The Devil's Kitchen February 7th, 2010
This has been a good year so far, certainly in the opinion of your humble Devil. The decision to prosecute even some of the thieving MPs is a small victory for those of us who have long maintained that those fuckers were stealing our money.But far greater vindication, as far as I am concerned, has come in the slow but steady collapse of the climate change alarmist camp; as someone who has been calling "bullshit" on this scam—in writing at least—for five years, watching the destruction started by the leak of the CRU documents has been a joy to behold.Whilst some of us swarmed over the emails and the data—delighting at the revelations about dirty tricks and shoddy statistical analysis that revealed the truth of our suspicions—EUReferendum was leading the charge against the High...
| Robin Hood Tax -
ecomonkey
From: Robin Hood Tax
"A tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad. It sounds complicated, but actually it isn’t. A tiny tax on bankers has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year – giving a vital boost to the NHS, our schools, and the fight against child poverty – as well as tackling poverty and climate change around the world. Not complicated. Just brilliant." More here
From: War On Want
"The financial crisis that has swept across the world economy since 2008 has destroyed jobs and livelihoods in developed and developing countries alike. The colossal bailouts given to the banking sector by UK taxpayers have raised the prospect of public service cuts and further reductions in social welfare. War on Want and many... |
| Robin Hood is good -
Mike Ion
Today I signed up to the new campaign for a 'Robin Hood Tax.' The Robin Hood Tax is a tiny tax on bankers that would raise billions to tackle poverty and climate change, at home and abroad. By taking an average of 0.05% from speculative banking transactions, hundreds of billions of pounds would be raised every year. That’s easily enough to stop cuts in crucial public services in the UK, and to help fight global poverty and climate change. Because of the financial crisis, frontline services at home – like the NHS and our schools – are under fire. At the same time, poor communities and the environment are being hit hard – as aid and green budgets are slashed by rich countries. So it’s time for the people who caused this mess to pay to clean it up. This isn’t some crazy... |
Robin Hood was a socialist… -
LOBBYDOG
 I guess it stands to reason. Sherwood MP Paddy Tipping pointed it out in a debate earlier.He was arguing for better tourist attractions to be set up at Sherwood Forest for when Ridley Scott’s new Robin Hood movie, Nottingham, is released later this year.“We want people to come and look at Nottingham Castle and admire it and then go from the home of the villain to the home of the free men in Sherwood Forest,” he said.“I want them to see that this green wood is a place to live and work and perhaps, for unreconstructed socialists, to give from the rich to the poor.”Unfortunately, given that Russell Crowe is playing the lead in the new film, I fear the most any peasant will get is a mobile phone in the side of the... |
| BBC self-censors for benefit of climate change deniers -
The Spicy Cauldron
I read an article on the BBC News website yesterday morning that had some prominence on the front page. By the time I wanted to show it to my partner in the evening I had to resort to using the BBC search engine to locate the story. It had been buried. What’s more it had been edited to correct two mistakes and also, it would appear, to appease climate change deniers who are strongly motivated, no doubt, to phone in and cry foul.
The original story referenced sea lions. It’s not sea lions, we’ve now been told. It’s fur seals. The measurements of average sea temperatures were taken by the Peruvian Geophysics Institute but were wrongly attributed to The Organisation for Research and Conservation of Aquatic Animals (ORCA) in the earlier version. These are sloppy... |
| Pascal's Wager and climate change -
Never Trust a Hippy
I'm fairly sure that there isn't a god. But if you met me on a crashing plane, I'd probably be on my knees doing a decade-of-the-rosary every couple of seconds.And for those of us that don't have to capacity to understand the science around man-made global warming, I think that there's a similar Pascal's Wager type approach that we could adopt.On the substance of the science, I don't have strong or fixed views on this question. As far as I'm concerned, whatever the scientists conclude, if we can all be a bit less greedy and over-consuming it can't do us any harm - and that most of that could be achieved with a fundamental change to the nature of consumer capitalism. Seeing as most scientists tend to think that man-made climate change is a sensible interpretation of what's happened, I'm... |
IPCC - More Gates Than Wickes -
Governmentitus
 Dr North takes the lead again in the fight back against the IPCC, with another revelation about the 2007 IPCC report which bogusly claimed that the Himalayan Glaciers would have melted in the next 25 years. That revelation showed that this was an entirely false claim and has rippled around the world and is what we know as Glaciergate.Dr North now says that the very same report was again wrong with claims that food yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020. The 2020 projection is in fact now exposed as based on nothing more than speculation that is sourced back to a Canadian advocacy group, and written by an obscure academic who specialises in Carbon Trading and citing references that do not support his claims.Time and again, we must examine why such claims are... |
| Climate change religion is falling apart -
Bloggers4UKIP
A Populus poll conducted for BBC News has shown a marked increase in the number of people who don't believe in the global warming climate change CO2 pollution religion.
Just 3 months ago 41% of people believed in man-made climate change, now only 26% believe. 38% believe that climate change is not proven to be man-made when 3 months ago only 32% held that opinion. Three months ago 8% of... |
British Council and BAE -
The Language Business
 As BAE is fined £286 million following criminal prosecution and conviction one may reflect on the fact that our “official” cultural relations organisation is hand in glove with that company, and so we as taxpayers are rather closer to the scandal than we might like. British Council insider Ali Fisher (former director of their Counterpoint “think tank”) reflects here on the dangers of an organisation that is – improbably some would say – supposed to build trust while being so close to an arms dealer, now known to have acted criminally. (And scanning this page is a reminder of how many times people in authority have been at pains to bury the story).
BAE Systems, apart from funding specific British Council programmes in, for example, Saudi and India (where they make fighter... |
Bye bye climate change consensus? -
Letters From A Tory
 From the BBC:
There has been an increase in the number of British people who are sceptical about climate change, a poll commissioned by BBC News has suggested. It showed that 25% of those questioned did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November. The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75%. The poll, based on a sample group of 1,001 adults, was conducted by Populus.
The findings, based on interviews carried out on 3-4 February, show that only 26% of people think “climate change is happening and is now established as largely man-made”, only 1% more than those who think there is no global warming. In November 2009, a similar poll by Populus –... |
| Climate Change my arse - BBC Poll shows Sceptics now the majority. -
Daily Referendum
Oh what a wonderful day! The BBC have conducted a poll into public opinion on Climate Change - and guess what? man made climate change sceptics are now in the majority! So the science is not exactly settled after all is it? The figures show that while 75% of people still believe that global warming is happening, only 26% are convinced that it is man made - a majority, 38% are not convinced. 25% believe that it is not happening at all.From the BBC: "It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period," Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News."The British public are sceptical about man's contribution to climate change - and becoming more so," he added."More people are now doubters than firm believers."The Department for Environment,... |
Insight: warming and glacier shrinking in the Tibetan Plateau -
optimum population trust news watch
 The Tibetan Plateau, with an average elevation of over 4000 m asl and an area spread over approximately 2.5 × 106km2, is the highest and most extensive highland in the world and is often called the “Third Pole”. The Tibetan Plateau has a great influence on regional and global climate through thermal and mechanical forcing mechanisms.
Panu Glacier
This is because the Tibetan Plateau has the largest cryosphere outside polar regions and it is the source of all large rivers in Asia. Indeed, in China it is known as the “Asian water tower”. We know that the Tibetan Plateau has warmed in recent years, mainly due to greenhouse-gas emissions, but we now present a general study of this region by analysing climate and cryosphere changes in this Asian...... |
| Detectives question climate scientist over email leaks -
The Guardian World News
University of East Anglia scientist Paul Dennis denies leaking material, but links to climate change sceptics in US drew him to attention of the investigatorsA scientist at the University of East Anglia has been questioned by detectives investigating how controversial emails were leaked from the campus's climate research unit.Norfolk police have interviewed and taken a formal statement from Paul Dennis, 54, another climate researcher who heads an adjacent laboratory.The leaked emails from the head of the unit, Professor Phil Jones, surfaced just before the Copenhagen conference in December and caused a furore because they suggested that data which did not support theories of global warming was being deliberately withheld. Dennis denies leaking the material. But it is understood that his... |
| BBC and climate change denying nuts -
Pickled Politics
Wrote an article last night on the BBC’s increasing climate change denialism. Published today:
After watching last night’s Newsnight, I can only come to one conclusion: the BBC has become this country’s most pernicious climate-change-denying media outlet in the UK.
There is simple reasoning behind this grand statement. While the assorted commentators who regularly spout ill-informed propaganda across the media are usually taken with a pinch of salt, the BBC is broadly trusted as an impartial and trustworthy reporter of news. It sets the agenda. Which makes the rubbish it has been producing lately on climate change even more dangerous.
Let me start by saying I believe that man-made activity is the prime driver behind global warming. I don’t have time for... |
Carnegie suspended Pachauri grant -
EU Referendum
 Despite Dr Pachauri's claims that his research institution TERI was being funded from a grant of $500,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 'the money from one of America’s leading and oldest charities had already been suspended.The announcement of the funding was made jointly at a prestigious press conference by Pachauri and the president of Iceland, Dr Ólafur Grímsson on 15 January of this year.On the day, the TERI press release claimed that, "according to predictions of scientific merit they [the glaciers] may indeed melt away in several decades. This, in turn, will have implications for the entire water system of the sub-continent, with immediate effect on soil, water management, and the possibilities of food production.""Looking at the unfolding scenario in the mountains... |
