US: Shock Democrat loss in Massachusetts

20 January, 2010 by

Ex-Worst President

The party’s over for Obama. And how. Maybe it’s something to do with all spin and no substance (a bit like Kevin Rudd really), and promising to pay billions of US taxpayers money to third world countries to advance the cause of global socialism, er, “tackle climate change”:

At 9.20pm today, in Massachusetts, or 1.20pm on the Australian east coast, the era of Obamamania abruptly ended. The euphoria surrounding the elevation of Barack Obama to the American presidency was brought to a crashing end.

It didn’t even last a year.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Obama’s inauguration as President of the United States.

On the eve of that anniversary, the people of Massachusetts, the bluest of blue Democratic states, delivered a thunderous rejection of the Democratic Party and, by implication, the President.

In a special election to fill the seat vacated by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the people of Massachusetts did something they had not done for more than 40 years: they elected a Republican to represent them in the Senate.

This was unimaginable one year ago, as Washington was gripped by euphoria over the charismatic Obama.

Shockingly, today’s election wasn’t even close.

With 2 million votes counted, a previously obscure Republican state Senator, Scott Brown, 50, defeated the Massachusetts Attorney-General, Martha Coakley, 56.

The margin was 52 per cent to 47 per cent, a resounding turnaround, given Massachusetts’ voting record.

The result is a political earthquake.

It sure is. And as I read on one of the blogs, Jimmy Carter is now celebrating that he is no longer the “worst ever US president in history.”

Read it here.

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Abbott's stinging attack on Rudd

20 January, 2010 by

Stinging attack

Not climate specifically, but a good story none the less. This is what we need the Opposition leader to do. Expose the hypocrisy and spin of the Labor government, and in particular Kevin Rudd:

KEVIN Rudd is a “ruthless” politician who went to the polls in 2007 promising anything and everything in order to be elected, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said yesterday.

Mr Abbott said the Prime Minister’s failure to fulfill a raft of election promises was starting to show, contributing to his decline in popularity.

“I think Kevin Rudd is an extremely ruthless politician and I think pre-election he said whatever he thought he needed to say to maximise his chances of winning,” he said. “I think he thought he would worry about the consequences of his promises later.”

Mr Abbott launched the broadside against Mr Rudd after the Prime Minister delivered an Australia Day address in Melbourne on Monday night.

“It was typical Rudd,” Mr Abbott said. “It was full of things that we have to do in 2050, and almost nothing about what he would do this year.”

Great stuff, Tony. Keep it up.

Read it here.

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Heated moments mar Monckton

20 January, 2010 by

Viscount Monckton

Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian wisely counsels Lord Monckton against falling into the same trap as the alarmists:

When Monckton talks about the science he is powerful. Watch on YouTube his kerb-side interview of a well-meaning Greenpeace follower on the streets of Copenhagen last month. With detailed data behind him, he asks whether she is aware that there has been no statistically significant change in temperatures for 15 years. No, she is not. Whether she is aware that there has in fact been global cooling in the past nine years? No, she is not. Whether she is aware that there has been virtually no change to the amount of sea ice? No, she does not. Whether, given her lack of knowledge about these facts, she is driven by faith, not facts. Yes, she is driven by faith, she says.

To those with an open mind, Monckton’s fact-based questions demand answers from our political leaders. To this end, he will impress his Australian audience over the next few days. Unfortunately, while Monckton has mastered the best arts of persuasion, he also succumbs to the worst of them when he engages in his made-for-the-stage histrionics. In Copenhagen, when a group of young activists interrupted a meeting, he berated them as Nazis and Hitler Youth. Elsewhere he has called on people to rise up and fight off a “bureaucratic communistic world government monster”. This extremist language damages his credibility. More important, it damages the debate. You start to look like a crank when you describe your opponents as Nazis and communists. You can see how it happens. Talking to a roomful of cheering fellow travellers, the temptation is to hit the high gear of hyperbole. But if your aim is to persuade those with an open mind, this kind of talk will only turn people away. Warning people about the genuine threat to national sovereignty from a centralised global-warming bureaucracy is one thing. Talking about a new front of communists marching your way is another. It sounds like an overzealous warrior fighting an old battle.

Read it here.

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Summer snow in Australia

19 January, 2010 by

Taking a trip Down Under?

Unfortunately, it takes the Canadian press to report this story, since it doesn’t fit the alarmist agenda pursued by most of the Aussie media (record heat = global warming, record cold = just “weather”). Once again, from the Weather Isn’t Climate Department:

Australia is following its second-hottest year on record with extraordinary snow flurries in its southeastern alpine region, where some towns have recorded their first-ever summer snowfalls.

Australia’s temperatures during the summer months of December through February can be uncomfortably hot even on its highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, which stands a modest 7,310 feet (2,228 metres) above sea level.

Snow fell to 3,000 feet (900 metres) above sea level Monday in parts of New South Wales and Victoria states, Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Jane Golding said.

“Any time of year, it’s unusual to have snow down that far,” she said.

Golding said a cold front had brought frigid air from the Antarctic Ocean to southeast Australia. Normal summer temperatures are expected to return to the region on Wednesday.

The town of Bombala in New South Wales, east of Kosciuszko, recorded its first summer snow since the bureau began keeping records there in 1965, Golding said.

The town of Cooma, also in New South Wales but north of Kosciuszko, recorded its first summer snow since records were first kept in 1973.

Cooma resident Krystal Pernitsch said the wind chill factor made Monday’s high temperature of 59 degrees (15 degrees Celsius) feel like 48 degrees (9 Celsius).

“It’s a bit of a shock to the system after last week,” when the mercury reached 99 degrees (37 Celsius), she said.

Read it here.

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Quote of the Day

19 January, 2010 by

Quote of the Day

From the opinion pages of The Australian, and referring to the newly christened “Icegate” story from yesterday, where the IPCC has been discovered taking “facts” about glaciers shrinking from the back of a matchbox (see here and here):

This “icegate” scandal is potentially far more damaging to climate change science than the recent discovery of embarrassing emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. Those emails reveal a robust advocacy of global warming on the part of scientists but no evidence that this compromised their scientific work.

Strange that fiddling data (“hide the decline”), deleting correspondence in response to FOI requests and intimidating journals that dare publish alternative views doesn’t count as compromising their scientific work. Someone at The Australian should actually read those emails, perhaps?

Read it here.

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Wong the apologist defends IPCC

18 January, 2010 by

Will still be there for a very long time

An update on this story. Despite the fact that the IPCC has been caught out again, Penny Wong’s knee-jerk reaction is to defend them, because she knows, as well as anyone, that if the IPCC is peddling a crock of s#!t, then the government’s climate policy (on which it is 100% based) is not worth the paper it’s written on. So Penny’s doing her best (which isn’t saying much, let’s face it) to shore it up:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says a mistake made by a United Nations body on the predicted rate of glacial melting does not mean all its findings are wrong.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed in a report that the glaciers in the Himalayas could vanish in 30 years.

However that claim was based on a conversation between a journalist and a single Indian scientist a decade ago, according to British newspaper the Sunday Times.

The Federal Opposition says this shows the organisation’s scientific findings lack credibility.

Opposition energy spokesman Nick Minchin says the mistake made by the IPCC calls into question the Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme.

“For Australia to act ahead of the rest of the world based on [Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd’s reliance on this UN committee, which we now find is presenting reports based on mere speculation, [would be a mistake],” he said.

But Ms Wong says the main claims of climate change science remain unchallenged.

“This is a report that has been peer reviewed extensively [Ah yes, peer-review, the be all and end all of climate science, so corrupt itself that few papers challenging the consensus ever get published, because the alarmists threaten and intimidate publications which consider doing so. See Climategate – Ed]; very few errors have been found in it and none that challenge the central findings,” she said.

“Climate change is real and human beings are contributing to it, and people like Senator Minchin, who have never believed in climate change, will jump on anything in order to justify their position.”

Yawn, yawn, yawn. Sorry Penny, but we’re all bored senseless by your repetitive, robotic pronouncements.

Read it here.

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IPCC glacier claim was "speculation", not based on formal research

18 January, 2010 by

More dodgy science

The house of cards continues to topple as yet more “settled science” is revealed as being nothing of the sort:

THE peak UN body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports – that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming – was based on a “speculative” claim by an obscure Indian scientist.

The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming, appears to have simply adopted the untested opinions of the Indian glaciologist from a magazine article published in 1999.

The IPCC report claimed that the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish inside 30 years.

But the scientists behind the warning have now admitted it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Mr Hasnain, who was then the chairman of the International Commission on Snow and Ice’s working group on Himalayan glaciology, has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research.

The revelation represents another embarrassing blow to the credibility of the IPCC, less than two months after the emergence of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which raised questions about the legitimacy of data published by the IPCC about global warming.

Read it here.

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Bird shredders to blight "one in six beauty spots" in UK

17 January, 2010 by

Bird shredders at work

Gotta love them wind turbines. The moonbat Labour government of Gordon “On the Way Out” Brown is planning to spend GBP 10 billion on wind farms in order to “tackle global warming,” despoiling the British countryside in the process:

One in six of the UK’s officially-designated beauty spots could soon be blighted by wind farms, an investigation has found.

Out of 89 sites given special protection due to the quality of their landscape, planning permission for turbines has been approved or sought at 14.

Affected areas range from Cornwall and the Isle of Wight to the Lake District, the Outer Hebrides and the Shetland Islands. Campaigners claimed that the projects would spoil much-loved views and called for clearer rules on where wind farms can and cannot be built.

In England, out of 35 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs), four are the subject of a planning application for turbines. In one case the development would be within the AONB boundaries, in the other three it would be just outside but close enough to have a dramatic impact on the view enjoyed by visitors.

Among Scotland’s 40 designated National Scenic Areas (NSAs), six have already had turbines approved, one inside its boundaries and five just outside. One more is the subject of a planning application for a development inside its boundaries.

Out of nine AONBs in Northern Ireland, three are the subject of planning applications to build turbines within their boundaries.

Another kind of “dark satanic mills” on England’s green and pleasant land.

Read it here.

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UK: Taxpayers' millions "paid to Pachauri's institute"

17 January, 2010 by

Pachauri - conflicts?

More on IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri’s conflicts of interest, as reported previously in The Telegraph (see here and here). Despite Pachauri’s protestations of innocence, this story just won’t go away, and the Telegraph is starting to get its teeth into it:

Millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money is being paid to an organisation in India run by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the controversial chairman of the UN climate change panel, despite growing concern over its accounts.

A research institute headed by Dr Pachauri will receive up to £10 million funding over the next five years from the Department for International Development (DfID).

The grant comes amid question marks over the finances of The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI) London operation. Last week its UK head called in independent accountants after admitting ‘anomalies’ – described as ‘unintentional’ – in its accounts that have prompted demands for the Charity Commission to investigate.

The decision to resubmit accounts follows a Sunday Telegraph investigation into the finances of TERI Europe, which has benefited from funding from other branches of the British Government including the Foreign Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Dr Pachauri, TERI’s director-general, has built up a worldwide network of business interests since his appointment as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2002. The post, argue critics, has given him huge prestige and influence as the world’s most powerful climate official.

The decision by DfID to fund Dr Pachauri’s institute, based in Delhi, will add to growing concern over allegations of conflict of interest with critics accusing Dr Pachauri and TERI of gaining financially from policies which are formulated as a result of the work he carries out as IPCC chairman – a suggestion he strongly denies.

But Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor who now chairs the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank which challenges the prevailing scientific view on climate change, said: “It is now a wholly legitimate concern to ask questions about possible conflicts of interests. The IPCC is a very influential body and he is obviously very involved in its leadership.”

The plot thickens.

Read it here.

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Climategate in the US

17 January, 2010 by

More on the fudging of data at NOAA and NASA by James Delingpole in the UK Telegraph:

For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to US weatherman John Coleman’s magisterial demolition of the Great AGW Scam. I particularly recommend part 4 because that’s the one with all the meat. It shows how temperature readings have been manipulated at the two key climate data centres in the United States – the NASA Goddard Science and Space Institute at Columbia University in New York and the NOAA National Climate Data Center in Ashville, North Carolina. (Hat tip: Platosays)

Here is the video of Part 4 that James refers to:

[hana-flv-player video=”http://stream.tribeca.vidavee.com:80/vidad/tribeca.vidavee.com/bim/kusi/A129EA4D049A41CC260C3AAC814349E7.mp4″
width=”400″
height=”330″
description=”John Coleman – Part 4″
player=”4″
autoload=”false” autoplay=”false”
loop=”false” autorewind=”true”
/]

And he continues:

This is a scandal to rank with Climategate.

What it shows is that, just like in Britain at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) temperature data records have been grotesquely distorted by activist scientists in order to exaggerate the appearance of late 20th century global warming. They achieved this – with an insouciant disregard for scientific integrity which quite beggars belief – through the simple expedient of ignoring most of those weather station sited in higher, colder places and using mainly ones in warmer spots. Then, they averaged out the temperature readings given by the warmer stations to give a global average. Et voila: exactly the scary “climate change” they needed to persuade bodies like the IPCC that AGW was a clear and present danger requiring urgent pan-governmental action.

The man who spotted all this is a computer programmer called EM Smith – aka the Chiefio. You can read the full report at his excellent blog. In the 70s, the Chiefio discovered, GISS and NOAA took their temperature data from 6,000 weather stations around the world. By 1990, though, this figure had mysteriously dropped to 1500. Even more mysteriously this 75 per cent reduction in the number of stations used had a clear bias against those at higher latitudes and elevations.

Read it here.

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