Climate Industry: Climategate Hasn't Impacted Belief in Climate Change

BusinessGreen recently claimed that on both sides of the Atlantic 'belief' in climate change has been less dented by the Climategate scandal as first thought.

The choice of words is telling in and of itself. Apparently climate change is now purely a matter of faith.

You can read all about it in businessGreen.

In the meantime, we're doing an unscientific survey of our own to see if we can match the astonishing figures claimed by the climate industry, still comfortably in the double digits.

Of course it's hard to catch up with government propaganda and a media that are solidly aboard the climate change paradigm.

How gullible are you? Are you still in the grip of the watermelons?

Of Human Hubris, Coverups and the Debilitation of the Mind

Two results of a number of enquiries into the University of East Anglia's Climate Unit (CRU) are in. Complete whitewashes, as was to be expected. Here are the results. But after I've reported on a typical anti-human, Rousseauian narrative on radio last night, an interview with diver-photographer Dos Winkel (do visit the site; like Riefsenstahl's, the artwork is simply stunning).

The problem is, these self-appointed researcher-activists-Cousteau-wannabees are talking through their hats! Winkel is wildly peeling the alarm bells as entire species are disappearing and seas are being drawnetted dry. He knows, because as a diver he has witnessed the devastation with his own two eyes. Who wouldn't take him seriously?

But when you come think of it, there's something highly subjective and selective about such reports. Climber-activists have been doing the same in the Himalayas and the Alps as we know to our detriment. Some of these amateur-researcher reports have 101 found their way into the UN's IPCC 2007 Update without further ado, where they were used to influence politicians and other decision makers at the expense of the tax payer.

- Caption: photo by Dos Winkel - 

There's nothing scientific about these sightings (or lack thereof). How misguided are these people? Very. A Dutch commuter newspaper is suggesting there may be no summer this year "due to Iceland's volcanic eruption". A volcano is now standing accused of "polluting the climate". How dare it, they exclaim, as they're shacking their fists at the angry ghost in the mountain.

Robert Moon is reporting today in the Examiner that the climate lobby in the media are making the case, not of a direct cause and effect as they did with climate warming and hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse in 2007, but are now concocting a narrative as if there were a relationship between volcano eruptions and a decline in the weight of gletchers (whatever).

Human hubris can at times be quite staggering. This goes for the entire man-made global waming hypothesis. In the face of the mighty forces of nature, it's the question if man is capable of such a feat in the first place. The notion is the result of the erroneous postmodern habit of confusing the metaphysical and the man-made. Their minds have reached the level of the medieval bumpkin who's blaming the plague on demons (see reports on man-made climate warming being responsible for massive earth quakes).

Besides anti individualim, anti reason and anti capitalism postmodernists share this confusion with the Islamists: an Iranian cleric has just discovered that earthquakes are caused by extramarital sex. It beggars belief what divides these two members of the Unholy Alliance!

A debilization of the mind has taken place as a result of a world view that is a fallacy. Like the foundation of a house is out of whack, causing eventually the entire edifice to crumble, this warped world view produces nothing but inside out, upside down bolderdash - crap in, crap out.

I recently retrieved some of my earliest work on the critique of postmodern thought, laid out in - for want of a better word - the PMF (postmodern fallacies). It needs updating with the latest discoveries on present confusion (which is rife!), and the analysis of what constitutes pomo lingo (read also "The O Team: Mental Babies With Razors").

Here's a digest of the Climategate cover-up, but I encourage you to read the entire original article - it's quite concise.

National Post: "Climategate whitewash", by Peter Foster

'Climategate scientists cleared of wrongdoing” read the headline in yesterday’s Post. Who expected anything else? The two self-inquiries launched by the University of East Anglia into its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were always destined to produce whitewashes, as did a recent UK parliamentary inquiry, and as will an “independent” review by the UN.

The first of the UEA reports, from a committee headed by ardent warmist and anti-carbon profiteer Lord Oxburgh, appeared this week. As Lawrence Solomon points out elsewhere on this page, the choice of Lord Oxburgh indicated that the fix was always in for an inquiry which fails to address, let alone probe, most of the major issues. And yet there is a mountain of condemnation-by-faint-exoneration between the lines of the report’s ridiculously slim five pages.

Its attempt to present CRU head Phil Jones, and his beleaguered band, as unworldly boffins who were blindsided by all this attention is ridiculous. (...) The CRU’s data has appeared in two forms: raw and cooked. Much of the raw variety, unfortunately, has been “lost.” This is treated by the review as infinitely excusable due to the pressures of the academic life. You know, tedious admin meetings, the pressure to publish, the need to get in those applications for multi-million dollar grants attached to proving man-made global warming. But how can ditching the fundamental data on which your science depends be dubbed mere carelessness with “non-essential record keeping?”

As for the cooked data, the CRU has been accused of “manipulation” not in the legitimate statistical sense, so that different data sets may be comparable, but in support of the results required by government-funded, highly politicized science. Without data suggesting rising temperatures due to anthropogenic emissions, there would be no justification for massive global programs such as cap-and-trade, redistributionist “clean development,” or the hefty subsidization of alternative energy. The CRU is also gently fingered for its lack of statistical sophistication. (...) >>>

Related

- James Delingpole: "When the Germans give up on AGW you really do know it’s all over…"
- "Greenism"
- "Postmodern Ravages"
- "Global Warming: a Problem That is not Supposed to be Solved"

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• Oxburgh blesses Climategate boffins (go.theregister.com)
• Can we trust the 'Climategate' inquiry? (telegraph.co.uk)
• Second expert panel shows "ClimateGate" was a ClimateSham (desmogblog.com)
• 'Climategate' scientists criticised for not using best statistical tools (telegraph.co.uk)

Are You Ready for the Third Hockey Team?

Despite fierce ciriticism UN SG Ban Ki-moon and IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, are maintaining that their hypothesis about man-made climate change is entirely valid.

Yet they've requested Dutch scientist Robbert Dijkgraaf, chairman of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), to conduct an independent investigation into the work processes at the IPCC.

He's not going to redo or score the IPCC's 2007 5th Assesment, which is essentially a propaganda pamphlet meant to bring politicians on the climate bandwaggon. But he will investigate the scientific validity of the IPCC method, so that's a good thing.

In the Netherlands this was big news! Not because it involves a compatriot, but because it aims at putting tax payers' minds at rest: that all is well in the climate narrative and that their hard earned savings aren't misspend on hoaxes. See, how seriously we're taking the allegations?! We're doing all we can to make the charges go way. It says everything about the part the MSM is playing in the 'consensus' conspiracy.

A similar enquiry was launched just a few weeks ago at the behest of the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that aims at investigating the unethical and criminal conduct by researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, the original "hockey team". It stranded days later when it transpired that most members of the Russell enquiry were in some capacity or other involved in waming theory (see Greenism dossier, entries dated Feb. 12, 2010): the Russell enquiry turned out just to be another "hockey team".

This is why the community of climate skeptics is keenly eyeing Dijkgraaf's scientific credentials. Well, he makes the noises of a unadulterated greeny, speaking in a radio interview of 'biodiversity' (this is not a normal Dutch word, but a favorite in the ecological lexicon). On the positive side, he's lauding the good, scientific process of the peer review, but doesn't seem to notice that lack thereof is at the heart of the CRU Climategate scandal.

- Caption: brillant sarcasm and witty cynism at "The People's Cube" - 

There's more bad news. Dijkgraaf is a mathematical physicist. That would be the class of scientists whose calculations yield a world view consisting of no less than thirteen parallel universes resting on a single membrane. They truly think there's nothing remarkable about such a contention. Because their claims can't be falsified by empirical means, they've developed a mentality which is more consistent with a belief system than with science.

Marcel Crok, a skeptic blogging on the Dutch Climategate blog, has caught Dijkgraaf largely ignorant of climate science, but entirely willing to comply with the 'consensus' - that arbiter of the postmodern version of 'truth'.

A few commentators are pointing to an open letter Dijkgraaf sent last year to President Obama, which ends with this piece of tear-triggering prose:

You are an intellectual, who graduated with honors at prime institutions.  You are aware of the power of words, thought and ideas and you show that the use of reason is not to a person's disadvantage. Unlike your predecessor, who went for his gun at the drop of the word science, you will be able to let the world once again hear the pure voice of reason. The world will be grateful. 

This shows Dijkgraaf's keen political involvement. He's not just a Bush basher, obviously suffering from BDR (Bush Derangement Syndroom), he's also a true believer in the Obama adulation cult. Does this mean he's sharing Obama's Marxist principles? Or is he just another sheeple, who thought an enquiry into the Obama background would be grossly overdoing it?

Commentators are also remarking that in addition, Dijkgraaf in the same letter lauds Obama's pick for Energy, warming advocate Steve Chu, which he typified as a "brilliant move".

Dijkgraaf's field (string theory) shows worrisome similarities with climate science: a young discipline in which  little experimental verification is possible; peers dare come up with completely absurd hypotheses, like "the theory of everything".

"Just how warmist is Dijkgraaf?", asks Crok. In a TV interview the physicist signals approval of two climate science colleagues, who're claiming to be one hundred percent behind claims of ocean acidification; another was claiming that Greenland's icecap is melting on account of CO2 emissions. The article concludes with little optimism about Dijkgraaf's impartiality.

Hans Labohm is a renowned critic of warmism and sums it up in a post on De Dagelijkse Standaard as follows:

"A sick branch of science like climatology that is politicized through and through, can't be fixed with an enquiry and a change of policy. What's needed is a traditional, open and free scientific discussion, not tightly directed Lysenkoism by climate alarmists. But don't expect the UN to a advance such a cause. In diplomatic life I've dealt with such organizations. While they may do great job in other fields, the manipulation of information, which may be subtle or not, is on the order of the day, all for our own good of course! UN bureaucrats know better what's good for humanity than the people themselves. (...) >>> 

De Groene Rekenkamer (the Green Audit) is concluding the following:

"Why does a man like Dijkgraaf accept such an assignment, which is obviously meant to clear the IPCC, or better perhaps, meant to divert attention. While "looking into possible improvement" implies that something is indeed wrong right now and is an admission of sorts, it's not enough. What's needed is a complete overhaul of what's known as "overwhelming evidence", whether there exists a climate problem or not (...) >>>

As said before, climate loyalists are deeply entrenched in their hypothesis. It will take some doing to collapse this house of cards. Truly staggering amounts of tax payers' money is involved. Persons, institutions, corporations and foundations (like the BBC pension fund) have invested heavily in the carbon offset business.

Increasingly,  for image-technical reasons corporations have adopted a green aura. Not to speak of the climate industrial complex for the new, green economy, like the Apollo Alliance and the Lisbon Council. Psychologically they need to make a 180 degrees pivot. This will hurt and people will inevitably end up with egg on their faces.

The process of the global redistribution of wealth under the auspices of the UN - actually a covert direct tax base for the UN - from the wealthy West to the poor Southeast, involves some 100 to 350 billion dollars ... a year! These are truly astronomical figures and great interests! So, don't hold your breath just yet.

Update

Larrey Anderson on American Thinker draws an interesting parallel between the current crisis of science behind man-made glowbull warming and Logical Positivism. Read at all in "The Best-Laid Schemes..."

There has never been a scientific scam in the history of mankind as big as the science swindle of "climate change." Nothing comes close. Modern scientific hustles like mesmerism, phrenology, eugenics, the Piltdown man, and even Lysenkoism, pale in comparison to the flimflam of anthropomorphic global warming (AGW). (...) >>>

Related dossiers


- "Greenism"

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• U.N. climate panel faces major review (msnbc.msn.com)
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Climategate: Despite 'Consensus", Far From Over

Normally news related to the Climategate issue - as far as I'm concerned an umbrella term for the entire global warming hypothesis - goes straight into the "Greenism" dossier. For technical reasons this item does not. The latest entry is positing evidence that the SoroS spiderweb of radical leftist organizations is for legal purposes an extension of the Obama administration. They're cooking the climate books in favor of "Big Wind" as they go along ("think numerous European companies, not merely a few utilities and GE").

In Britain, the Institute of Physics (IOP) has been testifying for the Parliamentary Select Committee for Science and Technology, and attacked the scientific process as it is conducted at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia. The IOP accused these scientists of "apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements".

Today the lefty newspaper The Guardian, itself wholly aboard the 'climate change consensus', plays a game of 'gotcha' journalism on the worn out basis of "bias" and "working for dirty oil".

It has 'unmasked' one of the institute's witnesses as "an energy industry consultant who argues that global warming is a religion". In it's mind, this renders all evidence submitted to the committee suspicious, if not invalid. The article doesn't say so, but implies it in an air, heavy with innuendo. What transpires? The IOP invited

"views from Peter Gill, an IOP official who is head of a company in Surrey called Crestport Services. According to Gill, Crestport offers "consultancy and management support services … particularly within the energy and energy intensive industries worldwide", and says that it has worked with "oil and gas production companies including Shell, British Gas, and Petroleum Development Oman".

On top of that Gill is caught being biased as he made note of the culture that made the Crutape scandal possible in the first place: "If you don't 'believe' in anthropogenic climate change, you risk at best ridicule, but more likely vitriolic comments or even character assassination. Unfortunately, for many people the subject has become a religion, so facts and analysis have become largely irrelevant," wrote Gill. This is stating fact, but The Guardian implies it is bias.

The paper suggests more preconception as it 'reveals' that Gill commented in November when Climategate broke that: "Poor old CRU have been seriously hacked. The emails and other files are all over the internet and include how to hide atmospheric cooling."

That's it: Gill is a skeptic and works  with Shell, British Gas, and Petroleum Development Oman. That renders the entire case invalid, unless that is you are a greeny and work with ConocoPhillips, BP, Caterpillar and manage to coopt an entire green industry to the cause at the expense of the tax payer  (the Apollo Alliance and the Lisbon Council).

With barely concealed triumphalism the paper proudly announces: "The IOP has already been forced to issue a clarification that the evidence does not undermine the scientific basis for climate change. Indeed The Guardian writes in another article that the IOP issued a statement that it doesn't question the science itself, but rather the scientific process as conducted by the CRU.

This is how the postmodern mind works. Rejecting objective truth (where the scientific method is supposed to lead), it knows only partisan subjectivity. The idea that Gill might work in the field of 'dirty oil' and still produce truth, isn't on the horizon in any way, shape or form. Postmodernists have a habit of taking the slightest flaw as evidence that renders an opposing claim invalid, while an infinitesimally piece of evidence in their favor is paraded as proof positive of their cause.

The entire climate change hypothesis is based on that mechanism. Their premise that objective reality does not exist rests solely on the phenomenon of optic tricks and sensory anomalies.

While we're on the subject of truth, climate skeptic Antony Watts in a recent post declares to have had it with Phil Jones. "In the Last Straw" he says to have avoided accusations of outright fraud till now, and instead argued a case of noble cause corruption. But now it has become hard to defend him, since on March 1st Jones testified before the Select Committee, positing that it is "standard scientific practice to not share data". A fact that is objectively untrue.

It's a sad conclusion, but the last weeks it has become apparent that the postmodern mindset is not just innate in the humanities, but is now also deeply entrenched in the field of exact science itself. I repeat my hypothesis:

what Immanuel Kant was to philosophy, climate change theorists are to science.

Related:

- "Greenism"

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• Physicists' memo to Parliament blasts AGW "science" (hotair.com)
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• Climategate hits Westminster: MPs spring a surprise (go.theregister.com)

Climategate: Meet the New Hockey Team ...

... instated by the University of East Anglia to probe the decisions and behavior of the old hockey team, led by Professor Phil Jones. Bishop Hill has the broad headings, the scope of the Russell investigation.

What a bummer! Just a few days ago we were happy to post with some optimism that "an independent enquiry into the 'Climategate' leaked email scandal at the University of East Anglia has been announced. Sir Muir Russell had been appointed to investigate allegations that leading academics manipulated data on global warming.

A separate police investigation is ongoing into whether the emails were leaked or hacked." Well, we already know it was leaked. It must have been an inside job by a whistle blower.

Sir Muir Russell is Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland and former principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow. The other members of the panel of enquiry are Geoffrey Boulton, General Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Professor of Geology), Dr Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief for Nature journal, Professor Peter Clarke of the University of Edinburgh (a particle physicist by background; he heads the e-Science Centre at Edinburgh), David Eyton, Head of Research and Technology at BP, Professor Jim Norton, Vice President for the Chartered Institute for IT.

Sky News: "Probe Into Leaked Email Scandal"

Climate change sceptics claim some emails suggest scientists were colluding in an attempt to bolster the theory that global warming is caused by humans. (...) "There aren't league tables about how good scientists are. We're expecting them to police themselves," he said.  "So if there's any evidence that they're conspiring against their critics, conspiring to shut down debate about what they're doing, conspiring not to comply with Freedom of Information requests - I think that's pretty bad news." 

The review by Sir Russell, who has no previous links with the climate science community or with the University of East Anglia, will examine whether there has been any manipulation or suppression of data "at odds with acceptable scientific practice". He will also look at the way the unit deals with all aspects of its research processes and the policy for Freedom of Information requests.

Many climate experts fear the scandal risks undermining decades of sound research on global warming. "It's a great shame that people have concentrated on the Climategate element of this, which is where the odd thing has gone wrong," professor David Collins told Sky News. "That is detracting from the underlying truth of the matter, which is that the physics behind climate change are pretty robust." The inquiry is due to finish by the Spring. >>>

But just hours after the announcement it turned out, the first member of the 'independent' panel was forced to resign. He might have a preconception or two as Editor-in-Chief of Nature, one of the IPCC's 'scientific' sources.

At Bishop Hill they've discovered another panel member with various problems involving bias. Read about Geoffrey Boulton here en here.

Reason Magazine in addition has raised objections to BP's Head of Research and Technology, David Eyton. BP has been 'sustainable' and 'socially responsible' for years - an early member of the climate-corporate complex. Also BP has been funding climate research at major universities - not because they're agnostic towards the man-made glowball warming hypothesis, one would think.

Nigel Lawson's GWPF has issued this statement on the news of the Russell enquiry. No public hearings, no transcripts and closed doors. This enquiry has all the makings of a cover up. And doesn't the choice of appointees betray a shocking lack of understanding of what is in fact the nature of objectivity?

To be continued, methinks.

Related dossier:

- "Greenism"

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This Shabby Asshat is Al Gore's 'Hero of the Planet'

Who thinks this is grilling, doesn't know Andrew Neil! Here he is, pussy footing around the issue, treating Watson with velvet gloves. "Oh, please don't bully the b*strd!"

Turns out Al Gore's hero's a bit entrenched in his dogmatic settled science looking more like Baghdad Bob by the day.

What's more, 'climate change' is a tautology! It's called climate for a good reason: it changes. You might not think it amongst postmoderns, but words actually do have a meaning!



more about "This Shabby Asshat is Gore's "Hero of...", posted with vodpod

The Guardian is proposing to save the narrative of climate change by launching a new narrative! That Jones, Mann and the CRU have a bunker and a siege mentality, because they were viciously attacked by evil deniers, who are waging a war against them paid for by ruthless, dirty energy corporations.

This illustrates the mindset of the Left to a t: my goal it so ethical (saving the planet), that it justifies any unethical means. Yes, peer reviews should have been done and yes, information under the Freedom of Information Act should have been supplied (reframed as "a PR disaster"), but hey, their job's so critical that it's no wonder such niceties were dispensed with for the moment!

Help out The Guardian saving climate change! It's important, 'cause a lot of money and ideology is caught up in this scam ... Granted, Climategate should never have happened! But not to worry, you too can now become a peer (granted you would wish to do so), helping The Guardian reviewing the leaked CRU documents. That at least creates the perception of belated orthodoxy.

The Guardian: "'Climategate' was PR disaster that could bring healthy reform of peer review", by Fred Pierce

Peer-review was meant to be a safeguard against the publication of bad science but the balance is shifting towards open access. In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature.

As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth. (...) The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk. The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate. (...) >>>

In the Netherlands meanwhile the issue is starting to make waves. The right-wing liberal party VVD in opposition is demanding a clarification from the Prime Minister. It turns out the delegation for COP15 (Hopenhagen) consisted of 110 persons: 109 climate loyalists and 1 sceptic. Among the loyalists, members of Greenpeace and other environmental activists. And Shock! Since the arbiter of postmodern politics is consensus, these activists were allowed to contribute to the drafts of the political agreement (yes, we've seen these drafts drifting by at the time, since sanitized from cyberspace (belated New Year's resolution: improve screenshot awareness)).

Just in:

• Telegraph: "India forms new climate change body"

The Indian government has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own leading scientist Dr R.K Pachauri. >>>

• NRC: "IPCC takes heat in climate controversy" (includes history of IPCC)

Related dossier:

- "Greenism"

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• Part 12: Climate science emails cannot destroy argument that world is warming, and humans are responsible (guardian.co.uk)
• 'Climategate' Professor Phil Jones 'considered suicide over email scandal' (telegraph.co.uk)

Serendipity Monday: Leftist Myth Explosion Day

Today saw a number of classic Leftist narratives had the bottom knocked out of them. Get it here and now, because you're not going at get it anywhere else, and it's hardly likely ever to be told again.

Miraculously there's no one addressing the objectively false Rousseau clarion call that has has it for two and a half centuries that "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer".

Has the giant face-saving operation begun? Not being a poet, there's no good way to express the irony of the situation ... [sarc] "a pause", is that what it is, is it? and they never tell you it hasn't 'warmed' in a decade [/sarc]. The very idea is giving the game away. If it really is the climate that's gone haywire, present winter conditions should be meaningless!

Telegraph: "Big freeze could signal global warming 'pause'"

The Arctic conditions which have brought Britain to a standstill over the past week could be the start of a "pause" in global warming, some scientists believe. (...) >>>

The following notion always was an insult to the poor, whose interests they always claim to have at heart ...

Wall Street Journal : "A Crime Theory Demolished", by Heather MacDonald

If poverty is the root cause of lawlessness, why did crime rates fall when joblessness increased? The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the "root causes" theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. (...) >>>

As of "Game Change" by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann hitting the bookstores we know for a fact that Democrats are expert projectionists (not that we needed any confirmation). The louder they accuse the opponents of transgression, the more they are guilty of it themselves - the true masters of hypocrisy!

Guanabee: "Harry Reid, Bill Clinton Busted For Making Racist Comments In Game Change"

juxtapose that to ...

Newsbusters: "Reid After Trent Lott's Resignation In 2002: 'He Had No Alternative'"

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in 2002 agreed with former Sen. Trent Lott's (R-Miss.) decision to resign his leadership role after Lott made what some felt were racist remarks at former Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party. "He had no alternative," said Reid at the time claiming, "If you tell ethnic jokes in the backroom, it's that much easier to say ethnic things publicly. I've always practiced how I play." (...) >>>

Here's an interesting mental exercise that explodes the myth that the Palestinian question is at the heart of all problems besetting the Middle East (actually, it's the Near East) ...

The Huffington Post: "It's Not About Israel", by David Harris

(...) There are those in the international community who claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root cause of the Middle East's problems. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been among the most prominent of these voices. (...) True, genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians would remove one of the long-standing conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover, to state the painfully obvious, peace would serve the best interests of those involved.

But the suggestion made by Prime Ministers Blair, Erdogan and others that such a settlement is a necessary precondition for wider peace in the Middle East and would take the wind out of radical Islam's sails is unsupported by the facts. Let's assume for a moment that Israel did not exist. Would that have changed the basic story line of the bulk of events in the Middle East? (...) >>>

Students of Marxism have long been aware that it's actually very hard to get the unwashed masses to revolt. They usually suffer from a false, bourgeois consciousness, or they're just too plain lazy. The Russian Revolution required World War I and countless agitators to set it off and even then no one really expected it. Which is why the Leftist intellentsia that think this stuff up, take refuge to upper and middle class brats. Consider ...

Frank Owen's Paintbrush: "The Pantybomber and the middle-class nature of terrorism"

(...) What I find interesting is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his alleged crime present further evidence that terrorism is an essentially middle-class endeavour. Perhaps even upper-middle-class, if we are going to get specific about it.

- Caption: Lenin at the All-Russia Subbotnik in the Kremlin - May 1 1920 -

Abdulmutallab is an extreme example in that his background is especially wealthy and privileged. Not quite at the same level of spoilt bratness as Osama bin Laden, but getting there. However, research suggests that most recruits to terrorism come from relatively well-off families and are educated to at least degree level, which makes them decisively middle-class. (...) >>>

The following article is pulling the rug from under one of postmodernism's many fallacies. The relativist belief that all faiths are equally valid, is equally offensive to all religions ...

The Washington Post: "Brit Hume's Tiger Woods remarks shine light on true intolerance", by Michael Gerson

(...) The root of the anger against Hume is his religious exclusivity -- the belief, in Shuster's words, that "my faith is the right one." For this reason, according to Shales, Hume has "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."

But this supposed defense of other religious traditions betrays an unfamiliarity with religion itself. Religious faiths -- Christian, Buddhist, Zoroastrian -- generally make claims about the nature of reality that conflict with the claims of other faiths. Attacking Christian religious exclusivity is to attack nearly every vital religious tradition.

It is not a scandal to believers that others hold differing beliefs. It is only a scandal to those offended by all belief. Though I am not a Buddhist or a Muslim, I am not "dissed" when a Muslim or a Buddhist advocates his views in public.Hume's critics hold a strange view of pluralism. (...) >>>

That's today's harvest of follies, folks. Let's give it a rest. Perhaps more rug pulling and myth exploding tomorrow.

#ClimateGate - BREAKING NEWS - of Knorr, Mao and the War on Reality

IBD just put up a post, announcing two more nails in the coffin of warm mongering.


The first is a study carried out by Wolfgang Knorr of Bristol's Earth Sciences Department. Unlike the climate charlatans of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia Knorr followed the data where it may lead. He concluded that just 45% of anthropogenic CO2 remains in the earth's atmosphere. The remainder is absorbed by nature. Those figures have not changed since 1850!  IBD:

"Knorr arrived at the figures by relying solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice. He did not rely, as the CRU did, on badly written computer models with built-in fudge factors to direct the data to a foregone conclusion."

The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters doesn't deny that increasing amounts of CO2 have been generated as the world industrialized, but it also eradicated disease, produced agricultural abundance and improved man's standard of living. CO2 is an indispensable element for life on earth.

Climate believers hold that all man-made emissions are pollutants, the cause of climate change - the word in itself a tautology.

But there's more good news on the climate front. Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat.com is reporting that the carbon footprint as a result of deforestation in order to grow crops for climate saving biofuels, have been overestimated by a factor two.

It is borne out by another study carried out by a team led by Guido van der Werf of the VU University in Amsterdam, published in November in Nature Geoscience.

In the US, preempting Obama's unprecedented Cap 'n Trade Bill, the Environmental Protection Agency has declared CO2 a toxic substance. Reduced to its root Leftism is a war on reality. The EPA's indictment of natural gas reminds me of China during Mao's Great Leap Forward when the masses were also mobilized to unleash a campaign against the metaphysical. Target was the humble sparrow, considered a fiend to the success of the drive for agricultural collectivism. In that light it should perhaps come as no surprise that the Obama administration enjoys its share of Mao admirers.

Update:

Elsevier: Dutch (right wing) liberal VVD party is demanding independent scientific study of climate change

Related: 

- "Greenism" (dossier includes COP15 and Climategate)

#Climategate: 30 Years of Science by Consensus - Plotting the Timeline

This is great!

Hat Tip: "Watts Up With That"      

Climategate: 30 years in the making

Mohib Ebrahim has created professional timelines for exhibitions, so it must have seemed only natural to him to want to visually piece together the full timeline of ClimateGate, laying out the analysis, graphs, emails and history of the scandal as revealed by dozens of researchers over the past weeks, months and years.

Visit the site to download.

The PDF chart is available in different sizes, each also with the 10 pages of cited references. The full chart is over 2 meters wide (94″x34″, or 2 A0 landscape pages) and best viewed on screen where you can zoom in and out, scroll vertically to see everything in a given time period or horizontally across time to see everything related to a particular theme. (...) >>>

Check it out! And then there's this:

Frank Hutchison on Renew America has written an excellent essay on postmodern science. Or science, not by objective truth (which they reject on principle), but by that arbiter of postmodern 'truth', consensus. He also touches on another area, subjected to the same treatment: the lamentable Emerging Church - the Truth of the Christian faith similarly reduced to lay consensus.

And irony of ironies, they've done it again. Fighting absolutism, authority and dogma with the fanaticism of the Witch Finder General, they've created the mother of all unshakable dogma, dissenters treated as heretics. Postmodern history is full such ironies. Invariably they create what they seek to destroy.

Renew America: "Corruption of the science establishment: causes and cures"

By now, most of my readers have heard of the scandal nicknamed "Climategate," involving the suppression of information that contradicts a supposed consensus of the science establishment about global warming. For ten or fifteen years, we have been told that when scientists have reached a consensus, all further debate should stop. (...) >>>

Related:

- "Greenism: #Climategate dossier"

#ClimateGate: the updates

Reminding the readership that there's a file on COP15 and ClimateGate on top of Politeia Articles for the duration of COP15 at least, which will be updated throughout with the latest revelations and commentary.