The obvious question - by Richard... Thursday, September 02, 2010

The obvious question - by Richard... Thursday, September 02, 2010

The suspect, we are told, had previously served two weeks in jail after staging a protest against the channel's supposed lack of commitment to protecting the environment.

He entered the building in Silver Spring, Maryland at 1pm, waving a handgun and wearing explosives strapped to his body. Police decided to shoot the suspect after almost four hours when they believed the hostages' lives were in danger.

Why did they wait so long?

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Declining standards - by Richard...

When push comes to shove, it is totally unacceptable that an official report of the supposed status of the IPCC AR4 should produce work of a quality that would not be acceptable for a PhD thesis. Yet, as we see above, The Daily Telegraph (the egregious Louise Gray) is giving house room to an "Oxford academic" who argues that the poor little darlings who author the next report should not be burdened with "red tape" – when what he is actually complaining about is that they are being asked to stick to the rules that are imposed on PhD students.

It comes to something when Dr Myles Allen does not seem to know the difference between "bureaucracy" and academic rigour, although this is perhaps unsurprising given what is clearly evidence of a long-term decline in academic standards.

Interestingly, and perhaps spurred on by my piece, the Moonbat has come back into play, defending his hero Pachy. But for all his stridency, Moonbat has never even begun to address the issues. He simply relies on the joke report from KPMG to clear his hero.

What he therefore neglects is that Pachy is a man at the head of an international organisation, with offices (and bank accounts) all over the world. In the one instance that we were able to get to his accounts, those of TERI Europe, because they were under UK jurisdiction, we found that they had been falsified. Look at the "before" and now look at the "after" and you will see what I mean.

Given this behaviour from a man that is a proven liar, it would be rather foolhardy to assert on the basis of an extremely limited report, laced with caveats, that Pachauri is "innocent of financial misdealings". Not least, you would have to go through every bank account, in every country, carrying out a forensic audit, before you could be so bold as to make such a statement - if it was true.

But that is precisely what Moonbat does, which says all you need to know about him. He believes what he wants to believes. He then cherry-picks the "evidence" to support his case and ignores the rest. That is why you cannot engage with him and it is not worth arguing with him. He is yet more evidence of the inexorable decline in standards that is poisoning the well of public discourse.

And the worse of it all it that he is so far gone that he does not have the first inkling of quite how off the wall he has become - a pathetic figure worthy only of sympathy. But then, he is in good company - exactly what we would expect of his creed.

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My Goodness - by Richard... Wednesday, September 01, 2010

When Geoffrey Lean takes agin Pachy, the world is coming to an end for the old charlatan.

"No fall from grace has been so unforeseen as that of Gore's co-winner, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," says Lean, making you wonder where he has been all this time.

"Just two years after picking up the prize, the UN organisation – chiefly criticised until then for its caution in interpreting the growing evidence of climate change – was plunged into controversy, after it was found grossly to have exaggerated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers are melting," he adds.

There in the background is Amazongate and Africagate, and all the others - there but unspoken as the commentators freely talk about "errors" in the plural, forgetting how adamant Pachauri has been about there being only one mistake ... in the singular. This "one single error", he kept saying again and again. The others are "not errors", he says. See the video.

Moonbat looks pretty damn stupid with his comments and its interesting how quiet he is now. So, incidentally, does The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph. If only they had held out a little longer, it would have saved us all a lot of grief.

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A Continuation of Policy - by Richard...

There is much huffing and puffing about a proposal to share with the French one of the aircraft carriers currently being built for the Royal Navy.

This is being described as "barking mad" by military experts, a quote taken from the naïve Commander John Muxworthy, who thinks that the plan would jeopardise the UK's military independence and place security of the nation in the hands of France, our oldest enemy.

An MoD insider is also cited as saying that: "We could find ourselves in a very difficult situation if we wanted to carry out an operation using the French carrier, and it was blocked by politicians in Paris."

Well, these people want to wake up and smell the coffee. The whole thing is a done deal and has been since UK and French defence ministers (ours was Portaloo, I think) signed an agreement in 1996.

This was the UK/France Letter of Intent (LOI) on "co-operation and areas of mutual interest in maritime defence" and came as one of a series of agreements which was started by Major and carried on through the Blair administration with the St Malo agreement. It now picks up where it left off, with the Cleggerons.

Some of the highlights of this series are as follows:

On 30 October 1995, at RAF High Wycombe, they inaugurated the Franco-British Euro Air Group whose aim is to strengthen the two air forces’ interoperability, complementarity and ad hocplanning capabilities. On 1 January 1998, this became the European Air Group.

During the State visit in May 1996, M. Chirac and Mr Major signed a declaration of intent providing for the setting-up of the Franco-British Joint Commission on Peacekeeping, which is now working on a regular basis.

At the Bordeaux Summit in November 1996, France and Britain signed a letter of intent showing the extent of cooperation between the two navies. A year later, at the London Summit (6-7 November 1997), a similar procedure gave concrete shape to cooperation between the two armies.

The Saint-Malo summit in December 1998 saw the signing of a cooperation agreement on crisis management and operations and the issuing of a joint declaration on European defence. This initiative gave a major boost to the discussions on a European defence dimension, which is a priority for both governments.

At the Anglo-French annual summit in London on 25 November 99, the talks focused on European defence. A joint declaration sets out ambitious targets for strengthening European military capabilities.

Thus, we are back with the post-Maastricht agenda, where Major then agreed to an extension of European defence "co-operation", which was further strengthened at Nice and Amsterdam and then again with Lisbon.

Already, way back in 1996, the Major government agreed to formalise naval co-operation with the French, covering a "very wide range of activity", including operations. Twenty formal Working Groups were established under the direction of the British and French Chiefs of Naval Staff.

One of those working groups covered "Future Aircraft Carrier Development" and there was established an operations cell at the Commander in Chief Fleet Headquarters, Northwood. It is manned by French officers to facilitate liaison and co-operation between the Commander in Chief Fleet and CECLANT.

Of course, we wrote about this many times – but no-one took a blind bit of notice ... just the Eurosceptics, and North in particular, getting worked up about nothing. People have such short memories, and seem to forget the 2006 agreement on carrier development, when it all becamesettled policy.

After Blair, Gordon Brown was less enthusiastic but with Clegg and Cameron, the "project" is back on track. We are not getting anything new, but a continuation of policy which has been signalled very clearly at every step of the way. That it apparently comes as a shock is simply a reflection of nobody wanting to see what was in front of their very eyes. Now it is out in the open, they are all flapping their hands.

But one thing they have right - it doesn't make sense to share one carrier. The only logical thing to do is share all three – two UK and one French - to make it a joint force, complete with the escort group. And that is what has already been agreed. It is just a matter of time before we see it in action. European Navy here we come.

Expect now, also, that the JSF is junked and we end up buying the French Rafale. I always said this might happen, such as back in May 2008. Once again nobody took any notice.

But then we had all those assurances that Cameron was a "Eurosceptic". Surprise, surprise, the agenda goes on. Anybody who thought this was going to be different has their head stuck in the sand – or somewhere more odiferous. Nor does it make a blind bit of difference having 13th Century Fox in place as a supposed Eurosceptic. He is either too stupid to realise what is going on, or too ambitious to care.

In any event, it was always pre-ordained. There was nothing much he could have done about it as the agreements have already been signed. And Cameron has just made it certain. All those little Tory Boys who voted for him should hang their heads in shame.

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Missing the point - by Richard...

Now we have The Financial Times adding its voice to the throng, noting that the time has come for Rajendra Pachauri to move on. But one wearies of the follow-through suggestions that the IPCC "needs stronger leadership to maintain credibility".

The FT thus thinks that a rejuvenated IPCC leadership could tackle the deficiencies in its review process. It says this should become more inclusive, welcoming alternative views where these are scientifically valid, and at the same time more exclusive, rejecting unsubstantiated claims of dramatic change.

But the paper is wholly wrong. The whole point of AR4 is that if you strip out all the unsubstantiated claims, there is no case for the Armageddon scenario that its authors wished to portray.

It was in the absence of such material that they cast around for material that would support their case, whatever the provenance. The senior authors and editors knew exactly what they were doing, people like Martin Parry who were instrumental in setting it up.

Having Pachauri in place to back them up was all part of the grand scheme, and changing the leadership will not change the basis of the project. Of course he should go, but it would be better if he was not replaced and the collective of nations walked away from the IPCC.

The whole thing was based on a lie - is based on a lie. And, whatever leverage Carter Fuck might have been able to exercise on The Sunday Telegraph, the High Court in Delhi branded Pachauri a liar. Nothing will change that - the man is a consummate, practiced, serial liar, and he is head of the IPCC.

The thing about so many of the warmists in this context is that they think I am as stupid as they are. For sure, I make the odd mistake, get confused about some things and get some details wrong. But my underlying research is sound.

Thus, I would be perfectly happy to stand up in court and defend myself ... many people know of my role in the MacDonalds case and I could repeat the whole charade. It would cost them millions and me just my time - I have nothing else to lose.

It matters not whether they rise to the challenge though - they lose either way. The main accusations against Pachauri stand, and I would be seriously foolish if I had not also salted away some additional material, to use at the appropriate time.

And eventually the truth will out. Then there will be some reckoning because this thing has gone too far and cost too much for people simply to walk away and forget that it ever happened.