12 Facts about Global Climate Change That You Won’t Read in the Popular Press

A nice and succinct post from Joseph D’Aleo on CO2 and climate change... Well worth a read.

Plain Stupid Plane Stupid

Who says that the days of radical political action are over? Dan Glass, a member of Plane Stupid, really gets radical when he glues himself to Gordon Brown's jacket. Wow! Down at indymedia there are virtual pats on the back all round... That's really radical, Dan. There you are in Downing Street to pick up an award for 'your protesting work' when you whip out the super glue and there you are, stuck to Gordon's pin stripe.

Yep, you read that right. Pick up an award. That's how radical and anti-establishment environmental protest is these days. How these people can imagine that they are fighting the establishment is beyond me. They are the establishment, lined up behind New Labour, New Tories, Lib Dems and the rest.

Global Warming Swindle - Ofcom ruling

Nice to see that the media's warmist frenzy is in full flow following the Ofcom ruling on 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. The Guardian even rolled out the former chair of the IPCC to comment that Ofcom hadn't gone far enough. Did he, or the rest of the media warmists, make similar comments when Al Gore's propagandist film was found guilty of more serious charges in court? No, I think not. Where Gore's film contains factual inaccuracies and lies, Swindle did no more than mislead some of the interviewees.

This is a huge difference, of course. Particularly when Al Gore's film gets shown to school kids up and down the country, day in and day out. My own kids report that the Gore film was not prefixed with the required warning about it being propaganda. Can you imagine the out-cry should Swindle get similar screenings in schools?

According to warmists, Swindle must count as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever, seeing as how it has been blamed for the skepticism of the majority of Britons when it comes to global warming. I suppose that's easier for warmists to accept than the alternative, which is that no amount of preaching and moralising can hide the paucity of evidence and lack of theory when it comes to climate change.

Brown Goes Green

Gordon Brown wrested the mantle of global leader from the rest of the G8 by urging people to eat their greens. Brown, with one eye on domestic concerns and the success of David 'Green Blue' Cameron, suggested that world problems could be tackled head on by eating a plate of spinach or spring greens. 'It's the only way,' he told the world's press.

Prime Minister Brown's outburst stunned world leaders. Nicolas Sarkozy has privately admitted that he likes tucking into curly kale, but feels compelled to deny this in case it is seen as too neo-liberal by the French public. George Bush, meanwhile, agreed that he shares his father's well-known dislike of broccoli, but that he does like to have some lettuce with his burgers.

In the UK the Tory party has been thrown into disarray. With rising inflation, a collapsing housing market and an epidemic of street crime they had taken their eye of the ball. David Cameron is reported to be furious with newspaper reports that he is a pak choi man. 'Yes,' he admitted, 'I may have had some pak choi as a student, but I didn't inhale.'

Sarkozy vs. Mandelson

The full text of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's comments on the EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson:

'It is an outrage zat Europe is represented by zis man. 'Ee is not a real man. No, Monsieur, Mandelson is not married to a beautiful and sophisticated ex-model like I am. 'Ee is a bandit de fess, no? Such a man 'as no feeling for the realite of Europe. 'Ee does not understand ze soul of Europe. For us Europe 'ees about protection of our farmers, our fisherman and our lorry drivers. For us Europe is about defending our way of life: ze annual burning of British tucks loaded wiz your rotten lamb, selling you our undrinkable wine and keeping ze good stuff for ourselves and most of all blockading our ports to screw your 'olidays. All of zis, Mandelson ignores. When I am President of Europe, all zis will change...'

Labour Deeply Disappointed With Henley Result

Jock McJock, a spokesperson for the Labour Party, has admitted that the Party and the Government are deeply disappointed by the result of the Henley by-election. 'We are just gutted to be in fifth place. Behind the Greens and the BNP,' he said. 'After all that work we still didn't come in last. What more do we have to do?'

His comments were echoed by Mildred Dimkins-Simkins, an advisor to Gordon Brown. 'We've got good money riding on this at Ladbrokes,' she confessed. 'If we can come last then we've got a big payoff coming.'

Arnold Reichstag of the BNP outlined what he believed the Labour strategy was. 'They're doing their best to make themselves unelectable. It seems to be the aim to make even us more electable, and it's working. Just take a look at the London elections where they did everything they could to get one or two members into the Assembly. Brilliant.'

An unnamed source at Labour Headquarters has suggested that future policy announcements will include a plan to kill off first-born children, price cars off the road and reduce the number of successful mortgage applications to one a year.

Dr James Hansen Speaks Out

NASA's Dr James Hansen, the man who made headlines world wide 20 years ago when he brought the subject of man-made global warming to public notice, has again hit out against those who deny the reality of the problem. 'What is it with these people?' he demanded. 'Can't they see that there's a real problem here? The world is warming so fast that soon we'll all be dead. Twenty years ago I said we had 20 years left, well, that's still true. Unless my funding is increased drastically I won't be able to carry on warning the world of danger.'

The ever-controversial Dr Hansen hit out at his critics. 'They've tried to censor me before, and they're trying to do it now,' he announced to the mass of journalists at his 23rd press conference of the day. 'This message has to get through,' he affirmed.

Dr Hansen had a number of radical ideas for raising the profile of the issue still further. Firstly he suggested that all climate change deniers be forced to wear a yellow star for easy identification. Secondly climate change deniers should be sterilised so that they could not breed. Possibly, he suggested, deniers could be used as an energy source - though he did worry about how much CO2 they would emit. Thirdly he suggested that young children should be forced to watch as their pets are boiled alive to illustrate what will happen to the world should his funding not grow exponentially during the next few years.

Finally Dr Hansen described attempts to undermine his work as criminally motivated. 'My work has stood scrutiny. No matter how many times I look at it I think it's fine. Anyone who disagrees is a fool or a liar motivated by nothing but personal greed and ambition.'

British University Announces Degree In Walking And Chewing Gum

A top British academic institution, the University of Trumpton, has announced the world's first honours degree in Walking and Chewing Gum. Dr Irma Dillo, Pro Vice Chancellor and a key advisor to the government, hailed the new course. 'Nowhere else in the world can students study walking and chewing gum to such a high level,' she announced. 'Once again we are at the forefront of academic innovation and creativity.'

The course follows a recent government initiative that aims to have 50% of school leavers able to walk and chew gum at the same time, even if only at the most basic level. Leading educationalists have attacked the plan as being too ambitious. Dr Crispin Crispin-Woods voiced widespread fears that the new course would prove too taxing for many school leavers. 'This is typical of an education system that is insufficiently diverse,' he said. 'Walking, yes, chewing gum, yes. But both at the same time? And where are the NHS resources to tackle the inevitable rise in accidents and injuries as young people attempt to chew gun while taking their first few steps? It's criminal.'

Opposition spokesman gave the new course a cautious welcome. 'Of course we're in favour of our children leaving university with a solid degree in Walking and Chewing Gum,' Tim Etonian told the Times Educational Supplement, 'but we think that going for a 50% target is the wrong way to go. Not everyone needs to walk and chew gum at the same time.'

The government, however, insists that the ability to talk and chew gum is essential if Britain is to remain a competitive economic power. A spokesperson from the Department of Education and Science was quoted as saying 'Industry is starved of people with skills in this area.'

Dr Irma Dillo outlined some of the key areas of study: gum and climate change, walking and obesity, diversity and different flavours of gum. 'The climate change agenda is in an implicit part of the course,' she stated.

The new course was announced on the same day that Trumpton University announced the closure of its Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics degrees.

10p Tax Band

Once more the Progressive Contrarian unearths the minutes of a recent meeting at 10 Downing St:

---

PM: 'Ah, Darling, there you are.'

Chancellor: 'Yes, PM. I am.'

PM: 'What's that, laddie?'

Chancellor: 'I am, PM. You said, "there you are", and I agreed and said "yes, PM, I am."'

PM: 'Enough of your wittering, Darling. We have a problem.'

Chancellor: 'Which one, PM?'

PM: 'What are you saying, Darling?'

Chancellor; 'Nothing, sir. A problem you said.'

PM: 'It's your budget. You've mishandled things, haven't you, laddie?'

Chancellor: 'But you said it was fine, I'd deciphered all the scribbles on the back of your envelope and...'

PM: 'Who delivered the budget, Darling?'

Chancellor: 'I did, PM. Sorry.'

PM: 'In cutting the 10p tax band you've made life very difficult for the most vulnerable members of society.'

Chancellor: 'The Parliamentary Labour Party?'

PM: 'Precisely. And rewarded those who deserve it the least.'

Chancellor: 'The Opposition?'

PM: 'Correct. Now, what what do you propose to do about it, laddie?'

Chancellor: 'Exactly what you tell, me, PM.'

PM: 'Good boy.'

Chancellor: 'But I told people I couldn't re-write the budget...'

PM: 'But you're not, are you?'

Chancellor: 'Technically, I suppose not. How can I be re-writing something I didn't write in the first place?'

PM: 'Well, laddie, that's one way of putting it...'

Chancellor: 'But the tax rebate is going to cost us billions, PM. Isn't that a lot of money to pay for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election? That's an awful lot of money for one MP.'

PM: 'Don't be silly, boy. It's not for one MP, it's for all of the ungrateful buggers. Ask them how much they think we should pay to keep them in their seats...'

Desalinating Livingstone

Way back in May 2006 I blogged about Ken Livingstone's refusal to allow a desalination plant to go ahead in London on the grounds that it wasn't carbon neutral. Now it seems that new Mayor, Boris Johnson, has over-turned that decision. That's a good move for London. Those of us in London were 'warned' that Johnson is a closet global warming skeptic. Personally I'd like to think that this was a factor in his win. But he's a politician and he'll tow the party line, and Cameron is a definite warmist. Perhaps we can hope that Johnson will pick up on the increasingly skeptical mood to finally stand up and declare the whole warmist enterprise dead. But I'm not holding my breath. For the moment, warmism remains the dominant political ideology of all the major political parties in the West.

It's about time he had some good ol' fashioned development (yup, that's development without the obligatory sustainable prefix).

Ends and Means

Numerous discussions with true believers in global warming have often ended with a rather petulant 'even if man-made global warming isn't true, it will have positive spin-offs in the end...' So, having failed to prove a case with any hard science the warmists end up reverting to an 'end justifying the means' argument. And of course they've got a long list of supposed benefits to justify Kyoto-like proposals to cut CO2 emissions. These include:

• Moving away from 'big oil'
• People buying local produce
• More emphasis on 'sustainability'
• Forcing people to think more about Nature

Well, what do we see already resulting from CO2 reduction policies (such as the EU renewal fuels policies):

• Food riots
• Increasing food prices
• Increased fuel poverty
• Environmental problems in the rush to plant bio-fuel crops
• A rush towards more nuclear power generation
• Increasingly authoritarian plans from governments and bodies such as the EU

It's especially ironic of course that the arch-demon of warming mythology (George Bush), is in part to blame for all of this by pandering to environmentalism. The subsidies to farmers for producing bio-fuel crops are seriously distorting things. On this one at least, Fidel Castro is right.

All of this is evidence, if evidence is required, that the logic of global warmism will ultimately hurt those supposedly most at risk from higher temperatures - the poor, both in the UK and the rest of the world.

But hey, at least Al Gore will continue to rake it in.

It's the weather, stupid

While AGW (anthropogenic global warming) advocates like to point out that extended cold weather episodes (like those afflicting huge chunks of the globe) are just weather and not climate, there's also no shortage of them seizing every severe weather episode as evidence of global warming (or climate chaos as some of them prefer to refer to it). This was the case in the UK with last summer's severe floods. Warmists were happy to pin the blame on CO2-induced climate change.

Of course the research suggests that this isn't the case. As reported by the BBC: The UK's summer floods of 2007 were a freak event unrelated to global climate change, according to a report from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

How many people will take notice of this? In the same way that the European heatwave in 1998 is now known not to have been due to global warming but a consequence of the la Nina event that year, it's still firmly embedded in the popular consciousness as being caused by CO2. It's a regretable part of human nature that we remember the initial accusation and not the subsequent 'not guilty' finding. Of course that plays well for climate alarmists everywhere...

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change

Not that you would have seen much mention of this in our UK media... Unlike the fuss made about warmist conference and declarations.

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change

"Global warming" is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed 'consensus' among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity's real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend --

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as "An Inconvenient Truth."

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008

Not at all funny

I must admit to sneaking several looks during the day yesterday - and smiling each time that I saw that electricity usages was marginally higher than normal during the UK's E-Day (Energy Saving Day).

How are you lot going to save the planet (© Al Gore Inc.) when you can't even turn off a few lights...

Test of Britishness

The applicant for British Citizenship must be able to:

Demonstrate a clear understanding of the terms: rat-arsed, bladdered, wankered, smashed. Additionally the applicant must undergo a practical test in order to demonstrate that he or she is able to achieve one of these states (and to show a true understanding of the phrase ‘responsible drinking’).

The applicant must undergo some activity that provides value to the community at large. Suggested activities include: canvassing for the Labour Party, joining the Labour Party, voting for the Labour Party.

The applicant must undertake to understand fully the science of climate change and global warming. Understanding of the consensus is essential. Additionally the applicant must be 100% in favour of other people cutting back on their life-styles for the good of the planet.

The applicant must be able to show an understanding of true British values by being able to slag off in detail the England manager, the England team and the wives/girlfriends of members of the England team.

Finally, a written test of English must also be taken. The exam will be to A level standard, and therefore applicants who show any sign of grasping grammar, spelling or punctuation will be heavily penalised.

Phillip Pullman - Miserabilist

And for a very late kick-off for 2008, here's a nice story from those spiky bastards over at the Register. So, Pullman joins the ranks of the misanthropic miserabilists who want to save humanity from itself - all for the good of the planet of course...

Unfortunately, Pullman's line in reasoning (or lack of), seems to be increasingly common even as the evidence continues to point away from CO2 as the big, bad driver of climate change.