Booker who suggested "going big" on the issue this week, his motivation in part being the intervention by George Monbiot, who has been his usual charmless self, parading the ugly face of warmism in all its triumphant ghastliness.

Monbiot, however, is but one of the warmist community who has leapt upon the strange action byThe Sunday Times in disowning its own report and wrongly conceeding that there is peer-reviewed science that supports the IPCC claim on the Amazon in the fourth assessment report. Headed by the WWF, which is crowing that Amazongate has "evaporated", the group triumphalism served to emphasise the importance of the issues involved.

Returning to Monbiot, if he is bad (and he is), his warmist commentators are truly awful. They are aggressive and display a sneering attitude and an absolute determination to ignore any argument but their own or to concede any points of substance. Thus, despite the clear evidence, and the absence of evidence, the warmists will allow only a "referencing error" in the WWF report used by the IPCC, as the whole basis of "Amazongate".

Having entertained myself briefly on the Monbiot comment section (username: "spacedout") one finds a predictable pathway where patient exposition is ignored, distorted and mocked, the discourse eventually descending to the ad hominem with nothing whatsoever resolved. It is not possible to engage in a rational discussion with the warmist fraternity and I have withdrawn, simply because it is a complete waste of time. It is worse than that, in fact. One feels soiled by the experience.

With the aggressiveness displayed by the warmists, it would take little imagination to work out that The Sunday Telegraph would be more than a little nervous about entertaining the Booker theme. This is an issue where those who feel slighted are keen litigants, and where they have frequent recourse to the PCC – which has a recent history of favouring the warmists.

Thus, as one might also imagine, the newspaper would be cautious about imputing motives to those who are so keen to challenge "Amazongate", or allowing speculation as to the reasons why they are putting quite so much energy into damage control.

However, the reason for the sharp reaction is also not hard to work out. As we have previously indicated, this is about money. Saving the forests, and in particular the Amazon, is how climate change concern is "monetized", with potentially billions of dollars to be made from generating carbon credits from the rainforests.

This is one of the other things the Monbiot commentators do not seem to be able to deal with – the fact that the key players in the drama, the WWF and Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center, are far from disinterested players. They have strong connections and massive financial interests in talking up climatic Armageddon in the Amazon basin.

But what is disturbing is the narrowness of the arguments offered by the IPCC, which demonstrates how this aspect of climate science has fallen into the grip of a limited, self-interested clique of advocates (dominated by WWF). A broader view of the science - ignored by the IPCC - completely refutes the Armageddon scenario posited by Nepstad and his allies.

With such huge sums of money involved, though, it is unsurprising that the clique are devoting so much energy to trying to ensure that their view prevails. Booker today has recognised the importance of this attempt, and is standing firm. The clique now have a problem. Having bulliedThe Sunday Times into submission, they have to try the same with The Sunday Telegraph, or duck the challenge and pretend that their writ still holds.

Already, with Monbiot's intemperate views on record, they have made a series of tactical errors. If they now try it on again, they will find sterner stuff than the patsy Sunday Times. Whatever the WWF might say, and however much Monbiot might crow, Amazongate is alive and kicking. It most certainly has not "evaporated".

Comment: Moonbat/Corporate cowardice thread

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The wages of stupid? - by Richard... Saturday, June 26, 2010

In the continuing drama of the Afghan military adventure, Guy Adams of The Independent argues that McChrystal's minders blundered by underestimating a title with a history of heavyweight journalism. And that, he says, is how Rolling Stone was able to bring down a general.

Read more on DEFENCE OF THE REALM.

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Perverse consequences - by Richard...

How to get rich was our subject for discussion last December as we reported how the CFC scam, mainly in China and India, was making entrepreneurs obscenely rich out of selling carbon credits through the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Now, six months later, Le Monde has picked up exactly the same story (translation here), complaining that CFCs have become the main source of the CDM.

Half a billion tonnes of CO2 (equivalent) "saved" through the CDM between 2004-2012 have come from the destruction of HCF 23. As we pointed out in our piece, this is the by-product of HCF 22 production but so lucrative has the CDM business become that the by-product has become the product.

We now have the perverse consequences, says Le Monde, that because the price paid for the destruction of gas is up to 70 times the actual cost of production, it is being produced solely in order to generate carbon credits.

Manufacturers have increased their production, artificially and deliberately maintaining high levels of HCF 23 production which would not exist if there was no financial incentive from carbon credit sales. Furthermore, it is estimated that these abuses have allowed the industry to collect one billion dollars annually.

Thus, concludes Le Monde, we see the absurd situation in which one "device" of the UN – the Kyoto Protocol - encourages the production of a gas, while another "device" of the UN - the Montreal Protocol - seeks its eradication.

Only the greenies could invent such a stupid, malign system – a cash-making machine creating money out of nothing, all in the interests of "saving the planet". And then they keep schtum about it as money pours into the coffers of carbon traders and opportunists. Where is Moonbat when you really need him?

COMMENT THREAD

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A symbol of "Europe" - by Richard... Friday, June 25, 2010

The last time I looked seriously at Galileo, the EU's GPS vanity project, was in April 2008 when I was disputing the commission's then latest claim - that €3.4 billion of our money would be enough to get the system up and running.

The figure, like the system, was pure moonshine, I wrote. That €3.4 billion was nowhere near enough to get the full constellation launched and operational - €10 billion was closer the mark, with additional through-life costs to maintain the system.

A few months previously, I had carried a report from Der Spiegel that the project would cost at least €5 billion and perhaps even €10 billion. Spiegel had added that a secret German government study had concluded the overall cost would rise by €1.5 billion even under optimum conditions.

Now, guess what? Bloomberg has reported a claim by Le Monde that Galileo will need another €1.5 billion "on top of the already budgeted €3.4 billion", to become operational in 2013.

Needless to say, the Italian commissioner now in charge of the project, Antonio Tajani, declines to confirm the figure, saying the amount of the extra funding needed will not be finalised until September.

Then, that is hardly a surprise – the project has been built on a foundation of lies and deceit from word one. In November 2007, it was going to cost €2.4 billion. And in order to gain member state approval for the project, in 2001 the commission gave its "solemn guarantee" that "no more public money would be needed after 2007".

Three years later, the EU is still putting its hand out for more money – even after raiding the CAP budget (pictured) - and the cost has doubled (with no end point in sight). If ever there was a project to symbolise the "success" of the European Union, this has to be it.