Following the ‘climatologist’ humiliation in Antarctica, the all too predictable and desperate alarmist response

It was only a matter of time.  With the MV Akademik Schokalskiy stuck fast in the Antarctic sea ice that was supposed to have melted in line with so many computer model predictions, the humiliated laughing stock that comprises the climate alarmist community has predictably rushed out a story to distract attention from the fiasco, in their default propaganda outlet:

Update: Katabasis, in the comments, points out that the source for the distraction effort story is Professor Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales.  As if by sheer coincidence, the ice locked expedition in Antarctica is being led by Professor Chris Turney… one of Sherwood’s team in the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.  Fancy that!

It seems all this warming will not come in time to prevent the spectacle of BBC and Guardian journalists, ‘climatologists’ and an assortment of non climate academics – who believe themselves able to walk on water, and thanks to the cold conditions in the south have been reduced to doing just that to pass the time – being airlifted from the vessel while a stalled rescue operation continues.

The desperation of the Guardian’s environment hacktivist, Damian Carrington, in rushing this scare story to the top of the Graun’s website while playing down the reality of colder than expected conditions in the southern seas and what this means for the alarmist predictions, is just too funny for words.

Ice locked ‘SS Alarmist’ provides reminder of media bias

We can be very certain that the crew and climate alarmist passengers of the MV Akademik Schokalskiy did not expect to get trapped in a thick ice sheet in Antarctica.  They went in search evidence of the world’s melting ice caps, but instead a team of ‘climate scientists’ have been forced to abandon their mission … because the Antarctic ice is thicker than usual at this time of year (code for ‘it’s colder, not warmer’).

Despite it being the Antarctic summer, when the most ice melt would invariably take place, the vessel and an ice breaker sent to cut her free are both stuck firm.  It’s not the first time conditions have failed to reinforce the narrative.  From this we can at least deduce the warming that is supposedly hidden deep in the ocean is not hiding in that part of the world…

It is rather satisfying to see the alarmists experiencing first hand the reality of conditions that differ wildly from their computer modelled predictions and consistently worrying warnings, that are parrotted obediently and without challenge or question by their fellow travellers in the world’s biased and agenda riddled media.

Had the crew and passengers managed to observe and record dramatic images of ice melt cascading off ice flows, we can be sure the media would currently be packed with ‘we told you’ so climate change/global warming reports prophesising impending thermogeddon and demanding even more ‘action’ and public money to tackle man’s warming of the planet – furthering the green agenda of reversing progress and industrialisation to force mankind back into the middle ages.

Instead, as they have experienced unexpectedly cold and contradictory conditions, they and their media lackeys only make passing reference to the vessel being trapped and package it up as a human interest story.  The bias is glaringly obvious.  Their embarrassment and frustration is palpable.  So clearly there is no mileage in global warming alarmists telling the world it is actually colder, despite all their ‘evidence’ to the contrary.

Therefore, sadly for the alarmists, the latest round of doom laden climate reporting grounded in biased computer models has been cancelled due to the inconvenient truth of observed reality.  The absence of a raft of climate change stories from these ideologues sends a clear message, move along… there’s nothing to see here (unless it fits our agenda).  Science and the media working in concert.  Ain’t it grand?

Despite no evidence media deliberately seeks to link tidal surge to climate change

It’s not just shabby, it’s downright dishonest.

The Independent – a viewspaper not a newspaper – having taken it upon itself as part of the establishment to push the climate alarmist narrative relentlessly, is even ignoring what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said about no evidence of a link between ‘climate change’ and ‘extreme weather’ and is trying to connect the east coast tidal surge to climate change.  But in a snide piece of journalism it is doing it in an underhand way, designed to be subtle while being blindingly obvious, by making references to Owen Paterson’s comments about the potential benefits of climate change.

Climate activists and their media mouthpieces keep suggesting extreme weather events are being caused by climate change.  Yet that would mean the weather events they have latched on to would be happening only because of a tiny amount of temperature change that has been recorded.  Paterson did himself no favours by describing the flooding this week as ‘quite exceptional’.  They were comparable to the floods of 1953, lower in some areas and higher in others, which pre-date the warming cited as a cause of weather events that have occured many times over the centuries.

But where there is an agenda being pushed by people who put their fingers in their ears to block out anything that undermines their belief system, and who refuse to provide balance in their reporting by publishing anything that contradicts it, we get what the media is serving up.

Source of climate change alarmism confirmed once again

Back in the wider world, regular readers will have noticed this blog rarely ventures onto the climate change topic these days.  The reason for this is simple, it is not about science.

While a number of other blogs continue to expend energy on arguing with climate activists and scientists who push the alarmist narrative, pulling apart findings and assertions and countering with studies and findings from scientists who reject the alarmist creed, this blog long ago explained that such debate is a waste of time.  Climate change long ago ceased to be a scientific issue, it has for a number of years been a political issue.

Several days ago this argument was bolstered by a couple of stories in the Telegraph concerning the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is due to be published on Friday.  Scientists are struggling to explain why global warming has slowed to a statistically meaningless level for the last 15 years, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

If climate change was a scientific issue the discussion about how to handle this fact, which contradicts all of the claims and projections made by climate alarmists reliant on computer models, would be exclusively between scientists.  But as the Telegraph explained, other parties are actively influencing the report:

In a leaked June draft of the report’s summary from policymakers, the IPCC said the rate of warming in 1998-2012 was about half the average rate since 1951.

Several governments who fund the body have since complained about how the issue is tackled in the report.

Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted, saying a time span of 10-15 years was misleading in the context of climate change, which is measured over decades and centuries.

The US also urged the authors to include the “leading hypothesis” that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean.

Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for any statistics. That year was exceptionally warm, so any graph showing global temperatures starting with 1998 looks flat, because most years since have been cooler.

While Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for sceptics.

This isn’t science, this is politics.

As such, rather than waste time countering scientific claims and trying to get one over the Michael Manns of this world, the focus should be on challenging the core of the alarmist cause – the governments and politicians who are clearly directing matter for their own ends.

In a follow up story on Saturday, the Telegraph reported that:

Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC, declined to comment on the content of the report because it is still to be finalised but insisted it would provide “a comprehensive picture of all the science relevant to climate change”.

More accurately, what it will provide is a picture of the ‘science’ relevant to climate change that has been shaped to fit the desired narrative of politicians, who then use the report as an excuse for more political actions to ‘fight’ climate change – which translate into more taxes, less conventional power generation, higher energy prices and more restrictions on supply.  That is what needs to be challenged.  Arguing statistics and method with scientists won’t make one iota of difference.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent Minister?

There seems to be no limit to Ed Davey’s capacity to press ahead ever more aggressively with the discredited, grossly expensive, unreliable and unpopular proliferation of wind turbines.  In the Telegraph we find coverage of a speech by Davey and some of his pre-speech comments.

They confirm him to be dangerously detached from reality, in possession of a disturbing quasi-religious obsession with wind power and impervious to all evidence that demonstrates his beloved wind turbines are far from value for money and simply do not serve the needs of the population.  His response to evidence of the shortcomings and inefficiency of wind power is tunnel-visioned inflexibility, and a propensity to lash out at those who highlight them.  It is like witnessing a recalcitrant child running amok in a man’s body.

Davey’s sole reaction is to revert to ad hominem attacks, which he has done with an assault on Owen Paterson, who commissioned a report on the impact of wind farms on the countryside.  Given Davey’s dogged devotion to advocating and encouraging the proliferation of yet more of these wasteful, subsidy-hungry machines, irony doesn’t come close to defining Davey’s whinge that Paterson’s report would be ‘partial’.  The rationale for this, the Telegraph explains, is that Davey doesn’t believe the report would ‘fit with Lib Dem ideology on wind farms’.

Never mind whether the report is accurate, or exposes yet more shortcomings and negatives of wind turbines, the Lib Dems have a worldview – and regardless how flawed or wrongheaded it is we have to suffer the consequences.  Consider these comments attributed to Davey:

Take the battles I fight over wind power.

Owen Paterson would cull wind turbines faster than he can cull badgers.

But we have prevented the stone age wing of the Conservative Party from destroying our leading renewables industry.

So it’s not about reliable ‘clean’ energy or climate change – the alarmist predictions about which are already being shown up as greatly exaggerated computer model hype.  It’s not about providing the energy people need in an affordable way.  It’s about partisan party politics and propping up an industry at vast public expense.  An industry that creates great wealth for landowners and renewables companies and ensures they get their lavish pay offs from our tax pounds and energy bill payments, regardless of how poorly the turbines perform or how little energy they actually produce.

The ‘stone age’ wing of the Conservative Party that objects to such outrageous waste and excessive cost, has been held off by the ‘recidivist thievery’ wing of the Liberal Democrats that views our money as their personal slush fund.

Those people who thought Chris Huhne was bad and breathed a sigh of relief when he resigned ahead of the courtroom exposure of his lies and contempt for the public, hadn’t bargained on the Lib Dems coughing up something even worse from their reservoir of objectionable and dangerously delusional ideologues.  But that’s exactly what they’ve done with Ed Davey.

Davey is dangerous and he has to go.  But neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg will act to remove him, as they share his belief system.  So the rest of us will continue to pay the price, in more ways than one.

We could be in the grip of a decade of wet summers say scientists at Met Office climate summit…

… reports the Daily Wail in the latest big global warming, climate change, extreme weather story.

This is yet another thing that was never predicted by those wonderful, high certainty, government policy-influencing computer models.  No doubt this warrants another round of fat bonuses at the Met Office this year!

Blinkered… bloody-minded… and justified

It is a strategy of such ingenuity, such cunning and such extraordinary brilliance it could only be described as a stunning masterstroke.

There can be no doubt that the development of the strategy took hundreds of hours of painstaking planning, discussion, re-working and collaboration with interested parties to bring to fruition.  One can only stand, applaud and marvel at the sheer élan to which we are bearing witness.

So take a bow Ed Davey, no mere Energy Secretary, but an intellectual colossus making arguments of such unassailable depth and citing empirical evidence of such weight that every sceptic of the orthodoxy of climate change should declare their complete and unconditional surrender and endorse Davey’s factual reality.

What else can we do?  After all, Davey has deployed an argument so substantive as to be beyond contestation by mere mortals.

He has argued in powerful terms that we are guilty of being ‘blinkered’ and bloody minded, that it is we who have been undermining science for political ends, that it is we who have turned the issue of climate change into a political football and that it is we who have an uncritical campaigning platform in the media to be used by individuals and lobby groups.

No, really.

It takes a special kind of thick-skinned arrogance to be able to take the full range of accusations levelled against the government, for refusing to examine or consider scientific findings that challenge the extent to which man and carbon are allegedly influencing the climate, and level those at sceptics instead.

Moreso to attempt to deflect attention from the BBC, Guardian and Independent in particular, which uncritically report every alarmist claim – however ludicrous and unscientific – as fact and truth in support of the warmist agenda while ignoring anything that contradicts them including scientific findings, and denouncing ‘right-wing’ newspapers who very occasionally allow sceptics to point out where predictions made with a high degree of certainty have failed to materialise, and models have failed to reflect actual observations we see around us.

As for citing the sceptics for supposedly using climate change as a political football, it is downright dishonest to pretend that anyone other than the politicans have used climate change in such a way.  The topic has been booted back and forth in a metaphoric arms-race between the parties to impose climate change related taxes on businesses and households (overt and hidden extra costs on energy bills, air passenger duty, petrol prices, recycling rules, closure of power plants etc).  It has been exploited to force expensive ‘solutions’ on us that create far more of an environmental hazard (lightbulbs, wildlife killing and illness inducing windturbines), outlaw ever more things to limit choice (restricting the kind of boilers that can be used).  And it has been used as an excuse to pledge ever more money – with a significant sum heading overseas – to tackling a phenomenon that is barely understood, the source of which is still unproven, and which consistently fails to result in the catastrophic outcomes predicted.

If challenging all this is construed as blinkered and bloody minded by the likes of Davey, it is also without any shadow of a doubt  completely and utterly justified.

Davey is not just lazy, uncritical, dogmatic and ignorant.  With his quasi-religious zeal and immunity to reason, this swivel-eyed climate change loon’s attempt to stifle dissent and keep the bandwagon rolling on in spite of evidence that challenges it, is downright dangerous.

Dr Phil Jones and supreme Spanish honorary irony

Oh the irony of it.  A regular reader in Norfolk kindly submitted this scan of a piece in the Norwich Evening News about University of East Anglia’s Dr Phil Jones dating back to last week (sorry for my delay in spotting the email).

So Dr Jones is ‘delighted’ at this recognition from such a ‘prestigious institution’.  Well, it’s great news that Dr Jones is feeling so much better than he was in 2010, when he told journalists he had considered suicide after the Climategate emails were released into the public domain.

But in giving Jones this honour, the faculty at Rovira i Virgili University now have some serious question marks hanging over them concerning their judgement when it comes to matters scientific.  It must have been a huge leap of faith to give Jones an honorary doctorate to recognise his work to ‘document global warming’ when Jones is noteworthy for having ‘lost’ the weather data he… erm… documented.  Either that or the academics at Virgili are paid up climate alarmists just doing their bit for the ’cause’ which sees the alarmist community giving each other feel good awards.

Also noteworthy is the Norwich Evening News’ determination to shill for UEA by repeating the demonstrably false assertion that Jones was cleared of hiding or manipulating data to back up his science.  The scope of the MPs ‘investigation’ was so limited and examination of the facts so cursory it would have been impossible to make any such declaration.

These people are seriously beyond parody.

Dr Michael E Mann – hoist by his own petard

Dr Michael E Mann is the high professor of rabid climate alarmism, a co-creator of the Hockey Stick with a dogged determination to hide data and emails, and a master of the delete button on Facebook and Twitter if anyone has the temerity to question him or critique his claims.

But today Dr Michael Mann stands humiliated, exposed as a liar at worst, or self aggrandising fantasist at best.  He has been hoist by his own petard, constructed on a foundation of arrogance, ignorance and self delusion.

As readers of ‘Watts Up With That’ will know, Dr Mann – a Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University – has filed a defamation law suit against National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with named writers Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg.

In setting out his case Mann has desperately tried to appeal to that old chestnut ‘prestige’. He wants people to see him as so grand and prestigious that his work must be considered to be beyond criticism. For people like Mann, what could confer more prestige than the claim that he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with other members of the International Panel on Climate Change? Mann used his Facebook page to announce the law suit in which he included this claim:

‘Dr. Mann is a climate scientist whose research has focused on global warming. In 2007, along with Vice President Al Gore and his colleagues of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.’

He even proudly displays a citation from the IPCC in his office window for all to see, only the citation makes clear he was not awarded the Nobel prize, rather he only contributed towards its award. Even that is a spurious claim, created by the IPCC without any grounds from the Nobel Institute for doing so.  But now it has got even better.  Mann’s claim to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has been rejected by Geir Lundestad, Director, Professor, of The Norwegian Nobel Institute, who has made it clear Mann is not a Nobel Laureate, by emailing Tom Richard the following information:

1) Michael Mann has never been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
2) He did not receive any personal certificate. He has taken the diploma awarded in 2007 to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and to Al Gore) and made his own text underneath this authentic-looking diploma.
3) The text underneath the diploma is entirely his own. We issued only the diploma to the IPCC as such. No individuals on the IPCC side received anything in 2007.

Mark Steyn had already been mocking Mann for his claim, but having this clear statement from the Nobel Institute has nailed Mann for what he is.  He is clearly incapable to dealing with evidence and facts right that sit right under his own nose, or on his office door.  One wonders what Mann’s highly paid lawyers now think of being the counsel for a man who is so cavalier with the truth and seemingly has only a passing acquaintance with reality.  You can read all the instalments of this story over on Watts Up With That.

Irrespective of what happens in the legal action, the question raised here is one of personal and professional integrity. If Michael Mann is capable of fraudulently conferring upon himself awards in this way and providing false information in a claim to a court, what is he capable of when it comes to scientific research, data and findings? Can he ever be trusted or considered a reputable scientist?  Mann it seems has just outed himself as a Walter Mitty character in a science department office at Penn State.

Perhaps this is why Mann is doing everything in his power to prevent data and emails, that have been collected and created at the expense of the taxpayer in the US, from being released into the public domain.  Many people may very well think that. Of course, one couldn’t possibly comment.

No stigma

Over on Watts Up With That? is an interesting post about yet another attempt by a ‘psychoanalyst’ to portray man-made climate change sceptics (aka ‘deniers’ as the alarmists like to describe them) as in some way psychologically impaired.

It seems to be the likes of Dr Robert D. Stolorow are rushing to fill a gap in the puzzlement of the alarmists that a significant number of people are still refusing to suspend reality and join the true believers in accepting a hypothesis supported by questionable data as a factual reality.  His opinion piece in Psychology Today is lightweight at best and probably more deserving of a slot in Pseuds Corner:

On October 5, 2012, on the front page of the Huffington Post, appeared a terrifying image of melting arctic ice, accompanied by the chilling headline, “Arctic Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise May Be ‘Decades Ahead Of Schedule’”. Why have the majority of Americans and American politicians been largely oblivious to this extreme threat?

Perhaps it has something to do with many people preferring to see hard evidence of what is claimed, or having the awareness to grasp that dire warnings years ago of what would have happened by now have simply failed to materialise. Perhaps they are unconvinced by scientists who fight tooth and nail to conceal discussions and information about their research from a public forced to fund them.  Or perhaps they smell a rat when they see those same scientists challenged on the science and responding with personal slights and a refusal to address the questions raised.

Regardless, Stolorow’s ramblings are yet another example of true believers, who cannot win an argument due to the lack of evidence and reason, attempting to sigmatise dissenters with spurious ‘science’ and ‘analysis’.  The aim is to make dissenters question themselves in an effort to make them conform to pack mentality in case they are considered to be outside the mainstream.  It’s a form of psychological blackmail that seeks to erode inquiry, free thinking and opposite viewpoints.  It’s a form of control.  And the WUWT post points to other times in history when this approach formed an effort to unsettle those who held an opposing view to the ‘consensus’:

Its just more Political Abuse of Psychiatry, such as was practiced in the Soviet Union:

In the Soviet Union, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place. Soviet psychiatric hospitals known as “psikhushkas” were used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate hundreds or thousands of political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally. This method was also employed against religious prisoners and most especially against well-educated former atheists who adopted a religion. In such cases their religious faith was determined to be a form of mental illness that needed to be cured. Formerly highly classified extant documents from “Special file” of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union published after the dissolution of the Soviet Union demonstrate that the authorities of the country quite consciously used psychiatry as a tool to suppress dissent.

As Anthony Watts asks:  Sound familiar when looking at what is being written about climate skeptics today?  Too right.  But sceptics should take heart from this.  It demonstrates the true believers are rattled.  They are struggling, worried that their claims are being so easily challenged and increasingly dismissed.  Not having a solid scientific argument to deploy they are resorting to playing the man instead of the ball.

If namecalling and attempts to make people feel like an odd-one-out is all they have as a strategy to make people accept their supposedly scientific claims then they are losing the battle.  You see this all the time in politics – and that underlines that at the heart of all this climate change hysteria is a political objective.

Shock! Climate change laws survive ‘red tape cull’

Imagine our shock!

The Barclay Brother Beano reports that 53 environmental regulations relating to pollution, contamination and waste are being scrapped to save money, however the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey has said that the Climate Change Act is an ‘example of essential legislation’ and all its supporting regulations must remain unchanged.

Of course it must!

After all, it is a money making machine for corporations at the expense of consumers and taxpayers who are forced part with cash unnecessarily by the State  – and it is used as justification by the political and bureaucratic elite for the globalisation of government and erosion of that inconvenient and troublesome process known as democracy.  Nothing can be allowed to derail the agenda.  If every environmental law and regulation bar one was scrapped the lone survivor would be the Climate Change Act.

If this latest piece of evidence doesn’t prove the fact the political class and corporations couldn’t care less about the environment and that the climate change bandwagon is just a means to their ulterior ends, nothing will.  Climate change alarmism has nothing to do with the environment and it has nothing to do with science.  It’s about money and control.  End of.

And despite this smash and grab raid on our pockets, our democracy and our individual freedoms, the vast majority of the population continue to drift through life in a sleepwalk, leaving the politicians and corporations to empower and enrich themselves.  By doing nothing we will deserve what we get.

Yet they say sustainability is progressive

Germany’s Spiegel has an excellent article today concerning that country’s green fetish and how eco zealotry is causing adverse consequences for the population.  The introduction sets the tone and what follows is a realtively brief, but eminently sensible examination of just some of the effects of the authoritarian brainwashing, to which history shows Germans seem incredibly susceptible:

The energy-saving light bulb ends up as hazardous waste, too much insulation promotes mold and household drains are emitting a putrid odor because everyone is saving water. Many of Germany’s efforts to protect the environment are a chronic failure, but that’s unlikely to change.

Perhaps it is worth highlighting that having been coerced into the costly adoption of ‘sustainable’ behaviour, the detrimental effects on the population require even more costly solutions for which the population will be forced to foot the bill.  Problems that industrialisation and the development of technology helped us to resolve and avoid are now coming for the fore as the sustainability bandwagon reverses progress made that brought real benefit to ordinary people.

Many corporations are getting very rich from their transit on the sustainability money train, aided and abetted by politicians who seek to out-do each other in the virtue stakes.  Yet too many people still believe all this manipulation of the markets, astronomic public spending and erosion of personal freedoms is being done to fight climate change – thus wilfully ignoring the stated aims and real objectives of unelected and unaccountable transnational bodies who are awarding themselves ever more power to control us and our lives.

If that sounds far fetched, see how the evidence is casually drip-fed into the public discourse by journalists who far from being impartial reporters of the facts are committed activists using blatant propaganda and bias by omission to push the party line.

Britain has not yet ventured as far down the greenwash path as the Germans.  It’s just as well because the Spiegel article, while only touching on some of the results of this eco fetishism, gives us a glimpse into what the future holds for us if the coalition’s climate change agenda is carried out.  This green extremism will plunge us into a nightmare.

The greens and the opportunist, self interested, authoritarian politicians and corporate officers all say what we are being forced to do is progressive.  After reading the Spiegel piece only the most deluded person would argue the realisation of the green agenda is anything other than regressive.  These watermelons are not just killing the planet, their insanity is killing people too.

Kiribati sea level story – Dr Nils-Axel Mörner responds exclusively

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph carried yet another climate alarmism story, this time about the government of Kiribati negotiating to buy land in Fiji ‘so it can relocate islanders under threat from rising sea levels’.

Autonomous Mind contacted the former president of the International Association of Quaternary Research’s Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, Dr Nils-Axel Mörner to ask for his response to the story.  Dr Mörner has very kindly replied with an exclusive comment, below:

With respect to the article on March 7 by Paul Chapman on the future of Kiribati, I have to protest and urge all readers to consult the only “hard facts” there are, viz. the tide gauge record of the changes in sea level.

The graph reveals that there, in fact, is no ongoing sea level rise that threatens the habitation of the islands. This is the hard observational fact, which we should all face before starting to talk about future flooding and the need for evacuation.

If the president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, claims that the islands will soon be flooded and that there is an urgent need to buy new land for possible future refugees, it is the president’s own tactical idea in order to raise money from abroad. Let us respect the observational facts and stay away from invented disasters.

Once again the media rushes to print with an alarmist piece that is completely devoid of balance or contrary opinion and which completely ignores the overtly political motivations and background of what has been shared with the press.  The dramatisation of Earth’s ever changing climate for ulterior political motives needs to be challenged.

How long will it be also before people start to hold the media to account for acting as the propagandist mouthpiece of government and vested interests?

Climate alarmism money train attracts rent seeking sockpuppet

There is an amusing tale on the Watts Up With That? blog, also covered by Bishop Hill, concerning an ‘organisation’ calling itself The Arctic Institute.

The story is about an individual called Malte Humpert (readers of Viz magazine may immediately be thinking ‘crazy name, crazy guy’) who is the founder of this august body, but has been posting comments on WUWT using at least three different names – none of which are his own. The story is explained on WUWT, providing essential background for the follow up information that Anthony Watts has added with this comment.

While this tale provides readers with some entertainment and again reinforces the shameless unethical behaviour of those like Malte Humpert who are promoting climate alarmism, neither Anthony nor the Bishop nail the real story here, which would add more value to the taxpaying public.

The institute was set up last year and its website has an About Us page which outlines its objectives and key drivers. You will notice my emphasis in red which has particular relevance following some recent posts here on AM:

Malte Humpert contacted WordPress to demand that this post be removed or the content quoted here be removed, along with the screenshot of his page. Presumably Google will also be asked to remove their screenshot and the content Humpert wants removed from view here, because that is where I obtained it when it was removed from his site.

Yes, there it is again! The catch-all justification for imposing an anti democratic, internationalist system of centralised government on the world… sustainability – coupled with a nice dollop of alarmist scaremongering. When the day dawns that catastrophic anthropogenic climate change alarmism (CAGW) is confounded by Mother Nature, Humpert and his ilk will simply focus on some other sustainable development issue. But that is not the story here.

The story is how and why a vehicle such as The Arctic Institute can be created by someone like Malte Humpert. Set aside for a moment the fact Humpert claims to have been its Executive Director since November 2010, despite the Institute’s About Us page stating it was founded in 2011. His biography and work experience demonstrate absolutely no qualification for being the director of an institute focusing on scholarly research.

Image removed by request of WordPress after a demand by the very shy rent-seeker Malte Humpert. Google however continues to provide a screenshot of the page without threats of being closed down.

What his biography does show, however, is someone with a passion for political science and a self professed head for commercial ventures. Humpert would appear to be another member of the legion of politicised rent seekers jumping aboard the taxpayer funded money train to enrich themselves at our expense. The money train is creating opportunities for people like Malte Humpert.

Clearly being a teaching assistant wasn’t satisfying enough for our Malte, so he hit upon a way to make money from his apartment without producing anything tangible for the economy. Five months spent as a Climate and Energy Policy intern seem to be his only exposure to the ’cause’; but as the director of an institute created to spread the alarmist gospel he can be assured of attracting funding and being accorded ‘prestige’ by those whose interests he will serve.

This is the nature of so much of the CAGW community. It is amazing how powerful the incentive is to jump on a bandwagon when there are billions of dollars, euros and pounds of our money out there just waiting to be hoovered up by chancers like Humpert – and you don’t even need to have any form of scientific background or experience, as Rajendra Pachauri of the International Panel on Climate Change demonstrates. This is being facilitated by the politicians and despite claims we live in a democracy we have no way of stopping this scandalous waste. That is the real story here.

Having has his head put in the spotlight by Anthony Watts, it will be interesting to see what sources of funding find their way to The Arctic Institute. No doubt, with their commitment to transparency and openness, people like Dr Peter Gleick, Andy Revkin, Leo Hickman, Suzanne Goldenberg etc. will demand to know the sources of Humpert’s future funding. If not, they will surely be content with any ‘leak’ of documentation obtained via impersonation and deceit. It’s the way of things among the true believers.

Note to WordPress – do not mark this post ‘private’ again. You do not have any justification to censor this.

The tactics of the globalist warmists are legion

In the comments to my previous post about the article on melting Arctic sea ice causing colder winters, by Richard ‘Black is White’ of the BBC, is this response from fellow blogger, Dephius, who writes:

AM, if you haven’t noticed it, I sense a paradigm shift in the trend of the BBC’s output. Its not so long ago that a report like this would have rammed the AGW message home loud and clear with several references to it.

Instead we have just one paragraph related to how man made CO2 might skew the natural pattern of global climate cycles.

When natural cycles and the effects of the Sun on global climate are given more emphasis than warmist dogma, I just wonder if we’re seeing the tide finally turning.

I’ve seen more emphasis given to Chinese (no friends of the AGW cult) climate research now too, which is interesting.

And then on another post prior to that, where I invited readers to forget the climate science feeding frenzy and focus instead on the real issue of the globalisation of government, which is using climate change as a justification for its development, commenter Karl Hallowell, contributes these thoughts:

I have to disagree. Not that there are ideologies that move to overthrow the current democratic order, but rather the claim that the strategy for dealing with them are flawed. Coming up with a policy attack -based vehicle for ideological purposes is not a trivial task. It’s not like guessing passwords or trying different keys in a lock. Each attempt takes a great deal of effort, communication, and coordination. And exposes the participants to risk of humiliation, disfranchisement, and even criminal charges, if they go too far.

Dealing with the attacks rather than the ideology has three strengths. First, it builds up a body of policy for when a valid weakness is found. Ultimately, having an established, democratic plan for dealing with valid environmental or societal problems will do more to cut off these attacks than fighting the ideology directly. Democracy by itself has done much to weaken the power of these ideologies, precisely because it provides conduits for debate and action that ideologues can’t bypass.

Second, they lose something every time they fail. The more they cry “wolf” the more they discredit themselves in future assaults. They don’t have infinite resources at their disposal.

Finally, it means that the strategy remains effective, even if the ideology mutates or is replaced. It works as well against would-be theocrats (of any flavor), Marxists, or any new ideologies that haven’t yet had a chance to rear their nasty, little heads.

Both are very good comments and worthy contributions to the debate.  As I was about to write a post replying to these points I spotted a great blog post on Biased BBC by the ever excellent Robin Horbury.  It addresses both points at once.

Firstly is demonstrates the shift in approach by the BBC, explaining the point raised by Delphius.  As, for example, the comments section on Richard Black’s activist page are increasingly pock-marked with spaces where comments have been removed and comments that are allowed to remain that nevertheless pull Black’s warmist position and bias to pieces, the angle of the warmist attack has changed.

It seems the BBC is slowly giving up pushing such an alarmist narrative because it is increasingly rejected and derided by readers those who stop to think about the reality of the situation and provide counter evidence.  Why waste time trying to convert people who refuse to accept the party line?  Far better to seek the adoration of and nodding agreement of those who believe the alarmist argument on climate and stand to benefit financially from the UN mandated wealth redistribution programme under the guise of fighting climate change.

On to Karl Hallowell’s comment, the Biased BBC post shows that going toe-to-toe over the scientific arguments being used by the globalist warmists only serves to drive them down another avenue, while maintaining their direction of travel.  The opportunity to engage and challenge the science is being removed from the sceptics while the globalist agenda is furthered in a different way.

Ultimately our money and resources are still going where the UN wants it to, and we will still pick up the tab for the alarmists’ policies as we are forced to pay for wind turbines that don’t work and CO2 emission measures that make no difference to the environment.  Surely that demonstrates that focusing on holding the line in one theatre of battle is futile as the enemy troops elsewhere isolate you from the rest of the war.

Their tactics are legion.  Until we stop tackling the climate science symptom exclusively and go after the political root cause of this agenda, we will be swamped and lose the war.

Winters are colder because it’s getting warmer

And so the game goes on.  The useful idiots (and hard core activists) of the cult of sustainability continue to create new arguments at public expense to justify a political ‘solution’.

The subtle and blatant distortion of the facts in the article aren’t important, but they will keep opponents of the anti-science global warmists occupied for days or even months. And while they might win another battle against the warmist using proper scientific method, they are unwittingly still losing the war because behind the scenes the real agenda continues its advance.

This claim from Richard ‘Black is White’ is faithfully carried in support of the ’cause’ yet if it is ever falsified by other scientists the new research will be ignored, omitted from the record, buried – instead a new claim requiring the same political solution will rise to take its place in the narrative and the incessant march towards global government on the basis of controlling spending to fix a problem that isn’t really a problem, will continue.

Forget climate change, we must focus on the real issue

Over at Bishop Hill there is a post titled A Study in Groupthink that looks at an exchange of Twitter comments between Maurizio Morabito (@Omnologos) and Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ), the blogs editor at Scientific American.

The author of the Bishop Hill blog, Andrew Montford, explains in his post that Zivkovic is clearly very much out of the same mould as Peter Gleick, which I take to mean an unswerving true believer, a rigid in his views who sees anyone dissenting from what he chooses to believe in and argue for as ultimately evil or corrupted by vested interests.  Montford’s take is that Zivkovic perhaps views his cause as beleaguered by wicked big business, and opines that reading Zivkovic’s tweets it’s a fascinating study in groupthink.

Strictly speaking, when looking at the cabal of proponents of man-made global warming theory (AGW) and the band of sceptics lined up against them, you can see they are all in fact caught up in a groupthink.  Because both sides act as if the issue at hand is about whether mankind really is causing the planet to warm significantly and therefore endangering the earth.  Which is why I left the following comment on the blog:

Ultimately it is all meaningless. While people like Zivkovic, Gleick, Mann, Trenberth, Briffa, Jones etc try to make this into a scientific argument, because they are funded to churn out hypotheses about the climate and the ecosystem, it is nothing of the sort. It is all about politics.

Sceptics, and scientists who dissent from the ‘consensus’, could falsify, debunk and disprove every element of the AGW narrative and see off every member of the ‘team’ and make a laughing stock of the ’cause’, but we will still come under assault.  For this is all about politics and ideology, even if the prominent actors don’t realise it.

Ultimately if it is not climate change it will be some other vehicle connected to ‘sustainability’ that will be used as a means of controlling the population and redistributing wealth from the industrialised world to the developing world in a way that enriches the corporates.

From the United Nations down, every tier of governance has been tasked with executing the ‘progressive’ agenda, which in reality is regressive for all of us.  It’s not some crackpot conspiracy, it’s just the way those with power and wealth are steering the ship.

This direction of travel will not be defeated by butting heads with a small band of AGW blowhards who are lavishly funded to continue producing ‘findings’ and ‘projections’ that fit in with the actions needed to further the overarching agenda.  Until people start to tackle the root cause of the disease instead of the symptoms, we will continue to go round in circles playing ‘he said, she said’ while our democracy, liberty, wealth and individual rights ebb away.

Expose the distortions, errors, scientific flaws all you like, but don’t lose sight of what is really going on and why.

Politics has changed.  We no longer have a left-right paradigm, even if many who are politically active but unaware of what is going on around them still define themselves in such terms.  Today we have an authoritarian mix of progressive and fascist corporatism (rule by and in the interest of government and corporations) on one side, and mix of classical liberalism and libertarianism (limited government and individual liberty) on the other.

We can see the evidence of the corporatist approach.  It makes me laugh when the global warming fanatics try to undermine opposition to them by arguing the sceptics are in the pay of ‘big oil’.  One of the worst propagandists for spinning this line is Bob Ward, mouthpiece for the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.  Australian Journalist Jo Nova reported that Exxon-Mobil had paid $23 million to sceptical groups over a ten-year period.  Big corporate Exxon-Mobil are therefore considered evil personified by warmists like Ward.

Ward’s employer is named after its benefactor – the uber wealthy fund manager, Jeremy Grantham.  In 2011 Grantham held 11,309,048 shares of Exxon stock.  Why would Grantham fork out to fund an institute researching climate change when he is making a fortune from the very company cited by his minions as evil big oil?  Perhaps because as a corporate animal his only interest is making money, and his hypocritical fence straddling is a means to that end.

Let’s compare Exxon’s oft cited $23m funding of sceptics to money poured into environmental interests.  How about another big corporate, BP?  They were investing $8 billion in biofuels, wind power and solar while building long term options in carbon capture and storage and clean technology. Five billion dollars of that had already been invested by 2011.  That money is funnelled into delivering exactly what the environmentalists want and also supports lobbying and activism.  But they are still considered ‘big oil’.

There are plenty more examples of these kind of inconvenient facts, where the supposed enemy is a friend and supposed ally is an opponent.  The bottom line is these companies will support whatever helps their bottom line.  They are super powerful and influential corporates, and with the subsidies on offer utterly committed to keeping the climate change gravy train on the tracks.  And we, the taxpaying consumers, foot the bill to increase the wealth of these corporations.

To believe the corporates have anything other than a vested interest in the centralisation of power and control that coordinates global action, to erode democracy and liberty which thus enables the transfer of wealth, is to reside in a realm of delusion.  No matter what the ‘science’ reveals and how much it is debunked, there will always be another line of attack from the sustainability playbook to further the political – and dare I say economic corporatist – agenda.  This is where the battle needs to be fought, not in the theatre of carbon dioxide emissions, raw and adjusted data or fractions of a degree of temperature change.

Guardian takes hypocrisy to stratospheric new heights

When giving evidence to the Leveson Inquiry in December the former Information Commissioner of the UK, Richard Thomas, said that offences committed under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (In the UK Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 concerns the unlawful obtaining of personal data – it is an offence for people, such as hackers and impersonators, outside of an organisation to obtain unauthorised access to someone’s personal data – an act otherwise known as ‘blagging’.) were:

[…] often at least as serious as phone hacking, and may be even more serious.

Mr Thomas went on to add that:

Interception of a telephone call or message is widely, and rightly, seen as highly intrusive, but a great deal more information can usually be obtained about individuals by stealing their electronic or written records – such as financial, health, tax or criminal records – than from a conversation or message.

Now think back to the Guardian’s obsessive pursuit of News International about the interception of telephone calls or messages – phone hacking – and its saturation coverage and condemnation that has demonised News Corp journalists and the Murdochs. Surely the Guardian, which has taken the high ground and occupied it so doggedly over such illegal behaviour can be relied upon to be consistent and condemn equally vigorously any instance of illegal activity, such as an individual impersonating another person to obtain unauthorised access to personal data?

Think again.

The Guardian is perfectly happy to go to war with competitors and ideological opponents, and grandstand in the most sanctimonious manner as it has over phone hacking. After all it is in its commercial and strategic interests and those of its friends, such as the BBC.

But when a climate change alarmist scientist, someone who says the things the Guardian says and like to hear and shares the same leftist worldview, admits he impersonated another person to obtain confidential documents and release them – a criminal act in the UK – the Guardian unbelievably describes it as a ‘leak’. That is how the Guardian is portraying the theft of documents from the Heartland Institute and their release, along with a fake document designed to misrepresent the organisation and stir up animosity to it.

This isn’t just cognitive dissonance, it is a staggering escalation of the Guardian’s rank hypocrisy.  It is a deliberate and calculated distortion used and the dishonesty is approved by the senior editorial staff for ideological reasons.  Guardian journalists such as Suzanne Goldenberg, endorsed by the like of Leo Hickman, are engaging in a corruption of language in support of a political agenda.  They are showing themselves up as propagandists for thieves and climate change alarmists.

This is the measure of the Guardian, a reflection of its true nature, and the reason why it is wholly untrustworthy and unreliable. It is an insipid little rag.

Credibility of Rajendra Pachauri continues to retreat

In 2009, the Indian environment ministry was accused of ‘arrogance’ by Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), after the release of a government report claiming that there is no evidence climate change has caused ‘abnormal’ shrinking of Himalayan glaciers.

Dr Vijay Kumar Raina, the geologist who authored the report, admitted that some: ‘Himalayan glaciers are retreating. But it is nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest as some have said that they will disappear.’  The response of Pachauri, a railway engineer often described as a leading climate scientist, was this:

We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.

Pachauri went on to say that such statements were reminiscent of ‘climate change deniers and school boy science’, adding this money quote:

I cannot see what the minister’s motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening.

He also went on record describing the Indian government report as ‘voodoo science’.  In light of this, one wonders how Pachy is feeling right now given the publication of scientific research using satellite data that shows there hasn’t been any melt of those glaciers at all in the last 10 years.  One also wonders, considering this new evidence, just what satellite pictures Pachauri and friends had been looking at.  He certainly seems to be the school boy after this.

It would appear that what is retreating at record speed is not the glaciers in the Himalayan range, but the last shreds of Rajendra Pachauri’s shattered credibility.  The excellent cartoonist, Josh, captures the moment in his own inimitable style over at Bishop Hill…

Now let’s see if any of the British MPs who are jumping up and down about wind power subsidies have the gumption to challenge the government to distance itself from the IPCC and Rajendra Pachauri for being completely unreliable and discredited.

Want to get your own way? Play the climate change card!

Regular readers will know we occasionally get little nuggets of stories from correspondents living near the global hub of the climate change alarmism effort, Norwich.  Last week it was 4×4 fire appliances that had become necessary because climate change is causing more fires and flooding.  Today we have yet another instalment, but this time it is a variation on the usual climate change theme.

Opponents to a proposed housing development in Pinebanks, Thorpe St Andrew, have come up with the novel argument for not building houses on a particular parcel of land… namely that it could ruin ‘rare geology’ vital to research into climate change!

Forget Arctic ice cores, bristlecone pines, glacier retreat and the mating habits of hedgehogs. Cast them from your mind.

The key to unlocking our climatic past and modelling our toasty future resides in a gravel pit in Pinebanks, just down the road from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

A spokesman for Natural England said:

The gravel pit is an important regional geological site. Our role is to make sure any rare geology is protected. If we think the development may damage this then we may object to it.

We want it protected so future generations can benefit from the study of it and reveal more about the earth’s past.

It would be interesting to know if Natural England et al, expressed similar concern for this ‘rare geology’ when gravel was being extracted from the pit.  You know, before someone came up with the idea of building houses around it.

Given the enthusiasm for anything AGW related at Broadland District Council, it seems the gravel pits will be spared being turned into residential estate.  It seems when it comes to this corner of Norfolk, if you want to get your way on any subject, just suggest some far fetched linkage with climate change and your wishes will be granted.  Climate change is the trump card in the big game.

Perhaps the time has come for the Norwich Evening News to rename itself the Climate Change Digest, to better reflect its editorial agenda to brainwash the local population into a CO2 centric terror and relay propaganda from UEA.