If we did it there'd be riots

Littlegreenfootballs has a post on what Egyptians think of the US election race.

If we published something similar about them then there'd be riots in the streets and we'd need 24x7 protection against agents of the so-called Religion of Peace.

10 Institutions That Ruin The World - #7

I have started a list of the 10 institutions that are ruining the world and how, in spite of their lofty aspirations, they actually end up doing harm. Today we have:

#7 - Government

Seriously? Government? If that's true then why isn't it further up the list, as it affects us all? Read on and all will be revealed.

We are fortunate to live at a time when those of us able to enjoy the advantages of a free society are able to learn from the experiences of history. If we learned nothing else from the twentieth century then it's that the experiment called socialism was a dismal failure. In spite of that fact, we still have ideologues pushing its virtues and telling us that we just need to try again but with a new twist. But I digress.

What is the role of government in a free society? I subscribe to the Milton Friedman position that government should be as small as possible, should enforce law and order, protect property rights, protect society from monopolies and diminish negative "neighbourhood effects" (the negative impact on a wide group by the activities of a small group). Government should also have control over money in order to buffer ups and downs in the market and, obviously, have ownership of national security.

For people to be free, there needs to be a balance between its major institutions in order to protect the monopolisation of power by any one. In our society the major institutions are government, business and the judiciary. The enemy of freedom is coercion. If there's only one shoe store from which to buy shoes then they can charge any price they like and personal freedom of choice cannot be expressed. Likewise, if there's only one political party then personal freedom is limited.

Society is held together primarily by its values. When situations arise that are unable to be dealt with we call on government to establish the rules of the game and we live within the parameters set. We accept this as being how it needs to be but sometimes miss the point that every time government makes a rule we lose a part of our personal freedom. The problem is that those rules are never overturned and so we become more and more constricted such as is happening in Europe where the only function of the European Union seems to be to make rules on how to live. Don't believe me? Check out the following picture of the EU Constitution, the US Constitution and the Iceland Constitution.

Hmmm, you go, as you ponder the nearly 2,000 pages of the EU and 58 pages of the US Constitutions. Why use a few words when whole chapters will do? The EU has about 25% more people than the US so why does it need such a huge document? Because it brings together a large number of people with diverse cultures, I hear you counter. Have you ever been to New York? Miami? Dallas? LA? You couldn't get more diverse groups of people and yet 58 pages is all it takes to hold things together. Of course, there are a million laws that sit underneath the US Constitution but the fact is that they all need to feed back up into it. Imagine how many laws could fit under the EU document? The EU must be the most regulated society of all time.

Laws tend to arise as a result of the efforts of special interest groups, particularly those masquerading as having a social justice agenda. In Australia we have anti-discrimination laws and we all think that's fair enough. However, what is little understood is that discrimination only applies from the majority group to a minority and not vice-versa. Thus, the freedom of the majority is chipped away bit by bit.

Here in Melbourne we recently saw the trial of two pastors from the admittedly bit-strange Catch The Fire Ministries who were charged with insulting Islam under the state's new racial vilification laws. They were found guilty by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal that first tried the case and spent over four years and close to $100,000 appealing the judgement before successfully having it overturned. Their original crime? Quoting directly from the Koran. That's right. When discussing Islam's position on certain social issues they used direct quotes, which were heard by Muslim activists sent by a discrimination commissar hired from a Muslim lobby group. Why was the law needed in the first place? It wasn't. Before coming into law in 2001, the then chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission said: “I am not aware of any conclusive evidence that suggests that discrimination is increasing.” Even the discussion paper the Government put out then admitted “documenting (racism’s) extent is difficult”. Where did the law come from? Muslim lobby groups doing what they do all over the Western world, looking for ways to promote themselves as 'victims' in order to extract concessions from their new homes. Has this law been repealed? I'll leave you to figure that out. By ceding power to government to control a non-issue the personal freedom of every person living in Victoria has been reduced.

Government has the ability to control an over-zealous judiciary or a monopolistic business sector. There is no reverse gear on government, though. The Left believes in big government to provide more and more services under the guise of helping those in need. The problem is that taxation is a coercive activity. It can't be avoided (though can be minimised) and force can be used if you fail to pay. Government taking by force from one individual to give to another represents the ultimate coercion. When the size of government gets as big as it is in Europe, for example, you end up in a complete nanny state situation in which you can have three generations of families that have never worked a day in their lives being provided for by the diminishing number of those that do. In Venezuela it will take a military coup to undo the carnage being wrought by Hugo Chavez. Governments will always find a way to spend all of your taxes but programs undertaken by government are always more expensive than the same programs undertaken by business. When people talk about government projects creating employment they miss the point that for every $1 the government spends on job creation the private sector does it for $0.60.

The reason that government is on the list is that the trend is towards larger government, which is more pervasive and intrusive than ever before. Why isn't it up higher on the list? Fortunately, globalisation has meant that business spans international borders in ways that it never used to meaning that government can only do so much to interfere (unless you're Mr Chavez) before the activity becomes damaging to itself thus business is acting as a counterbalance to expansionist government.

Government, and its tendency to grow, makes it into the list at #7 of my 10 Institutions That Ruin The World.

#8 - The Social Justice Movement
#9 - The Peace Movement
#10 - The Intelligent Design Movement, Discovery Institute

BOOK REVIEW - America Alone, Mark Steyn

I read Mark Steyn's recent book, America Alone, the other day. I say "the other day" because I started in the morning, was quickly hooked and read all the way through to finish in the afternoon. Like all good books it's concise and precise and packs a lot of punch in its two hundred and a bit pages.

Steyn's thesis is that societies are a product of their demographics and that the increasing number of Muslims in (particularly) Western Europe set against a decline in the indigenous population due to a massive decline in birth rates is going to have profound consequences.

“What’s the Muslim population of Rotterdam? Forty percent. What’s the most popular baby boy’s name in Belgium? Mohammed. In Amsterdam? Mohammed. In Malmo, Sweden? Mohammed. By 2005, it was the fifth most popular boy’s name in the United Kingdom.”

The book is full of really interesting facts about the decline in birth rates through various countries in Europe that will see those countries halve their populations by 2050. By mid-century, Muslims continue to have large families and Europeans continue to have tiny ones, the nation of Yemen will exceed Russia in population.

“In the fourteenth century, the Black Death wiped out a third of the Continent’s population; in the twenty-first, a larger proportion will disappear — in effect, by choice. We are living through a rare moment: the self-extinction of the civilization which, for good or ill, shaped the age we live in. One can cite examples of remote backward tribes who expire upon contact with the modern world, but for the modern world to expire in favor of the backward tribes is a turn of events future anthropologists will ponder, as we do the fall of Rome.”

Steyn agrees with the theme introduced by others including Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan that Europe's overly generous welfare system has attracted a new form of immigrant, one that isn't attracted by the strength of the society or by the opportunities to improve one's lot in life (such as the attraction of America) but by the promise of welfare. These rent-seeking newcomers don't respect the values or opportunities on offer but, instead, simply uproot themselves, end up in England, France, Belgium and Sweden etc and establish outposts of their home countries.

When one population breeds at a massive rate and one is in serious decline you'd think that there will come a point at which a clash occurs. However, far from understanding the threat, Europe is doing all it can to hasten its own demise by accommodating even the most ridiculous of Muslim demands. Neither Steyn or Phillips believe that there is any way to avoid Western Europe becoming an Islamic state. We are likely to see a majority Muslim European country with nuclear weapons within our lifetime and must cross our fingers that the dominant radical element has been overcome by moderate forces.

Steyn has a breezy, humorous style that makes it a frightening and fun read.

8/10 for the highly recommended America Alone.

10 Institutions That Ruin The World - #8

I'm running a list of the 10 institutions that are ruining the world and how, in spite of their lofty aspirations, they actually end up doing harm. Today we have:

#8 - The Social Justice Movement

There are so many single issue lobby groups that have cast themselves into the Social Justice net that it's hard to know where to start. For the purposes of this essay, the Social Justice Movement includes all lobby groups that promote race, gender or sexual identity with a goal of achieving 'justice' for their group by forcing equality of outcome through regulated favouritism over others.

It is certainly correct to say that once upon a time blacks in America were discriminated against in almost all aspects of society. The civil rights movement in the '60s put paid to that. It is less correct to say that women have always been discriminated against because you have to go so far back in history that it doesn't matter. The civil rights movement also had a positive outcome for women with regard to wage parity. And that's the point, society in Australia and the US is very egalitarian, certainly much less so than Western Europe, everybody is treated equally under the law and all have the same equality of opportunity.

The feminist movement keeps highlighting the disparity in wages between men and women, which show that, on average, women earn about 75% of what men do. However, this result is completely as a result of the employment choices women make. The fact is that never-married women out earn never-married men and that for every job category in any company or government department men and women earn exactly the same wage. Women choose to have families and take part time work and thank goodness they do otherwise we'd have a real problem. Another factor not considered in the 75% is that men work more hours than women (due to the part time factor), that hourly rates are therefore much closer and that for the same work the hourly rate is the same. The feminist movement has long promoted women as being equal to men and that women don't need a man in order to be successful. This has had the profound effect of lowering the level of happiness women report in studies over the last 20 years. It turns out that women, in fact, do desire a strong relationship with a man but they're too fearful of the consequences from their peers if they say so. Needing a man is a sign of weakness in a woman. What a shocking state of affairs.

Update: How Feminism Leads to the Oppression of Women

Let me give you a bit of a clue about what a huge lie the wage inequality argument is. Say that you worked in a business of a hundred employees and, for the sake of argument, it's an accounting firm. You have an aspiration to own your own business so you leave where you are and establish it. Here's the question. Will you have a greater competitive advantage by hiring A) all white employees, with the supposed highest hourly rate, or B) all women, who apparently only get paid 75% of what men get? Same argument for blacks or any other group you'd care to mention. Who in their right mind wouldn't have an all female or all black staff? If you were the CEO of a large, stock-exchange listed company then why wouldn't you be increasing your earnings by hiring every woman and black you could? My point is proven by the fact that those labour groups that are truly cheaper, such as illegal Hispanics, have pushed out higher wage earning Americans as farm workers and the like.

The black movement had a much more valid argument back in the '60s but, like the women's movement, they have achieved the equality of opportunity that they campaigned for. There are no Western countries in which blacks do not have the same opportunities as any other race group and it's been that way for nearly 30 years. People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, though, continue to preach a message of discrimination and victimisation that has only ever worked to the detriment of those they represent. How is it, if we are the racists that the black lobby accuses us of being, that Chinese Asians have done so outstandingly well? What about those from the Middle East? Or Indians? The most racist group in America today is the black lobby. In Australia its the Aboriginal lobby. Anyone who disagrees with them is immediately labelled a racist or bigot. How that advances the cause of the people they represent is beyond me.

Who started the gay lobby? Seriously. Does anyone care if your next door neighbour is gay? Everybody agrees that if gays live together that they should have equal rights under the law as a heterosexual couple. Most even believe in the fairness of civil unions. I certainly do. However, the gay lobby (which now is expanded to GLBT - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) has gone off the deep end on a few matters that have caused Average Joe to push back, to the detriment of gays themselves. In Western countries, this started with the AIDS scare and the claims that heterosexual groups were at just a great a risk as homosexual. Of course, this was only the case in Africa where the use of condoms was not prevalent and they were ignorant of the problem. In Western countries 97% of cases were homosexual men and intravenous drugs users that were sharing needles. I knew a haemophiliac that died after a blood transfusion and that type of situation made up the other 3%. The gay lobby then took on the issue of marriage and lobbied for it to be legalised. In every single case where the public has been allowed to vote on this issue it has been defeated but that doesn't stop the lobbyists, they just use liberal judges to impose their view. The self damage done to the gay community will be shown to be really significant over the coming years.

These lobby groups created the notion of Affirmative Action and gender/race quotas in the workplace and in universities. What this has done is to diminish the achievement of the majority of blacks and women that would have successfully been accepted to university or a workplace. Why is Affirmative Action needed in higher education when women make up nearly 60% of the campus?

The irony of these movements is that equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity is, in fact, the most profoundly bigoted and discriminatory goal in society today, as it requires that one group be penalised on behalf of another. Unfortunately, it is also the case that the group that drives forward the hardest has the heaviest Social Justice handbrake to overcome.

America and Australia have become about as race blind, gender equal and gay-friendly as a society can get. This has been due not to the ongoing bleating of the various lobby groups but because of the positive experience that individuals have had when working side by side with people of different cultures and races over the last 30 years. And yes, that initial opportunity was certainly due in part to the terrific work of people like Martin Luther King, no doubt about it.

Over the last twenty or so years the effect of the Social Justice Movement has been to work against the interests of those it represents, to the detriment of society, and that's why it comes in at #8 on my list of Institutions That Ruin The World.

#9 - The Peace Movement
#10 - The Intelligent Design Movement, Discovery Institute

Unexceptional underachiever mocks overachieving national icon

Unexceptional underachiever Germaine Greer is at it again, mocking overachieving national icon Steve Irwin in a rant brought about by the National Portrait Gallery choosing to replace the stomach churning image of a naked (but thankfully exposing nothing) Greer with Irwin in what she describes as a 'simpering' pose. In her column from the socialist UK rag, The Guardian, ex-pat Aussie Greer drivels:

"His left thumb is hooked rather coyly in a pocket; his lime-green shirt is undone to the fourth button, and pulled open to display his bosom in a manner not altogether manly"

This from a woman that said the "animal world had finally got its revenge" after Steve Irwin's fatal encounter with a stingray. To prove how truly out of touch she is with real people Greer claimed that many felt the same way about Irwin but were too intimidated to speak out. Oh, please.

Judge for yourself which portrait would be more memorable should you go and see them in a gallery.

Greer has spent her entire career as a pseudo-intellectual by climbing on the backs of her sisters while managing to hold back their cause by decades. She really is disgusting. Speaking on behalf of all Australians I have a message to Greer - Good riddance.

Music as torture condemned

One of the funniest statements you'll see in a long time came out a couple of weeks ago from the Society for Ethnomusicologists.

Stuff me, I laugh even as I read it now...

On behalf of the Society for Ethnomusicology the SEM Board of Directors approves the Position Statement against the Use of Music as Torture, which originated in the SEM Ethics Committee and has the unanimous support of the Board of Directors.

Are they complaining about too much Celine Dion? Bananarama? Bad rap? They want to find out that, as well:

The Society for Ethnomusicology

• calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;
• condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and
• demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.

I sent them an email asking whether they were going to develop a position statement against the banning of music in those Islamic societies where it is punishable by death. I am still waiting for a response.

Al Gore is a Greenhouse Gasbag

Hey, don't blame me for the title. That's what the Philadelphia Magazine used in their interview with Penn State University's Robert Giegengack, a geologist with nearly 50 years' experience.

The class is a typical-seeming group, heavy on girls, some of whom wear ripped jeans and do-rags, others of whom are carefully made up and snappily dressed, pulling their notebooks from designer bags. Midway through the class, Gieg says, “Now it’s time for us to talk about the number one political/environmental issue of our time.” He reads a snippet from a New York Times editorial about the Supreme Court global-warming case.

“What I’m going to try to do the rest of today and also probably on Tuesday is bring you up to date on this. I’ll try to avoid editorializing or politicking. I’ll just tell you some stuff. Give you information. There’s lot’s of stuff, and it’s very complicated.”

Gieg gazes upward toward his young charges. “Every single one of you knows more about this than Al Gore,” he tells the undergrads. “And vastly more than anyone in this present administration.”

Why is it that most of the criticism of catastrophic global warming predictions come from people that are over 60 and no longer rely on government grants? Looks like more melting of the global warming consensus to me.

10 Institutions That Ruin The World - #9

I have started a list of the 10 institutions that are ruining the world and how, in spite of their lofty aspirations, they actually end up doing harm. Today we have:

#9 - The Peace Movement

There are few organisations that are more hypocritical than the peace movement. Wikipedia defines a peace movement as being "A social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war (or all wars), minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace." That seems a fair description.

The modern peace movement began at the end of the 19th century and really grew legs after WWI, which was quite understandable given the unprecedented carnage and social upheaval resulting from that conflict. Unfortunately, the peace movement quickly came under the control of socialist organisations and, in effect, became their 'acceptable' public face.

By the middle of the 1930s, the movement had gained a great deal of public sympathy and support and was one of the most vocal bodies calling for England's non-aggression towards Germany, in spite of that country's significant build up of its military which was in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles signed at the end of WWI. The effect of the 'peace at any price' position was to delay England's build up of its own forces, lionise Neville Chamberlain for his negotiations with Hitler that led to his famous 1938 "Peace in our time" speech and darned near cost England her country. Because the Allies won the war it is assumed by the younger generation that it's because they were much stronger and, of course, after the US entered the war and Stalin switched sides they were. However, for over two years it was touch and go for England and could easily have resulted in a loss. Had the Japanese not chosen to bomb Pearl Harbour who knows what might have happened?

After the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War the peace movement really hit its stride. With an increase in financial support and command-and-control from the Soviet Union the peace movement became a powerful propaganda tool with a stridently anti-Western focus. One of its main objectives was unilateralism whether that be withdrawal of US forces from Europe, withdrawal of European from alliances with the US or unilateral nuclear disarmament (where have all the unilateral nuclear disarmament protesters gone since the collapse of the Soviet Union?)

Of course, the peace movement had a significant, and negative, role in the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, as well as the UK's conflicts in Malaysia and the Falklands. Old peaceniks are particularly proud of their role in stopping the US funding of the Vietnam war but remain callously blind to the three million victims of their 'high moral' position.

The peace movement didn't protest against any Soviet aggression and protested against Kennedy's reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis, initiated by the Khrushchev, that seriously altered the balance of power. It wasn't anywhere to be seen during Hungary in '56, Angola or Afghanistan to name but a few. It has been on the side of the Arab aggressors in all of their wars with Israel. It could have cared less about the Iran-Iraq war but certainly got its skates on when the US got involved in the Gulf. It hasn't protested civil wars that have killed millions in Ethiopia, the Congo, Mozambique, Sudan or Somalia. It said nothing about Kosovo until the US decided to go in and stop the genocide that was taking place.

Nothing sums up the lack of seriousness of the peace movement than the bumper stickers that read "I'm already against the next war", which requires a deep cognitive dissonance. One presumes that if the US is attacked then the correct strategy is to roll on your back and hope that the enemy gives you a good tummy rub for being nice?

For promoting an agenda that unilaterally weakens those nations that have worked the hardest to bring peace to the world since the end of WWII the Peace Movement takes the #9 spot on my 10 Institutions That Ruin The World.

#10 - The Intelligent Design Movement, Discovery Institute

10 Institutions That Ruin The World - #10

Over the next 10 days I will post a list of the 10 institutions that are ruining the world and how, in spite of their lofty aspirations, they actually end up doing harm. Today we have:

#10 - The Intelligent Design Movement, Discovery Institute

Intelligent Design postulates that the world is too complex to have evolved naturally, that there seems to be an order to things and that this order was created by a Designer. Intelligent Design (ID) is a product of the Discovery Institute, a Christian think tank that aims to counter what it sees as today's materialistic and immoral society through a recovery in the strength of Judeo-Christian values.

To the casual observer that might reduce to 'Christians believe in God as the Creator'. Big deal. Unfortunately, it is a big deal and a really big one at that. Let me explain.

In order to garner public acceptance of Creationism (that the world is 6,000 years old and the Old Testament is the literal truth et blah) it was renamed Creation Science, with the term first being used way back in the 1960s. The Creation Science movement tried hard for a long time to establish its bona fides and even attracted some high profile scientists to argue for the cause. However, the oxymoronic name and fundamentalist dogma were simply too great a hurdle to overcome and so acceptance of Creation Science remained largely confined within the Christian evangelical movement.

Enter the Discovery Institute and Intelligent Design. Understanding that Creation Science was a dead duck, the Discovery Institute sought a successor, one that would not just be a rebadged version of Creation Science but would be promoted as having the same legitimacy as Evolution. In order to deal with its opponents, a set of arguments were prepared that strongly countered the criticism of Creation Science. The aim was to have ID taught alongside Evolution in the biology classes of America's schools.

In 2004 the Discovery Institute was in a position to push ID into the school system and chose the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania. In summary: it stacked the School Board, raised the concern of Evolution being taught exclusively, took advice from the Thomas More Law Center, advocated teaching ID alongside Evolution and put it to a vote, which was carried 6-3. The situation ended up in court and in September 2005 Judge Jones issued a 139 page finding of fact stating that ID was no different to Creation Science, that it was therefore unconstitutional and that the ID proponents were pretty much a pack of lunatics. It could not have been a worse result for the Discovery Institute.

The reason that the Intelligent Design movement is an institution that is ruining the world is that the case became so high profile it polarised people against Christianity that would have otherwise held neutral or respectful views. It became a lightning rod for the worst, and loudest, groups in society such as the ACLU to hold up as proof of a Christian conspiracy to take over America. For the devout non-believer in society whose major value is narcissism and who believes in this same Christian conspiracy the ID movement ensured that the Christian Values baby got thrown out with the God bathwater. The fact that there's even a supposed Christian conspiracy is due to non-believers not being able to separate Christian values from Christianity and when they hear people talking about positive Christian values they equate that with God, which they've rejected.

Values are what bind a society together and without them we need to give government the task of making laws about how we'll conduct ourselves. Every time government passes a law that forces us to act in a particular way we give up a piece of our personal freedom. This is one of the reasons socialism is so destructive. It's no fluke that those countries with strong Judeo-Christian values made the greatest progress in the last two hundred years or that those that have rejected those values are now facing the greatest challenges. The difference between Western Europe and the USA in terms of societal values has never been starker. Europe is now almost completely secular, mostly socialist in the way it taxes society, passes laws seemingly as sport and has a birth rate that will see the population decline by 20-30% by 2050. No wonder countries like Germany and Holland have net positive emigration rates (i.e. more people are leaving the place than moving in).

The US and Australia retain their sense of cultural identity and values but there is always an ongoing battle against the socialist forces in society wanting to bring those down and replace them with the State. To people like me that are profoundly atheist (surprised by that?) who appreciate the strength of Judeo-Christian values, understand their role in making our countries great and wish to see society continue to be guided by their wisdom the Intelligent Design Movement's decision to act in the way it did seriously harmed the public's positive view of Judeo-Christian values - to our great detriment.

The Intelligent Design Movement and the Discovery Institute are #10 on my list of Institutions That Ruin The World.

One week old and 1,000 visitors already

This Kerplunk blog is only a week old and already it's attracted over 1,000 unique visits from all over the world with more than 1,600 pages read. I hope you all enjoy your stay and come back soon for more thoughtful, insightful commentary on the state of the world.

In the meantime here's one of the funniest movie scenes of all time. From Monty Python's Life of Brian it's the Biggus Dickus scene..."he has a wife you know"...cracks me up every time...

Climate consensus melting faster than Greenland

Green-wrapped socialists, aka the environmental movement, have worked hard in recent years to impose their destructive ideology through the Trojan horses of Climate Change, led by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and its relative, the Kyoto Protocol.

You may dispute that these people are socialists, agree that global warming is an issue and that their motives are good. The fact is that their efforts would result in the transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations via a carbon trading system while at the same time doing nothing to stop the rise of global CO2 emissions. You'll excuse me if I refer to that as socialism.

There are now significant cracks appearing in the ranks of the so-called "debate is over", "skeptics are like Holocaust deniers", "there is a broad consensus" proponents of a man made climate catastrophe. It is pure, unadulterated comedy that environmental extremists have now turned on themselves by criticising the IPCC's latest report for not being alarmist enough.

Over the last few months the level of pressure from formerly 'non-existent' skeptical scientists has built up to the point where their voices can no longer be silenced by a complicit mainstream media. Led by seriously credible people such as Bjorn Lomberg, Richard Lindzen and Roger Pielke, and with pressure from others such as Lord Monckton, research contradicting the 'consensus' is now starting to see the light of day. First comes Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, to say that it's the sun that is the main driver of the Earth's climate. Imagine that? It's that big, red, hot ball in the sky that's making us warm. And there I was thinking that all it did was make my eyes hurt when I looked directly at it. Then comes news that cosmic radiation is also not as innocent as first supposed. This all follows previous research showing that CO2 rise lags temperature rise in a lot of regions, which would make it hard to accuse of being the global warming culprit.

A few weeks ago the Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist, Heidi Cullen, advocated that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of man made catastrophic global warming. This was in response to a comment that TV weathermen were indeed quite skeptical about the whole thing. Now we see a panel of them saying that 95% of their colleagues disagree with climate alarmism.

The desperation of the lobotomised, can't-think-for-themselves Climate Gestapo was plain for all to see in an error-riddled screed by the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman just over a week ago. "By every measure, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises the level of alarm. The fact of global warming is "unequivocal." The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get." writes this scientific illiterate. The day that we rely on science at only a 90 percent certainty level is the day we're all in a whole heap of trouble, as anyone that was paying even vague attention in a year 7 or 8 science class could tell you. "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future," continues this non-scientist cum non-historian.

Clearly, the climate consensus really is melting faster than Greenland. They urgently need to call on the Al Gore Effect in order to solidify their position.

It will be interesting to see how the Alarmists recover and put their battered Climate Humpty Dumpty back together. There is a long way to go in this battle and hopefully the way forward is to have a two-sided, science-based debate on the subject with the mainstream media acting as an impartial moderator.

US Congress to Allies - "We could care less about your support"

The Democrats want out of Iraq, clear and simple, and will do anything in order to achieve this goal. All you hear from them is that Iraq is the current day Vietnam, that we can't win and that we should withdraw.

The withdrawal from Vietnam began in 1973 after Richard Nixon signed a truce with North Vietnam. His goal was "peace with honour" by denying the communist North a victory in the South. In order to obtain their agreement to the truce Nixon pledged that the United States would provide the South with military aid and funding so that they could protect themselves.

However, this was not enough for a number of hardcore anti-war activists including Jane Fonda and John Kerry who continued their campaign against US support for the South. In scenes remarkably similar to today's shenanigans by the Democrats they convened a war crimes tribunal, condemned the role the US was playing and initiated a strong campaign to persuade a Democrat controlled Congress to cut off all aid to South Vietnam (and Cambodia).

When Nixon was forced to resign due to Watergate the very first piece of legislation put to Congress was to cut off aid completely to the South, which was passed and enacted in January 1975. Just a couple of months later the North Vietnamese thought they'd have a crack at the border defences of the South, which appeared to have weakened significantly. They were genuinely surprised to find themselves rolling into Saigon at the end of April.

The result? Over the next four years more than three million people were slaughtered by the victorious North in establishing their socialist Utopia. Some estimates are much higher. To those on the left Stalin's maxim applies - one death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic. The unbelievable death toll and heart wrenching stories of hundreds of thousands of people taking to boats and trying to get to free countries, often with tragic consequences, are a mere detail.

So let's move on to the present. The Democrats were joined by 17 Republicans in a non-binding resolution denouncing President Bush's troop build up in Iraq. In a very brave political move two Democrats voted against the resolution. What is the point of supporting a non-binding resolution? For the turncoat Republicans the answer is easy - they're worried about the election campaign of '08 and want to be able to say they voted to denounce the build up.

For the Democrats the goal is clearly somewhat more insidious. The wiser heads have worked out that withdrawing funding for the war would be political suicide - the comparison to Vietnam is too stark. They have also done everything they need to in order to stop the Republicans putting up their own resolution that called for supporting the goals of the President in Iraq. The Democrats' tactics are reasonably clear - take a slow drip, death by a thousand cuts approach to achieving their goal of withdrawal from Iraq. Jack Murtha even said as much in his revealing interview with Moveon.org yesterday in which he clearly states that "...we're going to stop this surge." It is a disgusting and despicable tactic by a Democratic Party that is playing domestic politics hard and is willing to turn upside down the normal functioning of the House and Senate in order to achieve its goals.

There is, however, a negative aspect that the Democrats have either missed or don't care about - the effect on America's partners in the war including its longest term and staunchest friends such as Australia and Great Britain not to mention unsung contributors such as South Korea (they have the 3rd largest force in Iraq) and Poland. These countries have contributed soldiers at great expense from the outset, and invested serious political capital in supporting the goal of freedom for the Iraqi people. I think it's no coincidence that the world's best leader, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, while taking a swipe at Barak Obama's lunatic position of wanting a withdrawal by March next year, expanded his statement to include the entire Democratic Party. He understands all too well the consequences for Australia in the Pacific region of having an isolationist United States with a Democrat as President.

In spite of the resolution being non-binding, and therefore meaningless, the media around the world has chosen to portray it as a huge setback for the administration. Australia's ABC headlines "US House votes to reject Bush's Iraq strategy"; CNN - "House rebukes the president on Iraq"; BBC - "Vote signals hard times ahead for Bush"; Al Jazeera - "US House denounces Bush troop plan". These are hardcore headlines that set a scene completely at odds with the ability of the resolution to force the President to do anything he doesn't want to. When the Democrats grit their teeth, cross their fingers and say "we support the troops" they may be kidding themselves and their supporters but to America's terrorist enemies the message is all too clear - Democrats good. Republicans bad.

The Democrats clearly don't understand what the war is about. Freedom is not a value they treasure. They have lurched so far to the left that they have become blinded by their ideology and want out regardless of the consequences. They have no idea where the rest of the world is and are only concerned about 'America's reputation' internationally - by which they mean their kindred spirits in socialist Europe.

By starting the process of a slow strangulation of the effort in Iraq the Democrat controlled Congress has sent a clear and unambiguous message to her staunchest allies - "We could care less about your support". The consequences will be profound.

Obama - Not black?

I have said for years and years that the greatest threat to the advancement of blacks in America is the Black Lobby. Ditto the Feminist Lobby for women and even Unions for workers. What the likes of the unexceptional Germaine Greer did to damage the cause of women so, too, the blacks have their own social anchors in the form of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. You only have to look at how well other races have done in the US - Chinese and Indians, for example - all of whom lacked a conspicuous lobby group but completely eclipse blacks in the achievement stakes.

Sometimes, parody bespeaks reality and the very funny Stephen Colbert 'interview' with Debra Dickerson, author of The End of Blackness, on his Colbert Report demonstrates brilliantly the inanity, irrelevance and self-harm of today's Black Lobby.

Watch and enjoy.

The Palestinians already have a state

In all of the clamouring about the need for the Palestinians to have their own state it seems to have slipped under the radar that since September 15, 2005, the date that Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip and West Bank, there has indeed been a Palestinian state. Ruled at the time by Fatah, they even had open elections and managed to vote in a jolly group of suicide bombing, death cult terrorists called Hamas to run the joint. For those that refer to Hamas as 'freedom fighters' then you must have been just tickled pink to see the progress your freedom loving Palestinians had achieved.

There are a lot of people, indoctrinated by our mainstream media, education institutions and Arab lobby groups, that think it's Israel that's stopped the progress of the formation of a Palestinian state. I have just one thing to say to you - you are either a complete idiot or an immoral, dishonest, piece of crap. Ahhh, that feels better.

If you believe that there used to be a land called Palestine then you've been sucked in by the rhetoric of those that use Palestine as the symbol for their own wider regional goals. Answer these questions if you can: When was it founded? Who founded it? What was its capital? Who were its leaders? What language did it use? And what religion? I'm going to guess that you draw a big blank on all of those questions but go ahead and ask Professor Google and see for yourself.

The fact is that a Palestinian state now exists. It has its own popularly elected government with an administration, public officials and social services. And what has been the result? In the one year since the election of Hamas the place has descended even further into social chaos, violence and, lately, outright civil war between Fatah and Hamas. Both parties have as their goal the destruction of Israel and they both indoctrinate their young to hate Jews and the West. In an area where the average age is less than sixteen and where they have no economic prospects due to the militant leaders they enjoy is it any wonder that the place is a mess? If it wasn't for billions of dollars of international aid that's poured into the place there'd be a complete human catastrophe.

You may be wondering why it is that society has broken down so badly. It must be the fault of Israel, surely? In 2000 the Second Intifada started after Yasser Arafat rejected the Israeli settlement offer negotiated at Camp David. At that time there were 125,000 people living in the West Bank that were working in Israel or in joint industrial zones. Arafat, however, ramped up suicide bombings to such an unprecedented level that Israeli patience ran out and they fought back hard, inflicting much damage on capital infrastructure and disrupting local administration, which had the effect of closing large numbers of businesses and forcing more than 100,000 people out of work. Way to go, Yasser! He really was a tyrant on the level of Stalin, Hitler, Mao or Hussein and, like those delightful mass murderers, thought nothing of sacrificing the well-being of his people in pursuit of his own maniacal goals.

For the Arab nations, the 'Palestine Issue' has always been a card they've played in order to achieve other strategic goals. The thick-headed analysts of the Baker-Hamilton Commission Report even suggested that solving it would lead to peace in Iraq. How you could come to such a conclusion is beyond the cognitive capacity of this reasonably undumb correspondent.

So there you have it. A Palestinian state already exists and it's a complete nightmare for its people. The only question to be answered is why anybody would be in the least bit surprised.

Update: Quartet goes gaga over Gaza

Don't ya just love the former Commies?

There seems to be something about having lived under the catastrophic human experiment known as the USSR that gives one a greater sense of perspective on the realities of life. First up there was Mart Laar, a historian that became the first post-Soviet Prime Minister of Estonia, that pushed the country from the brink of economic extinction to 12th on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom 2007 by implementing the policies of the only book on economics he'd ever read, the great Milton Friedman's Free To Choose. Make sure to check that second link out, as it really is an uplifting story.

Now comes the previously little known Czech President Vaclav Klaus to raise his profile from zero to hero in the space of one interview with the daily rag, Hospodarske Noviny, on the myth of man made global warming. Having lived under socialist oppression and seen how it works he has no desire to see the world bow down to the current lot of totalitarian, green-wrapped socialists known as environmentalists.

Question: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released its report and you say that global warming is a myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?

Klaus: It's not my idea. Global warming is a myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the UN panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organisation of green flavour. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicised scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment.

Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "buts" are scratched, removed and replaced with oversimplified theses. This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians...

Question: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that man is demolishing the planet and himself?

Klaus: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.

Question: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?

Klaus: 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. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing ... We know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to nature, and vice versa. It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging nature -- by eliminating private ownership and similar things -- much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that on February 8, 2007, nature is protected incomparably more than on February 8 10 years ago or 50 years ago or 100 years ago.

Hows' that go again? "Global warming is a myth and every serious person and scientist says so" and the release of the Summary for Policy Makers is "an undignified slapstick".

What a terrific fellow! In one fell swoop he reduces the 2000+ scientist-consensus to the realm of the non-serious. He calls a spade a frickin' front-end loader and helps those fighting the socialist pro-AGW orthodoxy to level the playing field so that a proper debate can take place. Hopefully, he'll make a point of maintaining a loud and obvious profile on the subject.

The differences between Left and Right

What is the difference between those on the Left and those on the Right? Why does there seem to be such a wide gap in opinion between them at the moment? Why is any discussion on the topic du jour so bitter?

The fundamental difference between Left and Right is that the Left thinks with its heart and the Right thinks with its head. To those on the Left, compassion and good intentions are what matter most. On the Right the most important consideration is 'does it do good?' This is why the Left thinks the Right is bad and the Right thinks the Left is wrong (as distinct from bad).

There's a quote that is attributed to Churchill (apparently wrongly but nobody quite knows who said it first) that goes along the lines, "If you're young and not on the left then you have no heart. If you're middle-aged and not on the right then you have no brain."

This pithy aphorism explains the bad/wrong view that Left and Right have of each other. The vast majority of the Right (more than 90%) when they were young had leftist ideals, from wanting to be good to the environment to helping the poor. However, there comes a time when young people begin to 'grow up' attitudinally, they begin to see the world as it really is and the gravitation to the Right is a natural result. This is how come the Right knows that the Left is wrong; it's been there. Meanwhile, those on the Left continue to believe that all cultures are equal, that because their cause is morally good any negative results don't matter and that equality of outcome is more important than equality of opportunity. This is why the Left thinks that the Right is bad; i.e. you don't agree with my high moral values then you must be bad. All good, logical stuff.

I can now hear those of you on the Left reading this post accusing me of being some right wing death beast, some sinister, Karl Rovian apostle of conservatism or, shock horror, a fascist. Shooting the messenger is the Left's way of not having to deal with the message (see my other post on that subject).

If you're on the Left then ask yourself this question. Should we sign the Kyoto Protocol? At least 90% of you will agree that we should. I would then ask why we would sign it to which you would answer that Global Warming is an existential crisis and that we need to do something about it. I would point out that a fully implemented Kyoto Protocol (i.e. all countries including USA and Australia sign but China and India etc don't) would cost more than $20 trillion dollars and save, tops, 0.1C in the next 50 years, which doesn't seem to be much of a return on investment. That may be true, you would respond, but it's a symbolic first step. Symbolism is a large part of a Leftist's identity and the cost of it is irrelevant as long as the cause is good. Contrast this example with the environmentalist Bjorn Lomberg's Copenhagen Consensus Centre to see where people from countries dealing on a day to day basis with the real issues of life - disease, clean water and enough food - rank things in terms of spending priorities. The problem for me with the Global Warming debate is that it takes time and resources away from more important issues that need to be dealt with in the here and now, not in a hundred years' time.

Global Warming also introduces us to the flexible nature of Leftist opinion. We are told that we should believe in the anthropogenic (man made) origin of the current increase in temperature because there's scientific consensus on the matter. Since when is consensus a substitute for science? The general consensus a couple of thousand years ago was that the earth was flat. The consequences for the early nay-sayers were dire. When Einstein was told that a hundred leading scientists had signed a letter saying that his theories were wrong his response was to question why a hundred were needed when only one would do? If consensus settles the matter as inviolable truth then how did the consensus on Iraq's WMD turn out? Nearly everyone on all sides of the political spectrum shared the view that Saddam Hussein had WMD and the odd person that had been in Iraq and studied the matter (rather than those with a political barrow to push) who dissented were given no platform at all. After the fact, the Left changed its position and rolls out the "Bush lied, people died" mantra.

For the Left, feelings and good intentions trump truth. It is therefore OK to exaggerate the impact of Global Warming and to use the most extreme predictions from computer models in order to further the agenda because the intention is good. On the Right, if the outcome is bad then the goodness of intention doesn't even get a look in.

Which leads me to the last point I want to make. Why is there so much bitterness and hysteria in the debate today? Why does this emanate mostly from the Left to the bewilderment of the Right? The answer is that there is a societal civil war going on in the West at the moment between Left and Right. It is being waged in our education institutions, in the media and on the Internet. After the fall of socialism as an acceptable ideology with the end of the Soviet Union its supporters moved into the compatible field of environmentalism in order to continue to promote their politics. Environmentalism offered a respectable cloak to those with totalitarian ideology (Leftism naturally promotes totalitarianism, which will be the subject of a later post) and gave rise to the term 'watermelon' to describe those that are green on the outside and red on the inside. The litany of leftist failures in the 20th century including the 100+ million people dead in socialist countries, the disastrous effect the ban on DDT has had in Africa (millions dead of malaria), the wrongness of Paul Erlich's The Population Bomb, the peak oil crisis, the dishonesty of the heterosexual AIDS crisis, the prediction that the world would run out of essential minerals by the mid-80s and, famously, the consensus in the 1970s that the world was cooling and we were entering another ice age are all examples of the Left's feel-good, morally superior positions that have had either egregious outcomes or been just plain wrong. Does the Left feel any shame? No. Their intentions were good and that's all that matters. There is no accountability.

Global Warming, therefore, is the Left's last chance to impose its will; thus the hysteria. If you question the consensus you are referred to as a Denier, as in Holocaust Denier, and it doesn't get any more evil than that. It is a bitter fight and there are quite a few more years of it to come.

Bosnian Muslim shoots 6 dead - MSM doesn't even ask a question of motive

As the tragedy of the shooting at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square unfolded it became clear that the perpetrator was an 18 year old Bosnian refugee named Sulejman Talovic.

The Bosnian refugee community in the United States is of Muslim background and Sulejman is a Muslim derivation of Solomon so there's little doubt that he is a Muslim though you probably wouldn't know it from mainstream media reporting. As I write this, nearly a day after the events took place, Google News only returns 4 results for the two words - Talovic Muslim.

At a time when we're engaged in a worldwide struggle against radical Islam you would have thought that someone in the MSM would have gone 1+1=2 and at least speculated that there might be some element of jihad involved. Unfortunately, all too often for the MSM, 1+1=nothing to see here, move along. It may well be the case that he had some other grievance that drove him to do what he did. We don't know that yet. But what if he's not alone? The first one of a cell? Surely the old warning system can be raised from green - it's all OK to go about your business - to orange - proceed with caution for a while?

How long before CAIR complains about his identification as a Muslim and possible motive of jihad?

More from The Jawa Report.

A Conga Line of Hypocrites

I wish I'd thought of that line, A Conga Line of Hypocrites, to describe the Australian Labor Party's attack on the world's greatest Prime Minister, John Howard, but I didn't.

The Liberal Party has been accused of being in lock-step with the USA or more specifically, the Republican Party, since 9/11. Apparently, being a strong ally of a country that is prepared to stand up to dictators, terrorists and madmen rather than fawn all over them, want to talk to them to 'understand their point of view' and make huge financial concessions is something to be abhorred.

Howard's recent statements (described as an 'attack' by most of our ever supportive mainstream media) disagreeing with Democratic Presidential hopeful Barak Obama's lunatic view to bring the troops home by March '08 is entirely consistent with what he has been saying over the last couple of years about the calamitous consequences of an early troop withdrawal. He has been criticised for suggesting that Al Qaeda was hoping for a Democratic victory in '08 but that's really more a case of the truth hurting than overstepping the line of diplomatic decorum. Al Qaeda and its allies certainly seemed happy to share the credit for the Democratic success in the '06 midterm elections.

The world's greatest Treasurer, Peter Costello, has returned fire by highlighting the hypocrisy of the ALP's attack on the Prime Minister while extending an invitation to Venezuelan dictator Chavez to make a solidarity visit to Australia. Chavez, of course, has been one of the USA's greatest detractors, accusing it of plotting to assassinate him but also finding the time to go to the UN (avoiding assassination along the way in the land of his enemy) and give an infantile speech in which he called George Bush 'the Devil'.

These ALP members are the same ones that voted in Mark Latham as leader for their last disastrous election campaign. In the year prior to his rise to opposition leadership, Latham made the following remarks in Parliament:

"Bush himself is the most incompetent and dangerous President in living memory. It is a bit rich for him to be preaching democratic values when he himself failed to win a democratic majority in the 2000 presidential election. His war with Iraq is more about revenging his father's mistakes. It is about the things that happened in Iraq and Kuwait in the early 1990s and it is about securing domestic political advantage...
...

"Mr Howard and his Government are just yes-men to the United States. There they are, a conga line of suckholes on the conservative side of Australian politics. The backbench sucks up to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister sucks up to George W. That is how it works for the little tories, and they have the hide to call themselves Australians. In my book they are not Australians at all, just little tory suckholes. That is all they have left on their rotten little side of politics ...The truth is the Prime Minister has forgotten how to stand up for the national interest. He has forgotten how to be a good Australian, not some yes-man to a flaky and dangerous American President"

So now we have an opposition party that has a history of supporting extreme anti-US positions, attacks Howard for being 'pro-Bush' while at the same time praising anybody that is in the 'anti-Bush' camp. These people have no ideas and no shame. A conga line of hypocrites, indeed. I really do wish I'd thought of it first.

The Art of Climate Science

The BBC’s chief science correspondent, Jasper Fothingham, interviews renowned climate scientist, Malcolm Bradmann, on the state of climate research and discusses the likely impact of our failure to heed the signs of global warming.

Fothingham:	It’s no understatement that the world faces a challenge like never before in its history. The scourge that is Global Warming has led to not only record high temperatures around the globe but also withering blizzards, torrential flooding, an increase in hurricane activity and intensity, longer droughts, and the loss of vast tracts of Antarctica’s and Greenland’s ice sheets, which leading scientists in the field tell us will inevitably lead to unparalleled human catastrophe. At the root of the problem is mankind and its insatiable appetite for energy, pumping huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere resulting in the planet warming dramatically. To paint us a picture I’m joined by renowned climate scientist, Malcolm Bradmann, who has spent most of the last twenty years devoted to better understanding the field. Welcome to the program, Malcolm.
Bradmann:	Thank you, Jasper. It’s very good to be here.
Fothingham:	Malcolm, there’s quite clearly an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists on the scale of the problem. What’s the up to date view?
Bradmann:	Yes. You’re right, Jasper. The consensus view is that global warming is real, that it’s anthropogenic in origin – that is, to say, man made – and that unless we do something about it immediately the world will face the huge problems you described in your introduction.
Fothingham:	There has been quite a bit of controversy, especially in the last year or so, from scientists opposing the consensus and actually challenging the fundamentals of climate science. How do you respond to them?
Bradmann:	In the normal course of events I don’t respond. When you have in your corner such scientific luminaries as James Hansen, James Lovelock and Lonnie Thompson you know you’re in good company. The science is completely established, and accepted, as fact, so the views of these Flat Earthers really does nothing more than make us waste time on the debate.
Fothingham:	I’m sure that viewers will be interested in putting that one to bed so I’d like to get you to comment on some of the criticisms. Out of left field has come a statistician, Steve Mullofkintyre, whose analysis of the iconic Hockey Stick used to support the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change position on global warming has seemed to gain traction with many of the critics. What’s your position on Mullofkintyre?
Bradmann:	Ha-ha. Yes. Ha-ha. Well, not only is Mullofkintyre not a climate scientist but he has also worked for Big Oil so your viewers can decide for themselves what his real motives are in attacking us. But seriously, Jasper, we pointed out errors in his analysis a long time ago and, as far as climate science goes, the debate has moved on since then.
Fothingham:	Yes, you did point out the errors but weren’t Mullofkintyre’s statistics demonstrated to be valid by none other than Edward Wegman, a very well respected statistician and chair of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics in his report to the Barton Commission? Doesn’t that call into question the validity of your work?
Bradmann:	No not at all. Certainly Wegman sided with Mullofkintyre on the statistical method that he used but as we pointed out they used the wrong method. We have our own method that is peer reviewed and validates our results.
Fothingham:	Well, can you explain the method you used, then?
Bradmann:	Unfortunately, no. I’m a climate scientist. I am not a statistician.
Fothingham:	You mentioned before that the debate had ‘moved on’. Can you expand on that statement for our audience, please?
Bradmann:	Certainly! To remind people, our work is based on the field called dendroclimatology. That is, the use of tree ring data to analyse the earth’s climate from the distant past. By looking at how the tree rings are formed we can make an assessment of the impact of CO2 and other factors and make predictions about what climate changes the world faces with the current increase in CO2. However, there is a new field of research that has climate scientists even more excited than dendroclimatology.
Fothingham:	And what’s that?
Bradmann:	Artoclimatology!
Fothingham:	Artoclimatology?
Bradmann:	Yes! Artoclimatology.
Fothingham:	I must confess that I’ve never heard of the term. Please tell us what that is.
Bradmann:	I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard of the field yet, Jasper, as it’s very new and very exciting and there are only a few people working in it. The use of proxies is what underpins any analysis of past climate. Therefore, we look for those things that provide an indicator of climate through history. What better way to view nature than through the eyes of those people who were alive at the time and who actually painted the scenery? Artists! There are thousands of examples of the same landscape being painted by artists through the ages so an analysis of these paintings provides a huge clue as to the prevailing climate of the time. Thus, artoclimatology.
Fothingham:	Fascinating! And what is the research showing?
Bradmann:	The best way to demonstrate the results is to show people a number of views of the same landscape that have been painted at different periods, hundreds of years apart. I’ve brought in paintings from the same scene at the lovely Hyde Park in London. The first is a picture of a lady painted by monks in around 1300. At that time, Hyde Park was part of the Manor of Eia, which was run by the monks. The second painting is also of a lady and it was painted just before the civil war in about 1630. Finally, we have a painting from 1998, the warmest year on record, also of a lady.
Fothingham:	So, Malcolm, why are the paintings important and what can we deduce from them?
Bradmann:	Well, Jasper, as you can see these three paintings are all of exactly the same scene and are painted at the same time of the season. The reason that these paintings are important is that the first was painted when there was supposedly a medieval warm period, the second during a supposed little ice age and the third during the hottest year ever. When we examine them we see that the women in the first two paintings are wearing pretty much the same outfits, indicating that the temperature must have been much the same. This supports the conclusion of our research, which is that there was no Medieval Warm Period and no Little Ice Age. Dress standards had obviously changed by the twentieth century but there’s no doubt that the subject is wearing much less because it’s so much hotter.
Fothingham:	She’s wearing a bikini!
Bradmann:	Of course she is. It’s the warmest year ever.
Fothingham:	Malcolm, I can’t help noticing that the lady in the first painting is standing in the shade of the tree and has a closed parasol by her side. Wouldn’t that seem to indicate that it was indeed warm at that time?
Bradmann:	I agree that her position and the parasol are anomalous but my team did extensive research on 14th century fashion and parasols were quite the order of the day. As for standing in the shade – you can see that she’s quite a pale lady and she’s probably protecting her complexion from the sun.
Fothingham:	Hmmmm. OK. So this second painting indicates that there was no Little Ice Age because she’s dressed the same way?
Bradmann:	Well done! That’s exactly correct, Jasper.
Fothingham:	It appears to me that it really must be a deal colder because…well…um…this is a general viewing rated program so I need to be careful how I put it…her nipples seem to be standing out due to the hardness caused by the cold. Isn’t it possible that it really was colder when this was painted?
Bradmann:	To be perfectly frank, we were quite concerned by the hard nipples at first. However, if you look at the lady’s face you’ll see a little smile, sort of mischievous, and a bit of a gleam, a spark, in her eye. We believe that the painter was her lover and that she was simply aroused by it all.
Fothingham:	You’re not serious?
Bradmann:	Absolutely serious, Jasper. This is the future of the planet we’re talking about here!
Fothingham:	Well then, can you tell who the painters are and look at any of their other work? Does their style give a hint to their identity?
Bradmann:	Unfortunately, I can’t tell you. I’m a climate scientist. I am not a classical painter.
Fothingham:	So how much more research is there to be done in the field of artoclimatology?
Bradmann:	As I mentioned earlier, it’s a very new field but the results are so promising that we’ve been awarded quite a few million dollars from the IPCC to continue the research.
Fothingham:	And do you have any other paintings that you’re able to compare from different centuries?
Bradmann:	We do already. There are quite a few of the Swiss Alps, Paris and from Egypt and Mesopotamia that we’re looking at. Fortunately, the grants allow us to do quite a lot of flying to Switzerland, Paris, Egypt and the Middle East to continue our research.
Fothingham:	Flying? But isn’t that a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions?
Bradmann:	It certainly is, Jasper, but our research is so important that the environmental damage our flying around does just has to be borne. It’s a race against time and time is running short. If we can’t do this work and then Greenland melts in ten years’ time, putting us all under twenty feet of water then what will people say then?
Fothingham:	They probably won’t say much, Malcolm, as they’ll be quite drowned by then. You don’t happen to live on the coast do you?
Bradmann:	As a matter of fact I do.
Fothingham:	Goodly. Let’s hope that we get at least a little global warming, eh! Thank you, Malcolm Bradmann for being with us tonight.
Bradmann:	It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me