The Joy of Forbidden Light!

It seems we can still buy incandescant light bulbs. The ban doesn’t cover industrial users. Mrs Gabb is getting ready to order our first trial batch. The joy of real 100w light again!

http://www.energybulbs.co.uk/products/Incandescent+Bulbs/GLS+Bulbs/GLS+Rough+Service+Bulbs+-+Heavy+Duty

FLC150, Looking beyond Nuclear, Sean Gabb, 12th July 2006

An easy answer to the question of nuclear power is to ask what Tony Blair thinks about it. Since he has now said he likes it, and since everything he says or does is bad, we have an answer. I feel, however, this answer might gain by a more formal demonstration.

via FLC150, Looking beyond Nuclear, Sean Gabb, 12th July 2006.

Philip Foster to Paul Nurse

Sir Paul Nurse
The Royal Society
6-9 Carlton House Terrace
London SW1Y 5AG

29th January 2011

 Dear Sir Paul,

I understand that the Royal Society has changed its motto from ‘Nullius in Verba’ to ‘Respect the facts’. This is unfortunate.

In your factoid-riddled Horizon programme for BBC2 you allowed a NASA computer scientist to tell the audience, without a challenge, that temperatures have risen .7 deg. during the last 50 years. This was supposed to be a problem. Yet of course 50 years ago temperatures were at their lowest since 1922 (GISS figures) and therefore such a rise is not at all surprising, especially considering that temperatures have levelled off over the last fourteen years (Dr Phil Jones in a BBC interview 2010). By choosing a convenient starting point it can seem alarming, but it is not. You should, as a scientist, have challenged his assertions – ‘nullius in verba’. But if you merely ‘respect the facts’, you are at liberty, it seems, to ignore them.

The suggestion that a rise over 30-40 years will continue is like suggesting the following:

Since June 22nd last year a small but discernable daily reduction in daylight has been taking place such that by December 22nd daylight hours had nearly halved. If this trend continues (even though there has been a small increase in the last month), in about seven or eight months‘ time there will be no more daylight. We desperately need government funding to research and cure this dangerous trend.

Unfortunately that describes rather well current AGW thinking. In investigating all dubious activities the best thing to do is to follow the money‘. And, behold, billions of dollars, pounds and euros are being spent on “research” into AGW and in subsidies for idiotic “renewable” energy sources.* It has given NASA – already a rather corrupted bureaucracy – a new lease of life. As we know, in the UK, corruption of science has grown apace along with the foolish policies of mostly very gullible politicians. It is the poorest who now suffer the most – carbon taxed and bullied into expensive energy consumption (59p per litre of petrol is a carbon tax – the fuel escalator introduced by conservative chancellor Clarke as a designated green tax).

I am tempted to suggest you should stick to genetics. Climate is clearly outside your comfort zone.

 Yours sincerely,

Rev Philip Foster MA
1 Barnfield, Common Lane,
Hemingford Abbots,
Cambridgeshire PE28 9AX
01480 399098

* particularly idiotic as peak oil/gas is now hundreds of years away and peak coal not even on the horizon. Burning fossil fuels is wholly beneficial to the biosphere.

FLC188, Are the Russians Coming? Brief Thoughts on the Climate Change Scandal, Sean Gabb, 3rd December 2009

What I predict will happen is that the propaganda will continue for the next few years. But it will be gradually be replaced by a new set of justificatory lies. Global warming itself was the replacement for acid rain pollution, ozone holes, and even global cooling. In the absence of some new environmental claims, I suggest that we shall hear much more for now on about “peak oil” – the notion that fossil fuels exist in limited supplies and that they will run out within the next few generations.

via FLC188, Are the Russians Coming? Brief Thoughts on the Climate Change Scandal, Sean Gabb, 3rd December 2009.

Food as a weapon of mass destruction

David Davis

Michael should be writing about this, but he’s off elsewhere trying to borrow the dosh to buy another pedigree boar, as his one’s just died. Anyway, you all perceive I am sure the current trend in world food prices. My interest was triggered by this article today, clearly written by someone who knows what’s going on.

I say this because the author has skated egg-walkingly around the politically-charged issue of biofuels, which to my mind and in the view of most libertarians is a cleverly-cloaked way to export starvation – initially to those people that have the least ability, energy, resources and political clout to protest.

It has to be the correct conclusion, as the use of thsee wickedly and immorally-raised fuels serves no kind of “climate-related” purpose whatsoever. On Facebook I have just stated publicly what will happen to the politicos (and the directors and shareholders of firms which abetted their designs) as outwardly a little light amusement: but in reality, as our regular reader knows, you don’t know whether I am just joking or not.

Biofuels and barbarism

Michael Winning

I’ve found how to spellcheck my posts. Missus said I should do it in word first and then copy to here after the little red robot does his thing. Have to remember to do it thataway around though.

Today we see the cost of bloody biofuels, sicked onto the planet by big government and “Big Al” Gore, and big bribes to farmers. Who can blame them? Not me I guess but I don’t do arable, don’t know what the costs and downs are in that one.

There’s five of us up here in hills that employ nearly all the blokes in the village, in one way or aonther. We can’t pay them more wages to buy food for them and families than we can. If we was lower down hill, everyone might plant a bit more stuff but it’s too windy here.

You could be forgiven for thinking that biofuels are a giant conspiracy, to do the Mathusian thing on the world while people’s backs are turned. These people are more bad than I thought…

How to Fabricate Climate Change Evidence

Edward Spalton

Climate Change IV   – A THUMB (OR TWO) IN THE SCALES? 

        I was sent away to learn the corn trade to a firm called Lamprey & Son  in Banbury. The old office and shop building still stands next to the town hall and looks much the same today although it has long been converted to other uses.

        One day the boss showed me a really beautifully made,  brass, Victorian  balance that fitted into a polished wooden case which would slip into your pocket. On one end of the beam was a small pot about as big as a good-sized egg cup. The other side of the beam was milled with serations  and graduated with a sliding weight which moved along it. If you filled the pot up with a sample of grain and struck it off level, you could slide the weight along until it balanced with the contents of the pot and read off the bushel weight of the grain from  the scale.

        Bushel weight is a good indicator of quality. Plump, full grains weigh heavier than thin ones. A bushel of reasonable quality barley would weigh 4 stones (56 lb or half a hundredweight) and a bushel of good wheat 5 stones (70lb). So the little pot contained a very small part of a bushel. The sample might represent a parcel of grain which could be anything from 5  or 6 tonnes up to over 100.

        The boss let me try this out and in two or three goes I was getting a very consistent reading. He then did the same with the same sample and got a considerably  heavier bushel weight. Eventually he showed me the trick. The strike or straight edge, which was used to level off the contents of the pot, had two sides. One was like a ruler and the other had a piece of dowel along it. If you used the dowel side, it pressed a few more corns into the pot than the straight edge. With the effect of scale, this made the sample look considerably heavier and better quality.  Even with a correctly drawn sample, a small change in procedure or instrumentation could significantly bias the result.  “That’s how they did it in the old days days, boy” he said with a wink “buying or selling, you see, boy”.  I should add that this was shown to me as an antique curiosity and was not any part of the trading practices of the firm in my day!

        The kit which is used to “sample” the temperature of the climate is remarkably unchanged and about the same vintage as that rather splendid little balance. It is called a Stevenson Screen and was actually designed by the father of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of “Treasure Island”.  It is a standard sized wooden box with louvred sides to allow free circulation of the air around the instruments and keep them out of direct sunlight. Hence the expression “in the shade” when referring to temperature. The thermometer might be a traditional mercury maximum/minimum type or more modern sensors.  Stevenson Screens were traditionally painted with whitewash.

        It is doubtful whether a character like ANTHONY WATTS could exist in state-controlled Britain. He is an American meteorologist and weather forecaster for commercial TV and radio stations. For his living he depends upon his customers’ satisfaction with the accuracy of his forecasts. He also supplies custom-built weather stations, TV graphics systems and video equipment to broadcasters all over the world. So he is an expert who makes his living from weather but is neither a civil servant (who can be made to toe an official line) nor dependent on tax-funded grants (which require applicants to be politically correct). So he has a certain independence of mind and demonstrates that rugged individualism and tenacity of purpose which used to be the stuff of all-American heroes in many films of my youth.

        He noticed that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service (NOAA/NWS – roughly equivalent to the UK Meteorological Office) had made a small change to its Stevenson Screens. He wondered whether this change would affect the temperatures recorded. Back in 1979 the NWS had stopped using whitewash and started painting the Stevenson Screens with white, semi gloss,  latex paint. Whitewash essentially gave a coating of calcium carbonate whilst  latex paint used the pigment titanium dioxide which has significantly different infra-red properties.

        In 2007, having a little time on his hands, he set up a trial to see what the  differences might be. He used three Stevenson Screens – one unpainted, one painted with the latex semi gloss  used by the NWS and one painted with historically correct whitewash. He also used a modern stacked plate aspirated thermometer as an additional control. His results showed that the latex paint raised the maximum recorded temperature within the screen by 0.3 degrees  Fahrenheit and the minimum recorded temperature by 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit when compared with the whitewashed Stevenson Screen. So that is an average upward bias of 0.55 degrees Fahrenheit. Not very much, you might think but the whole scare about global warming is based on a claimed, observed temperature rise of only 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit in a century.

        Anthony Watts then decided to have a look at the NWS’s Stevenson Screens in his locality to see if they were being painted to the official specification. What he found was disquieting.  In one case, heat-generating radio equipment had been installed inside the screen, near to the temperature sensors. In other cases the weather stations were near to the outlet vents of air conditioning systems or close to other heat sources – all of which would tend to bias the recorded temperatures upwards.

        So he conducted further investigations, eventually recruiting a team of volunteers to observe and photograph as many of the  1221  weather stations as possible all over the United States. 865 of them were visited. NEARLY NINE OUT OF TEN WEATHER STATIONS PROVED TO BE OUTSIDE THE SPECIFICATIONS LAID DOWN BY THE U.S. AUTHORTIES THEMSELVES.

They were near to artificial heat sources, on top of concrete or tarmac surfaces, close to buildings, in the steamy warmth of sewage farms and so on. ALL OF THE OBSERVED FAULTS WOULD TEND TO RAISE THE RECORDED TEMPERATURES. It is a fascinating story of one man’s determination to get at the truth and can be read in full on www.SurfaceStations.org . Anthony Watts also has a regularly updated blog www.wattsupwiththat.com  which is one of the most widely read, independent sources of climate information. I particularly like the fact that contrary views are welcomed. Whilst they are vigorously debated, they are treated with respect and normal courtesy – unlike some blogs pushing the official line.

        To return to my analogy of that corn merchant’s balance – the few cubic feet of air inside a Stevenson Screen stand proxy for a huge amount of the earth’s atmosphere. Weather stations  are often hundreds of miles apart. So those few cubic feet are proportionately much smaller than that egg cupful of grain representing a parcel of some tons. Any change ,  such as a different coat of paint, a heat-radiating transformer inside the screen or a nearby heat source can have a disproportionate effect on a tiny sample which is claimed as representative of hundreds of cubic miles of atmosphere.  Probably unintentionally, the official methods  seem to have had an effect not unlike a thumb or two being pressed on the side of the scales indicating a warming, rather than a stable or cooling climate.  Yet the taxpayer-funded “climate community” was not at all grateful to Anthony Watts for looking in to the basic data and the  methods used to measure it. For them “the science is settled” is the whole of their faith. Forget accurate measurement. They have computer programs  to adjust things in ways which only they can understand.  Watts is a heretic and that’s that.

HOW THE CANADIAN THERMOMETERS WERE “TAKEN OUT AND SHOT”

        When the US authorities began monitoring surface temperatures of the earth’s surface, the 1,221 US weather stations were part of a worldwide total of some 6,000. But something strange happened in the last few years. The number of stations used to record temperature  dropped dramatically. Figures were still shown for all areas of the world but they were calculated by reference to far fewer  actual observations. They were “adjusted” and “homogenised” .  The Canadian blog, “Small Dead Animals” reported as follows on January 16 2010 under the heading

“The Sound of Settled Science”.

“In Canada, the number of stations dropped from 600 to 35 in 2009. The percentage of stations in the lower elevations (below 300 feet) tripled and those at higher elevations above three thousand feet were reduced in half. Canada’s semi-permanent depicted warmth comes from interpolating (don’t you love the word!) from more southerly locations to fill northerly vacant grid boxes, even as a pure average of the available stations shows a COOLING.

        JUST 1 THERMOMETER REMAINS for everything north of latitude 65N – that station is Eureka. Eureka according to Wikipedia has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to the flora and fauna around the Eureka area, mopre so than anywhere elese in the high Arctic. Winters are frigid but summers are slightly warmer than other places in the Canadian Arctic”.

        The same has happened to US thermometers, South of the Border. The computer expert E. Michael Smith joined forces with the Certified Consulting Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo and  appeared in a TV programme on www.kusi.com on 16 January 2010.  They reported that the number of weather stations used as a starting point for the world’s average temperature calculations had been reduced from around 6,000 in the Seventies to about 1,500 now . “That leaves much of the world unaccounted for. The greatest losses were in areas where NOAA and other data centers claim the warming was greatest like Siberia and Canada”. D’Aleo added that “In these regions NOAA “estimates” temperatures based on stations that may be 700 miles away”.

        Smith noted “When doing a benchmark test of the program, I found patterns in them input data… that looked like dramatic and selective deletions of thermometers from cold locations…….The more I looked, the more I found patterns of deletion that could not be accidental. Thermometers moved from cold mountains to warm beaches; from Siberian Arctic to more southerly locations, and from pristine rural locations to jet airport tarmacs….”

        Even as a very new, trainee corn merchant I knew better than to draw a sample from only the best part of the bulk. It would lead to the actual delivery being rejected and to great extra expense to my boss. He never liked that sort of thing. There seems to be no similar sanction for scientists drawing bad samples of climate and temperature with  equipment known to be faulty. If the results are what the politicians want to hear, they are fine. The enormous bill for remediating “climate change” will simply be passed to the taxpayer – even if it isn’t actually happening.

warmlist – Who Can Deny the Horrors of Climate Change?

 

A complete list of things caused by global warming

Acne, agricultural land increase, Afghan poppies destroyed, poppies more potent, Africa devastated, Africa in conflict, African aid threatened, African summer frost, aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pressure changes,  airport malaria, Agulhas current, Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end,  amphibians breeding earlier (or not),  anaphylactic reactions to bee stings,  ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink, Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk,   anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in bloom, Arctic ice free, Arctic ice melt faster, Arctic lakes disappear,  Arctic warming (not), asthma, Atlantic less salty, Atlantic more salty,   atmospheric circulation modified, attack of the killer jellyfish, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased,  Baghdad snow, Bahrain under water,  bananas grow, barbarisation, beer and bread prices to soar, beer better,  beer worse, beetle infestation, bet for $10,000, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billion homeless, billions face risk, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, bird loss accelerating, bird strikes, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds decline (Wales), birds driven north, birds face longer migrations, birds return early, birds shrink, bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blackbirds threatened, Black Hawk down,  blood contaminated, blue mussels return, bluetongue, brain eating amoebae, brains shrink, bridge collapse (Minneapolis), Britain one big city, Britain Siberian, British monsoon,  brothels struggle, brown Ireland, bubonic plague, budget increases, Buddhist temple threatened,  building collapse, building season extension, bushfires,  butterflies move north, carbon crimes, camel deaths,  cancer deaths in England, cannibalism,  caterpillar biomass shift, cave paintings threatened,  childhood insomnia, Cholera, circumcision in decline, cirrus disappearance, civil unrest, cloud increase,  coast beauty spots lost, cockroach migration, cod go south, coffee threatened, coffee berry borer, cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), cold wave (India), computer models, conferences, conflict, conflict with Russia,  consumers foot the bill, coral bleaching, coral fish suffer, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , coral reefs twilight, cost of trillions, cougar attacks, crabgrass menace, cradle of civilisation threatened, creatures move uphill, crime increase, crocodile sex, crops devastated, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, curriculum change,  cyclones (Australia),   danger to kid’s health, Darfur, Dartford Warbler plague,  deadly virus outbreaks, death rate increase (US), deaths to reach 6 million, Dengue hemorrhagic fever, depression, desert advance,  desert retreat,  destruction of the environment,  dig sites threatened,  disasters, diseases move north, dog disease, Dolomites collapse, dozen deadly diseases – or not, drought,   ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt,  earlier pollen season,  Earth axis tilt, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down,  Earth spins faster, Earth to explode, earth upside down,  earthquakes, earthquakes redux, El Niño intensification, end of the world as we know it, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, English villages lost, equality threatened, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing,  eutrophication, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, extinctions (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, pikas, polar bears,   possums,  walrus,   toads,  plants, salmon, trout,  wild flowers, woodlice,  a million species, half of all animal and plant species, mountain species,  not polar bears, barrier reef, leaches, salamanders, tropical insects) experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, fading fall foliage, fainting,  famine, farmers benefit, farmers go under, farm output boost,  fashion disaster, fever, figurehead sacked, fir cone bonanza, fires fanned in Nepal, fish bigger, fish catches drop, fish downsize,   fish deaf, fish get lost, fish head north, fish shrinking,  fish stocks at risk, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, flesh eating disease, flies on Everest,  flood patterns change, floods, floods of beaches and cities, flood of migrants, flood preparation for crisis, flora dispersed, Florida economic decline, flowers in peril, food poisoning, food prices rise, food prices soar, food security threat (SA), football team migration,   forest decline, forest expansion, frog with extra heads, frostbite, frost damage increased,   fungi fruitful, fungi invasion, games change, Garden of Eden wilts, geese decline in Hampshire, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, geysers imperiled, giant icebergs (Australia), giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, giant squid migrate, gingerbread houses collapse, glacial earthquakes, glacial retreat, glacier grows (California), glacier wrapped, global cooling,  glowing clouds,  golf course to drown, golf Masters wrecked, grain output drop (China), grandstanding, grasslands wetter, gravity shift,  Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop,  great tits cope, greening of the North,  Grey whales lose weight, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, haggis threatened, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome,    harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, health affected, health of children harmed, health risks, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes (Australia), heat waves, hibernation affected,  hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late,  homeless 50 million, hornets, human development faces unprecedented reversal, human fertility reduced, human health risk, human race oblivion, hurricanes,  hurricane reduction, hurricanes fewer, hurricanes not,  hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice age, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, icebergs,  illness and death, inclement weather, India drowning, infrastructure failure (Canada),  industry threatened, infectious diseases,  inflation in China, insect explosion, insect invasion, insurance premium rises, Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, invasion of alien worms, invasion of cats,  invasion of crabgrass, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, invasion of king crabs, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, Italy robbed of pasta, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, jets fall from sky,  Kew Gardens taxed, kidney stones, killer cornflakes, killing us, kitten boom, koalas under threat, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, lake empties, lake shrinking and growing, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, large trees decline, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers’ income increased (surprise surprise!),  lawyers want more, legionnaires’ surge,  lives saved, Loch Ness monster dead, locust plagues suppressed, lush growth in rain forests,   Malaria, mammoth dung melt, mango harvest fails, Maple production advanced, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, Meaching (end of the world), Meat eating to stop, Mediterranean rises, megacryometeors, Melanoma, Melanoma decline, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, methane runaway, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration,  migratory birds huge losses, microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, minorities hit, monkeys at risk,  monkeys on the move, Mont Blanc grows, monuments imperiled, moose dying, more bad air days,   more research needed, mortality increased, mountain (Everest) shrinking,  mountaineers fears, mountains break up, mountains green and flowering,   mountains taller, mortality lower, Myanmar cyclone, narwhals at risk, National Parks damaged, National security implications, native wildlife overwhelmed, natural disasters  quadruple, new islands, next ice age, NFL threatened, Nile delta damaged, noctilucent clouds, no effect in India, Northwest Passage opened, nuclear plants bloom, oaks dying,  oaks move north,  ocean acidification, ocean acidification faster, ocean dead spots, ocean dead zones unleashed, ocean deserts expand, ocean waves speed up,  Olympic Games to end, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened,   ozone repair slowed, ozone rise,  penguin chicks frozen, penguin chicks smaller, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts,  pines decline, plankton blooms,   plants lose protein, plants march north, plants move uphill, polar bears aggressive, polar bears deaf, polar bears drowning,   polar tours scrapped, popcorn rise, porpoise astray, profits collapse, psychiatric illness,   puffin decline, pushes poor women into prostitution, rabid bats,  radars taken out, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rape wave, refugees,  reindeer endangered, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice threatened, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, river flow impacted, rivers raised, roads wear out, robins rampant,   rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, rooftop bars, Ross river disease,  ruins ruined, Russia under pressure, salinity reduction, salinity increase,  Salmonella, salmon stronger, satellites accelerate, school closures, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, seals mating more, seismic activity, sewer bills rise, severe thunderstorms, sex change, sexual promiscuity, shark attacks, sharks booming, sharks moving north, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered,  shrinking ponds, shrinking sheep, shrinking shrine, Sidney Opera House wiped out, ski resorts threatened, slow death, smaller brains, smog, snowfall decrease, snowfall increase, snowfall heavy, snow thicker, soaring food prices, societal collapse, soil change, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, space problem, spectacular orchids, spiders getting bigger, spiders invade Scotland,  squid larger, squid population explosion, squid tamed, squirrels reproduce earlier,  stingray invasion, storms wetter,  street crime to increase, subsidence, suicide, swordfish in the Baltic, Tabasco tragedy, taxes, tectonic plate movement,   terrorists (India), threat to peace, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tigers eat people, tomatoes rot, tornado outbreak, tourism increase, toxic seaweed,  trade barriers, trade winds weakened, traffic jams,  transportation threatened, tree foliage increase (UK),   tree growth slowed, trees in trouble, trees less colourful,  trees more colourful, trees lush, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, truffle shortage, truffles down,  turtles crash, turtle feminised, turtles lay earlier, UFO sightings, UK coastal impact, UK Katrina,  Vampire moths, Venice flooded, violin decline, volcanic eruptions,  walrus pups orphaned,  walrus stampede,  wars over water, wars sparked, wars threaten billions, wasps, water bills double, water scarcity (20% of increase), weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, Western aid cancelled out,  West Nile fever, whale beachings, whales lose weight, whales move north,  wheat yields crushed in Australia,  wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, winds stronger, winds weaker,  wine – Australian baked, wine – harm to Australian industry, wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine – more English, wine -  England too hot, wine -German boon, wine – no more French ,  wine passé (Napa), wine – Scotland best,  wine stronger, winters in Britain colder, winter in Britain dead, witchcraft executions, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World at war, World War 4, World bankruptcy, World in crisis, World in flames, Yellow fever.

and all on 0.006 deg C per year!

Advice of any omissions (with sources) or broken links is welcome at warmlist@numberwatch.co.uk

Note: All links were live at time of posting. Inevitably some will disappear, particularly from Yahoo News.

Thanks to correspondents for additional entries; especially, as always, Our Man in Puerto Rico. Also, thanks to "Scraperguy" for the script to form the following:

The dead link collection

Africa hit hardest, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, anxiety,  Arctic tundra to burn,  atmospheric defiance, bananas destroyed, beer shortage, blizzards, boredom, business opportunities, business risks,  British gardens change, cardiac arrest,  cataracts,  challenges and opportunities,  cloud stripping,  cold spells, cremation to end, damages equivalent to $200 billion, dermatitis,  desert life threatened, diarrhoea, disappearance of coastal cities, drowning people, early marriages, early spring, Earth spinning out of control, Earth wobbling, extinctions (bats, ladybirds,  pandas, pigmy possums, koalas, turtles, orang-utan,  elephants, tigers, gorillas, whales, frogs, penguins,) fish catches rise, flames stoked, footpath erosion, frosts, glacial growth, global dimming, god melts, Gore omnipresence, harmful algae, hazardous waste sites breached, high court debates, HIV epidemic, human health improvement, ice shelf collapse, lightning related insurance claims, little response in the atmosphere, Lyme disease, jet stream drifts north, malnutrition, marine dead zone, Maple production advanced,  mental illness (Alberta), migration difficult (birds), mountains melting, mudslides, oceans noisier, oblivion, oyster diseases, ozone loss, Pacific dead zone, plankton destabilised, plankton loss, plant viruses,  polar bears cannibalistic, polar bears starve,  psychosocial disturbances,  rainfall reduction, reindeer larger,  riches, rivers dry up, rockfalls,  shrimp sex problems, skin cancer, snowfall reduction, squid aggressive giants, stick insects, stormwater drains stressed, teenage drinking, terrorism, tree beetle attacks, trees could return to Antarctic, tree growth increased, tsunamis, tundra plant life boost, uprooted – 6 million, walrus displaced, war, war between US and Canada, water stress, water supply unreliability, weeds,  whales wiped out, white Christmas dream ends.

Suggestions for replacement links are welcome.

Total (dead and alive) 690 

Last updated 11 December 2009

Index

warmlist

Brief Thoughts on the Climate Change Scandal, Sean Gabb

 

Free Life Commentary,
A Personal View from
The Director of the Libertarian Alliance
Issue Number 188
3rd December 2009
Linking url: http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc188.htm

Are the Russians Coming?
Brief Thoughts on the Climate Change Scandal
By Sean Gabb

Like many other people in our movement, I have been delighted by the publication of that computer archive from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. I have spent most of my life denouncing every excuse for state activism as a pack of lies. I have never yet had the joy of seeing the projectors of those lies revealed as little more than pantomime villains – twirling their moustaches while confessing their villainy in whispered asides. Compared with this, the “weapons of mass destruction” lies were misunderstanding in good faith.

But the question uppermost in my mind at present is what all this will mean for the climate change cult. Will this be a more complete moral and intellectual collapse than Communism ever suffered? To begin my answer, I will discuss the subsidiary questions of who and why.

In short, I believe the Russians are behind this. It may be that all those megabytes of data were stolen by a computer hacker. There may be any number of people who are up to such hacking in the technical sense. But this seems to have been an integrated operation. Having the technical skills to get access to a computer archive is not the same as knowing where to look in that archive and what to look for. Nor is it the same as knowing what to do with it.

But the Russians had means and opportunity to do the job. Perhaps their security services are no longer as efficient and as well-funded as in Soviet times. But they are still there. Their mission is no longer to win the Cold War. But making life easier for Mr Putin and his friends is a large mission in itself. They no longer have an active network in British universities. But there must be any number of senior managers there whose activities back in the 1980s would merit an outing in The Daily Mail, and who therefore are open to blackmail.

And the Russians had the best motive imaginable. Anthropogenic global warming is, as said, a pack of lies. But there is huge money behind it. And it is conceivable that Western scientific ingenuity will find a “carbon free” energy source that both works and is economically viable. Now, where would that leave Russia? Without its exports of oil and gas, the place is little more than a bankrupt post-Soviet slagheap. I believe the Russian state budget only balances on a minimum oil price of $40 a barrel. Knock the bottom out of the market in fossil fuels, and Russia can say goodbye to what progress it has made since 1991.

This is only a conspiracy theory. But it is interesting that the stolen data surfaced on a Russian server. Of course, Russia is beyond the reach of the British courts. But it is an interesting fact even so. I think this operation has gone so smoothly that only an efficient security service can be behind it. We can discount the Arabs and Iranians as not being up to the job. We can also discount the big oil companies – like the tobacco companies, they have been deterred from this sort of operation because of all those transparency laws. That leaves us with the Russians. They got the information. They packaged it. They have delivered it to maximum effect.

So what will be that effect? I cannot believe that it will be to prick the whole climate change bubble. There is too much corporate money and too much government activity now resting on the assumption that we must “do something” if sea levels are not to rise ten foot by next Tuesday. The cult leaders will not hang their heads and behave like the villain at the end of a Scooby Doo cartoon. When power and money on this scale are involved, things like that surely do not happen.

But will they be able to live this down? I have no doubt they will try. There will be an inquiry. Individual heads will roll. There will be the pretence of breast beating. But the lies will continue pouring out. The default response will be to turn up the volume of the lies to try and drown out the truth. After a few years, the embarrassment may have been forgotten, and discussion will have turned to how many units individuals should be given for their “carbon passports.”

And I shall be interested to see how well this can work. How powerful is the ideological state apparatus at imposing proven lies on the public mind? On the one hand, the propaganda streams out of every school and university and from every television screen in the civilised world. The message is nearly as uniform as in Soviet Russia. On the other hand, the weakness of the cult is that it has no message of hope and grants no indulgence to the masses. Christianity and Islam – regardless of their truth or falsehood – both offer an infinity of bliss for doing little more than good sense requires. Christians have to be a little more continent than nature seems to allow. Moslems have to keep off the bottle. There is no good news for believers in anthropogenic global warming. We are told to accept the rolling back of the industrial revolution simply to avoid catastrophe that hardly anyone dares tell us will strike within the reasonable future.

We know that the most notable preachers of this message have no intention of cutting back on their own living standards. Look at the Prince of Wales and his private jets. Look at Al Gore and his inflated utility bills. Add to this that the cult is not formally based on an extra-rational revelation, but on alleged scientific evidence – and the knowledge that this evidence has been fakes must count for something.

What I predict will happen is that the propaganda will continue for the next few years. But it will be gradually be replaced by a new set of justificatory lies. Global warming itself was the replacement for acid rain pollution, ozone holes, and even global cooling. In the absence of some new environmental claims, I suggest that we shall hear much more for now on about “peak oil” – the notion that fossil fuels exist in limited supplies and that they will run out within the next few generations.

This has the advantage of being arguably true. I know that people have been predicting the exhaustion of oil reserves for at least a century. But the world economy is growing fast at the moment, and may grow still faster. There must be some physical limit to how much oil and gas and coal can be economically extracted. Otherwise, there is the problem that the cheapest supplies are in unstable parts of the world. Doubtless, the specific claims made will be lies. But they will not require the same barefaced dishonesty as ignoring the historical and geological facts about temperatures and carbon dioxide levels, and ignoring all considerations of solar activity and other natural phenomena.

The other advantage, however, is that the peak oil hypothesis can be used to justify every tax and regulation so far made in the name of fighting climate change. Wind turbine construction, energy efficiency laws, the war on private motoring, bleats about “food miles”, and the like – all work just as well on the assumption that fossil fuels must be conserved.

This is a depressing prediction, so far as it allows the same caravan of liars to roll forward if on different wheels. But I am not sure if the transition will be as smooth as may be hoped. Liars who have been so visibly caught out in one set of claims may not find it easy to switch to another and maintain their full credibility. Until a few weeks ago, I saw the anthropogenic global warming claims as a new legitimising ideology for despotism as powerful in modern circumstances as state socialism had once been. Perhaps it has now been revealed as a fairly short-lived rescue hypothesis. It may not have anything like the long term appeal of state socialism. Whatever replaces it may be weaker still.

If this is the case, I for one will give thanks to Mr Putin. In the old days, he was a KGB officer. Nothing he may now have done can bring back all the people he helped murder. But repentance is always to be welcomed – especially when attended by so many good works.

NB—Sean Gabb’s book, Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives Lost England, and How to Get It Back, can be downloaded for free from http://tinyurl.com/34e2o3

Free Life Commentary No 188, 3rd December 2009

The Russians are Coming (And Thank God for That!)

Sean Gabb

How’s this for a conspiracy theory? The 61Mb of climate change fraud evidence was hacked by the Russians. They had the means, motive and opportunity.

Means and Opportunity: Just because the Cold War is over doesn’t mean the Russian security services have become any less efficient than they used to be – nor that all those connections with lefties in the universities have entirely lapsed.

Motive: Climate change is all nonsense so far as we are supposed to be the villains. However, the sort of funding poured by Western governments into developing alternative energy sources might actually get somewhere. Bearing in mind that Russia is kept afloat solely by its oil and gas exports, the Russians have every reason to want to shut this research down.

Add to this that the data was first put up on a Russian site, and I find the case most persuasive.

Good on you, Mr Putin. It’s too late for the KGB to apologise to all the people it murdered. But if it has now joined the forces of light in the climate change debate, there may be an element of redemption.

From Blogmaster:-

Some files from the lovely batch delivered up by the Russians:-

http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/idl_cruts3_2005_vs_2008b.pdf

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=75J4XO4T

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/23/the-code.html

The following is a searchable database of the content of the Hadley-CRU emails and datafiles:-

http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php

Storm clouds gather over leaked climate e-mails : Nature News

 

Storm clouds gather over leaked climate e-mails

British climate centre reeling over Internet posting of sensitive material.

Quirin Schiermeier

The online publication of sensitive e-mails and documents from a British climate centre is brewing into one of the scientific controversies of the year, causing dismay among affected institutes and individuals. The tone and content of some of the disclosed correspondence are raising concerns that the leak is damaging the credibility of climate science on the eve of the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich confirmed on 20 November that it had had more than 1,000 e-mails and documents taken from its servers, but it has not yet confirmed how much of the published material is genuine. "This information has been obtained and published without our permission," says Simon Dunford, a spokesman for the UEA, adding that the university will undertake an investigation and has already involved the police.

“There are apparently lots of people who really do think that global warming is an evil socialist plot.”

Many scientists contacted by Nature doubt that the leak will have a lasting impact, but climate-sceptic bloggers and mainstream media have been poring over the posted material and discussing its contents. Most consist of routine e-mail exchanges between researchers. But one e-mail in particular, sent by CRU director Phil Jones, has received attention for its use of the word "trick" in a discussion about the presentation of climate data. In a statement, Jones confirmed that the e-mail was genuine and said: "The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward."

"If anyone thinks there’s a hint of tweaking the data for non-scientific purposes, they are free to produce an analysis showing that Earth isn’t warming," adds Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist and policy researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "In fact, they have been free to do so for decades and haven’t been able to."

"There are apparently lots of people who really do think that global warming is an evil socialist plot, and that many scientists are part of the plot and deliberately faking their science," adds Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and former director of CRU.

Alleged e-mails containing critical remarks about other climate scientists are merely proof of lively debate in the community, adds Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

The title of the uploaded file containing the leaked e-mails — ‘FOIA.zip’ — has led to speculation that the affair may be linked to the deluge of requests for raw climate data that have recently been made under the UK Freedom of Information Act to Jones (see Nature 460, 787; 2009). The source of many of those requests is Steve McIntyre, the editor of Climate Audit, a blog that investigates the statistical methods used in climate science. "I don’t have any information on who was responsible," McIntyre told Nature.

Nevertheless, e-mails allegedly sent by Jones seem to illustrate his reluctance to comply with these requests. "All scientists have the right to request your data and to try to falsify your results," says Hans von Storch, director of the Institute for Coastal Research in Geesthacht, Germany. "I very much respect Jones as a scientist, but he should be aware that his behaviour is beginning to damage our discipline." In a statement, the UEA said: "The raw climate data which has been requested belongs to meteorological services around the globe and restrictions are in place which means that we are not in a position to release them. We are asking each service for their consent for their data to be published in future."

However, von Storch believes that, at least until the affair is resolved, Jones should cease reviewing climate science for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Storm clouds gather over leaked climate e-mails : Nature News

Klimate Change

Fred Bloggs.

I recently found this on Englishmans Castle. As the story goes, the Watermelons at East Anglia university had their computers hacked by the Russians, and all their e-mails and stuff was “acquired.” The stuff contained within is really quite frightening, as they have set out “rules” so that they can brainwash people with ease, ie. target /these and these/, but forget about /them/ as they know we’re talking through our arses, ( and also they refer to everyone who doesn’t belive in Jolobial Warmin’ as “irritating”).

One other thing, I’ve ironically noticed that our biggest ally at this moment against the Greens is the former USSR: this just keeps getting better and better. (Us libertarians will be able to look to our Russian comrades for aid during the revolution against the Brown Führer.)

Here’s the PDF of the “Rules” I was talking about before:

RulesOfTheGame

Food rationing coming soon: it will be called “choice-editing”.

David Davis

They’re after your children again.

Has nobody among these GramscoFabiaNazi “researchers” considered that children need to be fat in places like Stockton-on-Tees, because it’s effing cold a lot of the time? (So your children can, indeed must, be fat, or they will be uncomfortable.)

And that in wealthy, hot Sussex, way-down south of here, it’s just, well, hot? (So your children can, indeed must, be thin, or they will be uncomfortable.) They have successful vineyards, for f***’s sake.

Anyway, those effete southerners are too close to all those “Haute Couture” designers in strange places like London and Paris who seem to think all humans ought to be 3-meter-high-skeletal boys with a scowl, so they probably get to like thin children…

And of course, picking and treading the Sussex grapes, for the Political-Enemy-Superclass to crow about in venezuela and Cuba, in the traditional pre-capitalist-barbarian grape-treading-manner, gets you fit and thin.

Will the first libertarian State (minimalist) have to be armed to the teeth against foreing Statists? Discuss.

David Davis

I do worry about this, really I do: and I lie awake at night and I do not know what to suggest.

It does occur to one that in the event of a truly Libertarian “government” – if that’s not oxymoronic – arriving in power somewhere any time soon – and I don’t somehow think it will be here in the UK – what will we do about the following?  

By this I mean the inevitable ire, fulminations, threats, missiles such as the Shithead-3, the Gramsci-VII, the Fabian-V, the Skcidpan-flying-dustbin-Mark37,478-people’s-sword (based as always on the V-2 and about as effective as seen in 1991) sanctions (you name it, we didn’t invent it!) outright attempts at piracy of out trading-ships on the High Seas by the “people’s spontaneously-arising-revolutionary forces of the” states-most-threatened, and the like?

And what is all this sword-iconography about, that “people’s states” seem to affect strongly? Like this stuff?

I do not mean to be churlish about people who sell us things, but why do that when others do or did this?

 

Must like swords, then

I confess that I don’t see the point. I don’t think even the statist forces of the UK do swords much on their badges. Swords are old hat (bad pun.)

Perhaps they still use them as machinery to behead people. Well then, personally, I believe that to be repellent and disgusting and (even) very very pre-barbarian, and I would put a stop to it in Westminster now  __in__  all those “nations” (Ha!) who do it today, and I’d go after the f****rs on the High seas if needed. As you all know, this writer does not favour the death penalty under the present cicumstances here, for this reason:-

For we cannot delegate to the Agency at Westminster any rights that we do not ourselves posess.

But to get back to the point of this post, as I have to go out and do orange-diode-stuff to the meters on the Steel Beast for a bit, a Libertarian Admministration would have hard choices: I don’t think all of them will involve domestic policy decisions – which will be easy as we can just fire everybody on the State-payroll, raze the buildings, and mallet the hard-drives of the State departments that will need to be “let go”.

I think some decisions will involve what foreign powers think of us, and I don’t think they will be initially friendly.

Really, I was just looking at this stuff, and thinking strategically. Obviously battleships are a no-no, as they are noe deadmeat, but you get the point.#

Anna Bramwell (who he?), environmentalism, and fascism

David Davis

Scary, scary stuff.

It confirms all I have ever suspected about GreeNazis and environmentalists.

I am indebted to davidncl for pointing to it, somewhere else, I think on Mr Eugenides, somewhere on his comment thread for this piece here.

Putting a Green Spin on WW1

Fred Bloggs.

I’m feeling rather facetious today, and I feel like taking the piss out of the Greens.

Here I go:

World War one is often seen as one of the worst and most costly, in terms of lives, wars of all time, but many people do not realize that whole new enviroments for great bio-diversity were created in those four fateful years.

To name a few of these habitats of indigenous widlife is quite easy: the vast amounts of shell and mine craters were turned into artificial lakes, which housed all kinds of life, such as frogs, newts and, in some cases, cod. The vast amout of trenches were in turn repurposed into interconnecting rivers, which created vast wetlands which were a safe haven for endangered birds and wildlife.

 Also the craters mangled the farmland so much that it was unusable to grow crops, due to the fact that farmers’ tractors would repeatedly fall into, and get stuck in, the large pits, so all of the land was used to plant trees, which in turn created the Ardennes forest specificaly so that in WW2, German troops could use it as a recreational area, as it was ideal for long walks. 

On anoter note, horses were widely used instead of cars, because the Allied Command and Centeral Powers Command unamiously agreed that the fact that horses create very little CO2, was very desirable.

During the Battle of Jutland many artificial reefs were created for the wildlife of the North Sea.

A request for Gordon.

 Fred Bloggs

In the face of the current economic crisis, the collapse of the housing market, the raiding of pensions, the nationalisation of banks, and “Jolobial Warmin’”, Gordon Brown should do what any respectable and honourable man would do in this situation.

Commit suicide.

Since this might be a bit hard for Gordon to decide himself, I have put it to a vote on how he will commit suicide.

Margaret Thatcher – New Labour’s Midwife

Sean Gabb
Director, The Libertarian Alliance
(Carbon-positive since 1979)

30 Years After: I reject Margaret Hilda Thatcher and Most of Her Works

 Since everyone else is boring on about the 30^th anniversary of her first election victory in 1979, I was until ten minutes ago disinclined to say anything of my own. However, I have now promised to put something on the Libertarian Alliance Blog. Therefore, having nothing else to write, I will say why Margaret Thatcher was a bad thing for the cause of liberty in England.

Here goes:

She started the transformation of this country into a politically correct police state. Her Government behaved with an almost gloating disregard for constitutional norms. She brought in money laundering laws that have now been extended to a general supervision over our financial dealings. She relaxed the conditions for searches and seizure by the police. She increased the numbers and powers of the police. She weakened trial by jury. She weakened the due process protections of the accused. She gave executive agencies the power to fine and punish without due process. She began the first steps towards total criminalisation of gun possession.

She did not cut government spending. Instead, she allowed the conversion of local government and the lower administration into a system of sinecures for the Enemy Class. She allowed political correctness to take hold in local government. When she did oppose this, it involved giving central government powers of supervision and control useful to a future politically correct government. She extended and tightened the laws constraining free speech about race and immigration.

Her encouragement of enterprise never amounted to more than a liking for big business corporatism. Genuine enterprise was progressively heaped with taxes and regulations that made it hard to do business. Big business, on the other hand, was showered with praise and legal indulgences. Indeed, her privatisation policies were less about introducing competition and choice into public services than in turning public monopolies into corporate monsters pampered by the State with subsidies and favourable regulations – corporate monsters that were expected in return to lavish financial rewards on the political class.

She virtually began the war on freedom of choice where smoking is concerned. She started the modern obsession with health and safety as an excuse for controlling our lives. She vastly expended state powers of supervision and control over parenting, and immensely expanded the numbers and powers of social workers.

She made the environmental nonsense politically fashionable. She was the first senion British politician to start wittering about climate change and ozone holes. She doubtless thought she was further stuffing the coal miners. In fact, she was a useful idiot for the ideology best suited to replace socialism as an excuse for Enemy Class domination.

She hardly cut taxes. She ruthlessly pushed the speed of European integration. Her militaristic foreign policy and slavish obedience to Washington mostly worked against the interests of this country. The one war she fought that might have some justification was only necessary because her own colleagues had effectively told the Argentine Government to invade the Falkland Islands.

Even her reforms of the trade union movement had malevolent effects. Before her, trade unions were run by ordinary working class people who used the strike and violence to achieve their ends. She ensured that the unions were taken over by the usual Enemy Class graduates. These were the only people capable of using the health and safety and workplace discrimination laws and so forth that were brought in to replace the older methods of advancing working class interests. The result has been the co-option of the trade unions to purposes that have done nothing at all to advance working class interests.

Forget Margaret Thatcher as some hero of our Movement. She was at best the midwife of the New Labour Revolution. She did not just make the world safe for New Labour – she created New Labour. Without her precedents and her general transformation of our laws and institutions, Tony Blair would have been impossible.

I am inclined to wish James Callaghan had won in 1979. If things had turned nasty thereafter, it would at least have been an honest despotism. No libertarians or genuine conservatives would have been making idiots of themselves nearly a third of a century later trying to tell themselves and everyone else that it was other than it was.

Bloody hell! I thought the RSPB was a charity, until I discovered Wind Turbines.

David Davis

This is shocking and obscene. I’ve filed it under pornography.

What I thought was a charity about birds and wildlife, but is probably a quango instead, has a “Climate Change Policy”……

Here’s an extract:-

Ruth Davis, head of climate change policy at the RSPB, said the charity was promoting the development of wind power because the evidence of the increasing impact of global warming on birds was “truly terrifying”.

“Left unchecked, climate change threatens many species with extinction.

“Yet that sense of urgency is not translating into actions on the ground to harness the abundant wind energy around us.”

She said the solutions were largely common sense, including a clear lead from government on where wind farms were built and clear guidance for councils on how to deal with applications.

here’s another extract:-

The Government must step in to provide a clear lead on developing wind farms more quickly without damaging wildlife or alienating communities, the RSPB urged.

Make up your own mind what these people are for.

Greens: like Kermit in a liquidiser, green outside, running red with blood and Gore inside.

David Davis

“Sir” “Jonathon Porritt”, (….on…? Bit prissy, n’est-ce-pas?) described as an “adviser”, has apparently come out in the true colours of GreeNazis, and on the original 1960s paleophilosophic Rachel-Carson-Paul-Ehrlich-Hegelian battle-ground. This was human population, its supposed right size, its growth, and what should be done about it in the light of their belief that lots of humans is bad, and a few well-chosen ones is good.

The Landed Underclass integrates his own thoughts about why Greens and other antihuman-oids have these ideas about population levels, with the notion of what populations would become, for a polity, under different market conditions.

The Devil, also cited by Landed, has this. I tend to agree that people who advocate population levels of humans under those which currently exist, are deliberately wicked and evil killers.