Delusional George: Monbiot proclaims his responsibility to uphold the highest standards of science -- the scientists having failed to do so

At first I thought it
now I know it
George Monbiot
is an idiot.

In all the talk about the stolen emails, I have yet to see evidence that any of the journal publications of Phil Jones and colleagues are technically fraudulent.

Sure, data were massaged. Sure, questionable judgements were made. But as far as the integrity of the publications is concerned, the only issue for the scientific community is whether the handling of data was consistent with the published description of methods, theory, etc., and there appears to be absolutely no evidence that it was not.

As to whether the data handling was appropriate, that is another matter. But it is not something to be resolved by Internet chitchat or by the reviled Pat Michaels or other talking heads on CNN of Fox News. It is a question that the scientific community must decide on the basis of evidence and discussion presented in the peer-reviewed literature.

The emails show that Prof. Jones and associates were partisan in reviewing the work of peers whose ideas differed from their own. But no one who participates in process of reviewing and editing journal articles is without bias: for which reason the scientific literature is highly flawed. Nevertheless, the process of peer review is generally believed to be the best method of vetting the literature that the scientific community has yet come up with.

Monbiot's repeated calls for Prof. Jones' resignation despite feeling "desperately sorry for him" are, therefore, ridiculous and contemptible.

None of which alters my suspicion that some of the methods and models used to measure and predict climate change are highly questionable. With luck, therefore, the current debate will encourage a new look at the analysis of global temperature trends over the last hundred years or so, with particular attention to the urban heat island effect and other potential artifacts that I discussed with Prof. Jones in an email correspondence many years ago, and which Kevin Trenberth raised in one of the most recent of the stolen emails.

Much more important, though, is the analysis of possible long-term, climatic consequences of human influences on the composition of the atmosphere (not just carbon dioxide but water vapor, black carbon or soot, sulfate particles, and other aerosols, methane, fluorocarbons, etc.), and the surface properties (albedo) of the earth. This is the field of climate modeling, and the stolen emails tell little if anything about this.

Monbiot claim that as a leader among "climate rationalists" he will "uphold the highest standards of science" is simply delusional. George Monbiot was evidently until now totally unaware of the kind of intellectual world in which Prof. Jones operated. How, then, can he presume to uphold standards of any kind within that world?

George simply doesn't know what is going on and should stop pontificating about and publishing alarmist books on climate change research, a subject about which he is obviously largely ignorant.

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Understanding Britain's inquiry into the Blair-Bush conspiracy to murder Iraqis

Gordon Brown, once again plumbing his inexhaustible depths of moral and political cowardice, has made it clear that he has no intention of appearing before the hearing.

He would rather maintain the pretence that he harboured deep reservations about the war than admit to the truth that he was as gung-ho as Tony Blair and sent his henchmen to twist the arms of reluctant Labour backbenchers into supporting the invasion. Evidence of his refusal to fund the Armed Forces properly, denying them vital equipment which could have saved countless lives, will be suppressed.

Brown would sooner apologise for matters which are nothing to do with him, such as the deportation of children to Australia before he was born, than ever admit culpability for his own actions. ...

Camilla condemns violent gangster rap videos

UK makes sex education compulsory for five-year-olds

Top Oz scientists wanted to poison Asians

What's different today is the elite want to poison everybody.

The Bush-Blair conspiracy to murder Iraqis

UK diplomat questions post of Jews on Iraq panel

A British diplomat has criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK's Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

...Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war.

"It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available," he added. "Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced."

Tony Blair's lies fooled his own miltary commanders in Iraq, exposing troops to chaos and danger

... troops went into action with only five bullets each. Others had to deploy to war on civilian airlines, taking their equipment as hand luggage. Some troops had weapons confiscated by airport security...

Hey, gimme my gun back. We're here to kill ya.

Brit Iraq commander complained US military "treated us as badly as if were were Portuguese"

But they consider Portuguese a notch above Iraqis.

Swine flu vaccine causing severe side effects in Canada

America's mercenary war in Pakistan

How the ruling elite outsourced the British population

The Ethnic Cleansing of Britain

Russia to Buy Canadian Dollars, Mulls More Currencies

U.S House Prices: Real Prices, Price-to-Rent, and Price-to-Income

Verification of man-made global warming from New Zealand!

New Zealand experiences coldest October in half a century

Mish: Marc Faber Sees War Against an Invented Enemy and a Big Financial Bust

Intelligence services 'fully aware' and 'grateful' that Pakistan was torturing UK terror suspects, claims report

Canadian whistleblower's warnings on detainee torture reached Minister's office

Mr. Colvin's latest revelation comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched a fresh attack on his credibility and e-mails obtained by The Globe and Mail demonstrate how worried Ottawa was in 2007 about drawing attention to fixes it was making to detainee-transfer arrangements.

The notion that the Afghan security service would not torture detainees handed to them by Canadian forces seems bizarre.

The notion that the Government of Canada gives a damn about what the Afghan Security services do to detainees handed to them by Canadian forces seems equally bizarre.

Canada is in Afghanistan as sidekick to the American Empire. Empire and torture go together like -- well I leave it to your imagination.

As Dick Cheney said referring to "enhanced" interrogation "It's a no brainer." It's certainly a "no brainer" if your a psychopath, and if between one and four percent of the male population is psycho, what percent do you think is psycho in the top ranks of government and the military?

In a supposed democracy, where some concessions must be made to the humanity of the electorate, it will obviously be a matter of reflex for the government and military brass to deny all knowledge of torture.

If a Mr. Colville or an Ambassador Murray insists on making evidence of torture public, naturally they will face a barrage of abuse intended to bury the allegations.

That the abuse, in Mr. Colville's case, comes directly from the Prime Minister and the former head of Canadian armed forces General Rick Killyer, only confirms the strength of Mr. Colville's evidence.

Under the circumstances, one can only assume that in the coming days and weeks Mr. Colville's sanity will be questioned, his integrity will be impugned, his competence will be denied and he will be drummed out of the public service, for which, clearly, he is temperamentally ill-suited.

And to that, all I can add is: good on you Mr. Colville.

Bam continues Gallup off into the sunset

George Monbiot on the leaked climate warming emails

The astonishing thing about George Monbiot is that he is always wrong, even when he's admitting he's wrong.

"It's no use pretending this isn't a major blow." he says concerning "the emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia." These private communications, he says, "could scarcely be more damaging."

"A blow", "damaging", a blow to whom, damaging to whom? A damaging blow to folks like George apparently, who've been trying for years to convince us that the argument about global warming is over and that the skeptics are finished.

But no one is interested in the preservation of George's self esteem. The only significant issue, and the only possible justification for delving into someone else's email, is whether the correspondence bears on the validity of the science they discuss.

I don't see that they do. They show bias, they show partisanship, they show a group of scientists convinced of the correctness of their hypothesis, they show hostility to critics. But which group of scientists does George know who do not show most if not all of these characteristics?

For the scientific community, the only important issue is whether the emails demonstrate fraud. Specifically: do they show that what the correspondents published in the peer-reviewed literature was manipulated or selected in ways that could not have been inferred from the published account.

Exerpts from the correspondence that I have seen, suggest that a positive answer is unlikely. But in any case, the argument will be above George's head: he should worry about something else and stop muddying the water.

As for George's demand that Prof. Jones resign his chair, this might work out well if George will resign his Guardian post to make way for Phil Jones. At least, then, the Guardian would have a qualified weather correspondent.

Eric Walberg: Canada's Guantanimo

Canada promoting democracy -- secretly: 'The Halifax "war conference"

During his prepared remarks, Peter MacKay referred to this format as "a chance where people can speak openly, honestly, among friends," albeit largely outside of public scrutiny. Contrary to its undemocratic overtones, MacKay said that he feels the conference is "an example of democracy promotion, having an international forum such as this...talking about issues that relate to the democracies of the world."

Ha ha, he can "speak openly and honestly" he tells us ony "outside of public scrutiny."

What a damn fool we have for a Government Minister.

Stephen M. Walt: They hate us because we occupy their country

The ultimate privatization: Blackwater waging secret war in Pakistan

Britain's bank bail-out may have broken world trade rules

Trade rules exist to prevent governments bailing out little people, you know, folks who make shoes and shirts or auto parts and software. When the people who own the system are at risk, obviously the system will not prevent them looting the masses to save their skins.

Craig Murray: UK Iraq war inquiry -- the first big lie

Paul Craig Roberts: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's Trial Will Convict All Americans

Originally, according to the US government, Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11. To get bin Laden is the excuse given for the US invasion of Afghanistan, which set up the invasion of Iraq. But after eight years of total failure to catch Osama bin Laden, it became absolutely necessary to convict some culprit, because the 9/11 Truth Movement is becoming too strong.

... The outcome of Mohammed's trial will complete the transformation of the US legal system from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state. Feige writes that Mohammed's statements obtained by torture will not be suppressed, that witnesses against him will not be produced ("national security"), that documents that compromise the prosecution will be redacted. At each stage of Mohammed's appeals process, higher counts will enshrine into legal precedents the denial of the Constitutional right to a speedy trial, thus enshrining indefinite detention, the denial of the right against damning pretrial publicity, thus allowing demonization prior to trial, and the denial of the right to have witnesses and documents produced, thus eviscerating a defendant's rights to exculpatory evidence and to confront adverse witnesses, The twisted logic necessary to disentangle Mohammed's torture from his confession will also be upheld and will "provide a blueprint for the government, giving them the prize they've been after all this time -- a legal way both to torture and to prosecute."

It took Hitler a while to corrupt the German courts. Hitler first had to create new courts, like President George W. Bush's military tribunals, that did not require evidence, using in place of evidence hearsay, secret charges, and self-incrimination obtained by torture.

Every American should be concerned that the Obama administration has decided to use Mohammed's trial to complete the corruption of the American court system.

When Mohammed's trial is over, an American Joe Stalin or Adolf Hitler will be able to convict America's Founding Fathers on charges of treason and terrorism. No one will be safe.

Murray Dobbin: Is your elected MP trying to find grounds on which to brand you an anti-Semite?

Here are the members of the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism:

Scott Reid, Mario Silva, Luc Desnoyers, Bob Rae, Raymonde Folco, David Sweet, Jerahmiel S. Grafstein, Eve-Mary Thai Thi Lac, Candice Hoeppner, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, Pat Martin, Irwin Cotler, Jason Kenney, Carolyn Bennett, Peter Kent, Joyce Murray, Lois Brown, Anita Neville, Luc Desnoyers, David Sweet, Ken Dryden, Rick Dykstra, Tim Uppal, Raymonde Folco, Hedy Fry, Jeff Watson, Randy Hoback.

Gilad Atzmon: Why isn't Alan Dershowitz in jail?

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

Only a fool would ask the question.

Alleged shenanigans among a particular group of scientists have no bearing on whether there is, or is not, a human effect on the climate.

Whether there is currently conclusive evidence of human induced climate warming is another matter. But not a very important one, since the real question is whether there is likely to be significant human induced climate warming in the next hundred years or so.

To answer that question we need valid climate models. And, at best, the models will only predict the future with a degree, possibly a very large degree, of uncertainty.

The conduct of a few scientists gathering temperature data has no bearing on the validity of the climate models that exist or are under development.

Temperature anomalies: The US is not the world

And now, Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Renaissance and Enlightenment 'thinking'

If you're going to fudge your results, the important thing is to do so in support of the right idea. However questionable his methods, Newton was vindicated by the return of Halley's comet in the Year 1758.

Prejudiced or not, will the global warming theorists be vindicated by events?

Given the recent spectacular failure of most economic models, there seems little reason to trust the even more complex climate models, which must forecast events not twelve months or a couple of years hence, but 50 or 100 years into the future.

This is not to say the climate modelling is futile if done intelligently and with integrity.

As previously noted:

Although they will never be exact, and may never be even approximately correct, the models are, nevertheless, useful, and even worth the billions they have cost, because they provide a perspective on what may happen. They allow anticipation of events based on the best calculations of some clever people who have spent decades on the task.

And, as noted here:

... the problems that bedevil predictions of climate warming, apply with equal force to the arguments of those who say we can radically alter the composition of the Earth's atmosphere and be confident that nothing bad will happen.

They don't know what the future holds. No one knows. No one could know.

Which means that only a damn fool or a scoundrel would fail to act to limit the manifestly large impacts of human activity on a climate system we do not fully understand and which may respond to our actions in ways devastating to mankind.

Climate change science: what to do about negative squares!

Alleged CRU Email questions validity of reported land surface temperature increase

From: Tom Wigley To: Phil Jones
Subject: LAND vs OCEAN
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:36:15 -0700

We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming -- and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important.

----
Many years ago, while I was engaged in developing the naturalSCIENCE Web site, I emailed Prof Jones to ask whether his data on land warming could be attributed at least in part to the urban heat island effect or other potential sources of bias (e.g., the shrinking skyling effect). In his response he dismissed these concerns (unfortunately, the correspondence is not included in the batch of hijacked files and my own record has long since been deleted).

Now, an emerging discrepancy between land and ocean temperature trends lends support to the assumption of bias in the land warming data. Had possible sources of bias been investigated when the issue was first raised, the need to deal with the question now, at what seems an awkward time, would not have arisen.

John Daly, whose recent death gave some cause for cheer, was among the first to warn of possible systematic error in the ground temperature warming data.

Craig Murray: The Evil of torturing innocent people to obtain a false confession in support of a false narrative

But then as "Talib" notes in a comment:

I would like torture Straw man [the (Dis)honorable Jack Straw, U.K. (In)Justice Minister] please. Or other guy, guy who stop traffic.

You see, in my country drone attacks very bad. Very very bad. Under torture, Western officials reveal details future drone attacks. Or whereabouts other officials who know details future drone attacks. And then my cousin's wedding safe.

I look long for justification torture in Sacred Texts, in Marx, everywhere. But find nothing. Now, thanks to Western Moral Philosophers, I know torture is God-given right. Thank you, thank you.

Ticking Bomb -- I like it. Haha.

Microsoft in discussion with Wrinkly Rupe over payment to remove content from Google

Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism, the age-old cry of anti-Semitism

And why should anyone care?

It's not like people are smashing windows of Jewish-owned stores and burning synagogues in Berlin.

When criticism of Israeli war crimes raises yelps of anti-Semitism, or when criticism of Israeli purchase of influence with democratically elected representatives in Britain or elsewhere raises yelps of anti-Semitism, what we hear is slanderous abuse intended to prevent free speech.

Yet why should all the world put the Jewish interest ahead of its own? Why are Jewish interests beyond criticism?

Because of the Holocaust, did you say?

Which one?

The killing of 20 million Russian and Ukrainian Christians, largely the work of Stalin's Jews?

Not that one, you say?

Or Mao's slaughter of tens of millions of Chinese?

Oh, no need care about them, you say?

You mean the Jewish Holocaust?

Ha, when that happened my father was serving as a volunteer in the RAF fighting the Nazis. So I'am sorry, but I feel absolutely no guilt about the Jewish Holocaust, and see no reason why it should limit my freedom of speech.

The Holocaust of European Jews, which occurred in the aftermath of World Jewry's declaration of war against Germany, was a great crime. But it is history now, and history is a catalogue of great crimes, including the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Jews in times both ancient and modern.

Norman Finkelstein: Why not apply the rules of international law to Israel?

John Pilger on false charges of anti-Semitism

Major Hasan Of Fort Hood: A Patsy In A Drill Gone Live?

Alan McKinnon: Why we fight - the nature of modern imperialism

Teresa Forcasdes, MD, PhD: The crimes and abuses of the pharmaceutical industry (36-page PDF)

Joseph Mercola: Exposing the swine flu scam

MAKING SURE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH IS REAL SCIENCE, NOT POLITICS

Scientists' emails suggest that climate warming data were fudged

These emails provide no evidence of scientific fraud. However, they suggest a powerful bias among some climate researchers in the assessment of both data and ideas. Such bias can be as conducive to error as outright fraud, and stems from the same cause: a fixed preconception of what is to be discovered -- in this case, the preconception being that rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will lead to an inexorable rise in global temperature.

Yet such a preconception is quite unreasonable. Yes, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps some outgoing infra-red radiation, but the effect is already half-way to saturation and there are many other so called "forcings" that have impacts of comparable magnitude, some positive some negative. Black carbon particles, or soot, for example, mainly from combustion of diesel oil, absorb sunlight and raise the temperature; sulfate particles, which are white, and are produced mainly by burning sulfur-laden coal, reflect sunlight and lower the temperature. Deforestation, probably has a net cooling effect despite the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide that it causes, because trees are highly efficient (up to 99%) at trapping incident solar radiation and transferring that energy as heat (sensible or latent) to the trophosphere. Then there is water, which as vapor, is not only the most important "greenhouse gas" but, in the form of cloud, can either trap outgoing infra-red radiation or reflect incoming solar radiation, depending on cloud height, time of day and many other factors.

Previously, I have argued that scientific fraud rarely has significant consequences for science. However, bad science, whether fraudulent or merely biased by preconceived notions of the "correct" result can have massive social consequences, from wars based on false interpretation of intelligence data, to hugely expensive investment in bad research with worthy social goals (e.g., the search for a cure for AIDS), or the restructuring of the world economy to prevent a falsely predicted catastrophe (e.g., as a result of climate change).

Climate change research has been subject to political manipulation from the outset, with consequent social costs in the form of both bad research and bad economic policy.

Climate change research is important. Better science in this field could be assured by a sharp cut in funding, say, 90%, with what remains -- still amounting to $billions, going only to those picked for their unquestionable integrity, relevant expertise and exceptional competence.

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Perfidious Albion: Britain Plots with Taliban Against Pakistan

Tony Blair looks haunted - with good reason

The former Prime Minister had been intriguing and plotting to be appointed European president ever since he left No 10 more than two years ago.

There are several reasons why he so desperately wanted the job, but perhaps the main one concerns the immunity from prosecution seemingly enjoyed by all politicians in high office. ...

Germany warns low US interest rates create risk of new asset bubbles

Spanke Bernanke.

Poll: Bam below 50%

Galluping into the sunset.

If the Earth had rings

But it doesn't. But still, if it did! Well, O.K. It's certainly a clever animation accompanied by a lovely rendition of Ave Maria.

You have two cows: Political science for dummies

Sentence first, verdict afterwards: Obama Assures Public KSM Will Be Convicted and Executed

HOW NEW LABOUR RE-ENGINEERED THE BRITISH NATION FOR ELECTORAL ADVANTAGE

EARLIER LINKS ...