Gorilling news

Well, I am very pleased to hear that Gorilla numbers are higher than they've been saying for the last 20 years.

One personal observation I made while I lived for a spell in Africa was how much better at living alongside nature Africans (Kenyans specifically) were than they were generally perceived to be. Flora of all kinds and forna of all except snakes were pretty much welcome. They don't like things eating their cows or their crops, but outside of direct provocation, Africans are pretty harmless to animals. One reason why Africa is less developed is that Africans like widening their eyes to nature, and going with its flow. But that's by the bye, I guess.

"I find it outrageous that... garbage is being printed in journals that used to be prestigious and that average or downright stupid women and men who can't reach the ankles of people whom I consider scientists of global importance are being presented by dishonest journalists-activists as the world's leading scientists. This proliferation of idiots and parasites in the name of political correctness is just disgraceful. And it is very dangerous, too."

Lubos Motl, Physicist (formerly of Harvard), on an environ-mental "paper".

Signs of hope

I genuinely wish Boris all the best with his new job! Bye Ken. Bye lots of NuLab councillors. The BBC are obsessed with what they perceive as his negatives. The reality I suspect is far more homespun and genuine than people realise. We'll see.

Meanwhile, another hopeful sign is the realisation that the MMGW or simply the global warming debate is really not over, although warming itself might be. It's been a chilly old spring in Central Europe; rain, a little crisp sunshine, 10-19 degrees more or less. Booker has the climate lowdown. Motl always keeps me up to date. The climate in my view should never have been news at all. Events are news. Trends are open-ended, intrinsically undefinable and unstable.

When I watch something like this, an interview with the remarkable former slave from Sudan, Simon Deng, I am reminded just how wonderful are the African people, and how much we need to learn about the real world around us. Educational, especially concerning Israel and the UN.

Snow-blind.

While the BBC have been busy covering the icings of snow that have adorned many a picture-postcard photo from spellbound Britain, EURef have brought to my attention the terrible weather in Tibet- freezing temperatures over long periods endangering livestock and people at a time when their overrulers in China are far from happy with the country.

It's not so much this parochialism which is likely to be to blame as the BBC's tendency to screen out stories about prolonged cold temperatures- it gives too much credibility to people like this.
(thanks to ATW for the link)

Onwards and Upwards.

Progress: "misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier."

Being busy without reason is a public menace.

In a week when the BBC have been trumpeting what they see and highlight as the latest evidence that global warming is fact (and of course, they always include the man-made hypothesis in this as though it were necessary to add it when it is implicit in the very presence of "Global Warming" stories in our societies' dailies), it's a relief to find Stephen Fry put his support for the movement in a philosphical context, reframing Pascal's Wager about God's existence:

"For the eco-believer it’s no-lose situation: we all survive if they’re right and we’ve acted on their belief, we survive if they’re wrong and we’ve acted on their belief. Whereas for the eco-denier we survive if they’re right and we’ve done nothing but we perish if they’re wrong and we’ve done nothing."

So often we get pointless and rebuttable anecdote- here we get a theory of action.

It's good to be able to say that Fry's thought is quite inadequate on this matter.

It's clear that there is not one accepted result of ignoring global warming. There are many, and few of them catastrophic in the short term save to a small minority of the world's population. Yes, that does sound rather Benthamite, doesn't it? Well, the eco-enthusiasts are the real Benthamites, it seems to me. They figure that focussing the world's economic, scientific and political resources on one aspect most prominent to themselves and their interests has and will have no consequences to those falling outside the sphere of action envisaged by the protocols of rich nations.

And if it does, well, tough. IT'S THE ONLY WAY. Win-Win :-).

Update: I've just come across this rather excellent post from Sean Gabb of the Libertarian alliance on the subject.

Lubos Motl is scathing about the Goracle's coronation by the Nobels.

What galls me is that the UK seems to have run out of appetite for good old-fashioned (and trustworthy) anti-American stereotypes, just when one of them could be usefully applied.





The British Government now thinks it's a laugh to sell snake oil to school children, after sober reflection of course.

More than irritating.

Awarding the Nobel peace prize to Al Gore was an act of political hostility, ironically. Personally I hate such backslapping affairs and would rather recognition were spontaneous- in which case the moronically inclined could whoop it up for Al all by their ownsome. It's the astonishing lack of attention given to their detractors which makes the Nobel committee's decisions so much like a kind of open suicide note to history. Recognise Carter, Annan, Gore, and you're pinning your colours to the mast and inviting a reprisal through public opinion. But so what?

Guess which British broadcaster was busy doing some loud whooping? Yup, that one. Another group whose demise would have me saying, "so what?".

Al Gore seems to think, by the way, that Hillary is unstoppable for 08.














It's true she's been a well-oiled machine of late. However, her almost preternaturally attractive image (seen above) is a bit of a Dorian Gray- someone's bound to find the real picture over time. She's clearly got image consultants that "silky" Edwards would die for- she's just not that attractive and powerful-looking, never has been, and truthfully the falseness there is indicative of her wider flaws: a skin-deep philosophy hiding a neurotic desperation for power.

People will prefer Fred, who is my tip for '08.

And that's the real danger for our Norwegian friends and the Rev. Al Gore as well- vanity will out in the end. Can't wait.

Champion of the blogosphere

No, not Al Gore, who only invented the internet. Damien Thompson, who lays into the old fraud here.

Comment of the day though comes from John B:

"Well, that proves it. The Nobel peace committee is entirely predictable, unlike the earth's climate."

Just how rubbish are they?

Climate scientists, I am talking about. We hear daily from the BBC about the assumed effects of global warming, but what we don't hear about is all those embarrassing slips which make global warming science the kind of mish-mash it is.

Today we discovered that 1998 was not the warmest year on record in the USA- among other things. Just one of those facts that are casually bandied around in the debates where people tell you the facts are all against you. The reason for this re-evaluation, made by Nasa itself? Oh, just some little Y2K hiccup they overlooked impacting their data. You can read the story of its discovery, by bloggers rather than by Nasa scientists described here.

Wiil the BBC report this? Is that the chirruping of crickets I hear?

Incidentally, I have reached the end of Anthony Giddens' "Europe in the Global Age". One of this guru's recommendations for the Euro-elite-

"We cannot treat climate change any longer as just a possibility for the future. We should act on the presumption that it is already happening, and that even in the short term its effects will worsen. This means taking measures now..."(p196, EitGA- "At the level of the EU")

Truly it's frightening that we have men with such drive allied to men with such incompetence.

I could be on to something, Watson...

Excuse my headline, but I've just been reading several Sherlock Holmes mysteries with English-Czech side by side translation. Yes, even lazy me wants to learn languages. These stories though I've been reading side by side with Anthony Giddens' latest potboiler, "Europe in a Global Age". Thrilling stuff.

Well, actually, less of the irony. Giddens's prose might have written by an android, but he has a cyborg-like kind of diligence in asserting his agenda which has affected you and I more than a bit since 1997. It is actually quite fascinating to see how closely the Left's project as manifest in our Government and in media like the BBC are to the musings of their maestro. According to Giddens (p99 EiaGA), "Welfare should be redefined in terms of personal autonomy and self-esteem". Note the replacement of the word "freedom" or "liberty"(a US concept these days) with "personal autonomy"- or freedom to choose (from a range of presumably defined options). Giddens goes on to say "self-esteem, or rather lack of it, has been shown to be involved with a range of social problems" and "a whole range of behaviour that centres around addiction, including eating disorders, alcoholism and even aspects of sexual violence, relates to self-esteem and a lack of a stable sense of self".

Well you know, what's new in that? The idea really that it's the state's responsibility to sort it out, to make you not just be good, but feel good, the mushiness of all that angst to be undergirded by the public purse (assisted by other "actors") for the "clients" of the social system. It's basically the kind of self-help psychobabble of the 80's brought to the aid of the statist extensivism of the Blair-Brown project. As ever, Giddens plays a socialist riff off Thatcherite radicalism.

Of course Giddens is very keen that non-state actors be involved... hey, what about the BBC? Couldn't they get involved? They could write articles warning about catching fatness, not feeling guilty about hating fatness; endless warnings to Mothers about their unborn children. They could create a whole section of fabulation and sensation and call it "Health"?

No, of course that wouldn't be possible without a stream of scientific papers and of course since scientists don't rely at all on the Government to fund them, it wouldn't be possible to engineer that, would it?

"Why are the global warmers so zealous? After a year of arguing with people about this, I am convinced that it's because global warming is first and foremost a political theory. It is an expression of a whole middle-class political world view. This view is summed up in the oft-repeated phrase "we consume too much". I have also come to the conclusion that this is code for "they consume too much". People who believe it tend also to think that exotic foreign places are being ruined because vulgar oiks can afford to go there in significant numbers, they hate plastic toys from factories and prefer wooden ones from craftsmen, and so on."

- Martin Durkin on the response to The Great Global Warming Swindle in Australia recently. Read the whole thing for a characteristically devastating summary against the dominant meme of our era. Via Greenie Watch.

Personally, I am not so sure that the term "Middle Class" has any validity any longer. The time is long past, it seems to me, for a more complex model. Still, Durkin is spot on in many respects- and in the central one where he identifies the armada of common causes which has assembled together to create an invasive ideology.

(btw. Sorry for the gap in posting. A variety of factors may be to blame, not least that nothing actually struck me that I felt the need to say. It is not likely to be a persistent condition.)

The enviro-scam

How fundamental is the enviro-scam to the thinking and ascendancy of today's Left?

That's the question I am pondering more and more. The idea of dwindling resources, the need for management, for restraint, for taxes, for censorship of ideas- all the profound needs of the Left can be satisfied by their mantra.

It makes the sell-out of the modern Conservatives look painfully foolish.

The BBC are of course among the main culprits in causing this skewing of data and ideas, and of course the BBC have been the most stable platform for leftwing ideas for decades (they have in fact been a vital long-term incubator of all leftish ideas). Where would the Left be in the UK without the BBC?

EU Ref points out a series of items in today's Telegraph which call into question both the "fact" of MMGW and the BBC's behaviour.

Then there is this latest example. It's also very wintry in Australia- almost as if El Nino were still playing itself out.

The bottom line for the BBC (unchanging, we know):

"Scientists say the unseasonable droughts, heavy rains and frosts are due to climate change."

In fact it seems ever more likely that it was the Sun wot did it, or the lack of it.

See also what Lubos Motl has translated from Vaclav Klaus. Choc full of ideas. Motl is a great Czech, as is Klaus.

Is the IPCC doing harm to science?

Look out for a big BBC climate change splash this weekend, unless that is they think the weather's too cold in London or they think people are looking the other way. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), you see, is due to release another climate change paper on Friday.

Der Spiegel have written an interesting analysis of the current state of play, explaining the international wrangling that goes on about the use of language, and how the EU (with the UK) has tended to have its way in hardening forecasts.

What struck me most was this concerning CC "denier" Richard Lindzen:

"Lindzen's arguments sound convincing, but they are still nothing but claims, popular theories as opposed to a transparent global process, a global plebiscite among climate researchers."

I grew up in a family headed by a scientist, and this was not the way I understood it should work. Politics and science just don't mix, which appears not to be good enough for some.

Oh, another highlight from the Spiegel article (unserious one), concerning Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC:


"When colleagues describe him they mention his beard, the way he combs his hair straight across his head and his diplomatic skills."

Ah, I think this is the polite German way of saying that he has a wicked comb-over.

View it HERE! The Great Global Warming swindle, I mean. It's extremely watchable, engaging, and mostly cogent.

Apparently one of the scientists interviewed has cried foul- Prof. Wunsch. His contribution was modest and limited in scope, as well as being largely informative. Naturally the Indie gives the story its usual unspun and unbiased treatment. Ahem.

The maverick climate-change deniers are examined in some detail by Brian Micklethwait at Samizdata. A good post, which addresses the concerns I had about the reliability of the documentary makers. Summary: who cares who made it if they spoke truth to power. Or, as Brian puts it:

"If a mad, not-to-be-trusted person says something true, there is still the matter of its truth to be considered. "

Generally speaking I would like to vote Conservative, but sometimes they've been too pathetic a shower to allow for it.

When Dave Cameron (yes, I'm still angry about the sacking of his shadow minister Mercer- see below post) was spouting his green credentials to the heavens recently I said to myself that sooner or later his judgement was going to be exposed on that issue. There's no way the reality matches the hysteria.

It looks as though that time has come sooner rather than later with the devastating documentary on Channel 4- The Great Global Warming Swindle- yesterday exposing the shallowness of global warming science. Dave could suffer serious credibility loss as this sinks in. Melanie Phillips has a grand summary up of the main points covered, so that even though I myself didn't see it I can tell how powerful the message was.

"The Great Global Warming Swindle has blown an enormous hole in every fundamental claim made to support the climate change obsession — including the claim that the argument is over."

Do read it all. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me is that it got made by Channel Four, maverick to the core it would seem.

Interviewing Mr Klaus

The Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, is one of the few decent politicians on this planet:

"Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't."

Proof here

Wow- this is a fantastic way to start an article:


"The more I think about “global warming”, in light of the most recent United Nations report, the more confident I become in averring that it is a fraud, a political stunt, a criminal imposture, that every intelligent journalist should be helping to expose."

From the great David Warren- continue reading here. Think I'll go and read the rest now... [update: immensely well worth the time]

The BBC and truth agree at last:


"Back to cold war?
By Rob Watson
BBC defence and security correspondent, Munich

The Munich security conference was born in the 1960s - the height of the Cold War. Forty years on, there been talk of a new chill"

Meanwhile, back in darkest Russia:

"The real news from Saint Petersburg -- demonstrated by cooling that is occurring on the upper layers of the world's oceans -- is that Earth has hit its temperature ceiling. Solar irradiance has begun to fall, ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012 to 2015. The depth of the decline in solar irradiance reaching Earth will occur around 2040, and "will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-60" lasting some 50 years, after which temperatures will go up again."