This is obscene for two reasons: 1). The huge waiting lists for treatment in most hospitals. The money should be spent on more doctors and nurses; 2). The British experience suggests that the money will be completely wasted anyway. The Brits have just given up on their computter system after spending 12 BILLION pounds on it
A BROAD coalition of health professionals believes it made progress in its quest for $6.3 billion in federal funding at the government's massive broadband conference in Sydney last week. The Coalition for e-Health's hopes have been buoyed by strong indications it has support from Kevin Rudd, Health and Ageing Minister Nicola Roxon and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.
Michael Legg, president of the Health Informatics Society, which convenes the CeH, said the group had been asked to hang tight. Professor Legg said the group had been strongly encouraged by comments made by Department of Health and Ageing deputy secretary Jane Halton at the conference that indicated the department was behind the group. "That's the first time that I've really heard anybody at that level in the department declaring their position with respect to it, which means, I think, that that they do have strong political support," Professor Legg said.
The group has been in limbo since June, when the federal government accepted a report issued by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission that found e-health was critical to improving Australian healthcare. The report convinced the government to recognise e-health as a critical component of its health reform policy.
The Business Council of Australia issued a strategy paper last month that suggested Australia could cut $27.8bn from its national medical bill over eight years if $6.3bn were invested in e-health systems over five years. [What utter bull!]
The Prime Minister was expected to provide feedback on the strategy after last week's meeting of the Council Of Australian Governments. CeH wrote to Mr Rudd urging him to move swiftly to accept the findings of the strategy paper. It said in the letter the government had not made its position clear on e-health and asked Mr Rudd to take a stronger leadership position to ensure stronger cohesion between state and federal health jurisdictions. "We ask you as Prime Minister to lead the way," the group wrote.
"This is a nation-building exercise that requires clear vision and strong leadership. To date, your government, while supportive, has not articulated a clear position and commitment. Without this, all jurisdictions will struggle to move ahead . . . We also believe this is a great opportunity to chart a new course; to give the broader health community something to aspire to and work toward, and that this is an essential step towards providing a health system fit for the 21st century." But Professor Legg said Mr Rudd had declined to provide the feedback on the basis the issue was too complex.
The government has isolated health as one of the five key policy areas to be entwined with its $4bn plan to build a super-fast national broadband network. Delivering his opening address to the Realising our Broadband Future conference on Thursday, Mr Rudd said the NBN went beyond communications policy. "In other words, our national broadband policy is not about communications policy," Mr Rudd said. "It is about health policy, education policy, transport policy and the whole way that governments meet the needs of our people."
Labor has given e-health a prominent place in its health reform strategy, but the Prime Minister's positive mood did not carry over to discussion sessions on e-health later in the day. There, frustration was strong over an apparent lack of political leadership backing the vision. In one session Ms Halton faced strongly worded commentary from health professionals on a range of issues. Some bemoaned regulations that prevented them charging for health services supplied electronically. Others were concerned that the e-health agenda was too closely tied to the NBN and urged the government to take "the low-hanging fruit" by supporting health services that were possible with existing broadband connections.
Privately, others expressed concerns that ongoing political conflict over medicine services between the federal government and states and territories was holding back e-health.
However, Professor Legg took up one of the main barriers to e-health services -- the lack of unique healthcare identifiers linking individuals to healthcare records. As discussions were taking place at the conference on Thursday, the federal government released draft legislation to assign such identifiers to providers and patients. [A national ID card by the back door?] That was expected to overcome security and accuracy problems with medical records.
Some questioned the timing of the legislation but Professor Legg said it was a logical progression from the Council of Australian Governments meeting. "The government was moving as fast as governments do," he said.
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Loads of money for hospital computers but nothing more for patients?
Monday, December 14, 2009
Is the Brain Like a Muscle, Really?
I thought I would reproduce the Newsweak column below as proof that Leftists never learn anything. Results such as they describe have been known for years. What nobody has been able to show is that the beneficial effects of special training are lasting. Educationally "enriched" kids are just as dumb when they get to adulthood as are control groups -- mainly because environmental handicaps tend to fade in importance as we get older. I noted recently some very powerful genetic research which showed exactly that: Environmental influences do matter somewhat in childhood but that fades out so that in adulthood it is your genetics that dictate your abilities.
Probably what the findings below show is that if you train kids in doing the sort of tasks that you encounter in IQ tests, they will get better at doing IQ tests for as long as they remember the training.
There is a slightly expanded account of the research concerned here but I can find no trace of it being published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. That leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It is, for instance, normal for there to be a "learning effect" in IQ testing. If you give the same test to the same people two weeks apart, they will do significantly better the second time around. That alone could explain the results below. The proper academic way to circumvent that problem is to use a "parallel form" of the test on the second time around. Most tests do have such forms available. Did the researchers below do that? Who knows? Other Problems: Was the study double-blind? Again, who knows? So I think that the bright-eyed enthusiasm shown below is mainly a product of uncritical and uninformed thinking.
For a sidelight on the issue, I reproduce a recent email from a reader underneath the article below. Some people don't need "enriched" education. In fact they do very well with very little. You will never guess who. In the end genetics rule the roost. Education can increase your knowledge and give you some skills but it cannot increase your ability to learn and figure things out Back in 2007, Ashley and I reported on the science of praise for New York magazine, highlighting in particular the body of work by Dr. Carol Dweck. Dweck had done studies for over a decade – and we covered them all – including a brand new semester-long intervention that had been conducted with Lisa Blackwell at Life Sciences Secondary School in East Harlem.
Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with high aspirations but 700 students whose main attributes are being predominantly minority and low achieving. The scholars split the kids into two groups for an eight-session workshop. The control group was taught study skills, and the others got study skills and a special module on how intelligence is not innate. These students took turns reading aloud an essay on how the brain grows new neurons when challenged. They saw slides of the brain and acted out skits. After the module was concluded, Blackwell tracked her students’ grades to see if it had any effect.
It didn’t take long. The students who had been taught that intelligence can be developed improved their study habits and grades. In a single semester, Blackwell reversed the students’ longtime trend of decreasing math grades.
The only difference between the control group and the test group were two lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but a single idea: that the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workout makes you smarter. That alone improved their math scores.
Ever since that New York magazine story was published, it’s been common now to tell kids the brain is like a muscle, and intelligence is malleable. The catch was that the students at Life Sciences were reading a four-page middle-reader version of neuroscience-lite that was somewhat edited to enhance, or sell, the idea that IQ isn’t fixed.
So it’s been a legitimate ongoing question whether we’re really now telling kids the truth, when we tell the brain is a muscle. Just how malleable is IQ, really? Are we misleading them at all, when we suggest their IQ is something they can control?
As Ashley and I wrote in NurtureShock, children’s IQs do change a lot as they develop. More than half of children will see significant swings in their IQ – not just once, but three times. And the swings are not minor. Two-thirds of children’s IQ scores improve, or drop, more than 15 points. One-third of kids’ scores jump more than 30 points. So there’s clearly a lot of instability going on.
But does that give us license to suggest to kids their brains can really be altered, quickly? Are we lying to them if we ignore there’s some element of genetic predestination?
Well, that’s why yesterday’s column here was, we believe, so important. Drs. Silvia Bunge and Allyson Mackey set up a special afterschool program at a low-performing elementary school in Oakland. For eight weeks, twice a week, kids came into one of two rooms to play board games, video games, and card games. These are games available at most retailers, but they’d been chosen by Bunge and Mackey because they demanded very specific cognitive skills. One set of games – in one room – challenged the kids’ reasoning ability. The other set of games – in the other room – challenged those kids’ processing speed.
Before and after the training, the scholars measured relevant components of the children’s IQs. The scholars expected some modest improvement. But the results were staggering – the group that trained for reasoning ability saw their non-verbal intelligence scores leap 32%. The group that trained for processing speed saw their brain speed scores jump 27%. In just eight weeks – 20 hours total of training – the games had a drastic impact on the kids’ IQ.
Now, Mackey does warn that kids who already come from enriched home environments might already have these games, or something similar, and in many ways they might have already trained their brains. So while Mackey suspects all kids could benefit from the game training, not all kids would benefit so much, so quickly.
Nevertheless, it’s striking evidence that indeed, the brain is like a muscle. While every individual probably has upper limits to what we might be capable of, brain training – like weight training, or fitness training – can lift us towards those limits.
SOURCE
An email from a reader with some relevance: "My wife is picking up our 10 year old adopted Chinese child at this moment. The little girl speaks 3 dialects, knows well over 1000 Hanzi characters, is able to read (not yet speak) quite a bit of English, and is off the charts in technological aptitude. And this from a girl who hasn't been exposed to 1/5 of what kids from even our lowest, social welfare classes receive. Tell me there's not something biological going on. As well as more courage and determination that what is generally inculcated in our society - at that age, anyway."
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
"Rabbit-Proof Fence" grossly inaccurate
RABBIT-PROOF Fence, the film that in the eyes of millions of children around Australia tells the true story of the Stolen Generations, is "grossly inaccurate" and should be withdrawn from schools.
Keith Windschuttle, a frontline warrior in the history wars, has questioned the veracity of the film - though not the book on which it was based - in the third volume of his series, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, to be released next week, The Australian reports.
In Phillip Noyce's award-winning film, three young indigenous girls are snatched from their family's embrace on a remote settlement in Western Australia, forcibly removed by a racist government bent on "breeding out the colour". Based on a true story, the movie tells of Molly, Daisy and Gracie and their remarkable 2000km trek home following the rabbit fence. It remains the most vivid and poignant example yet of what has come to be known as the Stolen Generations.
The problem is, this big-screen version of their journey, which is now a staple of school curriculums across the country, does not include all the details of the original story. Windschuttle has researched the experiences of sisters Molly Craig, 14, Daisy Kadibill, 8, and their cousin Gracie Fields, 10, for his book.
According to the historian, Molly and Gracie were removed from their families on the Jigalong Depot more than 75 years ago because of their "sexual activity with white men working in the area".
The West Australian chief protector responsible for their removal, Auber Octavius Neville, had not been trying to "breed out the colour" by marrying off half-caste Aboriginal girls to whites as depicted in the film, Windschuttle said. His claim was born of a review of state archives, where he found a letter to A.O. Neville in December 1930 by a Mrs Chellow, from Murra Munda Station near Jigalong, in which Molly and Gracie were accused of "running wild with the whites".
"Running wild' was said to be a contemporary euphemism for promiscuity, which meant the girls were having sex with the white males in the area," Windschuttle writes in the preface of his new work.
He told The Australian yesterday: "They didn't say these girls were sc--ing boys, they said they were running wild . . . anyone from that era knows the meaning of the term. "That is the big lie of the film. Neville did not use child removal in order to breed out the race."
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
The old, old story: "Soaking the rich" does not work
In Britain, it is particularly foolish -- but hate overcomes the reason of its Leftist rulers. The financial services industry is Britain's biggest earner and they are steadily chasing it away to nearby Jersey, an independent country under the crown but outside both the UK and the EU -- where the movers get tiny taxes and lovely freedom from mountains of bureaucracy!
Britain’s financiers and entrepreneurs are quitting the UK at a rate of 10 a week to avoid Labour’s new 50% taxes. The burgeoning exodus threatens to deepen a £178 billion black hole in the public finances and leave middle-class voters with higher taxes for years to come, figures obtained from Companies House reveal. The number of directors of British businesses registered as living in the low-tax centres of Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man has risen by almost 500 to 6,729 in the past 12 months. The British Virgin Islands is also a popular destination, with 615 directors of UK companies now based in the Caribbean tax haven — an 18% rise on a year ago.
Those known to be fleeing the UK include hedge fund managers, property tycoons, bankers and people who made their money setting up companies organising private healthcare, call centres and luxury holidays. “The UK model is broken,” said Stephen Hedgecock, a partner in Altis, a £1 billion hedge fund company with 35 staff that has relocated to Jersey, leaving only a small presence in London. “It’s not just the 50% rate — it’s National Insurance, the treatment of pensions ... everything. It’s just a ridiculous amount of taxation.”
Russell Newton and Danny Masters, co-founders of Global Advisors, another hedge fund with hundreds of millions of dollars under management, also abandoned London for Jersey’s thriving finance community in the summer.
Another 100 Britons have begun working in the island’s businesses since the downturn began two years ago. The Jersey government said it had seen a 20% increase in interest from people looking at moving to the island. A new marketing brochure published by the island’s authorities promises “in Jersey, keep more of what you earn”. The authorities impose corporation tax at 10% and income tax at 20%. There is no inheritance tax or capital gains tax. Property taxes are also low.
Jersey Finance, an agency set up to attract financial talent to the island, has held a series of private dinners in London to woo new residents. Geoff Cook, the agency’s chief executive, said: “The 50% tax rate does seem to have been the tipping point for many people.” However, the island’s authorities maintain that the rich often favour Jersey because of the easy access to London, the sandy beaches, low crime rates and the use of English as the first language. “There is a lot of interest right now,” said Nigel Philpott, the Jersey government’s head of high net worth residency. “Last year I was getting one or two calls a day from people who wanted to come and join us. Now I get four or five on some days.”
Paul Bater, 52, a former bank manager from Swansea, is so happy with his move to Jersey that he has allowed himself to be used as a case study in promotional literature for Jersey Enterprise. “I love living in Jersey. The pace of life is much more civilised than anywhere else I have worked,” he said.
John George, the owner of Jag Communications, the UK’s third biggest mobile phone retailer, has moved to Guernsey, Jersey’s neighbour. The 48-year-old businessman now commutes by private plane to his company’s office at Perranporth, Cornwall. The journey takes just 30 minutes — and ends at his privately owned airfield. “It’s very easy, very straightforward and I never get stuck at the lights or any of that,” said George. His office is fewer than five minutes from the airfield.
For years considered little more than family holiday resorts, Jersey and Guernsey have become a playground for the rich in recent years, with Michelin-starred restaurants, luxury spas and hotels. Almost one in five of the island’s workers has a job in financial services. There are nearly 3,000 experts who help people set up trusts and companies — a rise of 12% since the onset of economic downturn. It is a similar situation in the Isle of Man, which says it has seen a 20% growth in the non-banking financial sector.
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Australia in on the carbon scams too
The best-known of the carbon scams is the way Germany and Russia were allowed under the Kyoto treaty to count the meltdown of their former Communist industries as carbon reduction credits. And Britain was allowed to count the conversion of much of its electricity generation from coal to gas -- which was in fact done to save money. And America counts the relocation of much of its industry to China. And China and India were exempted altogether, of course. So it must be no surprise that Australia's negotiators found a comfortable little loophole too -- comfortable for the government but hard on Australia's farmers. The coverage below is, rather surprisingly, from the Green/Left blog "Crikey". I notice that they are very wobbly about the difference between "effect" and "affect". I think I have corrected most of the bloopers concerned. I have tamed a few excess apostrophes too
Over the coming week Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will attend the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and be hailed as one of the world leaders on climate change action. The PM attends the meeting with Australia being one of a handful of developed countries to have met their Kyoto Treaty obligations. Australia’s Kyoto commitment was to limit the Nations Carbon Dioxide emissions to 108% of 1990 levels.
The Carbongate “Trick”
The “trick” is how Australia, with a rapidly growing economy over the last two decades, has been able to achieve this. Emissions from energy and transport have increased by 23% over 1990 levels. Australians might wonder how with our rapidly growing population and economy over the last two decades, as a nation we seemed to be in a position to claim that we only increased our total emissions by 9%. Well, we haven’t. Our emissions have increased by 30% but thanks to the “carbongate” swindle we can claim it’s only 9%.
Here is the “trick” and it is not PM Kevin Rudd’s “trick”, it was actually the Liberal / National Coalition Howard Government’s master stoke. At the Kyoto negotiations in November 1997 Senator Ian Campbell was able to negotiate into the agreement what controversially became known at the “Australian clause” . Clive Hamilton documents the trickery of the Coalition’s bargaining that brought about the inclusion of the Australia clause in his book “Scorcher”. Indeed he devotes a whole chapter to it – Chapter 6 Drama at Kyoto. From page 72: “As emissions from land-clearing had decline sharply since 1990, their inclusion in the base year would give us a cushion of ‘free’ emissions reductions. our fossil-fuel emissions would be able to increase to at least 120 percent of 1990 levels by 2010 while still coming in under overall target of 105 to 110% . The Australia clause represented a loophole in the Kyoto Protocol that a couple of Bulldozers with a chain between them could drive through.”
The brilliant “win” for the Federal Government at Kyoto was only the first part of the “trick”. To make it work the Howard Government then had to stop private property owners land-clearing. Not only did they have to stop them but as private property it had to be done at no cost to the Commonwealth. This in the face of the Constitution which states that if the Commonwealth takes a private citizen’s property for its’ benefit it must compensate the citizen on “just terms”.
The Howard Government then set about having the Carr and Beattie State Labor Governments introduce Vegetation Management laws that effectively locked up 109 million hectares of privately owned land into the world’s largest privately owned carbon sink. The “trick’ is with the Native Vegetation laws being passed by State Governments Under the Constitution the State Governments have no obligation to pay private landholders compensation. Brilliant, they’d created the world’s largest carbon sink – at no cost to the Commonwealth.
With the “trick” now in place Australia’s Greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 22% when you add back in the 83.7 millions tonnes of CO2 that was not emitted from land that may have been cleared at no cost to the Commonwealth. This and this alone has allowed Australia to meet its Kyoto Protocol Treaty Obligations and in doing so has saved the Commonwealth tens of billions of dollars in compliance penalties by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Australian family farmers have never been compensated for this Kyoto “free kick” that the nation and in particular the energy and transport industries have received.
That is how the Liberal National Coalition government effectively “stole’ what has amounted to 83.7 million tonnes of Carbon Credits from private individual landholders and is the sole reason that todays Labor Prime Minister can be heralded as a true warrior of climate change with Australia having met its Kyoto obligation – cost free.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong being interviewed in Copenhagen on the ABC 7.30 report admitted that the only reason Australia was able to claim it had met its’ Kyoto commitments was thanks to the blanket ban on broad scale land clearing. “I think what you’re referring to is the way we account for emissions from land clearing, which was agreed at the Kyoto Protocol. And Australia did respond to that. We did reduce our land clearing. We took active steps, particularly in Queensland, and Queensland is to be congratulated for fact that the reduction in land clearing in that state and also NSW has reduced Australia’s national emissions.”
The affected Australian family farmers are not celebrating their contribution. The impact on the relatively few citizens who have been asked to bear this enormous burden should outrage each and every fair minded citizen of this country.
The lock-up of their land has caused great hardship and driven many devastated landholders to desperate measures including suicides. A symbol of the despair and desperation felt by those carrying the Nation’s entire Kyoto burden is New South Wales farmer Peter Spencer who is in the 20th day of a hunger strike on a two metre platform high up a 300 foot tower on his property just outside of Canberra. See Video ACA interview with Peter Wednesday 9th – Dec – day 18 of Peters Hunger Strike.
Peter says that Federal Government has declared his 5,385 hectare property a carbon Sink without compensating him. Peter had never wanted to clear his land, but under the vegetation management act the entire property is rendered off limits to any form of development.
These affected Australian farmers have been responsible for virtually the entire burden of the Nation’s greenhouse gas emission reductions but their efforts worth billions of dollars have not been recognized or financially rewarded.
These farming families have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 70 million tonnes since 1990 and by 2010 the saving will be about 83.7million tonnes. To put that into context that is equivalent to eliminating the entire annual emissions of New Zealand or Ireland. Over that same period of time emissions from energy and transport have continued to skyrocket.
Hide the takings
Peter’s hunger strike has gathered support from grassroots people from Australia, the US, UK, Pakistan and Malaysia. On the Peter Spencer Hunger Strike causes site over 150 people have been lobbying frantically to get the mainstream media to cover the story and for politicians to intervene on Peter’s behalf.
Peter’s supporters have been bombarding State and Federal Labor, Liberal and National Party Politicians and the mainstream media to bring attention to his cause. But Peter’s story is being stonewalled by the mainstream media and Politicians of all colours and creeds. So far they have managed to have Peter’s story covered by 2GB’s Alan Jones with a live interview with Peter Spencer and his barrister Peter King by mobile phone on Tuesday morning and one with Alastair McRobert who is at the property with Peter on Thursday morning and a 5 minute spot on Channel 9’s A Current affair on Thursday night (the video above).
Fairfax Media, News Corporation and the ABC have steadfastly refused to run the story except for The Telegraph which ran a small piece last Sunday on page 42 titled He’s the Darryl Kerrigan of Climate Change. There has been a small amount of coverage in regional media - see a full list here. The group knows that the mainstream media is stonewalling the story because a journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald was due at the property Tuesday – but the story was pulled without any reason offered by the papers editor.
Peter’s supporters have contacted by phone or email or in many cases both, Andrew Bolt, Laurie Oaks, Miranda Devine, Paul Kelly, Kerry O’Brien, Tony Jones and every major metropolitan TV, Radio and Newspaper with no result. You can read all of there efforts on the Peter Spencer Hunger Strike group wall.
The response from politicians is equally frustrating. Liberal and National politicians for obvious reasons are ducking for cover, not wanting to get involved and saying it is a matter for the Rudd Government to sort out. The Prime Minister has referred Peter’s letter to him to the Federal Police. That is the extent of his response and Labor politicians State and Federal everywhere want nothing to do with the issue.
To his great credit one Federal Liberal Politician Alex Hawke the member for Mitchell was one of the earliest people to join and show his support.
Peter Spencer’s peaceful protest has the potential to embarrass a great number of politicians from all sides of politics , State and Federal, who have been complicit in the “Carbongate” great Carbon Credit theft. They are all keen to “hide the takings”.
How is it that they can all condone the taking of billions of dollars of benefit for the nation from private citizens, yet look at paying the huge polluters billions of dollars of compensation to cut carbon emissions through the Rudd Government’s proposed CPRS? “Carbongate” – is truly an incredible blight on our democracy and an embarrassment to our nation.
Peter's supporters, the majority of whom are from urban areas and from all walks of life, are desperate as time runs out for Peter.
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Saturday, December 12, 2009
NOAA/GHCN, the "Global Historical Climate Network", are crooks too
Willis Eschenbach (sounds like a pen-name of someone with a job to lose) has been looking in great detail at the work of one of the alternatives to the CRU. We know that CRU are crooks but what about the alternative sources of climate history? There are only two major alternatives and one of those is NASA/GISS run by Jim Hansen. So you have got the fox minding the henhouse there. That leaves only GHCN. So do they "adjust" their data in the same way that CRU do? Eschenbach uses the data from the Darwin area in Australia as a case in point. He presents the raw data -- which shows FALLINg temperatures -- and then the GHCN adjusted data -- which show RISING temperatures. And the adjustments done to achieve that are just plain weird. An excerpt from Eschenbach below followed by some comments on the risible "reply" to Eschenbach by Tim Lambert:
Then I went to look at what happens when the GHCN removes the “in-homogeneities” to “adjust” the data. Of the five raw datasets, the GHCN discards two, likely because they are short and duplicate existing longer records. The three remaining records are first “homogenized” and then averaged to give the “GHCN Adjusted” temperature record for Darwin.
To my great surprise, here’s what I found. To explain the full effect, I am showing this with both datasets starting at the same point (rather than ending at the same point as they are often shown).
YIKES! Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celsius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celsius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century … when those guys “adjust”, they don’t mess around. And the adjustment is an odd shape, with the adjustment first going stepwise, then climbing roughly to stop at 2.4C....
Intrigued by the curious shape of the average of the homogenized Darwin records, I then went to see how they had homogenized each of the individual station records. What made up that strange average shown in Fig. 7? I started at zero with the earliest record. Here is Station Zero at Darwin, showing the raw and the homogenized versions.
Yikes again, double yikes! What on earth justifies that adjustment? How can they do that? We have five different records covering Darwin from 1941 on. They all agree almost exactly. Why adjust them at all? They’ve just added a huge artificial totally imaginary trend to the last half of the raw data! Now it looks like the IPCC diagram in Figure 1, all right … but a six degree per century trend? And in the shape of a regular stepped pyramid climbing to heaven? What’s up with that?
Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.
One thing is clear from this. People who say that “Climategate was only about scientists behaving badly, but the data is OK” are wrong. At least one part of the data is bad, too. The Smoking Gun for that statement is at Darwin Zero......
What this does show is that there is at least one temperature station where the trend has been artificially increased to give a false warming where the raw data shows cooling. In addition, the average raw data for Northern Australia is quite different from the adjusted, so there must be a number of … mmm … let me say “interesting” adjustments in Northern Australia other than just Darwin.
And with the Latin saying “Falsus in unum, falsus in omis” (false in one, false in all) as our guide, until all of the station “adjustments” are examined, adjustments of CRU, GHCN, and GISS alike, we can’t trust anyone using homogenized numbers.
More HERE
Tim Lambert teaches computer science at the university of NSW (my old stamping ground) so he has a good brain. But, like most academics, he is a very conventional thinker much given to defence of Leftist pieties. He certainly displays the anger that is characteristic of the Left. He is as unhappy with the world he lives in as I am happy with it.
And his latest exudation, dependant on just one of Eschenbach's eight graphs, is in the usual Leftist style: Abuse, accusation, appeals to authority and ignoring the full facts. Most risibly, he accuses Eschenbach of "cooking" the books, even though he admits the fact that Eschenbach argues against making ANY adjustments to the raw data at all! That's "cooking" with the stove off! He justifies his assertion by noting something that Eschenbach dealt with at great length: The discontinuity of the various records. He fails to acknowledge Eschenbach's main point that none of the records show an upward trend -- with the records before 1941 tending clearly downwards and the post-1941 records pretty flat. He also accuses Eschenbach of not taking into account the apparent step-change around 1941 when Eschenbach in fact dealt with it at great length and looked at the effect and rationale of making allowances for it.
Lambert then goes on to to parrot the BOM line, perhaps hoping that people will be unaware that the BOM under their present leadership are committed Warmists. And to be a Warmist you have to ignore an awful lot -- the "local" medieval Warm period for starters -- a period so "local" that records of it can be found in such widely separated places as Greenland, Argentina and New Zealand. Only a Warmist would call that "local". But the Warmists are desperate, of course. They first tried to pretend that the MWP did not exist but when that didn't work, they just exchanged one form of dishonesty for another.
So Lambert's parroting of the BOM line is merely amusing. It is similar to a pair of thieves giving one-another an alibi. The BOM "results" are very similar to the "results" published by GHCN so are just as susceptible to Eschenbach's criticisms as are the the bizarre GHCN "results". Lambert makes no detailed effort to rebut those criticisms. He simply rejects them "a priori".
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Obamanomics...
by Rep. John Campbell (R-CA)
There have been a number of recent stories exposing the complete folly of the so-called "stimulus" plan and the number of jobs claimed to have been "created or saved" by this rapacious spending undertaken by the Obama Administration. Take for instance, the 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, the administration it claimed to have 'saved', even though they really only employ 508 people. Or how about the 129 jobs that were said to have been 'created' at a childcare center in Florida when the money was actually used for employee raises, and not new jobs.
Using these methods, in Obama speak, today I created or saved 3,000 calories towards my diet. Clearly, I could have eaten 300 more calories if I tried, but I "saved" those calories due to my stimulus plan. At this rate, I could lose 100,000 calories while still gaining weight! Now, that is Obamanomics.
Well, many have already become expert 'Obamanomists.' I asked some of my constituents in Orange County, CA for their experiences using 'Obamanomics,' and I recieved many good responses, but the one below is by far my favorite. I am interested in hearing your best example of 'Obamanomics.'
Using Obamamath, I've just saved, nay, created a great deal of money. How? I had wanted to buy a new Lamborghini Gallardo roadster so that I could drive to the White House to personally thank our beloved President for all that he is doing to save us from financial ruin. The trip, via New Orleans in order to view the results of former President Bush's failure to forestall Hurricane Katrina, would have been an approximately 6,000-mile roundtrip.
I didn't buy the Lamborghini, as it wasn't manufactured by Government Motors. I not only saved (created) some $243,000 (including tax) by not making this purchase, but I saved (created) an additional $1,500 by not purchasing fuel for the trip.
Since both the Gallardo and its fuel would have been imported, I'm sure that the Governmental Accountability Office would classify these as "green" savings. Thus by not buying a Lamborghini Gallardo, and not driving it to visit our President, I will have created a total of $244,500 in Green Savings. Not bad for an amateur!
But think for a moment: If each of the approximately 4 million families who live in Barack Obama's Illinois and Joe Biden's Delaware were to NOT buy a new Lamborghini, and NOT drive to the White House (via New Orleans), we would create an additional $1 trillion in new Green Wealth. Now that's Obamawealth with a vengeance!
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Influence for "some academic scribbler of a few years back" (To quote Keynes)?
A correspondent writes: "In reading Tony Abbott's "Battlelines", I find you cited. Your "Conservatism as Heresy" seems to have been a seminal influence on the young Abbott's life. Indeed, Abbott picks up your assertion that you are a "Burkean conservative" and opines that you were probably the first Australian to so self-describe. Given that our former prime minister described himself thus, we can now realise he was plagiarising you. Congratulations Dr. Ray for your influence on the re-formation of conservative ideology in Australia."
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
IS SELF-HATRED UNIVERSAL?
Instapunk is a much better blog than its name suggests but it does have the peculiarity of no permalinks that I can find and hence, presumably, no archives. I was particularly interested in a transcript of Dec. 10th from a video by Andrew Klavan, a recent convert from Leftism to realism. Klavan says:
Shame and guilt and self-hatred are universal. Whether you chalk it up to original sin or to Oedipus or call it Jewish guilt or Catholic guilt or white guilt or black guilt, every single one of us knows he is not the person he was made to be. There are honest ways to confront that. You can kneel before God and pray for forgiveness and live in the joy of his love. Or you can drink heavily and make sardonic remarks until you destroy everyone you care about and then keel over dead – that’s honest too. But what a lot of people do is try to escape their sense of shame dishonestly by constructing elaborate moral frameworks that allow them to parade their virtue and their lavish repentance without any real inconvenience to themselves while simultaneously indulging in self-righteousness by condemning others for their impenitent evil. That’s the bad version of religion – the sort of religion Jesus came to dismantle. And that’s exactly the sort of religion leftism is: an elaborate system for hiding shame behind a cheap mask of virtue. That’s why they demonize any opposition. To them, we’re not just disagreeing with them, we’re threatening to tear off the mask of their virtue and reveal them to themselves.
I think that's a pretty good diagnosis of at least some Leftism but I think his initial generalization is far too broad: "Shame and guilt and self-hatred are universal". Really? Universal among leftists, maybe but I doubt that many lifelong conservatives are moved by such feelings. I certainly have never felt any such feelings and I pass as a pretty good conservative, I think. I am in fact perfectly happy with my life and have been as far back as I can remember. I was probably born that way. I have no tolerance for the many rogues of the world and do my best to expose them when and where I can but I certainly don't need that activity to feel good. Being a born academic, I would probably be just as happy studying medieval theology or learning more Latin. In fact I would rather do that but I think the world is in great danger from a resurgence of Leftism so I feel that I have to direct my energies to where they are most needed.
As I see it, conservatives are basically happy and contented people who are in fact far too tolerant of the Leftist crooks who wish them nothing but harm. When really pushed, conservatives do rise up but mostly they just want to get on with their own lives with as little interference from others as possible. And ideological Leftists (as distinct from the many ordinary sensible people who are duped into voting Leftishly on election day) hate that. They want everyone else to be as discontented and as miserable as they are. They need it for self-validation. They want us all to be ants in one big anthill, to paraphrase Hegel. They dislike individualism because they are not capable of it themselves. Marching along in lockstep with some current "consensus" is their thing. They seem to need that for a sense of security -- unlike us conservative "heretics". I say much more about all that here and here
Update
I have finally found the permalink to the Instapunk posts. It is a tiny "bug" just before the word "Comments". So the permalink to the Klavan comments is this. The permalink to posts here is the timestamp, a longstanding system in blogspot blogs.
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Friday, December 11, 2009
Some perspective on climate
I’m looking at the temperature record as read from this central Greenland ice core. It gives us about as close as we can come to a direct, experimental measurement of temperature at that one spot for the past 50,000 years. As far as I know, the data are not adjusted according to any fancy computer climate model or anything else like that. So what does it tell us about, say, the past 500 years? (the youngest datum is age=0.0951409 (thousand years before present) — perhaps younger snow doesn’t work so well?):
Well, whaddaya know — a hockey stick. In fact, the “blade” continues up in the 20th century at least another half a degree. But how long is the handle? How unprecedented is the current warming trend?
Yes, Virginia, there was a Medieval Warm Period, in central Greenland at any rate. But we knew that — that’s when the Vikings were naming it Greenland, after all. And the following Little Ice Age is what killed them off, and caused widespread crop failures (and the consequent burning of witches) across Europe. But was the MWP itself unusual?
Well, no — over the period of recorded history, the average temperature was about equal to the height of the MWP. Rises not only as high, but as rapid, as the current hockey stick blade have been the rule, not the exception.
In fact for the entire Holocene — the period over which, by some odd coincidence, humanity developed agriculture and civilization — the temperature has been higher than now, and the trend over the past 4000 years is a marked decline. From this perspective, it’s the LIA that was unusual, and the current warming trend simply represents a return to the mean. If it lasts.
From the perspective of the Holocene as a whole, our current hockeystick is beginning to look pretty dinky. By far the possibility I would worry about, if I were the worrying sort, would be the return to an ice age — since interglacials, over the past half million years or so, have tended to last only 10,000 years or so. And Ice ages are not conducive to agriculture.
… and ice ages have a better claim on being the natural state of Earth’s climate than interglacials. This next graph, for the longest period, we have to go to an Antarctic core (Vostok):
In other words, we’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history. But the broader lesson is, climate doesn’t stand still. It doesn’t even stand stay on the relatively constrained range of the last 10,000 years for more than about 10,000 years at a time.
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Greek tragedy for the world economy
The gloomy thoughts below are from a much-published German economist presently working in Australia. It would certainly be very disruptive if countries stopped being able to pay interest on their debt. The USA can just print money to pay what it owes to China (etc.) but other countries that owe dollars cannot do that. And the US dollar is already devaluing rapidly under the impact of Obama's huge debt-financed spending -- so a large part of the world's savings (held in U.S. dollars) is being wiped out at a rate of knots. And that (inflation) is always very disruptive
By Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich
Just when many thought the global financial crisis was over, it re-emerges with a bang. This week, Greece and Spain both had their credit ratings downgraded. Standard & Poor’s changed Spain’s outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘negative.’ For Greece, the news was even worse: Fitch revalued Greece’s creditworthiness to BBB+, just a few steps above junk status.
Dramatic as these developments sound, they are hardly surprising. When Greece was allowed to join Europe’s Monetary Union in 2002, it benefitted enormously from the Eurozone’s lower interest rates. Unfortunately, the Greeks did not use this opportunity to consolidate their finances. Instead, they took it as an invitation to run even higher deficits.
Only in one year, 2006, was Greece able to comply with the EU Growth and Stability Pact, which sets a budget deficit limit of 3% of GDP. Following the financial crisis, this deficit has now ballooned to 12.7%. At 121% of GDP, Greece’s public debt is much larger than its economy, making it the most indebted country in the European Union.
Australians could be forgiven for thinking that Greece’s problems are those of a small, faraway country. But they matter for at least two reasons. First, the GFC has demonstrated how interconnected the world economy has become. There are no faraway places anymore. Second, the Greek troubles could be a harbinger of much worse. It is only a matter of time before one of the world’s other sovereign debt time-bombs detonates.
That even Greece could trigger a financial domino effect is not least due to its membership of the Euro currency. There is no political way the other Euro member states could let the Greeks go under. Having just supported their banks, French and German taxpayers may now have to bail out a whole country. This will have implications for the Euro and economic stability, generally. It could even break the European Union with unforeseeable consequences.
Whether Greece will be the next country to declare bankruptcy is by no means certain. Other hot contenders are the Baltic states, Spain, Dubai, Ireland and, threatening even greater disruption, Japan and Britain. US public finances hardly look reassuring, either.
There is a real possibility that some countries have overstretched themselves so much that they cannot service their debt in the near future. It now looks more like a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ that will happen. We are anxiously awaiting the next act of this Greek tragedy.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated December 11. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590.
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Obama does not even have good manners
Barack Obama's trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner. Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.
The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children's event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre. He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.
According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable. "Of all the things he is cancelling, I think the worst is cancelling the lunch with the king," said Siv Jensen, the leader of the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party. "This is a central part of our government system. He should respect the monarchy," she told VG.
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Climate change ‘ forcing polar bears to become cannibals’
But Inuit leaders have dismissed the idea, saying that it is a normal occurrence totally unconnected with global warming
A male polar bear dragged the grisly remains of a cub that it caught and killed in the Hudson Bay area, Canada, after separating it from its mother — one of a growing number of instances of cannibalism on record, according to climate change campaigners.
The bears may be forced into eating their own kind when the slower formation of Arctic ice leaves them with a shrinking platform from which to hunt seals, according to a study by American and Canadian scientists in 2006. The World Meteorological Association reported yesterday at the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen that this decade is on track to become the warmest since records began in 1850, and 2009 could rank among the top five warmest years.
However, a local Inuit leader dismissed the idea of any link between cannibalism and climate change. Jose Kusugak, the president of the Kivalliq Inuit Association, told reporters: “A male polar bear eating a cub becomes a big story and they try to marry it with climate change and so on. It becomes absurd — when it’s a normal, normal occurrence.”
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Maybe the Police Will Help
Here's one you probably won't hear about from the liberal media, it's a 911 call (US emergency number) where a woman shoots a burglar dead. 56-year old Donna Jackson is home alone when Billy Dean Riley begins trying to force his way into her home. Jackson calls the police asking for help. She tells the dispatcher that she has a shotgun and doesn’t want to shoot the man attempting to batter down her door, but will if he is able to get in. (Despite what liberals think gun owners don't want to shoot people.) Jackson is on the phone with the dispatcher for ten minutes with no police response, when Riley uses a lawn chair to break through a plate glass door. Jackson then dispatches Riley with a single shot. Jackson then returns to the phone distraught that she has had to kill someone. It is another ten minutes before the police finally arrive. This is a prime example of why you can't rely on the police to save you from criminals, even if guns are outlawed. If this woman didn't have a gun she would have been dead long before the police ever got there. Note how much she doesn't want to shoot the idiot. But at least the dispatcher tells her she can shoot the guy.
LINK
Maybe next time he'll attack someone who doesn't have a gun. Oh wait; there won't be a next time. Oh well at least all those liberal gun haters are safer because this woman had a gun and knew how to use it.
The Greatest Man I Ever Knew
A few days ago Touchstone noted that “we lose nearly a thousand WW2 veterans every day.” Three weeks ago marked the passing of one of those WW2 veterans and one of the greatest men I have ever had the honor of knowing. And while he was neither a great political figure nor even a famous man, I hope you will forgive me this one time to share some of my thoughts about him on this web site.
I am writing about my father, Ralph Lavell Austin, who died, November 14, 2009 in Ogden, Utah. My father served in the US Navy towards the end of WWII as a flight engineer on a PBM search and rescue seaplane. (He liked to tell me that the Japanese were afraid of the PBMs because they knew that something that big and slow couldn’t be an airplane.) He was preceded in death by his wife Shirley and survived by five children and many grandchildren. To my mind, my father was one of the greatest men who ever lived. I realize that I am somewhat prejudiced here, but the effect this man had on my life certainly warrants that status for me. I would hope that most sons think the same of their fathers.
My father taught me the meaning of honor, the virtue of honesty, the difference between right and wrong, the need to be kind and respectful of others, the rewards of loyalty, the value of love, and the importance of a good laugh. He shared with me the common sense to know that evil exists in this world, it can’t be ignored, trivialized, nor wished away, and that if good is to survive then good must be supported and evil opposed, if only by recognizing it and doing what is right. He taught me in word and deed, each and every day that I was privileged to share with him, I’m certainly not perfect in these things, though I certainly though my dad was.
My father loved his family, his friends, his church, and country. He loved art and music, fun and laughter. He loved helping people, talking to them, and making them feel good. He loved life and all the good things in it. I think this is how he handled the difficulties and pain he had to suffer through in the last few years. The fact that he loved life and the people around him so much that it was still worth all the effort that might go into it. And still with all the pain he was always happy to talk to me on the phone. And even in the last few months, as his hearing got to be so bad that it was nearly impossible to talk on the phone, he was still able to laugh at himself. In my father I saw a man who would rather die fighting to live well than live waiting to die, because each day was one more day he could share with the people he loved.
Rich and famous people leave their mark on the world, often for the worse. My father was neither rich nor famous, but he left his mark on the world for the better, he left it on me as well. He left it on those he loved and those who loved him. My world is a better one because of him, but a smaller one without him. All that I am, all that I have achieved, and all that I will come to be, I owe to him. So, I am very grateful that God chose to bless me with a father who was truly the greatest man I know.
Going for a break..
Posting will be non-existent and my visits around the blogosphere will be patchy at best. It's been a heck of a year folks. I will miss your posts and your comments while I'm gone.
I hope you will all still be firing away when I return and let's hope it's a better year for all of us. Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.
Image pilfered via Google.
Justice denied, again
Like the piece of crap I wrote about yesterday, she is 28 now and she'll be out by 47 and sponging off society again, contributing nothing, just leeching off us like the evil, worthless parasite she is. Again I ask, of what benefit is this scumbag, what is our horrendous loss if she weren't taken out the back and shot. What we should have done is follow the lead of the Americans.News.com.au - SHE murdered her beautiful toddler in the most abhorrent way - swinging little Dean Shillingsworth around by his hooded top until he choked, before packing his body in a suitcase and tossing it into a dirty pond. ...Justice Hulme did not find Pfitzner was substantially remorseful, nor had she yet accepted responsibility for what she had done - so sentenced her to a minimum term of 19 years and two months. The maximum sentence is 25 years and six months. Justice Hilme said she would have received 30 years had she not pleaded guilty before her trial.
For @#$&sakes, the scumbag killed and dismembered a woman, what's so effing humane about that? Why the heck does any humanity have to be shown to him. Heck I would have thought that one injection would be welcomed by the anti-cruelty crowd, but then, their real motive is letting the scumbag off so they can coddle him isn't it, not actually punishing him.News.com.au - OHIO has put to death a convicted murderer with just one drug in a new procedure that has opened up a host of legal and ethical questions over lethal injection and capital punishment. ...Critics held that Kenneth Biros, sentenced to death for killing and dismembering a 22-year-old woman in 1991, was a human guinea pig being subjected to an untested procedure.
Getting a meal every day until his execution is a luxury, not a right. When people take the lives of others in such a brutal and wicked way, they ought to be shown very little mercy in return. Execute scum like these, post haste.
But no matter what these bastards do, there are many among us still crying for them, just today I heard some half-wit on the radio bleating about how he can't support the death penalty because so many innocents have been executed in America. He conveniently didn't give any actual cases though. Does anyone know of any actual innocents who were executed?
Another nonsensical line people use is that with the advent of DNA and such we're finding that some innocents have been held in jail as if that's a reason not to execute the real scumbags. It's funny how people point to DNA to show innocence, but this same DNA can never be used to prove guilt! I for one am glad that technology can help us to clear innocents, but we should use that same technology to catch and prosecute the guilty as well.
And none of these folks who say 'the justice system is flawed so we can't kill the scum', never argue for it to be strengthened. For some weird reason, the horrendously flawed justice system that will mistakenly execute innocents can never send an innocent away for 30 years. Take the example of the woman above, the fellow who claimed that innocents will be executed if we had capital punishment, didn't question the trial or the process by which a woman was found guilty of murdering her son.
The way I see it, if you're worried about sending a few innocents to death, you should also be worried about sending them away for a decade or two, so work to strengthen the justice system, not weaken it to the benefit of the scum. Make the burden of proof harder for death penalty cases, add an extra review process for all I care, but if you have proved guilt in brutal crimes like the ones above beyond any doubt, then they must be put to death.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Monbiot in the pay of big oil
Alarmist George Monbiot writes in the Guardian on how we're just stooges of the oil industry. An excerpt:
In Climate Cover-Up, in Ross Gelbspan's books The Heat is On and Boiling Point, in my book Heat, and on the websites DeSmogBlog.com and exxonsecrets.org, you can find dozens of such examples. Together they expose a systematic, well-funded campaign to con the public. To judge by the comments you can read on this paper's website, it has worked.
But people behind these campaigns know that their claims are untrue. One of the biggest was run by the Global Climate Coalition, which represented ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute and several big motor manufacturers. In 1995 the coalition's own scientists reported that "the scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well-established and cannot be denied". The coalition hid this finding from the public, and spent millions of dollars seeking to persuade people that the opposite was true.
These people haven't fooled themselves, but they might have fooled you. Who, among those of you who claim that climate scientists are liars and environmentalists are stooges, has thought it through for yourself?
What I really love, however, is the giant ad for "Shell" served alongside Monbiot's piece:
SOURCE
It's absurd to say that Monbiot is in the pay of big oil because a small part of his paycheque comes from them. But it is equally absurd to say that climate skeptics are in the pay of big oil because a tiny minority of them have received small amounts from big oil. Another example of similar Warmist absurdity here, where the revolt against Warmist laws among Australian conservative politicians is attributed to a "holy war" -- because one tiny and wholly marginal Christian denomination opposed such laws
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Global warming has stopped, says new Australian conservative leader
OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has gone one step further from being a climate change sceptic and has questioned if the world is warming. The comments were seized upon by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, who will arrive in Copenhagen today for climate change talks that aim to set the foundations for cuts to global greenhouse gas emissions. It comes as the US Environmental Protection Agency plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions because they "threaten the public health and welfare of the American people".
When Mr Abbott seized the Liberal leadership from Malcolm Turnbull last week he rejected criticisms that he was a climate change denier, but said he was sceptical about what level mankind had contributed to the problem. His position yesterday raised further questions about his intentions to address climate change. "Notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man-made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world's warming has stopped," he told Macquarie Radio.
Senator Wong, who has been accused of not giving enough funds to helping the Torres Strait cope with climate change, hit out at Mr Abbott. "He is out there publicly talking about the world cooling when we have so many world leaders ... going to Copenhagen because they are concerned about climate change," she said. ["World leaders" matter more than the facts? She is a pure apparatchik] "We see Mr Abbott talking about the globe cooling as the rest of the world is trying to work its way to tackling climate change."
A gobsmacked Greens Leader Bob Brown said Mr Abbott's comments would alienate conservatives. "In a world where both big and small business understand the science of climate change and the need for appropriate action," Senator Brown said.
It comes as Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt has said tackling climate change would come at a cost. Mr Abbott has guaranteed there will not be any taxes, either "by stealth" or otherwise to mitigate the problem. "There are no cost-free options, but there are dramatically lower cost options," Mr Hunt said. "The Government picked the highest cost of all the major mechanisms (through its carbon pollution reduction scheme)."
SOURCE
Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Whooosh!
There is so much being written about climate at the moment that it is difficult to know what to put up. One thing I am NOT putting up is any of the "defenses" by the IPCC and others in answer to "ClimateGate". Why? Because I have yet to find ONE such defence that mentions a single scientific fact. All the defences are solely ad hominem. They say that something is right because of who said it. Such arguments are among the classic informal fallacies of logic and deserve no respect from anybody at any time. So on to some more factual reports and commentaries -- JR
More acidic oceans DON'T dissolve shellfish
Big blow to a big scare. Another simple theory does not survive an encounter with reality
In a striking finding that raises new questions about carbon dioxide's (CO2) impact on marine life, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists report that some shell-building creatures -- such as crabs, shrimp and lobsters -- unexpectedly build more shell when exposed to ocean acidification caused by elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).
Because excess CO2 dissolves in the ocean -- causing it to "acidify" -- researchers have been concerned about the ability of certain organisms to maintain the strength of their shells. Carbon dioxide is known to trigger a process that reduces the abundance of carbonate ions in seawater -- one of the primary materials that marine organisms use to build their calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. The concern is that this process will trigger a weakening and decline in the shells of some species and, in the long term, upset the balance of the ocean ecosystem.
But in a study published in the Dec. 1 issue of Geology, a team led by former WHOI postdoctoral researcher Justin B. Ries found that seven of the 18 shelled species they observed actually built more shell when exposed to varying levels of increased acidification. This may be because the total amount of dissolved inorganic carbon available to them is actually increased when the ocean becomes more acidic, even though the concentration of carbonate ions is decreased.
"Most likely the organisms that responded positively were somehow able to manipulate…dissolved inorganic carbon in the fluid from which they precipitated their skeleton in a way that was beneficial to them," said Ries, now an assistant professor in marine sciences at the University of North Carolina. "They were somehow able to manipulate CO2…to build their skeletons."
Organisms displaying such improvement also included calcifying red and green algae, limpets and temperate urchins. Mussels showed no effect.
"We were surprised that some organisms didn't behave in the way we expected under elevated CO2," said Anne L. Cohen, a research specialist at WHOI and one of the study's co-authors. "What was really interesting was that some of the creatures, the coral, the hard clam and the lobster, for example, didn't seem to care about CO2 until it was higher than about 1,000 parts per million [ppm]." Current atmospheric CO2 levels are about 380 ppm, she said. Above this level, calcification was reduced in the coral and the hard clam, but elevated in the lobster
The "take-home message, " says Cohen, is that "we can't assume that elevated CO2 causes a proportionate decline in calcification of all calcifying organisms." WHOI and the National Science Foundation funded the work.
More HERE (The rest of the article is a collection of ad hoc theories designed to rescue something for global warming. The factual bit is above)
Dutch study: Gore Wrong on Snows of Kilimanjaro
Newspapers and news sites in the Netherlands today extensively broke the news of the findings of a research team led by Professor Jaap Sinninghe Damste — a leading molecular paleontologist at Utrecht University and winner of the prestigious Spinoza Prize — about the melting icecap of the Kilimanjaro, the African mountain that became a symbol of anthropogenic global warming.
Professor Sinninghe Damste’s research, as discussed on the site of the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (DOSR) — a governmental body — shows that the icecap of Kilimanjaro was not the result of cold air but of large amounts of precipitation which fell at the beginning of the Holocene period, about 11,000 years ago.
The melting and freezing of moisture on top of Kilimanjaro appears to be part of “a natural process of dry and wet periods.” The present melting is not the result of “environmental damage caused by man.”
Professor Damste studied organic biomarker molecules in the sediment record of Lake Challa, near Mount Kilimanjaro, and reconstructed the changes and intensity of precipitation in this part of Africa over the last 25,000 years. They observed an 11,500 year cycle of intense monsoon precipitation. In the dry period between 12,800 and 11,500 years ago, Kilimanjaro was ice-free. At the end of this period, a dramatic climate change from very dry to very wet took place — driven by changes in solar radiation — resulting in the creation of an icecap. At the moment, this part of Africa seems to be at the end of a similar dry period, resulting in the disappearance of the famous icecap.
DOSR calls Al Gore’s iconic use of the melting cap of Kilimanjaro “unfortunate” — since it now seems to be mainly the result of “natural climate variations.”
The journal Nature published the highly technical article by Professor Sinninghe Damste’s team. The website of Elsevier magazine — the Netherlands’ most circulated political weekly — broke the news as follows: “Dutchman discredits Al Gore’s climate evidence.”
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Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here
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