Saturday, December 26, 2009

Transmission Gulley Bypass

Libertyscott
20-12-09
reply to this
I spent most of my life in Wellington.

Quite simply, I support efficient road building. Projects with a good benefit cost ratio should go ahead. From this package I can observe the only good projects are bypassing Paraparaumu and Waikanae, and four laning from Peka Peka to Otaki. Kapiti has been appalingly served by its councils and a safer state highway is positive, but…
1. There is no capacity problem between Pukerua Bay and Mackays Crossing worth addressing. Paekakariki has an intersection problem, but that should be addressed specifically.
2. Pukerua Bay ought to be bypassed on its own.
3. Mana/Paremata has no real congestion issues anymore with the recent upgrades. The case for a bypass is modest, but would be so expensive as to be a low priority.
4. Aotea Quay-Ngauranga Gorge hard shoulder running would be cheap and worth considering, but perhaps best as toll lanes. That’s too innovative for New Zealand today.
5. A second Terrace Tunnel and second Mt Victoria Tunnel are only worth proceeding with if the old Tunnellink Urban Motorway extension is built. Frankly I’d do all of that ONLY if congestion pricing is also introduced to finance it, to significantly pedestrianise the CBD and narrow Jervois Quay.
6. Basin Reserve flyover should be part of a proper bypass, until then it’s a small patch up job.

I hoped for far better from the Nats.

I know there are far better road projects in Wellington with the Petone-Grenada link road and in eliminating all traffic light based intersections on SH2 from Upper Hutt to Melling, but that’s what you get when a “road of national significance” is announced.

The solution of the Greens is naive and makes no better sense, the real solution is to have a peak time only cordon around Wellington’s CBD and to make progressive upgrades to SH1 as the cost/benefit analysis justifies. The congestion charge would substantially boost the viability of public transport.
Time to go back to BCR thresholds of 2.5/1 for roads, sadly the Nats (and Labour before them) threw away economic efficiency.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

An Essence of ClimateGate

The introduction of the poster is reproduced here:

CLIMATEGATE: A STORY OF DECEPTION AND INTRIGUE
On November 19, 2009 some 3,000 e-mails, files of software and other documents from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit were covertly released onto the Internet. In his November 28, 2009 telegraph.co.uk article “Climate change:This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation”, Christopher Booker summarized the far-reaching ramifications of what was exposed in those documents:

The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the “hockey stick” were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre , an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann’s supporters, calling themselves “the Hockey Team”, and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite, including not just the “Hockey Team”, such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC’s 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore’s ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself. [16]
As the leaked documents were analysed, three threads emerged that sent a shockwave through informed observers across the world. As explained in “Global WarmingGate: What Does It Mean” [17], the e-mails suggested:

… the authors co-operated covertly to ensure that only papers favorable to CO2-forced AGW were published, and that editors and journals publishing contrary papers were punished. They also attempted to “discipline” scientists and journalists who published skeptical information.
… the authors manipulated and “massaged” the data to strengthen the case in favor of unprecedented CO2-forced AGW, and to suppress their own data if it called AGW into question.
… the authors co-operated (perhaps the word is ‘conspired’) to prevent data from being made available to other researchers through either data archiving requests or through the Freedom of Information Acts of both the U.S. and the UK.
THE CLIMATEGATE TIMELINE AND THE TICKING TIME BOMB
To better appreciate these themes and for ease of reference, the time-line chart attempts to consolidate and chronologically organize the information uncovered and published about the CRU emails by many researchers (see references), along with some related contextual events. There is far more information than can be assembled in one place (see in particular [124], but hopefully the key material uncovered to-date has been included.

Though many event boxes are important, perhaps two are most critical: one from 1981 and another from October 12, 2009 (with the bomb icons). The first sets out the shaky foundation underpinning the AGW enterprise, and the second an admission of its failure. Together, they help explain why everything that occurred in between (as revealed by the CRU documents and independent researchers like Steven McIntyre) was inevitable to plug the holes in the leaky boat and keep up appearances. Consequently, as Terence
Corcoran sets out in “A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism”, disagreement and skepticism ran strife throughout the 13 years of e-mails [124].

The story that emerges is not of a smoking gun, but of a 30-year time-bomb whose fuse was lit in 1981, when — despite only a handful of scientists supporting it — the AGW theory was championed, without question, by the Press.

However, due to AGW’s shaky foundation, it was only a matter of time before the growing divergence between real-world data and the AGW climate models, which had been considered beyond reproach, became self-evident and problematic.

Offending data was massaged to fit the models to stave off questions and the losses they might reveal.

The data manipulation became so extreme that a CRU programmer tasked in 2006 with reproducing CRU’s own published results using its own models and data was unable to do so after three years. Releasing the data and computer codes behind the models for others to review and verify was out of the question. Though FOI requests are redundant for peer-reviewed research, the CRU’s refusal to release data and methods used for papers published in respected peer-reviewed journals, despite journal rules prohibiting such refusals, inevitably led to legal FOI requests, if for no other reason than that some scientists were insisting that the world commit trillions of dollars to economic policies based on what they claimed their research showed.

Lest there be any doubt that these scientists did anything wrong, Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains what the CRU documents reveal: “They are unambiguously dealing with things that are unethical and in many cases illegal. … We have scientists manipulating raw temperature data. … The willingness to destroy data rather than release it. The avoidance of Freedom of Information requests.” [66] Consequently while, the UEA and Pennsylvania State University said they were investigating the matter, the UK Met Office (which works closely with the CRU and relies heavily on its product) announced a three-year project to re-examine 160 years of temperature data, signalling its own lack of confidence in the CRU-based temperature record.

What about the “other temperature records”: NASA’s GISS and NOAA’s GHCN? CRU and GISS get most of their raw data from the GHCN. Serious irregularities and questionable adjustments are starting to surface with the source GHCN data itself (see [50], [60], [62], [67]). And so, like the Three Musketeers, the CRU, GISS and NOAA’s temperature records stand or fall together.

Data fudging and secrecy aside, by 1998 the Earth had stopped warming and begun cooling, despite record levels of CO2. This divergence between AGW theory and reality grew so enormous that by October 12, 2009, Kevin Trenberth, in a fit of frustration, e-mailed his colleagues: “Where the heck is global warming? … The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” The reason he gave for their inability to account for the cooling was that “the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” In other words, the data showing cooling were wrong, but the climate models, predicting warming, were correct. This, arguably, is the key revelation of ClimateGate. It makes self-evident that blind faith and bankrupt logic are now masquerading as rational science. No matter how much techno-babble is used to make today’s predictive climate models sound impressive, they have all proved fatally wrong. The hockey team scientists admit they have no clue why this is so, although other scientists do.

These problems would have been publicized years ago if the AGW theorists didn’t have powerful allies: policy makers in virtually every professional scientific body, editors of virtually major every scientific journal, and reporters and editors at virtually all mainstream media outlets. Few provided unbiased, impartial forums where alternate views and evidence were aired and debated. Instead, most spared no effort to ensure voices against the artificial consensus were quashed by editorial fiat and a persistent campaign of vilification, intimidation, and ridicule.

Science has come full-circle, taking a page from the medieval Church by using fear and persecution to silence sceptics. The oppressed have become the oppressors. Given that most professional scientific bodies and peer-reviewed journals have been active accomplices in this scandal, one wonders how many other so called scientific consensuses have been similarly engineered and waiting for their own ClimateGates before truth is known.

JoNova
A freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host. The Skeptics Handbook: 164,000 copies printed.


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university economics

Wondering why young people spout Marxist claptrap? Look no further than the universities

Gerard Jackson
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 21 December 2009

If Copenhagen reveals anything at all — apart from the stupidity of politicians — it is that the cult of socialism is alive and is as intolerant and as ignorant as ever. So where do young people get this socialist drivel from? Unfortunately much of it comes from our universities. This brings to mind Frank Stilwell, a socialist professor of economics at the University of Sydney and another example of the left's total inability to learn from history, particularly economic history. In Why bother about economic inequality (OnlineOpinion, 15 July 2002) he slagged, the name of equality, "economic rationalism, economic fundamentalism and neoliberalism", leftwing codenames for free market economics.

In support of his argument for greater equality of incomes he deferred to John Stuart Mill. In keeping with the long-discredited Ricardian system Mill made the dreadful error of divorcing 'distribution' (income) from production, which led him to conclude that "The Distribution of Wealth depend on the laws and customs of society". (John Stuart Mill. Principles of Political Economy, University of Toronto Press, 1965, p. 200.) One has only to think of the late and unlamented — unlamented among those who love liberty, that is — Soviet Union to realise how incredibly stupid Mill's view is, especially in the light of his own nascent view of imputation. (Ibid. p. 31.)

In a free market the vast majority of incomes are not 'distributed' but earned. Marginal productivity theory is the means by which economists explain market outcomes. Now in The Australian Financial Review (17 December 1998) Stilwell regurgitated the same socialist crap. This time he claimed capitalist countries had traditionally tried to ameliorate the economic inequalities that free labor markets generated. Complete nonsense. First, it has always been the tradition in Christian countries to try and alleviate the conditions of the poor. One of the great achievements of capitalism was not only to eliminate mass poverty but even poverty as it was traditionally understood. Not a hint of this from the Marxist Stilwell.

Now for a few historical facts, those things that Marxist's prefer not to debate in public forums, that will cast considerable light on the matter of living standards and wages. Nineteenth century Britain saw real wages quadruple even though the population rose by nearly 300 per cent. This was an unprecedented event. Yet Stillwell clearly insinuated, as he did in a later article, that free labour markets, meaning capitalism, had, in his own words, created "major casualties". (I wonder what he calls the100 million people killed in the last century by Marxist regimes?)

Social polices to alleviate distress were not initially designed as a means to address the phony issue of market inequalities, even though leftists eventually perverted them to that end. Stillwell pointed out that Australia's arbitration system has endeavoured to ensure that wages do not fall below the "social minimum . . . [and] prevent the emergence of a 'working poor'". He then claimed labor market deregulation "undermines these arrangements." In other words, free markets, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, cause poverty. This is complete and utter left-wing bilge. The very thought that the state, any state, can guarantee its citizens a specified living standard is absurd, as a moment's reflection on the appalling living conditions that prevailed in former communist states proves.

Real wages are basically determined by the ratio of labour to the capital structure, not by posturing politicians, bullying unioncrats and their Marxist allies in academia — and certainly not by the "customs of society". Therefore, as a country expands its capital structure, adding to it more and more complex stages of production embodying new technology, it raises living standards. Moreover, as Stillwell knows, or should, marginal productivity theory explains why there is a tendency in the free market for workers to receive the full value of their labor, which in turn is paid by consumers and not employers.

One of the roles of a businessman is to act as an intermediary between consumers and the factors of production. This renders absurd Stillwell's claim that companies should keep up wages to avert poverty. Any attempt to raise wages above market rates will raise unemployment. The obverse is that any attempt to keep wages below market rates will cause labor shortages.

What really nails Stillwell is the fact that the "distributional hierarchy" is a socialist myth. Most incomes, as I have already pointed out, are not distributed, but earned (with the exception, perhaps, of some academics). Marxist attempts to demonstrate that labour was exploited by having part of its income (surplus value) confiscated by capitalists were completely demolished by the "marginalist revolution," and especially by the brilliant work of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (Capital and Interest, three volumes,1884 - 1912).

Stillwell is too shrewd a propagandist to directly use Marx's discredited exploitation theory of labor to attack free labor markets, so what he could not achieve by open debate he hoped to gain by stealth. Hence his insinuation that there is something unjust about market income disparities even though market participants tend to be paid in accordance with the value of their work.

This enabled him to confidently assert that a deregulated labor market "could certainly swell the ranks of those classified as living in poverty" despite the fact that the greatest cause of poverty in Australia was the unemployment that his beloved unions and arbitration commission created. But then again, Marxists are not generally noted for heeding inconvenient facts.

(In his brilliant seminar at the University of Vienna in the 1890s Böhm-Bawerk utterly demolished Marx's economics. Böhm-Bawerk's analysis was published in English in 1898 under the title Karl Marx and the Close of His System)

Stilwell's attack on the idea that the real wages of the lower-paid should be allowed to fall so that the market will clear is totally misconceived. It ignores the economic fact that if this group's income were excessive in relation to the value of its members' product then this involves a forcible transfer of income from displaced workers. Although he indirectly admitted this by conceding that lower wage rates could lead to more people being employed, he ignored the ramifications. Stillwell's most appalling argument against market-rate wage adjustments was the fallacy of demand deficiency. It is so bad that if I do not quote him in full readers might think I misrepresented him:

If total wage payments fall, this may lead to lower consumption levels. Unless the goods and services being produced are for export markets, this would lead to a tendency towards over-production.

(Incidentally, it is ironic that one of the most brilliant refutations of the demand-deficiency fallacy was penned by John Stuart Mill in his essay Of the Influence of Consumption on Production. Although written in 1829 or 1830 it was not published until 1844. As an aside, I'm inclined to think that Mill's reputation as an economist has — like Kenneth Galbraith's — more to do with his literary flair rather than a gift for economic analysis).

Firstly, what has "total wage payments" to do with anything? Market economists only call for cuts in wage rates that are above market clearing levels. Only Keynesians and Marxists seem to harp on about en bloc wage cuts. Even if, for example, the state was able to enforce a general wage cut the effect would not be to lower aggregate demand but to create labor shortages and encourage firms to find ways of raising incomes above the maximum to attract workers. (This phenomenon is called "wage drift" and was even documented in fourteenth century England.)

If reducing real wage rates in general caused 'demand deficiency' then Keynesian policies would never have initially succeeded because they only work by using inflation to cut real wage rates in relation to the demand for the marginal product. Secondly, raising wage rates above market clearing levels leads to withheld capacity by causing unemployment. This is just another way of saying that it reduces demand, the opposite of Stillwell's argument which is clearly based on the discredited purchasing-power theory of wages. (See W. H. Hutt's The Keynesian Episode: A Reassessment, LibertyPress, 1979.)

Now we can either express demand in terms of supplies or in terms of money, as do most economists. It follows that even if cutting wage rates did not reduce unemployment it would still not reduce monetary demand but only change its composition, which also means that demand in terms of supplies would not change either. Thirdly, by implying that by letting wage rates adjust to market clearing values the demand for labor would not increase, Stilwell, without any justification, slipped indeterminacy into his argument, thus sidestepping marginal productivity theory.

But even if these wage rates were indeterminate over a given range unemployment would still emerge if wage rates were pushed above their market rates. Thirdly, as Josiah Tucker pointed out about 250 years ago: "One man's work is another man's employment." This neatly summed up the economic truism (Say's Law) that supplies are demands; thus, pricing people back into work increases the demand for other products and restores the flow of incomes.

This is why total demand rises in these circumstances instead of falling. And this is why total payrolls (total wage payments) rise. Once again, let us turn to history. Hoover's belief in the purchasing-power theory of wages was behind his policy of maintaining money wage rates even as prices were falling. The results were tragic: by March 1933 total payrolls had fallen by about 70 per cent and unemployment had leapt to 25 per cent. So much for Stillwell's purchasing-power theory of wages. (Any wonder I consider the term Marxist economist to be an oxymoron).

In his final paragraph Stillwell impugned market economics by referring to "neo-liberal ideologies" — and this from an unrepentant Marxist ideologue. If free market economics is an ideology, as this Marxist hack claims, then I challenge him to prove it. As the 'Duke' said: "That'll be the day."

Of course, Stillwell made the usual left-wing genuflection toward "distributional equity". He did the same thing in his online article when he said that in his "view . . . there should be ceilings as well as floors in relation to income distribution, but we could reasonably debate whether the ratio of ceiling to floor should be 3:1, 10:1 or whatever". Really? I have five questions for him:

1. Why is the present pattern of 'distribution' inequitable? 2. What is an equitable 'distribution' of income? 3. Why is a pattern of 'distribution' designed by the likes of you economically and morally superior to one produced by the market place? 4. By what scientific means did you arrive at your conclusion? 5. What the devil do you mean by "whatever"?

Stilwell's casual approach to economics brings to mind S. G. Strumilin, one of Stalin's 'economists', who announced: "Our task is not to study economics but to change it. We are bound by no laws". (Cited in Robert Coquest's Harvest of Sorrow, Pimlico, 2002, p. 112.) Well we all know how that little experiment ended up.

Unfortunately, it seems Professor Stilwell's views on income differences are highly contagious. Tony Featherstone (or is that Featherbrain?), Business Review Weekly's then-managing editor, led one of his articles with this inanity: "Nearly everyone wants to be wealthier but the relationship between income and happiness is weakening." The subheading contained this dim-witted gem: "But can they [the rich] go on increasing their wealth at this rate, and what about the poor?" (14 July 2004). This journalist has no idea what the hell he is really talking about.

Note: The mark of any ideologue is a refusal to consider evidence that contradicts his position. This is why Marxists can claim that the collapse of the Marxist states and the failure of socialist 'experiments' do not prove socialism cannot succeed. And these people have got the gall to call free-marketeers ideologues.

Leftwing history v. economic theory. This is another example of the anti-capitalist bigotry that is spoonfed to students by leftwing activists.

Gerard Jackson is Brookes' economics editor

CO2 Radiative Heat Transfer

Here is an interesting email from Hans Schreuder - sent by Ronald Kitching - discussing the scientific fact that carbon dioxide cannot trap heat!

This issue is at the heart of the global warming hysteria. If CO2 physically cannot hold onto heat then it cannot be responsible for heating up the atmosphere!


Quote:
Some comments I wrote to a specialist email group, composed of mathematicians and various academics:

What I can say is that until such time that the scientific community comes to realise that their pet theory of a greenhouse effect (based as it is on greenhouse gases) is unreal, until that time will the climate alarm continue.

I know not what else to write to convince them of this fallacy.

Neither water vapour nor carbon dioxide are GHGs; if anything at all, they are superb anti-GHGs; they cool the atmosphere!
http://tech-know.eu/uploads/SUN_heats_EARTH.pdf

Monckton himself writes : "[...] The predicted phenomenon is startlingly and entirely absent from the observational record – No “greenhouse warming” signature is observed in reality" - from http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image ... arming.pdf pg 7.

Yet he admonishes me for my "ignorance" with regard the basic radiative transfer formulae?!

All formulae relating to radiative transfer in our open-to-space atmosphere are chasing their own tail, but how can I prove it?

G&T did a splendid paper, now peer reviewed; my summary: www.tech-know.eu/uploads/Falsification_ ... ffects.pdf

Then I wrote the layman's guide to how the atmosphere works, with not one word of response by the RS.

Nobody listens, nobody wants to know.
www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/RS_science ... ail_02.pdf

The GHE and the concept of GHGs are sacrosanct. Period.

Fact of life: both GHE and GHGs are fantasmas; exactly the same as phlogiston in its day.

Fact of life: no evidence for any hot-spot has ever been observed.

Fact of life: such a hot-spot will never be observed because it can not exist in the open-to-space atmosphere; only in lab flasks can it exist.

Alan Siddons summarised the behaviour of carbon dioxide rather succinctly yesterday:

The problem all along, of course, is that people jump to conclusions. Sure, concentrated CO2 exposed to infrared will get somewhat warmer than everyday air. But this only proves that everyday air (99.96% of which is nitrogen, oxygen and argon) is more transparent to IR and less apt to be heated that way. Air molecules, CO2 included, initially acquire heat by contact with warmer surfaces. Via mutual collisions and convective transport, this heat gets spread around within an airmass.

To some slight degree, CO2 also has the option of acquiring heat by radiative transfer. But, rather ironically, it cannot radiatively transfer this heat to the nitrogen, oxygen and argon molecules which surround it because, as said, they are largely infrared-transparent. As a result, an excited CO2 molecule is obliged to share its heat just like the rest of them do, by bumping into other molecules. In short, there’s nothing special about CO2 in a real-world context. Outnumbered 2500 to 1, CO2’s energy is lost in a busy buzz of collisions, its radiative properties wasted.

Moreover, any heated gas radiates infrared — and in this case 99.96% of the gas consists of molecules other than CO2. Yet no one seriously imagines that back-radiation from 99.96% of the air has a role in raising the earth’s surface temperature. Only when CO2 comes up do we lose touch with reality.

Here’s a succinct point: Immersed in the vacuum of space, the earth has but one means of losing heat: radiation. And what does carbon dioxide do? It radiates.

It’s amazing that so few people have bothered to give this theory a second look.

So, there you have it. In just a few sentences Alan manages to point out how impossible it is for CO2 to make the atmosphere warmer.

Yet Professors of Physics and UK MPs who have degrees in Physics are happily proclaiming that the atmosphere is warmer because CO2 "traps" heat.

Best regards,

Hans

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Education Czar

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

WARNING: This editorial includes discussion of topics that are sexually graphic. Under usual circumstances, we would never entertain these subjects or the rancid language involved. In this case, however, a very unusual exception must be made because the issues are central to the background of a senior presidential appointee at the U.S. Department of Education who is in a position to influence how and what our children are taught in our nation's schools. Thus far, out of fear or squeamishness, there has been public hesitance to examine closely the beliefs of this individual because many are afraid even to touch the risky content. Our scruples cannot be used against us when traditional moral precepts need to be defended. Simply, the deep level of depravity involved in this subject cannot be portrayed without providing a couple of examples to illustrate the inappropriate content. Please do not read any further if you will be offended by sexually graphic language.

The Obama administration is stonewalling serious inquiries about sexual filth propagated by a senior presidential appointee who is responsible for promoting and implementing federal education policy. Democrats clearly are terrified of ruffling the feathers of their activist homosexual supporters, who are an influential part of the Democratic party's base. This scandal, however, is not merely about homosexual behavior; it is about promoting sex between children and adults - and it's time for President Obama to make clear that abetting such illegal perversion has no place in his administration.

It is curious why White House officials and Education Secretary Arne Duncan believe it's worth it politically to continue taking arrows for defending Kevin Jennings, who is Mr. Obama's controversial "safe schools czar." The evidence suggesting he is unfit to serve as a senior presidential appointee is startling and plentiful. It was revealed this week that Mr. Jennings was involved in promoting a reading list for children 13 years old or older that made the most explicit sex between children and adults seem normal and acceptable. This brought up anew Mr. Jennings' past controversies, such as his seeming encouragement of sex between one of his high school students and a much older man as well as his praise for Harry Hay, a notorious supporter of the North American Man Boy Love Association.

But there is more. There are shocking new revelations this week of tape recordings from a youth conference involving 14-year-old students. The conference, billed as a forum to encourage tolerance of homosexuality, was sponsored by Mr. Jennings' organization and was held at Tufts University in March 2000. Mr. Jennings was executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) from its founding in 1995 until August 2008. The conference sessions appear to have had less to do with promoting tolerance and more to do with teaching children how to engage in sex.

Andrew Breitbart's Biggovernment.com provides tapes of some of the sessions. Describing the subject matter as smut would be putting it lightly. The conference discussions were very graphic and cannot be relayed in full detail in a family newspaper. A few examples are sufficient to describe the depravity of the subject matter. During one session about oral sex, a presenter asked the 14-year-old students: "Spit or swallow? Is it rude?" In another session, the 14-year-olds are taught about a gross practice called "fisting," in which "the man leading the discussion position[ed] his hand and show[ed] 14-year-olds how to insert their entire hand into the rectum of their sex partner."

Teaching children sexual techniques is simply not appropriate. Unfortunately, it is part of a consistent pattern by some homosexual activists to promote underage homosexuality while pretending that their mission is simply to promote tolerance for so-called alternative lifestyles. It is outrageous that someone involved in this scandal is being paid by the taxpayers to serve in a high-powered position at the Education Department, of all places. At some point, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Jennings, Obama administration spokesmen and the president himself are going to have to start answering questions about all this. Refusing to do so won't make the issue go away.

Monday, December 21, 2009

BBC Iraq WMD

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Friday, 2 March, 2001, 23:52 GMT
Saddam's bomb

In the wake of the US and British bombing of Iraq, investigative film maker Gwynne Roberts finds evidence that suggests that Iraq may already have developed its own nuclear weapons.
"Leone" emerged from out of the shadows outside my hotel in Suleimaniya, northern Iraq, on a bleak, misty night in January 1998 - just as the crisis between the United States and Iraq over arms inspection was reaching fever pitch.


Local Kurdish officials identified him as a nuclear scientist and when we talked, he seemed well informed.

Leone described himself as an engineer who was a member of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission - and a senior official in the secret Iraqi nuclear programme.

To prove his expertise, Leone worked throughout the night drawing detailed diagrams of nuclear weapons in his hotel room.

He said it worked on the principle of the Hiroshima-type bomb, in which high explosives drive pieces of highly enriched uranium together at high velocity. This triggers a nuclear explosion.

Then Leone made another staggering claim - that Iraq had actually conducted a nuclear test before the Gulf War.



Saddam threatened us with the death penalty if we told anybody about it

Leone
It was carried out at 1030 on 19 September 1989 at an underground site 150 kilometres south-west of Baghdad, he said.

"Saddam had threatened us with the death penalty if we told anybody about it."

The location was a militarised zone on the far shore of Lake Rezzaza, which used to be a tourist area. There is a natural tunnel there which leads to a large cavern under the lake.

"We went to a lot of trouble to conceal the test from the eyes of the outside world," said . "The Russians supplied us with a table listing US satellite movements. They were always helping us."

Late last year I turned to the most important defector to reach Europe - Abbas Jannabi, personal assistant to Saddam's son, Uday, for 15 years.


Abbas Jannabi: Appears to confirm the claims

He was imprisoned eight times by his former boss and routinely tortured. He finally fled the country with his family in 1998.

His cousin, Fadhil Jannabi, held a senior position in the Iraqi nuclear programme.

"It's true," he said. "A nuclear test was carried out in 1988 or 1989 in an underground site beside Lake Rezzaza."

Mr Jannabi pointed to the test site on a map of Iraq, and it was close to Leone's location.

"It is a military zone. I doubt whether UN inspectors ever visited it."

He himself had been to the site. He learned of the successful test from Uday, who, he said, was unable to conceal his jubilation.

"They were talking about the test, about their ability to produce a nuclear bomb. They were talking about a new powerful Iraq," said Mr Jannabi. "They had a celebration which was attended by senior officials and ministers."

South Africans 'supplied uranium'

I asked him if it was definitely a nuclear test. He said it was. I asked him who had supplied the uranium for the bomb. "South Africa," he said.

Mr Jannabi claimed that negotiations with the South Africans began in 1986, and the delivery was made in 1988.

So had South Africa really been selling off surplus stocks of highly enriched uranium?

I contacted a former intelligence official under the apartheid regime who had helped procure components for his country's nuclear weapons programme on the black-market.

"The story is true," he said. "About 50 kilograms were sold to the Iraqis. The Americans gave the green light for the deal."


Expert: Bhupendra Jasani

For the final stage of my investigation, I used the latest space technology to check out the Rezzaza test site. If Leone was telling the truth, there might be clues left behind - even though the test apparently happened almost 12 years ago.

I bought pictures of Lake Rezzaza taken in July 1989 - two months before the claimed test - by a French Spot Image satellite and compared them with images from the Indian IRS1D spacecraft, shot in September 2000.

Professor Bhupendra Jasani from King's College, London analysed these images of Lake Rezzaza, and made an important discovery - what looked like the tunnel Leone and Abbas Jannabi had told me about.

The images also showed an army base with some 40 buildings.

Each of the buldings were 40 by 70 metres in size, and a massive missile base was nearby. Sixty per cent of these buildings had been destroyed either in air attacks or by the Iraqis themselves.

"If you wanted to hide something, I guess this is exactly what you would do," said Professor Jasani.

Growing concern

There is growing concern that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction now threaten stability in the region as never before. But has Iraq already tested the atom bomb?

Since I first spoke to Leone, my investigation has come a long way. I have confirmed beyond doubt that UN inspectors missed a very large slice of the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme.

There is also evidence that the Iraqis tested a small nuclear device underground.

Saddam is now a hero in the Middle East because of his stand against Israel, Britain and America.

The tragedy is that the warnings of defectors like Leone have come to nothing. And that Iraq is now emerging as a nuclear power, causing the threat to peace to be far more real than ever before.

Saddam's Bomb: 1815 GMT, Saturday 3rd March on BBC 2.

Reporter: Gwynne Roberts

Deputy Editor: Farah Durrani

Editor: Fiona Murch

WATCH/LISTEN

ON THIS STORY

Gwynne Roberts:
"UN inspectors missed a very large slice of the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme"



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Sunday, December 20, 2009

Who Pays the Piper? and Clips the Tickets

eo (21:12:50) :

Who cares about your penny contributions to wike. Party time to all the AGW crowd. Just think of all the money being thrown around after the sucessful meetings and lobbying at Copenhagen. Its billions going international organizations and NGOs( something like 10 to 15% administration fees of the $10 billions promised per year), then most of it some ( 70 to 80 per cent will be for consulting fees, purchases of SUV vehicles justified by the conditions of the roads in developing countries, trainings seminars, regional consultative meetings, capacity building, study tours, report preparations, public consultations and hearings, banquets, design and supervisions of demonstration projects, information dessimination, documentation. etc.) Whatever small amount left is the one for the tangible demonstration projects. Not to mention in developed countries the huge amount of taxpayer’s funded research and development for clean fuel, sequestration, renewable energy, etc that goes to the big oil companies and energy generators. This is the real stimulus to the economies of the developed countries. The truth is irrelevant. Science is irrelevant. It is the golden rule. He who holds the gold rules.

Bill Board Tolerance,: Yeah Right ! !

From Kiwiblog

radvad (393) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Defacing destroying bill boards happens every election and does not draw such strong language from you David.

I don’t give a toss about the church’s silly billboad, nor do I get my knickers in a twist about its destruction. Churches frequently incur damage without complaining and in one recent case, I think in west Auckland, worked with the offenders. Sarah Palins church was destroyed in an arson attack over a year ago (with people inside) and still no arrests.

I however give a toss when people feed me pap. St Matthews claim they wanted to provoke discussion. Wrong. They wanted attention and did it by mocking a central Christian belief. If a similar bill board appeared mocking another religion’s beliefs they would be the first to cry for “tolerance” and “celebration” of diverse faiths. A tolerance they are not prepared to show themselves.

St M’s also claim some sort of moral high ground but seem to me to be long on confrontation and short of forgiveness, both very “unchristian”.

A pox on both the individuals who destroy private property and also those organisations that cause confrontation by mocking and then try to con us that their motives are pure. Bah humbug.
Popular. Like or Dislike: 55 : 11


andrei (484) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 12:29 pm

Censorship phttt that revolting image has gone viral.

Nor is it intolerance – let me just down the road from that Church Auckland’s elite have been guffawing at a play called Christ Almighty!!! which includes such things as St Joseph having sex with the donkey and transvestite angels huk yuk which reveals just how purile Aucklands glitterati are IMHO. And nobody said boo.

No beheadings – we just leave the morons enjoy their boorish entertainment knowing that it reveals how empty and shallow they really are.

I would have personally preferred that billboard remain to stand in condemnation of those who erected it but passions run high – assuming of course that those who erected it who aren’t also those behind the vandalism – always a distinct possibility when dealing with Liberal media whores.

But in no way was that Billboard anything other than a cheap attention grabbing stunt designed to sow discord and unhappiness during one of the Church’s Holy Festivals.

And in that it is mission accomplished
Popular. Like or Dislike: 43 : 12


the deity formerly known as nigel6888 (612) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 12:34 pm

I cant agree

It was a deliberately stupid, provocative and frankly anti-christian billboard put up by a bloody vicar who thought he/she was being all edgy.

I am an atheist myself, but you dont go shitting on your parishoners.

If you want a real analogy, as opposed to the foolish strawmen that you put up. Try this one:

Imagine one of mohammed in bed with his second wife (yes the 9 year old one) put up by the imam just before ramadan, with some smart arse comment aout bedtime stories never having been the same since the marriage.

Thats the level of stupidity this church elevated itself to. A supposedly christian church thought it would be funny at christmas to mock christianity. oh yes, hardy hah hah, very cool, very edgy.

and now the vicar thinks its cool to call an offended parishioner a “fanatic”. If she threw a brick through a window at mcdonalds and burnt a couple of cars, he simply call her a social justice activist, and attempt to understand her point of view.

Yup, no wonder the anglicans are deservedly going down the toilet.
Popular. Like or Dislike: 52 : 7


TripeWryter (200) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
1 – St Matthew-in-the-City’s vicar is misguided. He doesn’t even believe a central tenet of Christian belief; that Jesus’ father was God himself. That’s like a revolutionary not believing in revolution.

2 – The billboard was attention-seeking. Nothing to do with getting people ‘thinking about Christmas’.

3 – It did, however, serve to provoke the religious, in the same way that Jesus provoked the religious of his time; they conspired to have him crucified.

4 – The religious took offence on behalf of God, despite there being no evidence that God was offended. Was he? Does he care? If the religious are his representatives, they must know what he thinks.

5 – The Bishop of Auckland seemed weak yesterday. He was deploring the billboard, but he didn’t seem to be doing anything more. Aren’t bishops of any stripe, any religion, sovereign in their own dioceses? Couldn’t he have just ordered the thing taken down? He gave the vicar at St Matthew a licence to practise and to preach. Couldn’t he had just withdrawn it? Put the vicar on the next plane out to wherever he came from?

6 – An online magazine headlined its story: ‘Christ, can’t you take a joke?’

Too true.
Vote: 25 5


krazykiwi (formerly getstaffed) (4565) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

[DPF: The extremists use the same justification for their actions - the difference is only scale]

Scale indeed. And the difference in that scale is so vast that to associate them one with another is ridiculous. Perhaps these actions are similar because the perpetrators were breathing, or were right handed, or had brown eyes, or … whatever.

In truth the perpetrators of religiously inspired acts are driven by a feeling that they doing what’s right. So too are Greenpeace protestors, MP’s at the trough, and me double parking when I think I’ll only be a minute.

Being driven by a feeling of doing what’s right is not a crime – actually it’s laudable. If a crime results from the feeling then the punishment is matched to the scale of that crime, not to the motivation itself.
Vote: 15 : 3


ZenTiger (189) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

It has been amazing to see the intolerance on display by some extremist Christians.

Yeah, I’m amazed extremists are so extreme, but I’m equally amazed that all the moderate people remain so moderate through this. What is it with the moderates anyway?

They have applauded the destruction of a church’s private property, because they don’t like the message on display.

Yes, but in fairness only the extremists applauded. The moderates thought it a stupid response to a stupid billboard.

It is only a small way removed from the Islamic extremists who burnt down an Embassy, because they didn’t like the cartoons of a newspaper in a country.

And consensual sex is really only a small way removed from rape. They both involve penetration. And National Party voters that deface a Labour Billboard is only a small step away from murder. And making jokes about Helen Clark’s looks is only a small step away from bad taste. And faux outrage at “Christian intolerance” is only a small step away from advocating them thrown to the lions.

Of course that was a more extreme act, but what they have in common is both sets of people think their God allows them to break the law to try and suppress a message or image they do not approve of. It is the thin end of theocratic rule.

Of course, anyone engaging in a political act is in open defiance of democracy and needs to be executed for treason. It’s the thin edge of a full blown fascist revolution, comrade.

There are many legitimate ways people could take action against the billboard of St Matthew-in-the-City. They include:

* Complain to the Advertising Standards Authority (as Family First did)
* Protest outside St Matthews
* Put up your own billboard with an alternative message
* Lobby for the leadership of St Matthews to be disciplined or sacked by the church hierarchy (if possible)
* Try and have the entire parish booted out of the Anglican Church

But for some reason, only the moderates only explore those avenues. Why are extremists so extreme?

But instead the nutters have won, with their campaign of destruction:

After the latest attack, by an elderly woman with a knife last night, the church said the billboard would not be replaced.

An elderly women with a knife and a pair of knitting needles has put them off, or the vast amount of negative reaction from “moderate” voices?? After the paint over, they were all for putting up another billboard (and maybe they have), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the implications of just how offensive their little media stunt actually is to many people.

The Vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City, Glynn Cardy, said the billboard was “attacked by a knife-wielding Christian fanatic who was then apprehended by a group of homeless people who care about our church. Later in the evening another group of fanatics ripped it down.

There go those fanatics again. Why are they so fanatical? Then again, a fanatic with money simply puts up an offensive billboard. Those sorts of fanatics are easy to spot (due to the size of the billboard and the content of the billboard), but they are fanatical within the law. It’s not illegal to offend people, but it’s ignorant to hide behind “freedom of speech” as the excuse to offend people.

I wonder how the fanatics would feel if someone threw bricks through all the windows at their local church, because someone doesn’t like their message.

We’ll have to catch them and see what they feel, if they go to church and if they realise how stupid they were. But a word of warning – fanatics can be fanatical about things.

It isn’t far removed from the morons who vandalise Jewish graves because they don’t like Judaism.

They weren’t morons David, they were extemist religious fanatics. Don’t hold back now, a vandal isn’t merely a vandal nowadays.

There is no right in New Zealand not to be offended by a religious message.

There is every right and freedom to be offended. You cannot think for one moment you can tell people what they are and are not “allowed” to think about something. There is no right to use ones offense as a justification for action outside the law. Subtle, but an important distinction.

If you are offended, then tough. Either take action under the law, or lump it. But you do not have the right to destroy private property of a church, because you are offended by their message.

Same goes for all lawbreakers, they should be caught and punished in a just manner. No surprises there.

But for all those who cheer on the extremists and vandals, well don’t cry out for sympathy when the same happens to your church.

OK, that’s a few people. What about the thousands of moderates you are now going to lump into your next point?

I mean if the Catholic Church beatifies Pope Pius XII, then it must be legitimate for Jewish activists to vandalise Catholic cathedrals to protest such an offensive move

Yeah right. First you argue that extremists have no right to break the law, now you are suggesting that a third party (the Church and all it’s moderate members) should expect whats coming to them. The Catholic Church has not condoned this vandalism, and it’s thousands of moderate members have not condoned this vandalism. This is a straw man argument you are setting up. Why assume these people are Catholics? Why assume they speak for the Church?

(Pius XII refused to publicly condemn the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews)

A controversial assertion, and you might want to look into this a bit further. : Soviet KGB falsly linked WW2 Pope with Nazis,
Vote: 25 : 4


Redbaiter (8181) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

“You don’t have a right to vandalise something which you find offensive”

Maybe you cede them that right by posting something designed to provoke such a reaction, and then being unable to defend it when the expected reaction occurs.

[DPF: That sounds like the arguments Muslim extremists used against the Danish cartoons. I believe the rule of law is paramount]
Vote: 7 13


Komata (196) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

As a Christian I personally found the poster offensive, but as it was St Matthew’s in the City that posted it, I am not surprised in the least.

Sadly that specific church has a very long record of being ‘trendy’, hip. cool, avant-garde and so out there, liberal and with it, (add whatever other ‘freeing’ words you may care to ) dating back to the late 1960’s when a parish priest (name sadly unrecalled – it was a little while ago – with what we would now call ‘liberal tendencies), decided to ‘get with it’ and engage with the flower people, presenting the gospel (as he perceived it) in a new and exciting way to embrace all and everyone – especially the homosexuals, lesbians and homeless.

(It was at the time that the same church was becoming a leader in anti-American and anti-Vietnam War protests, with the same priest being at the forefront of said protests)

The fact that he was diluting the essential Gospel message (that only through a personal acceptance of and relationship-with Jesus Christ as your personal saviour can you have eternal life) was irrelevant – cool was all and he fervently went all out to embrace the hippies, their culture and their ilk (pot, drug use – the whole circus) in the name of ‘Liberal’ and ‘Revolutionary’ theology – enthusiastically supported by his Bishop (Brown?).

His actions were totally acceptable to the new Zealand Anglican Synod since it was after all, another means of outreach and a chance to reach the ‘lost’. That, at least was the reason why the church (St Mathews) suddenly became a leader in liberal Christianity in New Zealand, and touted itself as being at the ‘cutting edge’ of Christianity in New Zealand. They were also totally ‘accepting’ (ie condoning-of) of the lifestyle of homosexuals and lesbians.

Predictably, with the accolades of liberals (mostly non-Christians, incidentally) St Matthews has since continued on that path with a succession of ‘liberal’ priests who have increasingly diluted the Christian message over the years, while still being supported by their local Bishop and moving even further away from the essential tenets of Christianity (along with the rest of the ‘Western’ Anglican church). All other faiths, especially Islam (a faith which is diametrically opposed-to and is always in confrontation-with Christianity) are of course welcome (as are Gays and Lesbians) and their beliefs incorporated into services (so that no-one feels left out)

Evidently, at least one member of the congregation has at last decided that ‘enough is enough’ and decided to take things into her own hands – the fact that she is 70-years plus being an indictment of the church, since evidently the ‘younger’ members are so happy with the diluted faith they are being fed that they don’t see there is a problem.
Others, evidently from other churches have also felt the same way, and have also defaced the poster, and since the ‘church’ hierarchy evidently doesn’t see that there is a problem, all power to the people concerned. But a ‘knife wielding Christian ‘FANATIC’? I think not – rather a devout, Bible-believing elderly Christian lady who has decided to take a stand. I wonder what she will be charged with?
Vote: 21 5


LiberalismIsASin (151) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 10:17 pm

I have followed this debate and refrained from commenting, I mean what is the point? If you are a christian you are considered a legitimate target, liberals consider it a duty to denigrate the beliefs of all religions, epecially christians, or at least its a gallant protest. But seriously DPF is a hypocrite of the highest order. If a church put up a billboard that was as offensive to sodomites, who he champions, he would be lecturing us about the limits of free speech. St Matthews is the kind of church that can no longer be considered a church, everywhere and always they battle against the cause of Christ.
Vote: 15 1


malcolm (747) Says:
December 19th, 2009 at 10:47 pm

If you are a christian you are considered a legitimate target, liberals consider it a duty to denigrate the beliefs of all religions, especially christians, or at least its a gallant protest.

Please stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you want your religion to be respected, then make a case for why it deserves respect. No special pleading and no playing the victim card. There is no automatic respect for ideas just because they’re special to you. And be careful with the victim mentality; it stops you thinking about your faith in a rational way and helps to keep you inside the bubble.

Do you have automatic respect for Islam, Scientology, Church of LDS and witchdoctors? Of course not. You probably think they’re deluded or mad. And you’re most probably right.
Vote: 5 8

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Climate's Stubborn Facts

December 16, 2009
Climategate's Stubborn FactsBy Dexter Wright

Mark Twain once said, "Get your facts first, then distort them as much as you please." By contrast, he also exclaimed, "How empty is theory in the presence of fact!" This pretty well covers the recent controversy over the altered global temperature data from Dr. Jones at East Anglia University in Great Britain.


What are the facts? Well for starters, scientists at the Smithsonian Institution tell us that during what is known as the Medieval Optimum, the Vikings were growing grapes in Greenland. An agronomist at Virginia Tech suggest that if you are planning to start a vineyard, the roots of the vines cannot be exposed to temperatures below 25oF or the vine will die. Even though there were no thermometers at the time of Eric the Red, this gives us a benchmark for reference. There are no vineyards in Greenland today because it is too cold. In fact, the Smithsonian reports that there is evidence which supports the theory that the Viking colonies later collapsed as a result of a dramatically cooling climate.


Other facts seem to stand stubbornly in the way of the global warming theory. Paleoclimatological records show that after the last ice age -- about seven thousand years ago -- the climate on earth reached a very warm period (much warmer than now) known as the "climatic optimum," which resulted in green pastures covering what is now the Sahara Desert in Africa. This fact contradicts the popular mantra from former Vice President Al Gore that we are warmer now than ever before.


Geologists tell us that the earth's climate has changed many times from hot to cold and back again. The prevailing theories are that over the last billion years, there have been at least four major ice ages. Since the end of the last ice age, we have been in what these climatologist say is an interglacial period. In English, this means that the planet has not yet transitioned to a climate of either beach balls or snow balls.


But what about the curve balls in ClimateGate? The swirling controversy concerns the infamous e-mails about the Jones global temperature data set. The recent e-mails published on the internet suggest that the data was deliberately modified to reach a preconceived conclusion. This data was used in the reports generated by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has concluded that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) causes global warming by absorbing infrared radiation. The vast majority of the report documents the measured increase in CO2. The report also represents climate change model predictions as "evidence" of the effects of this increase in CO2. Climate models are computerized forecasting aids, not evidence.


Atmospheric chemists will tell you CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere and is measured in parts per million. It seems a bit of a stretch that the tail can wag the dog, especially when CO2 absorbs such a narrow portion of the infrared spectrum. According to Dr. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, the global climate change models cannot "hindcast" known climatic changes such as the Medieval Optimum, when good, vintage, homegrown wines could be enjoyed in Greenland. As forecasters at the National Hurricane Center will tell you, if a model cannot hindcast, it cannot be relied upon for a forecast. Could it be that the data was tampered with to agree with the global climate models?


Is this an isolated incident of over-pressured scientists caving in to temptation? Well, the cracks in the global warming theory began appearing as far back as 1998. Dr. Sallie Baliunas published a study that linked global temperature fluctuations to solar activity. This theory is not a new one, but meteorologists have been very reluctant to accept this theory because the physical connection has been hard to determine. Dr. Baliunas suggested that solar wind was the physical connection. Dr. Baliunas was maligned by many scientists among the global warming crowd in an attempt to discredit her work.


More recently, Dr. Bill Grey of Colorado State University claimed that the university had cut his funding for hurricane research because of his outspoken opposition to the global warming theory.



Even NASA has been caught making exaggerated claims. Late in 2008, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported that October 2008 was the hottest on record. They "corrected" the statement after two meteorologists caught the "error" in the data and posted their findings on the internet.


Another "error" was admitted by the National Snow and Ice Data Center when they under-reported the amount of polar sea ice in the northern hemisphere. It seems they had a "sensor drift" which prevented the detection of ice coverage of more than 190,000 square miles -- roughly an area the size of California.


Mr. Gore insists that the debate on global warming is over. With so many questions concerning the validity of the data, how can anyone believe this? John Adams once said that "facts are stubborn things." But we need to establish the facts concerning the data before the debate can begin.


Will these questions concerning the facts affect the upcoming Senate debate on cap-and-trade? Probably not, because cap-and-trade is not about global warming. It's about money. Like everything else in Washington, follow the money. The political left sees all the money being made in the energy industry, and they want it...all of it! Carbon-based energy is so intertwined in our economy that if you control the energy industry, you control the world's economies. And that is the everlasting dream of the political left.

16 Comments on "Climategate's Stubborn Facts"

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Global Cooling

Thursday 10 December 2009
Same fears, different name?Maurizio Morabito uncovers a 1974 CIA report showing that the ‘scientific consensus’ then was that the world was cooling.
Maurizio Morabito



Panic about climate change is not an entirely contemporary phenomenon. In fact, 40 years ago, some scientists were similarly fearful about an impending climate catastrophe. The world would be harmed and life would become harsh, we were told. Policies were drawn up to deal with the coming change, and the scientists crossed their fingers. But there is one vital difference between the panic then and the panic now. It wasn’t global warming that was concerning scientists 40 years ago; it was global cooling.

This revelation comes from a recently unearthed 1974 CIA report. Because of this we now know that a large number of scientists really were convinced that world temperatures were on the way down. The only uncertainty centred around the strength and duration of the upcoming cooling of the planet. Yet this apparent consensus around global cooling, so prevalent during the 1970s, seems to have been erased from history. Why?

The principal reason is that awareness of this contrasting consensus threatens the current climate change edifice. Try to put yourself in the uncomfortable shoes of an advocate of climate change policies, determined to scare the wits out of the majority of voters and world leaders about global warming by presenting it as the consensus view amongst scientists. What would you do with a previous consensus that contradicts the current view? ‘If scientists in the 1970s were predicting an imminent ice age’, summarises John Fleck in the Skeptical Enquirer, ‘how can their forecasts of greenhouse warming today be trusted?’ (1)

It doesn’t take much effort to find ‘the world is cooling!’ articles in the online archives of the New York Times and the Washington Post, or on websites reporting what appeared in a famous Newsweek article from 1975, ‘The Cooling World’ (2). Written by science correspondents, many of them now dead, these pieces show plenty of scientists ready to depict a colder future in doom-laden words. There are even mentions of government agencies getting involved.

All of this seems incompatible with the contemporary view of catastrophic global warming. First of all, the phraseology used then to describe a cooling world of floods and droughts is identical to the phraseology used now to describe a warming world of flood and droughts. Worse, even the mere acknowledgement that climate change alarmism is not new would undermine fears being stoked around impending environmental, social and economic disasters due to unfavourable changes in temperatures.

Take, as an analogous example, the panic around Y2K or the ‘Millennium Bug’. Despite the predictions of a techno-meltdown, a cyber-geddon, computers the world over spectacularly failed to crash on 1 January 2000. With all of that very clear and fresh in most people’s memories, it would be very difficult to spread fears about a ‘Year 2100 Bug’. It’s because of experiences like this that scepticism has kept apace, despite a number of scares and panics in the British and worldwide print media over the past decade. Look at the reaction first to the problem of BSE (or Mad Cows’ Disease), then to SARS and now to swine flu: they tell a story of ever diminishing returns, of a general public becoming more immune to panics.

Likewise, if it becomes widely known that a number of scientists agreed that catastrophic cooling was happening little less than 40 years ago, current fears about climate changes will be seriously undermined. It might then be possible to view climate change as a set of possible scenarios to be investigated instead of panicked over.

That’s what has likely spurred some proponents of climate change to action. Take the Wikipedia entry on global cooling (3), which presents global cooling as ‘conjecture’, a ‘hypothesis’ that ‘never had significant scientific support’. Such a statement is just too easy to falsify (you only have to show it had significant scientific support, once). Tellingly, the Newsweek article (4) is left perfectly unexplained in Wikipedia; and, ironically, most of the global cooling entry appears to be about the surfacing of global warming concerns.

This rewriting of history isn’t confined to Wikipedia. Prominent examples include a couple of entries from January 2005 and October 2006 on the RealClimate blog (5, 6), an article in the Skeptical Enquirer by John Fleck called ‘The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus’ (7), and a piece in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by Thomas Peterson together with William Connolley and John Fleck in September 2008.

In the Realclimate blog, Connolley points to a 1976 paper by BJ Mason stating that ‘there is no physical basis for predicting either the timing or magnitude of [climate] changes’. Connolley quotes a 1975 US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council report that states ‘it does not seem possible to predict climate’. He then spends a lot of time talking about the timescale needed for an ice age to materialise, before labelling the Newsweek article ‘regrettable’, a ‘science stor[y] from the mass media’ (8).

Fleck’s Skeptical Enquirer article goes further, asserting that ‘scientists in the 1970s did not predict imminent global cooling or a looming ice age’. That is used as a springboard to explain how at the time ‘scientists began to look at the possible role of increased carbon dioxide emitted when fossil fuels are burned’.

Finally, in the piece from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the authors declare that ‘There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then’. Time and again, they show evidence of a growing scientific consensus on global warming.

Is that the end of it? Is it really a myth that a large number of scientists believed the world was getting cooler? Not quite. Peterson’s, Connolley’s and Fleck’s first trick is to narrow the ‘myth’ to ‘an imminent ice age’, rather than simply ‘global cooling’. They then argue that for it be even approaching a consensus view amongst scientists, there would have to be ‘both the presence of many articles describing global cooling projections and the absence of articles projecting global warming’. Absence? As in not even one? Is that really possible, even in theory?

Peterson, Connolley and Fleck proceed to conduct a scientific literature survey, but they exclude, for example, geology-related works, which is ironic given that they argue that ‘the myth’s basis lies in a selective misreading of the texts’. They carry on even after admitting ‘most’ of the surveyed articles ‘do not… make clear predictions’. They manage also to find a feeble excuse for the 1975 Newsweek article, enlisting New York Times uber-warmist Andy Revkin to explain that ‘cooling’ could have been a ‘good peg’ for climate stories at the time. They also extend the temporal window of their search so wide (1965-1979, with citations counted up to 1983) that it would have been truly remarkable if a scientific consensus of any sort had been maintained without an IPCC-like body to sustain it, especially in a science as young as climatology.

This certainly doesn’t seem like a healthy way to look at, and understand, history. There simply was no IPCC in the 1970s, and there was still space for a number of new hypotheses. To go out looking for a 2008-style consensus, and perhaps even an IPCC-equivalent body in the 1970s, is to be anti-historical. It is a view analogous to those paintings from the Middle Ages that naively portrayed ancient Romans in contemporary garb.

But that’s not all. Peterson, Connolley and Fleck include this little gem: ‘By the early 1970s, when [Dr Murray] Mitchell updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the notion of a global cooling trend was widely accepted, albeit poorly understood.’ Is that the sound of somebody shooting themselves in the foot? Is it possible that a single paragraph undermines a whole article? After all, it does mention a ‘global cooling trend’, and uses an expression such as ‘widely accepted’ (the consensus that dare not speak its name perhaps). Continue now a few lines down the article and this is what you’ll find: ‘It was not long, however, before scientists teasing apart the details of Mitchell’s trend found that it was not necessarily a global phenomenon.’

A pattern is clearly emerging. We have a ‘widely accepted [by the scientific community]…global cooling trend’, at least judging from Mitchell’s work in 1972; doubts about that growing in the same scientific community from 1975/1976, as per Damon and Kunen’s paper; but not early enough to prevent Newsweek from publishing its 1975 article, one that even mentions a certain Dr Murray Mitchell. That means that pieces of the global cooling puzzle do suggest that cooling was a widely-held view in the 1970s.

Admittedly, such an agreed view did not last the whole decade: rather, it concerned the 1972 to 1975 period. Says who? Says the CIA, in a unique report I was recently able to re-discover in the British Library (9). It seems that even in the era of the internet and Google it is possible to unearth ‘lost files’.

Forgotten for 35 years, the CIA report, A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems frequently mentions a scientific acceptance of global cooling. It also reveals how most climate fears have never really left us, regardless of the underlying temperature trend.

Having seen the CIA report mentioned in a 1976 Washington Post piece, but with no copy of it on the internet, I obtained the microfiche document from the British Library. The content of the report’s 36 pages is striking. It may have been written in 1974, but the depictions are uncannily familiar: climate change, it says, will lead to floods and famines, and leaders in climatology are issuing stark warnings about threats to ‘the stability of most states’. The only thing to differentiate it from today’s scaremongering is the fact that the CIA in 1974 was concerned about global cooling, not warming. The report even mentions a ‘consensus’ among scientists.

The document is embarrasing to read. The ‘new climatic era’ is described in 1974 as a harbinger of famine, starvation, refugees, floods, droughts, crop failures, monsoons and the cause of all kinds of meteorological phenomena. As expected, potential benefits are downplayed and potential harms highlighted: the Sahara is expected to expand, and world grain reserves may last less than one month, the report claimed. There is even a cursory list of past civilisations destroyed by climatic episodes: The Indus, the Hittites, the Mycenaean and the Empire of Mali.

According to the CIA, these climate models are being refined (as always) and the energy balance of the atmosphere is perfectly explicable without a single reference to greenhouse gases. Thanks to government intervention (of course), many famous scientists, until then victims of ‘personality clashes’, have managed to establish a ‘scientific consensus’ about ‘global climate change’, including vague threats about a ‘greater variability’ in climate and serious economic problems around the world. And not only that; they all agree on a series of proposals about the creation of new government agencies. This is exactly the agreed scientific position as reported at the time by Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post and so on.

So what prompted the CIA’s interest in climate? The prime reason was the reported loss of a ‘significant part’ of the USSR’s wheat crop during the winter of 1972. Aware of the potentially dire consequences on the ‘politics of food’, the CIA was forced to acknowledge the lack of serious ‘analysis tools’ for climate. Hence, it wanted scientists to respond (unanimously) to policymakers, another feature of climate discussions common to both then and now.

In any case, on the back of the 1974 CIA document, Peterson’s, Connolley’s and Fleck’s reporting of the 1972 Mitchell paper, and the Damon and Kuten 1976 article, it seems clear that there was an agreed view amongst scientists that the world’s climate was cooling.

Why, then, was the CIA report overlooked until now? For one thing, it was classified at the time. Furthermore, Peterson, Connolley and John Fleck, and countless other people with even a passing interest in climate change, might not have obviously looked for it.

However, there are several websites with plenty of evidence pointing in the same direction. We have excerpts from a 1977 book, The Weather Conspiracy – the Coming of the New Ice Age (where the CIA-inspired scientific consensus is mentioned) (10). We can also learn that a 1972 conference of scientific leaders was convened at Brown University to discuss ‘The Present Interglacial: How and when will it End?’ Unless all participants believed a glacial period was in the making, that question would be meaningless. In fact the ‘42 top American and European investigators’ present concluded that ‘a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon’ (11).

The consensus was strong enough for Henry Kissinger to address the UN General Assembly on 15 April 1974: ‘The poorest nations… have been threatened by a natural [disaster]: the possibility of climatic changes in the monsoon belt and perhaps throughout the world.’ (12) Finally, indications of a build-up of a seeming scientific consensus on global cooling could be traced back as far as 1961.

Years ago, an Italian scientist humorously suggested the following to all aspiring climatologists:

‘To the question “Is the climate changing?” by all means never, ever, reply: “No, everything’s normal” […] because people would unanimously conclude that you understand nothing about meteorology, and nothing about climate. It would be the end of your career. The only sensible answer is: “Of course it is changing! It’s a well-known fact, scientifically confirmed and one that none could argue against.” You can then launch yourself into forecasting for the next hundred years a climate identical to the current one, amplifying the latest phenomena to extreme consequences.’ (13)

Let’s face it: today’s climate fears are similar to those of 35 years ago – even if the science has changed, and the thermometer readings have changed, and the climate models have changed, and the policies themselves have changed. Wouldn’t it be nice to see us become Climate Adults, leaving the infantile scaremongering behind, once and for all. We might even be able to devise better solutions than things like the hurried-up disaster called ETS (emission trading scheme).

Maurizio Morabito is a banking consultant, journalist and blogger.

Previously on spiked

Christopher C Horner told Rob Lyons that censorship and conformism are preventing proper investigation of climate change hysteria. Stuart Blackman said climate change is not beyond questioning. Christopher Monckton felt that Al Gore was too chicken to debate him. John Gillott asked whether there really was a consensus on global warming. Brendan O’Neill examined global warming’s chilling effect on free speech. Or read more at spiked issues Environment and Free speech.

(1) The great global cooling myth and the politics of science, John Fleck, Skeptical Enquirer, May 2009

(2) The Cooling World, Newsweek, 28 April 1975

(3) Global Cooling, Wikipedia

(4) The Global Cooling Myth, RealClimate.org, January 2005

(5) Global Cooling Again, RealClimate.org, October 2006

(6) Symons Memorial Lecture by BJ Mason, QJRMS, 1976, p473

(7) UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE CHANGE: A program for action, US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Report, 1975

(8) Symons Memorial Lecture, by BJ Mason, QJRMS, 1976, p473

(9) A study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems, CIA Report, 1974

(10) Excerpts from The Weather Conspiracy, the Coming of the New Ice Age, Icecap.us

(11) See An Important Letter Sent To The President About The Danger Of Climate Change, Fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com, 21 October 2009

(12) Cited in Our Changing Weather Patterns, Alan Wilkie, 1976, p48

(13) How to Be Right About the Climate: Always!, by Vincenzo Ferrara (trans. Maurizio Morabito), originally in Rivista di Meteorologia Aeronautica, Vol XLII no 1, Jan-Mar 1982


reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7817/

50 reasons Climate Change

Link - http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/12/50-reasons-why-global-warming.html

1) There is "no real scientific proof" that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man's activity.

Technically, proof exists only in mathematics, not in science. Whatever terminology you choose to use, however, there is overwhelming evidence that the current warming is caused by the rise in greenhouse gases due to human activities.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 per cent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the Earth during geological history.

Misleading comparison. Since the industrial age began human emissions are far higher than volcanic emissions.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth's history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

In the past 3 million years changing levels of sunshine triggered and ended the ice ages. Carbon dioxide was a feedback that increased warming, rather than the initial cause. In the more distant past, several warming episodes were directly triggered by CO2.

4) After world war 2, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

In fact, temperatures fell during the 1940s and then remained roughly level until the late 1970s. The fall was partly due to high levels of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide counteracting the warming effect.

5) Throughout the Earth's history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher - more than 10 times as high.

Which shows that higher CO2 means higher temperatures, taking into account the fact that the sun was cooler in the past. The crucial point is that civilisation is adapted to 20th century temperatures.

6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.

Yes. And sea level has been up to 70 metres higher during warm periods. If that happens again, there'll be no more London or New York.

7) The 0.7 °C increase in the average global temperature over the past hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

Wrong. The rapid warming since the late 1970s has occurred even though other factors that can warm the planet, such as the sun's intensity, have remained constant.


8) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers, not the 4000 usually cited.

Untrue, as even the briefest look at the scientific literature can establish.

9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists - in a scandal known as "climategate" - suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming

Nothing in the emails undermines any of the key scientific conclusions. Independent groups have come to the same conclusions.

10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

The sun may have contributed to the warming in the first part of the 20th century but it has not caused the rapid warming since the late 1970s.

11) Politicians and activists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming, but sea levels have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

Wrong. Sea level rose very rapidly as the North American ice sheet melted after the last ice age but levelled off and has been nearly stable for the past 2000 years or so. Now it is starting to rise rapidly again.

12) Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds.

He is right. All sorts of factors affect climate, even the lead in petrol. However, the recent warming is mostly due to rising greenhouse gases, and if we pump out more CO2 it will get even hotter.

13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that "fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our government and our political class - predominantly - are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world".

Irrelevant and incorrect on all counts.

14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions.

There are arguments over how much wind power can contribute, but there is no doubt they are already helping reduce emissions in many countries.

15) Professor Plimer, professor of geology and earth sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an "absurdity".

See (1). And note that Plimer is a geologist, not a climatologist.

16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is "embarrassed and puzzled" by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the Earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.

Many scientists think Soon should be embarrassed by some of the papers he has published.

17) The science of what determines the Earth's temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.

There are still lots of details to fill in but the big picture is increasingly clear. The uncertainties that do exist swing both ways: there could be more warming than predicted.

18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour, which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can't even pretend to control.

Water vapour is a feedback, not a cause of warming. The amount of water in the atmosphere depends on temperature; any excess rains out within days.

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4000 signatories, including 72 Nobel prizewinners, from 106 countries have signed it.

That's not what the Heidelberg Appeal really said, and 1992 was a long time ago.

20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 °C per century - within natural rates.

Incorrect. Over the past 1000 years temperature has never changed nearly as fast.

21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the scientific council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland, says the Earth's temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapour than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

See (18). And why believe someone whose work was rejected by the scientific community?

22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth's current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

The Earth is still warming and even if the sun's intensity does fall, it will not outweigh the effect of rising greenhouse gases.

23) It is a myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries.

Incorrect. The current retreat is unprecendented.

24) It is a falsehood that the Earth's poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder.

Illogical and incorrect. Warming is warming whatever causes it. And all parts of the Arctic are warmer compared with the average from 1951 to 1980. The extent of the warming is contributing to the rapidly shrinking in the extent of sea ice cover during summer.

25) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims climate-driven "impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance", but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research.

There is already clear evidence that the distributions of many species are changing as the planet warms (PDF). If it gets much warmer, some will have nowhere to go.

26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world's species does not make sense as wild species are at least 1 million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles.

Many species are less than 1 million years old. In any case, during the past 3 million years, the Earth has got a lot colder than it is now during ice ages but never much hotter.

27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Depends on what timescale you are talking about. Scientists differ on how quickly they think the ice sheets will melt, but studies of warm periods leave no doubt that if the temperature gets much higher and stays higher, all the ice sheets will melt completely after several centuries or millennia, causing sea level to rise by 70 metres.

28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population.

Higher CO2 levels do boost growth of some plants, but only if there's enough water throughout the growing season and the temperature is appropriate for particular plants. Overall, climate change is expected to reduce yields once the temperature rise exceeds 3 °C.

29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on Earth took place around 700 million years ago.

So what?

30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles.

Repetitive and incorrect. See (10).

31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called "greenhouse gases" may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming.

Burning fossil fuels produces CO2 and consumes oxygen, and thus lowers oxygen levels, though the decrease is too tiny to matter.

32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain-top observations made over the past three decades have not shown any significant change in the long-term rate of increase in global temperatures.

The rate of increase is in line with predictions.

33) Today's CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared with most of the Earth's history - we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere.

And when CO2 levels were higher there were no ice sheets and sea levels were 70 metres higher. Plus, the sun was cooler in the past.

34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3 per cent of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037 per cent of the atmosphere.

You can only get close to the 3 per cent figure by counting water vapour, which as we have already said is a feedback not a cause.

35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to "verify" anything.

No, they can't, because climate models are based on the physical laws that apply in the real world. In any case, the crucial evidence that CO2 warms the planet comes from physics and chemistry, not from general climate models.

36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.

Incorrect. For instance, while there is much uncertainty in this area, there is growing evidence that hurricanes will get stronger, though there may not be more of them.

37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that "none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases".

Meaningless taken out of context, without knowing what studies the statement was referring to.

38) The world "warmed" by 0.07 +/- 0.07 °C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 °C expected by the IPCC.

Actually temperature rose 0.19 ºC, but global warming does not mean natural variation goes away. Periods of cooling are still to be expected.

39) The IPCC says "it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense" but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally.

Incorrect. Some studies have found an increase.

40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth's many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms.

Incorrect and contradictory. Either the effect is negligible or helpful: it can't be both. In fact, rising CO2 will lead to big temperature increases, which will have a dramatic effect on Earth's ecosystems. Some species will benefit as their range expands, others will run out of suitable space. The speed of the change - far faster than natural climate change in the past - will make it very difficult for plants and animals to move fast enough.

41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate-change impact on civilisations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful.

Which researchers? Where were their findings published? In any case, over the past two millennia, warm periods have generally involved tiny changes compared with the changes we can expect over the next century.

42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical.

Er, why?

43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests.

Yet more repetition. See (28).

44) The historical increase in the air's CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years.

According to who? This statement is impossible to prove or disprove. What we can say is that the bulk of the increase in yields over this time are due to improved plant varieties and techniques, many of which are heavily reliant on the use of fossil fuels. If we don't start planning for the end of cheap oil, food prices could soar.

45) The increase of the air's CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

How exactly, and according to who?

46) The IPCC alleges that "climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths", but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations.

Incorrect. Excessive heat during summers is already killing more people than are being saved by milder winters.

47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto protocol has no scientific grounding at all.

See here for the political background. Russia signed up to the Kyoto protocol later that year.

48) The "climategate" scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change.

Or it points to a relatively cheap public education campaign and efforts by responsible scientists to ensure political decisions are based on sound science rather than on papers that have been shown to be flawed.

49) The head of Britain's climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.

Even if he has - no source is given - no one can be forced to spend money they don't have and such spending is an investment that will save householders thousands of pounds in the long term. If energy prices rise sharply as demand for oil and gas exceeds supply, we may all be wishing we had invested more in energy efficiency.

50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are "no direct subsidies", but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh, which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.