Fox News on global warming

Fox News continues to prove why it calls itself fair and balanced in this piece looking at global warming.















(Nothing Follows)

Climate Poetry

Al Gore really must be right into this whole climate change thing.

After all, what else could inspire someone to turn one's hand to poetry?

Here's Al's climate poem:

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea
Neptune’s bones dissolve

Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly

Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning’s celebration

Unknown creatures
Take their leave, unmourned
Horsemen ready their stirrups

Passion seeks heroes and friends
The bell of the city
On the hill is rung

The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools

Oh, bravo! Bravo! The talent! The wonder! Magnificent!

Can you imagine the screeching scorn from the cultural elites if George W Bush had written such drivel?

I think that The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy needs to be updated.



I might have a crack at some climate poetry, too...

Tracking brave souls
Data inconvenient
An abacus to use

Water ebbing up and
Down across endless
Stools in the night

Belching cars go
By jingo I say
These graphs are not

Round and round they
Go to the dogs
Stars shine down dimly

Half a degree
One degree
Two degrees upward

All in the Valley of Death
Predicted the Six Hundred
Climate Models

I can no longer continue
A crisis befalls us
Not of climate but of poetry.

How'd I go?

Al Gore, as they say in The Simpsons, eat my shorts...

(Nothing Follows)

These people are crazy

Add to the myriad of dire predictions of the consequences of climate change today's warning that the fish are going to go crazy.

Warmer ocean temperatures caused by global warming could cause sharks and other fish to become more aggressive, according to a new Australian study.

Research conducted by the University of New South Wales found that a slight lift in water temperatures — just two or three degrees — can cause some fish to become up to 30 times more aggressive than they normally would be.

The studies were conducted on young damsel fish, but head researcher Dr Peter Biro told ninemsn "he would be surprised" if sharks did not also undergo a similar transformation in warm water.

"I would imagine it ought to affect sharks ... We think it is linked to the metabolism of the fishes — it increases their need to feed," Dr Biro said.

The research involved putting the damsel fish in varying temperatures of water and placing other fish behind glass to see how they reacted.

Dr Biro said it was "obvious" the warmer water had an effect.

"Some fish would literally charge at the glass," he said.

"I'm quite confident that if the glass was not there they would have torn the other fish to shreds."

He predicted the increased aggression caused by climate change would cause some fish populations to dwindle, but it would eventually correct itself.

"I think in the short term we might see some effects," he said.

"But I think the animals will adapt, they won't all kill each other."

The test also exposed previously unknown behavioural traits that exist among the damsel fish species.

While some fish showed extreme aggressive reaction to the warm water, others did not react at all.

The majority of the fish tested appeared to be at least twice as aggressive in the warm water.

How could this test be carried out in anything that remotely resembles reality?

In the event that the oceans do heat up by 2-3C, which they show no signs of doing, then it'll take decades or, more likely, at least a century, as there's an enormous amount of heat required to do that.

So how did they undertake this test? Heat water up slowly over a week or two? No wonder the fish become pissed off - they're too bloody hot.

And what did they conduct this test on? A damsel fish.

This is a damsel fish:



Apparently, after testing on this little feller they expect sharks to get just as grumpy.



I dare them to try it on sharks.

Here's another point.

Sharks move around between colder and warmer oceans but it doesn't seem to matter what temperature ocean they're in to munch up the ocassional human...

(Nothing Follows)

Collapse of standards - Example 54390442

Two stories today demonstrate the ongoing collapse of standards in today's values-free, morally relativistic world.

First, thanks to Tiger Woods:

What's in a word?

Well, for Internet searchers, many aren't quite sure.

When Tiger Woods apologized today for "transgressions" after Us Weekly posted a voice mail of the world's No. 1 golfer talking to an alleged mistress, confused readers flooded Google with searches of the 14-letter word in search for clarity.

Google Trends, which lists in real-time the fastest rising searches on Google, lists "transgressions" as No. 1.

The search engine gave the query its highest ranking: volcanic.

To help you out, I've reached over to the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary on my desk for the definition:

• an act, process, or instance of transgressing: as a: infringement or violation of law, command, or duty b: the spread of the sea over land areas and the consequent uncomfortable deposit of sediments on older rocks

(We're pretty sure he meant the first part.)

What has happened to the standard of education when people don't know what trangression means?

I've mentioned my 20 x 20 question before (ask your teenager what 20 times 20 is; 90% won't say 400) and this is another example of not teaching the basics.

The next example comes from the world of cricket. Apparently, retired English captain Michael Vaughan has taken up art.

First it was tennis legend Martina Navratilova, and now former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan is using his sporting skills to produce art.

Vaughan, who led England to Ashes glory in 2005, has created a series of paintings by throwing paint-spattered cricket balls at canvasses, in a technique dubbed artballing.

The works -- with titles such as "Six!" and "Power Play" -- went on display Wednesday night at a gallery in London's upmarket department store Harrods.

"With my art it's been good to get away from cricket and switch off those thought processes required to captain at the highest level, the day-in day-out questioning of yourself and the team - the art is quite therapeutic," he said.

Vaughan, 35, who retired from professional cricket in June, admitted he first became interested in art when teammate Ashley Giles took him to trendy London galleries during rain-delayed Test matches.

"I tell people what I'm doing and they raise an eyebrow and say 'Oh, really?'. But then they see the finished works and it really takes them aback, which is great," the former batsman said.

A work entitled "183" commemorates his Ashes Test innings in Sydney in 2003, with a maroon ball spot for every single he scored, a red spot for every two, a pink spot for his fours and a solitary green spot for his only six.

Navratilova held an exhibition at Roland-Garros, home of the French Open Grand Slam tournament, in 2007 of her works produced by hitting balls soaked in paint against canvases, and bouncing them on canvases on the ground.

Check out the so-called 'art'...



All that's missing is a government grant.

When bouncing painted balls against a canvas counts as art then there's nothing that doesn't.

In the bottom left (Vaughan's right) you can see that he signed the 'art', as well. Is he beyond embarrassment?

(Nothing Follows)

Do Labor understand the danger Tony Abbott poses?

I wonder whether the government understands the danger posed to them by Tony Abbott's ascension to the Liberal Party leadership?

In his first speech as leader he attacked the ETS as just another great, big, Labor tax and quite rightly compared the government's reckless spending to that of Whitlam.

Opinion polls are published regularly showing that people are 'concerned' about climate change (in the same way that the Secretary-General du jour of the UN is 'concerned' about Iran building a nuclear weapon or genocide in Darfur) and that they want something done about it.

The left uses these polls as evidence that Australians want something done and they want it done now.

What are not published are any of the polls showing that climate change doesn't rate in the top half dozen things that voters are concerned about, which show that the economy and jobs are, unsurprisingly, at the top.

Tony Abbott can't win the next election, but he can make big inroads into the government's majority by focusing on jobs.

If I was him I'd be banging on at every opportunity that "The Liberal Party is the party of jobs and we are not going to sacrifice even one Australian job to implement a great, Green tax that will achieve nothing without the world's major emitters acting first."

Focus on jobs. Focus on the cost to families.

If he calls the ETS a "great, Green tax that will achieve nothing" then he might even take out a few Greenies along the way, which would be the greatest public service of all.

Labor, and its media acolytes, think that Tony Abbott is easy meat, that he can be made fun of for his Christian beliefs and history as a political strongman.

I think that they will be given a rude wake up call over the next few months as the Coalition finally gets its act together and forms a coherent policy narrative that the Australian people can support.

Andrew Bolt highlights a line from the Sydney Morning Herald as summing up the policy line that will be run:

TONY Abbott will steer the Liberal Party back to its conservative roots with a 2010 election campaign portraying Kevin Rudd as a Whitlamesque big spender whose climate change policies will smash Australian jobs.

Can you imagine Malcolm Turnbull coming up with such a simple strategy?

People can both understand it and relate to it.

I might send Tony Abbott a copy of Frank Luntz's Words That Work:It's not what you say it's what they hear to help him keep on message.

(Nothing Follows)

If the Liberal Party votes for an ETS then they lose my vote forever

The following is the Liberal Party of Australia platform:

What does the Liberal Party stand for?

We are the party of initiative and enterprise;

We believe in the inalienable rights and freedoms of all peoples; and we work towards a lean government that minimises interference in our daily lives; and maximises individual and private sector initiative.

We believe in government that nurtures and encourages its citizens through incentive, rather than putting limits on people through the punishing disincentives of burdensome taxes and the stifling structures of Labor's corporate state and bureaucratic red tape.

We believe in those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy - the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association.

We believe in a just and humane society in which the importance of the family and the role of law and justice is maintained.

We believe in equal opportunity for all Australians; and the encouragement and facilitation of wealth so that all may enjoy the highest possible standards of living, health, education and social justice.

We believe that, wherever possible, government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals - not government - are the true creators of wealth and employment.

We believe in preserving Australia's natural beauty and the environment for future generations.

We believe that our nation has a constructive role to play in maintaining world peace and democracy through alliance with other free nations.

In short, we simply believe in individual freedom and free enterprise; and if you share this belief, then ours is the Party for you.

Surely, anyone who believes in the scientific fabrication called climate change or global warming or whatever the heck it's called these days and supports an economy deadening tax cannot be a Liberal?

So what is Malcolm Turnbull thinking?

And how can he be a member of the Liberal Party let alone it's leader?

If the Liberal Party votes with the government and passes an emissions trading scheme then they will lose my vote forever.

The problem for the Liberals are that there are a lot of people like me.

(Nothing Follows)

No real world experience required to run US government

If this graph is accurate, and there's no reason to assume otherwise given it came from research done by JP Morgan, then it explains a lot about why the Obama administration seems to be such a bunch of incompetents.



How can President Obama give more than 90% of his cabinet appointments to people who have no real world experience?

These people will naturally choose ideological positions rather than those born of the experience gained in the real world of hard knocks.

No wonder the Obama administration can choose to abandon Honduras to the Chavista wolves or the pro-democracy movement in Iran to the Ahmadinejad thugocracy. They have no idea.

(Nothing follows)

NZ climate scientists massage things other than sheep

NZ climate scientists go to work on the NZ temperature record.

Before:



After:



They've turned a 0.06C rise per century since 1850 into 0.92C...

Apparently, THAT is science!

Read all about it.

(Nothing Follows)

Climategate comments

Many people are passing the so-called Climategate scandal off as not being important and not affecting climate science.

The problem with that view is that without confidence in the dendro temperature record climate science is pretty much reduced to localised physics and the ice core record, which, inconveniently, shows warmer Roman and Medieval Warm Periods than present.

The corruption of the HadCRU temperature record is plain to see in the very code that produces the models. We already knew that the NASA GISS temperature record was suspect so it was amusing to see the CRU crowd casting doubt on Hansen's methodology.

Here are the best examples of just how bad this situation is:

Summary of emails from Bishop Hill.

Willis Eschenbach's attempt to get information via the FOI.

The comments in the code tell the story:

; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions
; of growing season temperatures. Uses "corrected" MXD - but shouldn't usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.


And for terrific entertainment:



One might be able to defend one or two emails here and there and I have defended the use of the term 'trick' to describe a programming shortcut (though the trick referred to looks dubious) but the overall tone of the emails and code is one of manipulation of both data and scientific journals.

It's also interesting that all of the people involved seem to be activist environmentalists with email exchanges with Greenpeace, WWF and the NYT's enviro reporter, Andy Revkin. People in the hard sciences tend to split down the political middle. Perhaps the conservatives go to work for industry and the lefties go and work in theory-land at the universities.

I developed a view quite some time back that climate science seemed to attract mediocre scientists to its ranks. My reasoning is that they are able to undertake research that is not able to be tested in the here and now whereas decent scientists want to see their research create tangible outcomes. Michael Mann and our very own David Karoly are two shining examples of this mediocrity. These scientists have achieved prominence (and funding) far beyond where their abilities should have taken them. Nothing I have read in the emails changes my opinion.

I have also been commenting for a long time that climate scientists will give real scientists a bad name in the public square. Job done.

(Nothing Follows)

Thought for the day

If the leftie health police are so concerned about the effect of advertising on children (and the rest of us) then how is it that 99.9% of people who work in advertising are lefties?

(Nothing Follows)

Climate debt payments will go to world's most corrupt countries

Ironically, if the United Nations has its way then there will be a massive wealth transfer from the light blue shaded countries to the dark blue as payment for so-called 'climate debt'.




The Central Americans want money:

CENTRAL American nations will demand $US105 billion ($114.2 billion) from industrialised countries for damages caused by global warming, the region's representatives say.

Central American environment ministers gathered in Guatemala overnight to discuss the so-called "ecological debt" owed to them and to set out a common position ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen next month.

Guatemalan environment minister Luis Ferrate said the $US105 billion ($114.2 billion) price tag was "an estimate" of the damage done by climate change across 16 sectors in Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.

Ferrate minister said the region "had never faced" so much drought, aridity, flooding, and precarious food security.

A formal proposal will be presented in Denmark, officials said.

His Nicaraguan counterpart Juana Arguenal said that Central America would press industrialised countries to reach concrete decisions to reduce "greenhouse" gases at Copenhagen.

"We hope for a deal that is ethical and moral," she said.

Why wouldn't the Central American countries be asking for money from Brazil due to that country's clearing of 'the lungs of the earth', The Amazon?

Thieves, the lot of them.

(Nothing Follows)

The greatest scientific scandal since Piltdown Man will have no impact

The information provided yesterday by the hacking of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit is the greatest scientific scandal since Piltdown Man.

Here we have a large number of high profile, interconnected scientists who are actively conspiring to fabricate scientific results that show alarming 20th century warming and reduced warming during the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.

A number of people are going through the emails including: Andrew Bolt, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts and Lucia at The Blackboard so I don't need to.

This will have no impact - nil, nada, none, zero, zip - on the whole global warming/climate change movement.

The problem is that the mainstream media is too invested in advocating for climate change to even consider undertaking an investigation into the information provided by the hack.

By the end of next week this will all have died down. People like Steve McIntyre might find some data that shows results have been fabricated but he's done that before and the media has ignored him, which they'll do again this time.

If the mainstream media does not investigate a situation is which there has been conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice, falsification of data, suppression and tampering with evidence and public corruption (as Robert M pointed out at WUWT) then it will be yet another example of the slow decline of Western civilisation.

Here's an email that I haven't seen elsewhere, has an Australian reference:

From: "Thomas.R.Karl" To: Phil Jones Subject: Re: FW: retraction request Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:21:57 -0400 Cc: Wei-Chyung Wang

Thanks Phil,

We R now responding to a former TV weather forecaster who has got press, He has a web site
of 40 of the USHCN stations showing less than ideal exposure. He claims he can show urban biases and exposure biases.

We are writing a response for our Public Affairs. Not sure how it will play out.

Regards, TOm

Phil Jones said the following on 6/19/2007 4:22 AM:

Wei-Chyung and Tom,

The Climate Audit web site has a new thread on the Jones et al. (1990) paper, with lots of quotes from Keenan. So they may not be going to submit something to Albany. Well may be?!?

Just agreed to review a paper by Ren et al. for JGR. This refers to a paper on urbanization effects in China, which may be in press in J. Climate. I say 'may be' as Ren isn't that clear about this in the text, references and responses to earlier reviews. Have requested JGR get a copy a copy of this in order to do the review.

In the meantime attaching this paper by Ren et al. on urbanization at two sites in China.

Nothing much else to say except:

1. Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.
2. Had an email from David Jones of BMRC, Melbourne. He said they are ignoring anybody who has dealings with CA, as there are threads on it about Australian sites.
3. CA is in dispute with IPCC (Susan Solomon and Martin Manning) about the availability of the responses to reviewer's at the various stages of the AR4 drafts. They are most interested here re Ch 6 on paleo.

Cheers

Phil

Disgraceful...!

UPDATE: Bishop Hill has a terrific summary going...

(Nothing Follows)

Well, this should be interesting...

On such important issues to their agenda the organised left tends to overwhelm online polls, as I've demonstrated previously.

Let's see how this one goes:

9:29AM



10.47AM



11.37AM



Yes:No ratios so far are 1.62, 1.68 and 1.68. I'd expect the final result to be close to that.

4:38PM



UPDATE:

Someone has posted what appears to be a heap of emails and other documents from the Hadley Climate Reseach Unit that would be, if true, should be the end of climate science as we know it.

I predict the following:

• most of the information will be shown to be true;
• the mainstream media will give this almost no coverage;
• there will be small, inconsequential discrepencies found that will be used to discredit the entire document set; and
• it will have no impact on the climate debate, which, ironically, has very little to do with the actual climate.

(Nothing Follows)

This passes for research...??

Why is The Australia Institute described as an 'independent' think tank when all it does is spew out far left garbage?

Its founder and former head, Clive Hamilton, retired from the organisation recently and is standing as the Greens candidate for Higgins in Melbourne. Methinks that the Greens are too far to the right for old Clive who has suggested democracy needs to be suspended in order to respond to the threat of climate change...

Here is the latest example of what passes for research at this esteemed institution:

Australians work more than two billion hours of unpaid overtime a year, a $72 billion gift to their employers, a new study by an independent think tank shows.

The Australian Institute research shows a typical full-time employee is working 70 minutes of unpaid overtime a day, which equates to 33 eight-hour days per year, or six-and-a-half standard working weeks.

Now, there is no greater example of the fact that The Australia Institute doesn't know anything about Australia's workplaces than this blatantly ridiculous figure. Anyone who has been an employer, and I used to pay the salary of over 30 people before selling my business and moving into the corporate world, knows that the 'typical full-time employee' turns up on time, takes a lunch break and leaves on time. In the public service (in which I worked part time during my university years) there was much more turning up late, taking a long lunch and leaving early than there was working long hours (typically by the most senior executive level).

Across the workforce, the 2.14 billion hours of unpaid overtime represented six per cent free labour for the economy depends.

"While Australians might have a reputation for taking 'sickies' and 'smokos', the evidence suggests otherwise," the institute's executive director Richard Denniss said when releasing the research on Wednesday.

During the past decade Australia had simply accepted the "dubious honour" of working the longest hours in the western world, when other developed countries had sought to reduce working hours.

Australia does not work the longest hours in the western world. The US does. How we could work longer hours than the US when we get 4 weeks of holiday and they get 2...?

"The amount of unpaid overtime worked in Australia is the equivalent of 1.16 million full-time jobs," Dr Denniss said.

"In an economy where unemployment is rising, overwork is an obvious area for government to address."

So how's that going to work? Businesses lay off staff in order to reduce costs and survive the downturn. By definition, the productivity of the remaining staff increases. If there are people working significant extra hours, and I'm sure there are but not even one-tenth of what TAI is claiming, then any government legislation in this area can only harm the recovery by imposing costs on business that they can't afford.

The survey found 45 per cent of workers, and more than half of all full-time employees, work more hours than they are paid for on a typical workday.

45 per cent? I call BS. How did they get their data?

The online survey of 1,000 respondents, commissioned by the institute, found that 44 per cent of people who work unpaid overtime said it is "compulsory" or "expected".

Slightly fewer (43 per cent) said overtime was "not expected" but also "not discouraged".

Ooooooooh...an 'online survey'...how remarkably scientific. I never saw it. How did they choose people to send it to?

Australians also work three times more hours or unpaid overtime than they volunteer to community organisations.

More BS, I reckon.

In response to its findings, the institute has nominated November 25 as national Go Home On Time Day.

"Ultimately, managers and business owners have a responsibility to create an environment in which employees can work reasonable hours without risking their career, their health or their relationships," co-author Josh Fear said.

Fear. What a terrific name for someone pushing such rubbish.

The institute is encouraging workers to postpone all last minute tasks and register for a "leave pass" at www.gohomeontimeday.org.au

I downloaded the research paper from their website to look at their methodology.

Under 'Survey of workers' they have:

The Australia Institute commissioned an online survey of 1000 people in July 2009. The survey sample, sourced from a reputable independent online panel provider, was
representative of the adult Australian population by age, gender and state/territory. Of the total sample, 626 respondents were in paid work. These people were asked questions about unpaid overtime and how it affects them.

The reputable independent online panel provider was Valued Opinions Panel, the Australian arm of Research Now. How can you survey 1000 people who are representative of the Australian population and come up with only 626 being in paid work? It's not credible.

There's also an issue they haven't addressed. What is the impact of people taking smoke breaks on having to work 'overtime' in order to get their jobs done.

Yet again The Australia Institute demonstrates that it's more interested in pushing its far left agenda than deal with truth.

(Nothing Follows)

Proof that there are at least 20,368 morons in Australia

Ninemsn's latest poll question is - Do you think Australia is a corrupt country?

Here's the current count:



Do the 20,368 people who voted yes actually understand what a proper corrupt country looks like and how far from it we are?

How would they cope with what goes on in Africa?

Or in almost any Asian nation?

Or in South America?

These people are nitwits.

I blame their teachers.

(Nothing Follows)

Mendacious leaders the new norm

One of the most troubling aspects of the current highly charged political climate is the mendaciousness of its leaders in both Australia and the United States.

Everyone expects their politicians to tell them the odd lie here and there; it's part of normal political discourse.

Most people accuse the other side of lying for no other reason than political partisanship but it's when people who are not normally known as rock throwers start questioning the honesty and integrity of their leaders that one should be concerned.

Greg Sheridan is the foreign editor for The Australian newspaper. An experienced journalist, Sheridan has over 30 years of experience in his field and is known for the even-handedness of his opinions.

In an article on the cave-in of the Rudd government to asylum seekers on the Oceanic Viking he writes:

Rudd needs to stop a recent and baffling practice he has developed of telling the most outrageous lies about Australian foreign policy. Last week, in India, he claimed the decision not to sell India uranium was bipartisan. In fact, the Howard government had approved uranium sales to India and the Turnbull opposition continues to support it.

For some bizarre reason Rudd keeps saying the people on the Oceanic Viking have not got a special deal. This simply defies the ordinary meaning of language and common sense. The first principle of good foreign policy is generally to tell the truth. One reason governments don't tell the truth is when they are trying to avoid a hard decision...

As Andrew Bolt identified, Kevin Rudd has increasingly been telling lies on the asylum seeker issue. He can rely on the media to run cover for him for a while but there are now articles being written by committed leftists such as Michelle Grattan expressing disquiet about Rudd's playing fast and loose with the truth.

I'll tell you right now why Rudd lies - because he's completely incompetent to be Prime Minister; he makes policy on the run, which results in mistakes largely due to his arrogance and way too high opinion of himself and then has to cover things up with lies.

The media would never let a conservative prime minister get away with what Rudd is managing.

Over the big pond in the US of A, Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post is equally troubled by the gap between what President Obama is saying and what his administration is doing.

Samuelson is an old-style journalist whose reporting is balanced and informative. As a Washington Post and Newsweek columnist one would expect him to be on the left. However, he does not vote, as he says that voting would interfere with his ability to report objectively. Over the years of reading his articles it's hard to tell which side he's on - the sign of a good journo.

When someone like Samuelson is troubled then we all should be:

There is an air of absurdity to what is mistakenly called "health care reform." Everyone knows that the United States faces massive governmental budget deficits as far as calculators can project, driven heavily by an aging population and uncontrolled health costs. Recovering slowly from a devastating recession, it's widely agreed that, though deficits should not be cut abruptly (lest the economy resume its slump), a prudent society would embark on long-term policies to control health costs, reduce government spending, and curb massive future deficits. The administration estimates these at $9 trillion from 2010 to 2019. The president and all his top economic advisers proclaim the same cautionary message.

So, what do they do? Just the opposite. Their sweeping overhaul of the health care system -- which Congress is halfway toward enacting -- would almost certainly make matters worse. It would create new, open-ended medical entitlements that threaten higher deficits and would do little to suppress surging health costs. The disconnect between what President Obama says and what he's doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it. The president, his advisers and allies have no trouble. But reconciling blatantly contradictory objectives requires them to engage in willful self-deception, public dishonesty, or both.

Rudd and Obama were both elected by similar margins and both campaigned as centrists with Mr Rudd promoting himself as an economic conservative while Mr Obama promised a bipartisan administration.

Anyone with half a brain knew that they were not telling the truth at the time (but that's how campaigns are run so c'est la vie) so it should come as no surprise that what the electorate got was not exactly what they thought they were buying.

In Australia, Rudd's arrogance and dishonesty has damaged our relationships with China, Japan, India and Indonesia, to name just a few. Quite an achievement for someone who ranked international diplomacy as one of his greatest strengths.

In the US, Obama has backflipped on a climate change deal, introduced a health 'care' bill nobody other than true leftists wants that will further harm the country's finances, committed trillions of dollars in further spending and generally taken the country in a direction about 180 degrees from what he tells people and what they expected when they voted for him.

Last year I wrote that the English Speaking World is the world's leader and that the change from Bush-Blair-Howard to Obama-Brown-Rudd would have very negative consequences.

Unfortunately, I was right.

(Nothing Follows)

Lying pieces of crap scientists tell more climate lies

These people really piss me off.

Who?

The scientists who keep making predictions of doom and gloom about the fate of the Great Barrier Reef unless Australia unilaterally slashes its economic wrists.

Why do they have any credibility at all when every, single one of their previous predictions about the reef have been hopelessly wrong?

THE Great Barrier Reef has only a 50 per cent chance of survival if global CO2 emissions are not reduced at least 25 per cent by 2020, a coalition of Australia's top reef and climate scientists said today.

The 13 scientists said even deeper cuts of up to 90 per cent by 2050 would necessary if the reef was to survive future coral bleaching and coral death caused by rising ocean temperatures.

90 percent. How would they know? It's impossible for them to know that. Impossible.

"We've seen the evidence with our own eyes. Climate change is already impacting the Great Barrier Reef," Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said in a briefing to MPs.

Bullcrap. There is no evidence that the Great Barrier Reef is being impacted by anything remotely resembling the negative affects of climate change - affects, it should be noted, that won't actually be noticeable for 40-50 years and that's ONLY if the predictions of the hitherto useless IPCC climate models are correct.

Australia is one of the world's biggest CO2 emitters per capita, but has only pledged to cut its emissions by five per cent from 2000 levels by 2020. The Government said it would go further with a 25 per cent cut, if a tough international climate agreement is reached at UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December, but this is looking increasingly unlikely with legally binding targets now off the agenda.

Why bring out the per capita statement when it's immaterial to the argument? China ADDS Australia's output every 3-4 months. We can cut our emissions by 100% and have zero effect.

"This is our Great Barrier Reef. If Australia doesn't show leadership by reducing emissions to save the reef, who will?" asked scientist Ken Baldwin.

Why would any country - and I assume they mean India, China, Brazil and Russia etc - take any notice of Australia 'showing leadership' when Europe has had a carbon trading scheme for a number of years, thus 'showing leadership', that NO COUNTRY HAS TAKEN ANY NOTICE OF??? These people are truly zealots.

But the Government is struggling to have a hostile Senate pass its planned emissions trading scheme. A final vote is expected next week.

The World Heritage-protected Great Barrier Reef sprawls for more than 345,000 square km off Australia's east coast and can be seen from space. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the Great Barrier Reef could be "functionally extinct" within decades, with deadly coral bleaching likely to be an annual occurrence by 2030.

Bleaching occurs when the tiny plant-like coral organisms die, often because of higher temperatures, and leave behind only a white limestone reef skeleton.

Predictions of bleaching have the same record as climate models - nil, nada, zero, zilch, none.

The Australian scientists said more than 100 nations had endorsed a goal of limiting average global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, but even that rise would endanger coral reefs.

They said global warming was already threatening the economic value of the Great Barrier Reef which contributes $5.4 billion to the economy each year from fishing, recreation and tourism.

Are they saying that if we pass an ETS that it will protect the $5.4 billion? Making travel, accommodation, food and everything else will somehow protect this income? Have they done a projection on what the revenue will fall to if an ETS is implemented? If not then why not? It should be easy for them given they calculated that we need to cut emissions by 90% by 2050.

These people are seriously the pits and an embarrassment to real scientists.

(Nothing Follows)

Man-made climate change finally proven to kill people in China

Here's proof that it's possible for man to interfere with the climate and end up killing people, which takes the climate change scorecard to:

Real man-made climate change: 38
Fake man-made climate change: 0

At least 38 people have died in some of the worst snows to hit northern China in decades, state media says.

The most fatalities occurred in Shanxi province where nearly 500 traffic accidents left 24 people dead and 70 injured when heavy snowfall pummelled the region this week, the China News Service said.

Officials have said the two storms in Beijing were artificially induced, sparking anger among residents. The extent of the weather manipulation efforts remains unclear.

In some places this week's snowstorms were the biggest in up to 60 years, leaving up to one million people in need of some form of disaster assistance, the report said.

Some scientists including Australia's own Climate Anti-Prophet, Tim Flannery, have suggested that sticking sulphur and whatnot into the atmosphere would help avoid the consequences of any warming. Not factored into their calculations is the loss of life that is almost certain to occur. Not that they seem to care too much about that...

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The terrific 'Yankee Lady'

What a terrific photo (courtesy of Airliners.net) of 'Yankee Lady', a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress.



And here's where B-17 pilots went to work. It's remarkable to look at the complexity of dials and levers and remember that this aircraft was only designed around 35 years after the Wright brothers first took to the air.



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BBC confirms it's still a lying pack of anti-free market commies

I'll tell you an organisation that is helping to wreck society, lower standards and impoverish people - the BBC.

The BBC has just released a survey on worldwide attitudes to capitalism, the fall of the USSR and the Berlin Wall.

Wide Dissatisfaction with Capitalism — Twenty Years after Fall of Berlin Wall

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC World Service global poll finds that dissatisfaction with free market capitalism is widespread, with an average of only 11% across 27 countries saying that it works well and that greater regulation is not a good idea.

In only two countries do more than one in five feel that capitalism works well as it stands — the US (25%) and Pakistan (21%).

The most common view is that free market capitalism has problems that can be addressed through regulation and reform—a view held by an average of 51% of more than 29,000 people polled by GlobeScan/PIPA.

An average of 23% feel that capitalism is fatally flawed, and a new economic system is needed—including 43% in France, 38% in Mexico, 35% in Brazil and 31% in Ukraine.

Furthermore, majorities would like their government to be more active in owning or directly controlling their country’s major industries in 15 of the 27 countries. This view is particularly widely held in countries of the former Soviet states of Russia (77%), and Ukraine (75%), but also Brazil (64%), Indonesia (65%), and France (57%).

Majorities support governments distributing wealth more evenly in 22 of the 27 countries — on average two out of three (67%) across all countries. In 17 of the 27 countries most want to see government doing more to regulate business—on average 56%.

Now, in the midst of the global financial crisis one might think that there had been an opinion shift against free markets, especially given the onslaught of misinformation and agitprop from the BBC, ABC, NYT, CNN etc.

However, given their well established reputation for being leftist lying bastards it's always worth going to the source documents to see what the survey really said to see whether the BBC had cherrypicked information that supported their socialist doctrine.

Let's go to the graphs provided in the survery conducted by Globescan.



Looking at the information wouldn't it be more intellectually honest to say that 73% of people who have an opinion support free market capitalism?

Not if you're the BBC.

How do the answers stack up by country?


(click to embiggen)

It's interesting how low the percentages are in Japan and Germany that capitalism is a fatally flawed system. Perhaps it's because those two countries are massive exporters and understand that free markets benefit everyone who participates.

The BBC deliberately pushes leftist agitprop, which is picked up by unthinking media outlets around the world that spreads its distortions before, as they say, truth has a chance to get out of bed and get its boots on.

It really is a wonder that we have any freedom left in the world at all given the left's 50+ year assault on it...

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I Am Dumbfounded

I cannot believe this. I simply cannot.

What can one say?

Unlike George W Bush when he first got news that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre and that the situation was being assessed (people initially thought that it was a small, private plane), Barack Obama had all of the facts of the Fort Hood attack and yet still chose to dribble on about the organisation of the event he was at and how he looked forward to next year's event et blah.

US soldiers are lying dead and he has the temerity to smile and crack a joke???

Unbelievable. He should call George W and get a lesson in respecting the military.



Words fail me in the same way as Obama failed to respect the dead and wounded at Fort Hood.

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Australia's worst ever PM sells us down the river

Australia's worst ever prime minister, Kevin Rudd, seems determined to sell Australia's future generations down the financial river in order to feed the here and now of his megalomaniacal ego.

I cannot for the life of me understand why he is trying so hard to implement an economy-wrecking emissions trading scheme in advance of the Copenhagen Convention.

Does it give us any leverage at Copenhagen? Can't see how, myself.

Is such an expensive political wedge worth it in the long run?

When Anthony Watts first posted the link to the text of the treaty to be negotiated I took the time to read through it and became more and more concerned with what is in there.

While nobody has been looking, Australia's climate negotiators have been working on a treaty that will cost Australian working families over $7 BILLION per year.

Where will the money go?

To the United Nations so that they can give it to third-world and developing nations as payment of the West's so-called 'climate debt'.

Who in their right mind would think that the bulk of the money would not end up in the hands of UN middlemen and tinpot dictators?

Why would the West want to continue to donate to Africa, for example, when the more than $2 TRILLION of aid already given to that benighted continent has been so appallingly wasted?

I wonder whether the Average Joe Labor supporter is concerned with his side's abandonment of fiscal responsibility in the name of 'saving the planet' or dealing with the 'global financial crisis'?

Anyhoo, here are a couple of logos that are more appropriate given the times we live in:






(h/t Andrew Bolt for some links)

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More to drive the cultural left nuts

I think that ninemsn is doing its best to try and put up a poll question that gets a favourable response for asylum seekers but the Australian public refuses to co-operate.

The other day I posted their poll question "Should the army get asylum seekers off the Oceanic Viking?" which went 3:1 in favour of using the army.

Today's question is "Should we adopt a softer approach to asylum seekers?". So they've turned the question from being hard - use of the army - to soft.

The previous 3:1 has blown out to 7:1 against the asylum seekers.



This is also at a time when it is being reported that 20 people may have lost their lives when a boat traveling to Australia capsized northwest of the Cocos Islands.

Australians are generous to a fault but we really get riled up when people take the mickey out of us, which these so-called asylum seekers clearly are.

Andrew Bolt has more on their non-real asylum seeker status and how the despicable Greens tell lies in order to further their agenda.

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Fudging health care figures

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is part of a phrase attributed to the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, among others, and later popularized in the United States by, among others, Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." The statement refers to the persuasive power of numbers, the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their positions. The phrase is not found in Disraeli's works nor is it known within his lifetime and for years afterward. Many coiners have been proposed. The most plausible, on current evidence, is Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843-1911).

How remarkable that in the 21st century a phrase that was coined before air travel, before radio, before telephones, before elevators and (gasp) before the Internet can be so applicable.

Financial market models and global warming models are just two examples du jour.

Health care is another. Have a look at the following from good.is:



The 78.11 is life expectancy and $7,290 is the cost of health care. If you knew nothing else then you would think that Americans spend a lot of money to achieve ordinary outcomes. Zooming in on the graph gives:


(click to embiggen)

Gee, higher infant mortality than Norway? Worse cardiovascular results? More money spent? What a waste? Right?

Wrong.

You see, nearly every country listed on the image leeches off of the innovation of the US health sector in order to provide their health outcomes. Take away the US and the cost to each nation would be much, much higher, as they would be forced to take on the R&D costs currently borne by the US.

Not that left wing politicians and their supporters will ever make that argument, of course, in spite of its truth.

Here is an inconvenient fact for people who believe the above represents the whole picture - if you are diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a whole host of other conditions you will live longer post-diagnosis in the US than anywhere else in the world.

The issue in the US is not quality of care but access to care, brought about completely by ridiculous government intervention in the market, which restricts access across state lines, as well as tying health care to employment.

There is another problem with the above image - it compares a nation of 300 million people with much smaller ones.

Norway has a population of under 5 million. Every other country on the image has a much larger population than Norway. The bigger question is how is it that Norway can have such poor outcomes compared to the rest of the countries listed?

Of course, the comparison of the US can only be valid when compared to the whole of the European Union (500 million) or the whole of South America (385 million). There are states of the US that outdo Norway, Canada, Germany or Australia. So what?

Speaking selfishly, I hope that the health care bill as proposed in the US is defeated, otherwise our healthcare costs here in Australia will start to increase, as they will in the rest of the world.

And another thing - if health care reform is so urgent then why won't it be implemented until 2013, after the next presidential election?

(Nothing Follows)

This will drive the cultural left crazy

So there's a bunch of Sri Lankan economic refugees and assorted ex-Tamil Tiger terrorists living on the Oceanic Viking somewhere off of Indonesia in a political tug-of-war between crap knows who but mainly involving Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, trying to look compassionate, tough and statesmanlike all at the same time; a stance that he has failed spectacularly to achieve, which comes as no surprise to those of us who think he has little diplomatic skill and a decidedly nasty streak about him.

So here's the boat. There's 78 Sri Lankans camping on it.



Now, here's the bit that will drive the cultural left crazy.

Outspoken Liberal MP, Wilson Tuckey, suggested that the government may need to call in the army in order to remove the Sri Lankans from the boat and place them in detention in Indonesia.

Cue the usual whinging and carry on from Australia's left.

Here's the current status of ninemsn's poll on the issue - Should the army get the asylum seekers off the Oceanic Viking?


(click to embiggen)

Queue-jumping asylum seekers have very little support from the Australian people. We have a strong sense of fairness and these people are well past what we consider acceptable.

Now, would the cultural left accept the result of the poll?

Surely they would twist it into an example not of Australia's fairness but of its inherent racism?

No doubt there'll be much chatter among the chattering class over the injustice of it all.

(Nothing Follows)

Give that man an award for bravery

The loopy left must really be hating the fact that the fraud that is climate change is being exposed for all to see right before the Copenhagen Climate Junket is due to take place.

Here's Liberal Party senator Cory Bernardi putting into simple language the reason why the proposed emissions trading scheme is such a disaster for Australia.



You know, when a company changes its brand it's normally because the old one has problems.

Thus, when the earth's climate stopped doing what climate astrologers predicted it changed from global warming to climate change, which allowed activists to ditch the inconvenient truth of the old brand and include a whole bunch of other apocalyptic consequences - flood, famine, drought, pestilence - to scare the kiddies with.

Simple. as. that.

The greatest threat to freedom does not come from Wall Street or the Religious Right or even Islamic Fascism.

The greatest threat to freedom comes from Big Environmentalism.

(h/t Andrew Bolt)

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