Unfortunately, some misuse science. Some of their intentions, are far from benevolent. They see science as a mechanism for political power and control. There is great danger from those who would use science for political control over us.

How do they do this? They instill, and then continuously magnify, fear. Fear is the most effective instrument of totalitarian control.

Chet Richards, physicist,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/science_in_an_age_of_fear.html

Thursday 21 October 2010

Contempt for Parliament - an effect or an enabler of CO2 alarmism?

A Lord Marland disgraces the House of Lords with his blatant contempt for a fellow peer.  But it is a sign not merely of yobbishness on his part, but of the absurdity and indefensibility of the Climate Change Act.  It is out of the question that it can be complied with, and this particular exchange merely serves, as did the climategate revelations, to reveal the low calibre of some of those who create, or collaborate with, alarm about CO2 in the atmosphere.  This vacuity at government level is unsettling but not surprising - there being so little substance to the case for such alarm. An alarm that is now part of the curriculum in our schools.  
(Photo: http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/about/lord_marland/lord_marland.aspx)

Extract from the proceedings of the House of Lords, 20th October 2010
(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/101020-0001.htm#10102041000398)

Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the chairman of the Government’s own Green Investment Bank commission has authoritatively stated that the cost of meeting our current carbon reduction commitments in this country is somewhere between £800 billion and £1 trillion? Does he not agree that, with the best will in the world, this mind-boggling cost cannot be justified except in the context of a binding global carbon reduction agreement? Therefore, in the absence of such an agreement being secured at Cancun, does he not agree that it is only commonsense to suspend the Climate Change Act until such time as a binding global agreement is secured?
Lord Marland: My Lords, when I bumped into my noble friend in the Corridor and he said that he was catching the train to York I was rather relieved. Sadly, he will be catching a slightly later train than I was hoping for. I have now forgotten entirely what his question was.

Hat-tip: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/10/21/lord-marland-shames-parliament.html

Monday 18 October 2010

Food for thought: Lord Monckton on Canute, Communism, Climate, and Conspiracies

Greenpeace and communism.  Maurice Strong and world government. Climate scientists suborned and suborning.  And more.  Well worth an hour of your time, and if  you are a teacher or in educational administration or leadership, food for thought as you reflect on whether you want to be part of the deliberate scaring and misleading of the young about what we know and don't know about climate variation.


This is part 1 of a 5 part set of YouTube videos capturing an  interview/presentation with Lord Monckton published by Alex Jones on Prisonplanet.tv.  The links to the entire set are here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHyMYEzRyf8 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUUcb36a_4I 


Further credits: http://www.infowars.com/

Now this broadcaster, Alex Jones and his site are new to me.  He seems to be attacked by the establishment as a  'right-wing conspiracy site', and of course as such any posting using his materials will risk being attacked as well.  Well, so be it.  My examination of his site suggests to me that he is democratic, libertarian, and a believer in the Constitution of the United States.  So far, that's good enough for me.

Note added 10 June 2013   A YouTube video revealing Alex Jones as an unhinged oaf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgBq6q4x8Fw

Friday 15 October 2010

Wikipedia stalls one CO2-agitated editor, giving hope of a broader treatment of climate debates



'William M. Connolley topic-banned (R3)

5.6) William M. Connolley is topic-banned from Climate change, per Remedy 3.
[snip]....
It has become clear, during the case itself, that the topic area has become too personalized and polarized around a number of editors who are, frankly, incapable of working together. While I may not agree that all editors involved have the same severity of misbehavior, I can appreciate that a forcible fresh start is probably going to help — with gradual return on merit as the editors involve themselves in other areas of the project. — 
[snip]....
Sad, reluctant support. I dislike intensely the idea of separating a knowledgeable editor from editing in the field of his expertise. My instincts impel me to say that I would, if possible, prefer a more carefully tailored, nuanced sanction or set of sanctions that could preserve the value of William M. Connolley's editing while addressing the problems that exist with it. (This is an observation I've made about some of the other editors who are being topic-banned as well.) We have also acknowledged that some of the specific assertions made about him previously were inaccurate or taken out of context. However, the "enough is enough" consensus of the committee is clear, and given the entire record here I can hardly say that the overall structure and outcome of the final decision is an outlandish one. Given the result, I hope that William M. Connolley can refocus his dedication to the project in other ways, while addressing the concerns that have been expressed so that he can return to this topic area in due course.'
See full announcement here, with supporting references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision#William_M._Connolley_topic-banned_.28R3.29

Hat-tip: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/10/14/going.html


A step forward, but so many years of misleading innocent readers will not be so readily corrected.  Wikipedia, like other utopian ventures, has always been vulnerable to those with few scruples about pursuing their own self-interest with ruthlessness.  Even if we see no more Kyoto-style over-reaction to CO2 such as that captured in legislation in the UK (and that seems over-optimistic given the huge momentum of interested parties wanting more of it), there remains the damage to the standing of science and to the practice of both politics and education.  I suspect that an oppressive burden of gloom has been imposed on wave after wave of children passing through their school years, with a diet of alarmism based, ultimately, on the speculations of a handful of climate modellers.  Speculations that have been contradicted by many observational and theoretical studies, but which nevertheless survive and are vigorously promoted by those for whom they are like a dream come true.

If Wikipedia may be at least pausing its own part that promotional effort, and if even the BBC and the Royal Society have recently indicated at least a tiny embarrassment at their part in it, I like to think, in my optimistic way, that progress is being made.

But meanwhile, in schools and other organisations aimed at children throughout the world, the deliverables of this narrow,  'science is settled', doom-laden agitation about CO2 are pushed at the young.   A dream come true for some, a nightmare for others, not least the children.

Monday 11 October 2010

10-minute trainers on climate nonsense: materials for at least 94 of them

Pierre Gosselin's list of climate nonsenses reached 94 in August.  I suppose at least one '10-minute trainer' could be produced from each and every one of them.  But who has the freedom to make use of them in a classroom?  Will a group of dissident teachers/schools emerge, or must we wait for government approval?

'No science produces more controversy, exaggerations, distortions, follies, and falsehoods than climate science does. In this new list we’ve got
94 climate-gates total
28 new gates
145 links to reports with details.
The new gates on the list are designated with “NEW!” to make them easy to spot. Thanks to a number of readers who have given me tips.'
The first 10:
1. Acceleration of sea level rise-gate 
Claims of accelerating sea level rise are misleading.
2. African agriculture claim-gate
IPCC wrongly claims that in some African countries yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.
3. AIT-gate and British High Court
35 errors or gross exaggerations are found in Al Gore’s Oscar winning documentaryAn Inconvenient Truth.
4. NEW! Alaskan glaciers-gate
Loss of glaciers in Alaska was grossly exaggerated.
5. Amazon rainforest-gate and  here (NEW!) and here (NEW!) 
IPCC cites “robust” source: green activist organisation WWF. WWF’s source was merely an anonymous brief on forest fire risks posted in 1999 and taken down four years later.
6. Antarctic sea ice-gate
Antarctic sea ice underestimated by 50%.
7. NEW! Authoritarian science-gate
The science says… Science is increasingly used as an instrument of authority to impose public policy.
8. NEW! Australia-gate Australia temperature adjusted upwards to show more warming.
9. Bangladesh-gate
IPCC inflates Bangladesh doomsday forecasts in 2007 4AR.
10. NEW! Biofuel-gate
Efforts to save the planet by using bio-fuels are in fact rapidly destroying it.
Link to them all: 

Sunday 10 October 2010

RIP Phillip and Tracey, virtual victims of 10:10's murderous intolerance

The use of children as political fodder for spreading alarm about CO2 is bad enough.  Showing them being murdered in cold blood for having parents who do not share that alarm is disgusting.  At a time when many people are under daily threat of renewed attack by other intolerant bombers, also obsessed by their cause to the point of losing any trace of humanity, the 10:10 movie was particularly odious.

It served to give us insight into their attitudes, and for that we may be grateful.

Delingpole has a bitter-edged post on suggested actions for today, the 10th of October, 2010:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058296/1010-who-are-you-going-to-kill-to-help-save-the-planet/
It begins:
'Hey kids, the big day’s here. It’s 10/10/10 and that if you’ve been following the campaign of Franny Armstrong, Richard Curtis, Eugenie and all their other nicely-spoken, privately-educated, Daddy-funded, Guardian-reading trustafarian chums at 10:10, you’ll know that means just one thing: Climate Action.'




The first comment I saw posted under that piece, by 'scientificanomaly' is the inspiration for the title of this one:
'This post is in loving memory of the young martyrs Phillip and Tracy. May they rest in peace. They shall never be forgotten, we shall honour their memory by re-doubling our efforts to consign the AGW climate scam to the dustbin of history and by driving all the deranged eco-bullies out of positions of influence.'


Saturday 9 October 2010

Pushing Junk Science on Children in the USA

More political context for CO2 alarmism getting into schools in the USA is given in this piece:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/pushing_junk_science_on_childr.html      than in my earlier one here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

Extract:

'Democrat Representative John Sarbanes of Maryland wants public schools to "get young people invested" in "climate change" and "population growth" in order to "[raise] awareness early" and "promote the agenda." That would be the agenda of junk science alarmism.

Thank goodness for clarity, because until now, Americans were unaware that public schools are supposed to breed fanatics for ruling class politics. Not only has Sarbanes advocated global warming indoctrination, but the congressman's remarks also seem to call for schools to push the debunked overpopulation myth popularized by Paul Ehrlich in his 1970 book, The Population Bomb. Rachel Carson's DDT scare, acid rain, anti-nuclear power hysteria, the population bomb, and the global warming hoax -- the world has been asked to prepare for one faux-disaster after another. In the process, American liberals have used schools and universities to fill young minds with grotesque falsehoods.'

Is there any country in which this corruption of the young is not taking place?  Certainly not the UK.

Teachers read this: science has been corrupted by the climate scam

The climate-related machinations of the leadership of the American Physical Society have led to the resignation of one of that society's most distinguished members.  Perhaps those in education who cannot bring themselves to question the rectitude of such as the IPCC,  the Royal Society, and the Met Office, will be given pause for thought by this:
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal
==========================================================
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)