Saturday 5 February 2011



With that headline, Fox News knows exactly what it is doing – and the shrieks of "it's weather, not climate" can be heard clear across the Atlantic. The storm is not quite as bad as this one (photo below), but it's getting pretty close – and that was in November 1940 at the start of the little cooling.




And the warmists can peddle their damage limitation, with their increasingly absurd claims that the cold and the snow and the ice and the blizzards and the storms and the frostbite are all a natural part of global warming. But their protestations are drowned in sniggers and howls of mirth. And that's one of the reasons why the warmists just hate Fox News.

COMMENT THREAD

I was looking for suitable pic to go with the "open thread" (pronounced "fred" in the part of the world where I was born and bred, where they still speak proppa). And google images came up with this. There is a story here, but I'm not actually sure I want to know it.

Anyhow, it seemed a nice colourful attention grabber to go with a post which is there for you to put anything you wish on the comments, without let or hindrance, subject to divine retribution if you break any of the rules, most of which we haven't even made up yet. The last open thread, I thought, went quite well, but – as they do – it gets stale, so here we go.

COMMENT THREAD

It is open again, for a brief period, for anyone who missed out last time, and wants to register ... subject, as always, to the usual caveats.

My team of gifted helpers are as we speak thinking about ways to improve the presentation of the forum, but unless you think differently, it seems to me that it is an effective way of opening up the "conversation", and ate least we have a corner of the internet which is troll-free.

I have again to express my thanks for the high quality of the comment, and the continued support. For other bloggers, I have to say that I have no objection to you posting your own links on the forum ... and I'll try to make more "open threads" available for that and general purposes.

COMMENT THREAD

Mary Ellen Synon has her finger on the pulse. More to the point, she is fingering Charlie Boy as a rabid Europhile. There was a belief once that he was one of us ... believe no more. He is one of them ... the tumbrels await.

COMMENT THREAD


In the increasingly bizarre Daily Failygraph there is a story which its shares with its stable mates, the unloved Independent and the BBC's house journal, The Guardian. This is about the "record drought" in part of the Amazon, a hilarious contribution to the Komik Korner put out by "tropical forest expert Simon Lewis", at the University of Leeds, which he and his mates have been touting since November last. This means that his WWF paymasters can't be far behind.

The cause of this terrible drought - which is causing the trees to give off masses of life-threatening "carbon" - is, as if you didn't already know, increased CO2 emissions. This has Lewis - who led "research" published in the ironically-named journal Science - happily dribbling: "Put starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world's largest forest."

As a seasoned polemicist, though, Lewis covers his back by noting that, " significant scientific uncertainties remain and that the 2010 and 2005 drought – thought then to be of once-a-century severity – might yet be explained by natural climate variation." Of course, the el Nino/la Nina cycle might just have something to do with this, but you will struggle to find any mention of this.

Instead, we learn that Lewis and his little mates "are now trying to raise £500,000 in emergency funding to revisit the plots in the Amazon and gather further data" – which is of course the whole purpose of the exercise, to keep the chaps in lolly-pop money.


But what brings this into the arena of the surreal, though, is that the chaps are featuring Manaus and the River Negro for their horror story. They forget to tell us, of course, that in 2009, the very same area suffered from floods which were being described as the worst for 56 years. The Negro river rose to 88.32 feet, just short of the 1953 record (pictured - see also pics here). But – and you guessed it - this was "caused by climate change".

Where droughts do the damage in the Amazon is when you get a succession of them, and the soil dries out. Otherwise they are part of the normal cycle, and the forests prove remarkably resilient to them – as the likes of Lewis well know. But when funds and jollies beckon, and paymasters have an agenda to sell, any old tripe will do. Sadly, there are any number of komiks which will print it.

We then also get the BBC groupie Richard Black using the opportunity to revisit Amazongate, peddling the usual distortions with such a fevered intensity that it can only confirm the warmists' sensitivities and how much that little outing hurt them.

Thus, they keep coming back and back to it, like picking an old scab off a wound. But then they have to. Strip their little fantasy away and they have nothing. They would then have to go out and get proper jobs. That would never do.


The real dishonesty of all this, though, is that Manaus (pictured above) is the state capital, and while you get the impression from carefully selected photographs of an unspoiled wilderness, asthis article explores, the region is under intense population pressure, with major areas of forest clearance, man-made fires and, of course, high water usage, which adds to the pressure on resources.

As a major heat island, the city itself is contributing to the local climate, changing it from a tropical rain forest environment to a crowded urban landscape and intensive agriculture. Lewis and his little mates will never mention this, of course. Their agenda comes first. Any pretence of science went out of the window a long time ago.

COMMENT THREAD


One link I intended to put up the other day, and never got round to it was this one, from the blogNourishing Obscurity. It takes on an issue close to the heart of this blog – the "false prophets" of Hannan and Carswell, and their increasingly untenable positions as faux eurosceptics and members of Cameron's not-the-Conservative Party.

The Judas Goat meme is doing quite well, with several spontaneous references to it on Hannan's blog comments. The "golden boy" is losing some of its shine.

And in case you are wondering about the pic, it's a "Judas Goat" – a USAAF B-24 in high visibility colours that was used as a formation leader, for bombers to formate on before they set off on a mission. Once the formations were set up, the "Judas Goat" would bugger off back to the safety of the base, while the rest of the bombers would fly on to face the slaughter of the German guns and fighters. 'Bout right for Myrtle, methinks.

COMMENT THREAD


After an epic winter storm on Wednesday buried more than a third of the United States in drifting snow, sleet and ice, the State of Texas suffered the embarrassing inconvenience of having serious electricity supply problems, even though most areas were not directly affected by the bad weather.

The problems arose when 7,000 megawatts of generating capacity tripped out on Tuesday night, leaving the state short of capacity equivalent to that required to power about 1.4 million homes. Suppliers had to resort to "rotating outages", which avoided total blackouts.

WUWT has been quick to point out that Texas as a state has been a wind power enthusiast, and that the supply problems coincided with a period of very cold temperatures and light winds – exactly the conditions which prevailed in the UK over Christmas.

While the implications for British energy supply are obvious, as long as our fool leaders continue to push for increased wind power, in this case Texas has had the double embarrassment of having to go cap-in-hand to Mexico's state electricity company for extra power.

Even then, it was only able to supply 280 megawatts, a mere fraction of what Texas needs, but it was better than nothing. For once, a Mexican "invasion" has been welcomed, and old enmities have been forgotten (pictured). One wonders, however, what JR Ewing might have made of it and whether, with the resurrection of the series Dallas, "rotating outages" will feature in the script, alongside idle windmills.

What a different world we have from the original "Dallas", which ran from 1978 to 1991 and set a record viewership of 90 million, the days when oil ruled supreme, greens were for wimps and JR wouldn't have been seen dead near a windmill.

COMMENT THREAD

Autonomous Mind was referring to the Met Office, which is providing him with no end of stories. But it could just as well apply to the blog itself. Far too much of value to single out one post ... go look for yourselves. This is "added value" blogging as it should be.


I have been exceedingly reluctant to write about Egypt, even though the subject is one that naturally falls within the remit of this blog – the very simple reason being that I do not have enough information to understand what is going on there, and therefore have very little to add to the torrent of news (and misinformation) pouring out of the region.

It was more than a little interesting, therefore, to see the headline from CNN, which proclaims that Egypt is: "a 'heartwrenching' and 'complex' diplomacy issue for US". Never truer words have been spoken, particularly the "complex" bit.

The one thing of which I am absolutely certain of this issue is that we have very little idea of what is really going on. Much of what we are told is wrong or misleading. I was thus minded to revisit my own writing in April 2008, when we last saw tumultuous rioting in Egypt. Then, I found that I wrote:
Diving in to a subject when blessed with supreme ignorance is very easy and rewarding. Fortified with indignation and innate prejudice, one can so easily come up with solutions that all the other idiots – the so-called "experts" – have missed, and then rail at their inability to see the obvious. That is something to which this blogger is particularly prone ...
Thus diving in, my suspicion is that what we are seeing now is the unfinished business, left over from 2008, when all the conditions which then so nearly led to a revolution still pertain, only more so. Whatever the proximate causes of the unrest – then it was put down to food shortages – the real causes are the underlying stresses in this troubled country. But these were manifest in the 1952 revolution which brought in Col. Nasser (pictured), and still have to be resolved.

In 1967 and again in 1972, Egypt sought to divert and entertain its peoples by focusing hatred on Israel, and embarking on a series of adventures, in the former event under the banner of pan-Arab unity. Since then, of course, with much water passing under the bridge, the country has internalised. This started happening when the 1979 peace deal was brokered with Israel, and the country was forced to confront its own problems. But, more than 30 years later, it has not even begun to solve them.

What very few people understand is the extent to which the peace deal was bought and sustained by US dollars. Egypt was then and still is kept afloat by US aid. This is what I pointed out in my 2008 article. But in the manner of things, a Band-Aid on a suppurating sore serves only to conceal the decay, without in any way offering a remedy. Now, as the sore erupts, the aid bandage can no longer contain it.

At the heart of the current violence, then, is probably exactly the same things that were at the heart of the violence in 2008, when I was writing this piece, of which I am still quite proud (if one is allowed such base emotions as pride, these days).

We had in 2008, a corrupt, inefficient, badly governed nation, with gross inequalities, injustice and misery – with very little hope of change under the then current administration. But in 1952 we had a corrupt, inefficient, badly governed nation, with gross inequalities, injustice and misery. We have in 2011 the same. Nothing of that has changed and, one suspects nothing will change, other than that invading Israel is no longer an immediate option.

Thus we will see the children of the '52 revolution devouring themselves - the inevitable and predictable consequence of decades of missed opportunity and adventurism. That brings in the "heartwrenching" – which indeed it is. The tragedy has yet to play itself out.

COMMENT THREAD


I'm on a writing jag at the moment, powering ahead with the third chapter of the Battle of Britain book half-written. It requires bursts of total concentration, when you temporarily inhabit a completely different world. Coming out of that, into the present and looking at the news, you are brought back with a jolt, wondering which one of the worlds you are inhabiting is the real one.

Can it really be true, you wonder, that the administration spent £1.85 million from its foreign aid budget to help pay for the pope's state visit last year? I think we did know that, actually. The news comes out of a parliamentary select committee and you don't really expect those little dears to be on the ball.

But if this is fantasy land, what price the report in The Independent which is telling us that Europe nations must bridge a €2.2trillion (£1.9trn) "carbon capital chasm" if they are to meet 2020 carbon emissions reduction targets? This is supposed to be about two percent of Europe's total GDP, but it would almost certainly only be the down payment if the greenies had their way.

That, of course, is why we take global warming so seriously on this blog. The greenie push for subjugation to their Gods represents a real and present danger, an existential threat - i.e., one to our very way of life. Over lesser issues, nations have gone to war, and we in our own way are fighting a war. The travails over the Booker comments might seem like jolly japes, but the fight for their domination is part of that overall battle which could determine our very survival.

One does begin to wonder, though, whether we deserve to survive, to judge by this story in theDaily Express today. It tells us of "disturbing figures" released yesterday showed UK windfarms last year operated at only 24 percent of their capacity. And during the bitter pre-Christmas period the figure, we are told, "fell as low as 5.8 percent efficiency" because there was so little wind.

There is nothing basically wrong with the story, except that if that represents the level of knowledge of the newspaper, to the extent that it thinks this is news – even Loupy Loo having done it for the Daily Failygraph - then we are so far behind the curve that we will be meeting it coming the other way.

One also cringes at the terminology. We are not talking about 5.8 percent "efficiency" here, but load factor, which is an altogether different thing. You do expect hacks to get these things right. They are not complicated. The sloppiness here is bad journalism and makes the writers look incompetent.

And, by the way, there were times when output fell notionally to zero, which would have added an extra dimension to the story, especially as in all probability the wind turbines were actually drawing current off the grid, to keep the blades rotating and de-iced.

However, the story gives me the opportunity to use the pic. I think it is stolen from WUWT, although I'm not sure, as one of my readers sent it to me via e-mail and I'm too tired to check. (Turns out it was on WUWT ... details here - an interesting story ... it's a dodgy old business this subsidy farming.)

A lot of people, even Mrs EU Referendum herself I sometimes suspect, don't realise how exhausting writing is. They see you sitting down in a comfy chair, in a warm room with a cup of coffee, tapping away at the laptop and it must look so cushty. But after a day at the keyboard, I sometimes feel more tired than after a full day of strenuous physical work.

However, the idea of collapsing bird choppers is enough to sustain me, long enough to get this piece finished and fall into bed. Another day, and other battles will shortly beckon. Even then, I have this waking nightmare that Euroslime Dave has appointed as his new publicity chief the former head of BBC global news. This can't be true ... that would be another existential threat, and we can only take one of those at a time.

COMMENT THREAD


Reaction to the Monckton stitch-up goes on. There is a lot I'd agree with in this review. Monckton is not the only climate sceptic in town – he does not represent "us", whoever "us" might be, and many people with sceptic views feel uneasy about his bombast and his faux scientific certainty. But it is classic BBC tactics to pick on the easiest target, create a straw man and knock it down.

We have been here before, you know. This is the game they played with the EU/euro debate. The BBC has an unerring ability to spot the "swivel-eyed loon" and build them up. The "mark", usually with an over-inflated ego, is invariably flattered and falls for it every time. Monckton fitted the bill admirably, and the hatchet job proceeded apace.

The worst of it is that the BBC can now say it has "done" climate scepticism. It has given the issue a full airing, it will say, and now it can get back to making "proper" programmes about the effects of dangerous climate change and the need for action.

That, probably, was the real agenda. The BBC was creating its own alibi, constructing its pathway for the future where it can maintain its own myth of "impartiality", and carry on just as before. Unwittingly, Monckton has served them well - "proving" the point that sceptics are a bunch of right-wing nutters who can safely be ignored.

Incidentally, the programme is now on i-player.

COMMENT: "STITCHED-UP" THREAD


The joke that The Daily Telegraph webspace has become continues apace. Yet allowing one troll to stack up over 900 disruptive and insulting comments in the space of 48 hours is only part of the problem. This has become the norm on the Delingpole column:
bjedwards: Otherwise Engaged wins today's Loony Denialist of The Day award.

colrouge: bjedwards "Otherwise Engaged wins today's Loony Denialist of The Day award."

as reported by one of Lenins Useful Idiots

benfrommo: Do you bite my funny little parrot? I would like to feed you a cracker, but don't want my fingers bit.

I also want to know why I never get to win the loony denialist of the day award ... is that because I never feed you crackers?

otherwise engaged: Blowjob Edturd wins the unemployable 7 buck an hour shill for the greentard investment company's award for the year.

dozzer: Oh, goody. Giving out prizes, Beej? Can it be a snow-globe?

bjedwards: Just another kick of your butt, dozzer.
You can take a view on this, one being that it does not matter – that it is not important. The fact is, though, that this is the website of a national newspaper, one with supposedly a reputation for serious comment and some authority.

It has become unmanaged space – the above being the inevitable result. Why is the newspaper sponsoring the equivalent of a pub brawl? If it is not prepared to manage its own websites, why bother having comments at all?

COMMENT REMOVED THREAD


We have to offer half a cheer, I suppose, to "veteran" Tory MP Peter Bone. Described as a "eurosceptic", he has been seeking in parliament to "give the British people the right to have an in/out referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union".

This brave endeavour, which now joins the list of heroic failures such as Bill Cash trying to get his Bill passed, on whatever it was he was trying to get passed, whenever it was that he was last doing it – if not before.

Bone is a particularly powerful qualifier for the list, having sought to add an amendment to the Tory joke European Union Bill, which pretends to give us the option of a referendum if more powers are ceded to the EU – not withstanding that every time an EU Directive or a Regulation is passed, more powers are ceded to the EU ... and we're not going to get a referendum.

What was on offer was an in-out referendum in the event of the first referendum delivering a "no" vote. This was always going to be a forlorn hope but what propels Bone to the top of that list is that his attempt was defeated by 295 votes to 26, giving the Cleggeron administration a majority 269.

Labour former minister Kate Hoey, a supporter of Bone's attempt, said the "establishment" parties "do not want the British people to have a say on whether to stay in or move out of the European Union". You don't say!

Bone and his (very few) supporters do, of course, mean well – and they give great heart to the eurosceptic mob. For that, they cannot be faulted. But one does wonder about the tactical acumen of a group of supposed politicians who have achieved nothing other than to show how weak the eurosceptic movement is in parliament - as if we did not know already.

That may not be the message they intended to give but you can be pretty sure that Euroslime Dave is sleeping easier in his bed now. Not that he probably ever gave a rat's posterior anyway, or ever needed to. Given the tactical plays with which he is confronted, he has no problems. But then, as long as the mob has got its Bone, it's happy as well.

COMMENT THREAD

It gets better ... Autonomous Mind completes the current episode in the Met Office drama. "You couldn't make it up," is a somewhat hackneyed phrase to use in this situation. But there's a reason why you couldn't make it up. That's because the Met Office got there first ... they did.

COMMENT: MET OFFICE THREAD


That diminishing band of us who celebrate having memories of slightly greater capacity than the proverbial goldfish in a bowl will recall what a big deal the Tories made out of the shortage of helicopters for our troops in Afghanistan – even though the need was vastly overstated.

Such was the political pressure, though, that the then Labour government allowed itself to be bounced into ordering a further 20 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters to augment operations – unwisely in my view. These were cut to 12 in the defence review, and that was thought to be the end of the matter.

How interesting it is, therefore, to learn from the left-leaning Daily Mirror that the self-same helicopters "promised to troops in Afghanistan" may be axed by the Tories. And if that is too partisan a source, then one should note that the Financial Times is also pointing out that there is a "question mark" over the order. The Guardian has also picked up the issue.

I said at the time that the Tories were playing politics and they were pushing the wrong debate, for the wrong reasons. So it turns out to be – a classic example of political opportunism.

It then becomes doubly interesting to see how quiet the media are being about this volte face, especially the gung-ho, Tory-supporting Sun, which thought nothing was too much for "Our Boys", as long as pointing this out embarrassed Labour.

When the account of the current Afghan campaign comes to be written, it might then be remarked how quick the media and the Tories were to make political capital out of the military problems in theatre, when it suited them, but how little they actually did care, and how quickly the Tories forgot their concerns once they were in what passes for power.

COMMENT THREAD


Richard Norton-Taylor - who is a somewhat pompous bore but nevertheless reasonably competent, for a Guardian journalist (which isn't saying very much) - is ruminating on why revolutions such as Tunisia's (and the situation in Egypt) come as such a surprise.

The answer he comes up with is nothing particularly new or surprising, but it is neatly put. Diplomats and intelligence agencies, the strap to his piece reads, often tell ministers what they want to hear – and overvalue secret sources of information

Secret intelligence services, naturally enough, writes Norton-Taylor, want to emphasise secret intelligence – a product which only they, in their special and privileged role, can offer. As a result, they have seriously underestimated what can be gleaned from "open sources".

This came out in the Franks report into the Argentinean invasion of the Falklands in 1982. More accurate and timely information could be gleaned about the Junta's intentions from local newspapers than from British secret agents in Latin America, it said.

Norton-Taylor reminds us that Britain's diplomats and spooks, in common with all western intelligence agencies, also spectacularly failed to foresee the fall of the Berlin wall. Thus, he says, they must in future pay much more attention to "open sources", what they can hear on the Arab street, and what they can read, notably on the internet.

That last comment has a particular resonance and applied in spades when I was researching forMinistry of Defeat. Iraqi insurgents were especially internet savvy so that, while MSM defence correspondents were so often relying on MoD briefings, I was able to tap into their daily reports of activities.

These, and other internet sources – including Middle East media reports - often proved surprisingly consistent and accurate, far more so than British media and the MoD. As a result, I ended up better informed, in some respects, than the people who were actually in the country (but miles away from the action).

But this does not only apply to exotic situations. Anyone who relies merely – or even mainly – on the MSM for their "take" on what is happening in this country, or for their general news of events, would end up very seriously ill-informed. Yet it remains the case that the political "set" in this country rely for their information on such conventional sources, and are still unduly influenced by the MSM.

However, we cannot leave it there, without also referring to what could be called mindset myopia. Our "élites" very often do not realise what is happening because they already think they know, and therefore do not avail themselves of credible information sources, because they believe they know better. They don't look for information because they don't see the need for it. And that is what really catches them out.

Either way, when our revolution eventually arrives – in whatever form it finally takes – our politicians and other agencies will also be caught by surprise. If they had the ability to see it coming, they would also have the ability to head it off.

Almost by definition, therefore, revolutions must always come as a surprise to those at whom they are aimed. The happen because those people are so out of touch that they are capable of being surprised.

COMMENT THREAD

The Purple Scorpion has an extremely good "take" on last night's climate sceptic documentary. What it is to have a classical education (sort of) ... sigh!

COMMENT: "STITCHED-UP" THREAD

It doesn't sound much. But this website is telling is that the ice pack which is created in the north of the Okhotsk Sea and then is blown down the coast of northern Sakhalin before reaching the Shiretoko coast in the north of Hokkaido, actually arrived in Japanese waters three days earlier than the annual average – on 29 January.

Despite the warmists and their troll friends on numerous websites trying to make out that the Okhotsk Sea ice pack was perfectly normal for this time of year, this source – which relies on data from the Japanese Ibuki satellite project(pictured: enlarged view here click pic when it has loaded) – is telling us that something abnormal was happening in the region.

Ice extent reports also have to be assessed in the context of strident complaints about the decline in the icepack, which was first observed in 1989. Since then, we are told, it "has never recovered to its former levels" – except perhaps now, when it is above average for the time of year.

Certainly, while reports of two-metre ice thickness were being made, scientific modelling in the Sakhalin area seems to suggests that mean maximum annual ice thickness is in the order of 108 cm, of which 70 cm is "congelation ice" and 38 cm is snow–ice, formed later in the season when the heaviest snowfalls are experienced.

As the inquiry into the cause of the Okhotsk Sea crisis now begins to get underway, there must be some explanation for why apparently experienced skippers of major vessels allowed themselves to become trapped in the ice. Having become used to the pack coming late in the Gulf of Sakhalin, where the ships were stranded, the skippers may have been caught out by the ice arriving unusually earlier, or being much thicker than expected.

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS


If you had a site that had four million people attempting to log on at a rate of 75,000 people a minute, I guess you would be mightily pleased. But, seeing as it was a public service website - showing the locations of reported crimes - the server crashed.

From this, one can deduce several things. The first and most obvious is that, despite being the most expensively funded online content suppliers in the world, the public sector remains totally useless at managing its own websites – possibly even worse than The Daily Telegraph.

Secondly, it shows how much online traffic is generated when an issue is well-publicised and it is of public concern. A flow rate of 75,000 a minute is pretty good by UK standards.

Mind you, there is nothing to say that all were UK residents, or that they were actually genuinely interested in their local crime statistics. The top-scoring comment on the Mail website asked why Downing Street was not on the list, while the second-best rated comment (from a reader in the Netherlands) noted that it "should be at the top off the list for sure as they have been robbing us for years!!"

The third point is more sombre. For this blog to get 75,000 hits in a week would be exceptionally good (although we have done better). That a site can get that much traffic in a minute, and on its first day of business, suggests that we might have a little way to go before we reach our full potential. We are still grovelling in the weeds.

COMMENT THREAD

Or, as Autonomous Mind has found out, the Met Office's seasonal forecasts, which are no longer forecasts, are actually forecasts - except that they aren't ... for the purposes of presentation. Or, in Met-speak - if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and implements bowel evacuation procedures in a duck-like manner ... it's a horse.

Read also the two previous posts on the AM site. You begin to get a picture that everything is not quite right in this world of ours.

COMMENT: MET OFFICE THREAD