Court challenge to Niwa climate records – STUFF Climate change sceptics are taking the country's state-owned weather research body to the High Court over claims that its records are inaccurate. The government’ National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) is being challenged about the data it uses to calculate climate change. The court action is being funded by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition … [who are] asking the court to order that records are invalid that show a 1 degree Celsius warming trend in nationwide temperatures during the past century, and wants NIWA to be ordered to produce another "accurate" record. It has also asked the court to order Niwa to stop using its current records to advise any government authority or the public.
The challenge is a simple one. As reported here several times before, the raw temperature records from New Zealand recording stations over the last century shows no to only very slight warming. But, in a process begun by disgraced climatologist Jim Salinger, those raw figures have been adjusted upwards, well upwards, and the records justifying those specific adjustments are “no longer available.”
This is bad science, used to back up the most serious political attack on NZ industry since the war. Basically, the dog has eaten NIWA’s homework, and the best they can now do is point to general reasons for their dramatic upward adjustments, with no specific record available, they say, to justifying their fiddling of each figure.
And when that fiddling has been done by Jim Salinger, a certified climate alarmist who NIWA themselves described as “a stranger to truth,” there’s good grounds to hope this bad science is as discredited by this case as it deserves to be.
Because NIWA are the source of the advice given to NZ governments on which they based their carbon taxes and emissions tax scam. If that well is poisoned, their advice is moot.
Because NIWA are the source of the advice relied upon by councils around the country that severely restricts (against right) what people may do on their own coastal property. If their advice is wrong, councils’ cases fall apart.
Because the likes of the anti-development Environmental Defence Society (EDS) understand this perfectly, which is why they’re joining the action with NIWA. Without NIWA’s discredited advice, one less reason exists for the EDS to claim control of your land.
Because the raw temperature records from the Met Service show no significant warming. Yet adjustments have been made by NIWA downwards pre-war and upwards post-war (the reverse of what you would expect as an adjustment for the Urban Heat Island effect). Talk about cooking the books! And the records for those adjustments"? They’ve been lost, says NIWA. This is either incompetence or dishonesty--and it’s certainly bad science—so in either case their advice to anybody should be ignored, and as the late Augie Auer maintained , they should be shut down. Because they’re not scientists, they’re shills.
UPDATE 2: Climate Science Coalition rep Barry Brill discusses the claim with Leighton Smith on air. Listen to the audio here. [Brill appears about 10:35am]
UPDATE 3: Apparently Radio NZ is finding it hard to find anyone to support NIWA on air, so this morning they went with truffle farmer Gareth Renowden, who does his best to fudge the story. Listen to how carefully he dances around the disappearance of the log of adjustments, and the specific reasons for each.
Here is a Forbes article titled, The Death of Global Warming, and here is a great synopsis of the science by Dr. Roy Spencer titled, My Global Warming Skepticism, for Dummies. And, in case you are keeping track, here is some skepticism on the recent "independent review" of the Climategate controversy conducted by approximately the same people who were accused of the cover-up.
That should help give this all some context—and help you understand why warmists are getting so desperate.
A blog reader contacted me this morning to tell me he'd just got off the phone to NIWA. He wasn't happy.
Given that parliament is currently under urgency to make room to pass the Emissions Tax Scam Bill next week (despite the Greens' Russel Norman saying only a week ago that they wouldn't support the Bill if it was pushed through under urgency), and since this is a bill that will strangle industry for this generation as successfully as the Resource Management has strangled development, my reader figured he'd check out the local research that backed up this anti-industrial bulldozer.
After all, David Wratt, NIWA's General Manager Climate Change, is on record as saying the evidence for global warming is "unequivocal." Get that? Unequivocal. And being NIWA's General Manager for Climate Change, one would expect that he's just the chap to whom the politicians would go to seek the evidence.
So this is what my reader set out to do too. What he was after was a local data set that unequivocally illustrates this unequivocal warming trend (or lack thereof) -- in other words, the evidence from NIWA on which the politicians are relying. The raw evidence that hasn't been tampered with. The woman he spoke to at NIWA however was very evasive on the point. What she had for him, in a word, was nothing. Unequivocally nothing. (Don't take our word for it, try it yourself on +64 4 386 0300, or email: climate-enquiries@niwa.co.nz, or fax: +64 4 386 0574, attention “Climate Enquiries.” Details here.):
"I mentioned to her the website john-daly.com," he says. "I pointed out that one can go to the 'What the Stations Say' page on that site, and see what sort of warming trend there is (or lack thereof). There is a world map there. You click on the area of interest, and the actual stations are presented with their corresponding records."
My reader spent about an hour on this site, clicking all over the world, and was unable to find anything, anything at all, that substantiated David Wratt's "unequivocal" warming trend. The records for New Zealand, Easter Island, and Antarctica are particularly interesting, he told the telephonist at NIWA. Here for example is the record for Christchurch and Invercargill to 2001:
Says my reader: "What I reasoned was that if these data are fiction, then Wratt should be able to produce the actual sets.If these were presented to the public, perhaps the warmist perception can be corrected. Some local 'undoctored' data might be more convincing than Al Gore's propaganda."
Sadly, he wasn't successful. NIWA's telephonist had nothing to offer him.
But you can find NIWA's own raw data yourself, online, if you sign up to NIWA's National Climate Database (go to www.niwa.co.nz and choose National Climate Centre) -- which I did -- and a very nice lady emailed me with comprehensive instructions on how to use the system -- which I did.
Now, just recall that the government is rushing through an Emissions Trading Scheme based almost solely on advice from NIWA that New Zealand and the rest of the planet is warming. But curiously, when signing up online to access this data one is given the caveat that "NIWA does not make, and the Recipient acknowledges that NIWA has not made, any representation or warranty (express or implied) as to: (i) the accuracy or completeness of the Data; (ii) the use to which Data may be put; or (iii) the results or outcomes which may be obtained from using the Data."
A curious thing to say, don't you agree, when it is data such as theirs -- in fact, data that is theirs -- on which the future prosperity of this country is now being made to hinge, yet they can offer no representation or warranty (either express or implied) as to the accuracy or completeness of the Data?
Curious indeed.
Curious too that when one downloads data for some of NZ's longer-term recording stations, one is at a loss to find the trend that Wratt and and the ETS rats claim is "unequivocal." (See here for example for the raw temperature record for Kelburn from 1928 to 2005.)
However, it turns out that Wratt is neither relying on local data nor global data for his warning of unequivocal warming. His case rests not on actual evidence of existing warming, but almost solely on the IPCC's "projections" of future warming, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their four successive reports.
That is to say, not on evidence of warming, but on evidence of projections of future warming.
(Note that this is an organisation more political than scientific. "Its brief," says Christopher Brooker, "has never been to look dispassionately at all the evidence for man-made global warming: it has always taken this as an accepted fact. -- helmed by what John McLean calls an "incestuously linked ... core group of academics whose models underpin everything the IPCC wishes us to believe about global warming.")
one needs to estimate a multi-dimensional probability distribution that quantifies how likely different model parameter combinations are given knowledge of the uncertainties in our observations. The computational cost of mapping a multi-dimensional probability distribution for a climate model using traditional means [requires] 104 to 106 model evaluations for problems involving less than ten parameters...
Given the complexity, the answers delivered by the models have a tendency to be written by the limited number of assumptions, fudge factors and parameters one is able to build in. In other words, "the answers are written in the assumptions."
Simple answer: they've been crap at looking forward, but great at looking back. As Marlo Lewis says when looking at how well projections match observations, "despite accelerating emission rates and concentrations" "there’s been no net global warming in the 21st century. Although seldom reported by the mainstream media, it’s quite a story, because no climate model predicted it."
Just to show you how crap, the "projection" from the IPCC's last report, the Fourth Assessment, of a temperature increase of 0.2 degrees per decade already overstates the amount of warming we have seen -- or in scientist-speak, "based on measurements since 2001, and the four statistical models described above the central tendency for projections communicated in the IPCC AR(4) falls outside the range consistent with real earth weather data." See:
And here:
Remember, this is despite accelerating emission rates and concentrations.
They've been making these projections now for nearly twenty years , yet despite being able to "backward project" quite well with later reports (as the other three trend lines produced from later reports in 1995, 2001 and 2007 all manage to do), they're not quite so good when they try projecting forward.
A series of articles by Roger Pielke Jr published in January, before this year's temperature dip, shows just how crap the previous future projections have been. In Pielke's words, "It seems pretty clear that the IPCC in 1990 over-forecast temperature increases" [see below where he even tries to help by nudging the starting point], while the later record "is clouded by an appearance of post-hoc curve fitting."
If you're about to vote to strangle New Zealand prosperity on the basis only of these projections, then may I urge you first to take the time to check Pielke's analyses from January this year:
A few months back a reader here at NOT PC discovered you could now view NIWA’s raw temperature records online, and what he discovered when he did was that while NIWA was shouting about warming, the raw data said something totally different. The raw data said there’d been no warming at all.
The NZ Climate Science Coalition saw the same thing, and their research showing what NIWA have done is now big news round the world this morning: the news that the supposedly neutral meteorological organisation has apparently been fudging its figures to say something the raw data doesn’t.
The work uncovering NIWA’s calumny was done by NZ”s Climate Science Coalition, and can be told in these two graphs. The first graph tells the story NIWA would like you to hear, a graph Jim Salinger started working on back when he was working at the now disgraced Climate Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia showing a clear warming trend across the country:
This second graph however tells you the story told by the raw data, that is, no warming whatsoever: The reason for the difference? NIWA “adjusted” the raw data because . . . well, for no very good reason at all, really. Instead of adjusting for the Urban Heat Island effect, which should have seen modern temperatures adjusted downwards, virtually all the adjustments were made in the other direction, to manufacture a clear warming trend where there wasn’t any. See:
These figures, the adjusted figures, have been used to manufacture a scare story now used to justify sending NZ taxpayers a $100 billion Emissions Trading bill. And the people who manufactured those figures? They’re the ones who’ve been advising minister Nick Smith that his Emissions Trading Scam is necessary. Says the Climate Science Coalition:
There have been strident claims that New Zealand is warming. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), among other organisations and scientists, allege that, along with the rest of the world, we have been heating up for over 100 years. But now, a simple check of publicly-available information proves these claims wrong. In fact, New Zealand’s temperature has been remarkably stable for a century and a half. So what’s going on?" Researchers find records adjusted to represent 'warming' when raw data show temperatures have been stable.”
This sort of review of NIWA’s science is only possible now NIWA’s raw figures have been made available on the ‘net, since as the NZ Climate Science Coalition note in their summary of what they’ve uncovered, “Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered . . . ” You can only wonder why.
This is how climate science has been done here, folks – the science that’s being used to make us all poorer -- and while reviews of that science like this one are still themselves in their infancy, what’s already being uncovered in the CRU emails and data like this is not pretty.
This is undoubtedly the biggest story around this morning, and coming on the back of the hacked emails from that other organisation for which Jim Salinger used to work, it should call into question with every honest person the basis on which the warmist mantra has been intoned.
Read about the story here at Andrew Bolt’s who’s got a great summary too of subsequent developments in his updates: Climategate: Making New Zealand warmer.
The Climate Science Coalition has an eight-page PDF summarising the scam: Are we feeling warmer yet?.
It’s a story that’s gone around the world:
And from New Zealand, the mainstream media catches up by issuing the denial before the news itself: Climate scientists attack criticism.
And NIWA belatedly explain the arguments for their adjustments at one site, Kelburn, after repeated refusals by Salinger to either release the raw data for all of them or explain the reasons for all the one-way adjustments: Combining Temperature Data from Multiple Sites in Wellington.
I’d like to see that replied to today, and I’ll be checking back at the Climate Science Coalition site regularly to see if it has.
Oh, and by the way, since we’re “thinking local” here, satellite data for the Southern Hemisphere over the last thirty years shows "a warming trend" for the Southern Hemisphere during those last 30 years of 0.00 °C per decade.. . . UPDATE: In the absence of a swift response from the Climate Science Coalition, Ian Wishart critically examines NIWA’s response re their adjustments to the Wellington data (that’s one station out of seven for which they’ve adjusted temperatures “to hide the decline,” presumably the easiest to explain, they think), pointing out quite correctly that all such adjustments “need to be fully explained so other scientists can test the reasonableness of the adjustment”; wondering if “applying a temperature example from 15km away in a different climate zone [is] a valid way of rearranging historical data”; and reminding NIWA that “we'd all like to see the methodology and reasoning behind adjustments on all the other sites as well.”
Pronto. UPDATE 2: Zen Tiger hacks satirically into NIWA’s emails to discover the real reasons for their drastic upward adjustments of raw data:The NIWA Emails
UPDATE 4: Anthony Watts takes NIWA to task for its response, and for the frankly hopeless state of some if its temperature collection stations [pdf]. He posts a picture of the Auckland station (incorrectly labelled Kelburn), from whence Auckland's official temperature record is kept - right on the NIWA rooftop in Khyber Pass (all that lovely warm concrete), right under the motorway (all those lovely cars) and right next to the air conditioners. So no problem at all with its accuracy then.
UPDATE 5: By the way, you can see pictures of all NIWA's surface stations caputured on film so far at Watts' Surface Stations Gallery. Compare them with some of the other horror stations uncovered so far around the world, while remembering that it is from stations such as these combined with "adjustments" by the likes of David Wratt and Jim Salinger that "the" temperature record is made.
Salinger is still seething over being peremptorily dismissed by his former employer, the Government's National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA), and is appearing before the Employment Relations Authority in an attempt to pull down truckloads of cash for the pain, hurt feelings and the bruise on his sorry arse caused by the long-overdue appearance of his employer’s boot there.
But Salinger was known less as the head of NIWA, which was what he was paid to be, and more as "New Zealand's most prominent climate alarmist," and “the voice of global warming in New Zealand.” But that wasn’t a role his employer wanted to pay for, and as NIWA’s lawyer indicated in court yesterday, it required him to put his warmism before the truth.
Here’s just some of the “wisdom” dispensed on behalf of his former employer, that back up the lawyers’ claim:
At a convention of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in New Zealand, Jim Salinger appeared to scare the crowd with news that climate change is going to cause a decline in the production of malting barley in New Zealand and particularly Australia. "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," speculated the irresponsible scaremonger, without benefit of any science.
"Regional warming" is killing NZ’s glaciers, said Salinger in November 2007. Yet figures from Salinger's own former organisation, NIWA, showed (and still show) there has been no “regional warming” at all in New Zealand (so if those glaciers are receding, it could only be because they’re psychic). I’ll say it again, no regional warming at all. Just take a look:
In April 2007, Salinger claimed that heavy rain and flooding in Northland was the direct result of global warming since, he claimed, “as climate warming occurs, the atmosphere can hold more moisture and therefore more rain falls.” But NIWA’s own figures demonstrate that there have been no local warming at all; and as meteorologist Augie Auer said at the time, "As an explanation of the cause and consequences of last week's Northland rains, Dr Salinger's statement ... is as unscientific as it is incorrect. " "So simplistic, it's silly" was how the late Dr Auer described the statement, and “the strongest argument [yet] for the disbanding of NIWA and the return of all weather matters to MetService. “
In February this year, Salinger was quoted in the Herald on Auckland’s so called “hottest day ever” -- “the highest since official NIWA records began in September 1868” the Herald quoted Salinger as saying – a remarkable judgement based on one outlying reading in Whenuapai, a station which only existed from 1945 to 1993 and from 2005 to now. (See discussion here at NZ’S Weather Forum.) This interview was among those cited as a reason for Salinger’s sacking.
Frankly, Salinger looks less like a scientist than a serial liar. He has as much credibility as Al Gore’s movie, which a British High Court Judge found contained nine serious lies and exaggerations.
UPDATE: The hearing continues. NewstalkZB reports Salinger faced questions today “about disregarding a clear request by management to not use traditional local knowledge when compiling a climate report in the Cook Islands [traditional local knowledge!?]. Dr Salinger also admitted to doctoring an email which was sent to management regarding the issue.”
Doctoring an email would certainly put him onside with the likes of fellow warmist Phil Jones – who’s managed to mislay the entire modern temperature record. The dog apparently ate his homework.
Eugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species (Wikipedia). At its pre-war height, the movement often pursued pseudoscientific notions of racial supremacy and purity. It was practiced around the world and was promoted by governments, and influential individuals and institutions.
The second largest known eugenics program was created by social democrats in Sweden and continued until 1975. The pseudo-science was considered as 'settled' by progressive bien pensants in Europe and the US in the early decades of the 20th century. Then, the second World War came along. Several million dead bodies somewhat discredited the 'science'. Suddenly, no one believed in it any longer but, even more remarkably, no one had ever believed in it, apparently.
Which is pretty much where we are now with Global Warming. I predict that, not before long, no one will believe in this proto fascist construct - and you will be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to admit that they ever did. But, like eugenics, not before untold damage has been inflicted on millions. The stupidity of converting crops to biofuels has consequences. Eco-entrepreneurs make millions, millions die.
The wheels are falling off the climate change bandwagon. The corruption of science evidenced by Climategate is simply too blatant to ignore. The IPCC turned out to be as corrupt as you would expect a United Nations body to be. Politicians everywhere who went along with this charade are finding out all about the Turnbull effect.
You read it here first. About three years ago, I commented on these matters in an address given to a group then celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Some extracts from that address:
"The Importers Institute is pleased to be associated with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. That is because we believe that international trade is good. It is certainly preferable to war. That, we must not forget, was the main reason why the founding fathers of the European project sat down in Rome 50 years ago and decided to free up trade among European countries.
"Let us celebrate the success of that project, but let us not forget that it is under constant attack. Many Europeans seem to have forgotten the lessons of history and are again flirting with a form of fascism. This time, it is eco-fascism and is dressed up as a wish to "save the planet".
"These people are opposed to free trade. They fret about "food miles" (but, strangely, not about clothing miles or pharmaceuticals miles) and say that the only way we can save the planet is by de-industrialising, reducing food production and restraining the mobility of people.
"In fairness, this disease of the mind is not exclusive to Europe. You will be familiar with Al Gore's alarmist documentary, the one that seems to say that we must all panic now, before it is too late. Mr Gore relied heavily on a graph showing a very close correlation between past temperature changes and concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. What he conveniently omitted to tell us was that the levels of CO2 changed 800 years after the temperature went up. There is a correlation all right, it is just that it goes the other way. How inconvenient.
"All that happened about 10,000 years ago, long before humans invented SUVs, hospitals or air-conditioning. The medieval warm period was another inconvenient truth. So inconvenient, in fact, that the IPCC relied heavily on a graph showing that it never existed. The now infamous hockey stick graph showed a flat temperature line stretching back one thousand years, rising steeply from the beginning of the industrial revolution. Unfortunately for the alarmists, the graph was proven to be not just scientifically wrong - it was an outright fraud.
"The more that people begin to realise the actual impact on their daily lives of the eco-fascist agenda, the more they are likely to question the pseudo-scientific hype used to justify it. The eco-fascists reply against this inevitable backlash seems to be to shout that the "science is settled" with increasing shrillness. Settled science: now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one.
"But, is such talk really inconsequential? People bent on 'saving the planet', with their talk of food miles and taxes on air travel, have the potential to destroy the very basis of our economy. Instead of countering their fallacious arguments with science, we seem to be saying that yes, you are right, but please go easy on us because we are quite green ourselves. What a strategy!
“We want to keep access to Northern hemisphere markets and would like their tourists to continue to fly twenty four hours to spend their money here, while agreeing that air travel is bad for the environment. Then, we spend a few million dollars on a 'buy local' campaign. If madness is defined as the ability to simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs, the inescapable conclusion is that we are being governed by the insane.
"Let us celebrate the real success of the Treaty of Rome and that was the opening of borders and the increase in prosperity that only trade can deliver. Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman did not set out to create an isolationist Europe, inimical to trade and wedded to romantic notions of economic self-sufficiency. We should celebrate their legacy by refuting those notions."
* * * To get a free subscription to Daniel Silva’s Importers Institute email news service, please subscribe in www.importers.org.nz.
Nonsensical comments over Northland's flooding show that the Government's National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) should be shut down, says Augie Auer, chair of the science panel of NZ's Climate Science Coalition. "So simplistic, it's silly" is how Dr Auer describes the statement by NIWA climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger over the flooding.
"As an explanation of the cause and consequences of last week's Northland rains, Dr Salinger's statement ... is as unscientific as it is incorrect. "
At a time when MetService and NIWA are at such loggerheads that a mediator has had to be appointed, it's time for the Government and the Opposition parties to disband NIWA to stop its nonsense statements and return its functions to the agency where they rightly belong, MetService. At least MetService deals in the real world of observation of actual weather events, and forecasts based on those events, as well as its links with World Meteorological Organisation, as New Zealand’s official representative on that body. This is the real world of weather, as opposed to the computerised ‘statistical models’ on which Dr Salinger says NIWA relies” said Dr Auer.
NIWA has sacked Jim Salinger. Described by some as “New Zealand's most prominent climate scientist,” by others as "New Zealand's most prominent climate alarmist," and still more as “the voice of global warming in New Zealand,” his sacking does not unfortunately presage any sort of change of direction for New Zealand’s most prominent global warming promoters. NIWA is still wall-to-wall warmist – but when both Greenpeace and Jeanette Fitzsimplesimons are upset at his sacking, it’s reason enough to celebrate.
Now if NASA could just get the stones to do this for Jim Hansen . . .
Said Salinger himself in response to the sacking: “As scientists we’re all a bit eccentric and we all might slightly break protocol, but it’s not going to destroy NIWA.” For “break protocol,” read “use his job as a political soapbox.”
For your interest, here is some of the “wisdom” Salinger has dispensed on behalf of his former employer:
At a convention of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in New Zealand, Jim Salinger told the crowd that climate change will likely cause a decline in the production of malting barley in New Zealand and particularly Australia, and that, "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up."
In April 2007, comments from Salinger over over Northland's flooding showed that the Government's National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) should be shut down, said Augie Auer. "So simplistic, it's silly" was how Dr Auer described the statement. "As an explanation of the cause and consequences of last week's Northland rains," said Dr Auer, "Dr Salinger's statement ... is as unscientific as it is incorrect. "
In February this year, Salinger was quoted in the Herald on Auckland’s so called “hottest day ever” -- “the highest since official NIWA records began in September 1868” said the Herald – a remarkable judgement based on one outlying reading in Whenuapai, a station which only existed from 1945 to 1993 and from 2005 to now. (See discussion here at NZ’S Weather Forum.) This interview was among those cited as a reason for Salinger’s sacking.
Anyway, here is a YouTube grilling of warmist messiah Al Gore by a Republican Congresswoman on cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gases during a congressional hearing recently which just been posted at TechCrunch. Watch Al Gore being frustrated by the questions put forward to him the the Congresswoman.
This was yet another occasion when the Goracle -- who has a policy of never debate, only obfuscate -- managed to once again sidestep the challenge of former Thatcher Science Advisor and Free Radical contributor Christopher Monckton, Gore’s Democrats refusing to allow Monckton to testify alongside Gore. [Michael Savage interviews Monckton here.]
And even CNN has taken to mocking Gore these days, pointing out the irony in Gore trying to draw parallels with global warming activism now and civil righs activism in the 60s – there was some irony in that remark, being that Gore's father was a longtime senator from Tennessee that voted against civil rights legislation, said Dobbs – who “also noted during the segment prior Earth Day prognostications, all of which didn't quite come true.” Newsbusters reports:
"Well, Earth Day, this week, and here are some words of doom and gloom from leading scientists, academics and authors on our climate and environment associated with Earth Day," Dobbs said. "Journalists Peter Collier wrote, ‘One to two million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.' Biologist Paul Ehrlich claimed that most people are going to die in ‘the greatest cataclysm of mankind.' Harvard biologist George Wall said, ‘If we don't take act now, civilization will end between 15 or 30 years.' And ecologist Kenneth Watt claiming that in 15 years, ‘Air pollution will reduce the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one- half.' I want to point out if I may that each and every one of those quotes were from the first Earth Day in 1970, nearly 40 years ago." The CNN segment highlighted a ClimateDepot.com report that global warming skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton was denied the opportunity to testify before the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. "The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face," Monckton told the online magazine Climate Depot," CNN correspondent Lisa Sylvester said. And as Climate Depot's Marc Morano explained - most Gore's doom-and-gloom forecasts are to occur in the distant future. "If you look at Gore's testimony today, he was talking about what could, might and may happen 50 to 100 years from now," Morano said to CNN. "He was not talking about reality."
Knowledge is power. Here’s some reading from around the traps.
A sad story with a happy ending. “A New Zealand man who admitted helping his chronically ill wife die has been discharged without conviction.” Thank goodness. But the right to voluntary euthanasia should be enshrined in law, not left up to the discretion of a judge skating the edge of the law to deliver justice—with all the final comforts it denies the loved one, and all the necessary legal safeguards it must flout. Man avoids conviction for helping wife die – NEWS.MSN
“It was a great disappointment that Justice Venning was not prepared to declare NIWA’s data adjustments to be a breach of the Crown Research Institutes Act 1992. On the law, the Judge found that any review should be ‘tolerant’ and ‘cautious’ because NIWA was ‘a specialist body acting within its own sphere of expertise.’ He declined to rule on the disputed science… Where does this now leave the NZ Climate Science Coalition’s long-term effort to show that the NIWA temperature adjustments are wrong?” Quo vadis? – Barry Brill, CLIMATE CONVERSATION GROUP
The Green Party is perpetuating the claim that development beyond Auckland’s “city limits” imposes a high cost on ratepayers—ignoring the impact on affordability for new home-owners priced out of the market. Phil McDermott responds with facts. The Answer Is Urban Consolidation – What Was The Question? – Phil McDermott, CITIES MATTER
No point propping up newsprint says Steven Joyce in Kawerau, we'll prop up biofuel instead. Nek minnit... EU going cold on biofuels. – CATALLAXY FILES
I’m still calling for National supporters to tell me what they consider the Key Government’s greatest achievements. I really do want to know, you know. Calling all National supporters – NOT PC
“Forgive President Obama if he seemed a bit shell-shocked during his brief statement Wednesday on the murderous attack against an American consulate in Libya. In June 2009, he had grand plans for harmony between East and West. In a celebrated speech delivered in Cairo, Obama spoke earnestly about the need for the West and the Muslim world to look past old hostilities and suspicions. And then on Tuesday night, his grand vision came crashing down.” The second 9/11 illustrates futility of groveling for peace – Editorial, WASHINGTON EXAMINER Deconstructing Obama’s Cairo Speech – THE DAILY BLADE (2009)
Meanwhile, “the debate over Iran's nuclear program has become so feckless -- so disconnected from reality -- that perhaps it's time to inject a dose of what those of us who served on the national security side of the Reagan administration used to call "real-world intelligence…. Of course Iran is building a nuclear bomb; the evidence is obvious and overwhelming. The only purpose of those leaked National Intelligence Estimates asserting that Iran hasn't actually made the decision to build a nuclear bomb, and of similar leaked documents from European intelligence services, is to prevent what the analysts fear would happen. They're afraid that if they officially judge Iran to be on the verge of having a nuclear bomb, political pressure for a military attack will become irresistible. They want to delay action until it's too late, so we will be left with no choice except to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.” A Dose of Real-World Intel on Iran – Herbert Meyer, AMERICAN THINKER
“The capacity for unclouded enjoyment...does not belong to... fools; an inviolate peace of spirit is not the achievement of a drifter.” - Ayn Rand
The negative feedback cycle of welfare payments make it obvious that money alone is not a value: it can’t replace the spiritual value of engaging in a productive life. The Corrupting Influence of Entitlements – Amit Ghate, THRUTCH
“What governs politics is not policy details but ‘the vision thing’–a vision of right and wrong, good and evil. It’s the morality, stupid. The Democrats seem to know that.” Obama Hears Your Whining, And He's Here to Help You Out – Harry Binswanger, FORBES
“Steven Keen is going around the country right now explaining the many, many evils, as he see them, of standard economics. That the majority of economists don't agree with Keen will not come as any surprise to most people. One person who has done a great service in debunking Keen's ideas on Debunking Economics is Professor Christopher Auld.” Auld keen on debunking Keen – Paul Walker, ANTI DISMAL
“’The income of the typical U.S. family has fallen to levels last seen in 1995, a long and pernicious slide that likely means it will be a generation before Americans regain the peak income levels reached at the close of the ’90s.’ While one should always be careful using median income figures, the data is consistent with and can be best understood when combined with a capital-structure macro model of the economy.” Which is to say, not only has all that capital consumption of the last decade-and-a-half not made us any richer, but … New Evidence Supports an Austrian Business Cycle Interpretation of 1995-2012 – John Cochran, CIRCLE BASTIAT
Um, David Cunliffe seems to think the ministers who are driving economic and finance policies in the National Government are dyed in the wool Chicago economists. Disciples of Milton Friedman. No, he really does. The cult of National Party economics – David Cunliffe, RED ALERT
Meanwhile, David Parker seems to think the former central bank governor Don Brash “is a Hayek disciple”—apparently unaware Hayek received his Nobel Prize for explaining how central bank meddling is the primary cause of capital consumption and the business cycle. Still, Parker also thinks Hayek was a Friedmanite on today’s central-bank monetary meddling!!-so whatever Parker learned on his world trip, it wasn’t economic history. Meeting with Joseph Stiglitz – David Parker, RED ALERT Hayek on the Business Cycle – Joseph Salerno, MISES INSTITUTE John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and F.A. Hayek Compared – Jonathan Mariano, TRIPLE PUNDIT
The deficit is not not the biggest problem; the biggest problem is the spending. “Ultimately what matters for the economy is not the size of the budget deficit but the size of government outlays — the amount of resources that government diverts to its own activities.” Is the "Fiscal Cliff" a Threat to the Economy? – Frank Shostak, MISES DAILY
The UK is the only country surveyed where more people want to increase govt spending than decrease it. But only just.
So that’s both the US and Europe’s central banks rapidly throwing money out the window then. Draghi Acts: Is It Inflationary? – Jeff Harding, THE DAILY CAPITALIST
Any wonder the NZ dollar just spiked above US83c?
“Few of the many analyses on Federal Reserve policy consider the psychology of diminishing political and financial returns of Fed promises.” Psychoanalyzing The Fed – Charles High Smith, ZERO HEDGE
“Nowadays, the Fed gives banks digital transfusions of money to lower long-term interest rates, which result in … Not much bang for trillions of bucks… Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke evidently thinks that driving up the stock market will quicken the animal spirits of the affluent 20 percent who own 93 percent of equities, and this “wealth effect” will spur economic activity, eventually benefiting others. So, the interest rates Barack Obama favors are a form of the trickle-down economics he execrates.” A different kind of inflation problem – George Will, WASHINGTON POST
“Here is how it is with Keynesian policy. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Everywhere you look, there are debt and derangement, direct consequences of the Keynesian expenditure of the past three years… Economic theory hasn’t kept up with policy so most textbooks still peddle C+I+G and teach about the importance of aggregate demand…. It is value adding production that creates growth and employment, not increased spending on anything. Most people are too polite to say it, but macroeconomic theory is now about as flat earth as it could possibly be.” Fool me twice, shame on me – Steven Kates, CATALLAXY FILES
Not just the last three years. The result of 99-years of Federal Reserve type playtime economics? “In the entire ‘developed’ world, there is only one country that runs a budget surplus, even as the entire ‘developed’ world is now, according to the Reinhart and Rogoff definition of sustainable public leverage, insolvent.” 99 Years Of Keynesian-Monetarist "Winning" – Tyler Durden, ZERO HEDGE
“As a former Waldorf class teacher, I've seen first hand how unchecked screentime from films, tv and computer games can adversely affect young children as they grow, but I also believe in doing what I can as a parent to educate and turn a potential problem into an opportunity.” My Favorite Films for Children — Maxwell's Finds – Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, APARTMENT THERAPY
No, I’ve never procrastinated either. Ahem. Dr Diana Hsieh discusses why you find yourself washing your windows when you’re supposed to be getting that report finished. The Problem of Procrastination – Diana Hsieh, PHILOSOPHY RADIO [AUDIO]
In today’s world, the income of one parent in each family goes out just to pay the tax bill. And what about the cost of those kids! Dummy's guide: the cost of raising kids – THE AGE
Did you wonder how two British newspapers reported one of the biggest politically-driven cover-ups in modern British history. I did:
It’s not the full and justifiably famous ten-minute blast from the Carnegie Hall, but with Gene Krupa, Harry James and Benny Goodman (natch) this still rocks like a bastard.
Jimmy Lunceford tries a special kind of mazurka.
Glenn Miller (in the guise of Jimmy Stewart) swings the US Army.
Happy New Year everyone. I trust you’ve been having an enjoyable summer, and a great start to the year. Here’s your first ramble for the year, some of the best liberty links around during this silly season.
UPDATE: John Stossel talks Ayn Rand on his Fox Business show last night with Yaron Brook, John Allison, Brad Thompson and some curly questions from the floor. Top stuff all round. Here’s Part 1. You can get the remaining five parts from the same up-loader…
Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson "made it clear [long before this protest] that he intends to place the Ady Gil in harm's way” and place the blame on the whalers. Earthrace Reborn: Sea Shepherd Unveils The Ady Gil
And just remember that the captain of the Ady Gil, Pete Bethune, is a an idiot with history. The smug moron literally pulled fat out of his arse to power the damn thing in its first ignominious expedition. True story: Eco-boat powered by human fat attempts round the world speed record And he's no stranger to crashing into people in his boat either. Fortunately no-one died this time, but they did in 2007: Earthrace crew allowed to leave Guatemala
The Ady Gil "spent a great deal of time skipping around in front of the vessel that it eventually collided with." [hat tip Tim Blair] http://bit.ly/5dUbmk
The “stationary” Ady Gil was "rammed," say the Sea Shepherds. But it’s hard to be “stationary” when your boat has a wake. . . http://bit.ly/8yPJcy
The central problem, say George Reisman & Robert Klein in Barron’s, is the central bank. “The Federal Reserve's easy-money madness must end.” Central Problem: the Central Bank
Harry Binswanger damns the two new AynRand biographies in a comment at the Volokh Conspiracy: I knew AynRand, he says, and she was nothing like the Ayn Rand in those two books. [hat tip Lindsay Perigo] http://bit.ly/4GAv2F
Binswanger also said as much in a letter to the New York Times back in November: ”Adam Kirsch’s review [of Ann Heller’s Rand bio] repeats a story from Bennett Cerf’s 1977 autobiography At Random about Rand’s response when Cerf asked her to cut Galt’s speech: ‘Would you cut the Bible?’ she supposedly said. When Cerf’s book came out, I asked Rand about the story. With obvious indignation, she replied, ‘I never said that — the Bible needs cutting.’ “In general, the portrait of Rand contained in the review [and the bio] clashes dramatically with the Rand whom I first met in 1964 and with whom I was good friends in her final years. The Rand I knew was a unique combination of disciplined rationality and emotional intensity. Well, not completely unique: there are also the fictional heroes she created.”
Here’s some New Year’s Predictions you haven’t seen, but should have: the gathering economic storm clouds of 2010. New Year Predictions You Haven’t Seen
“Reading Homer’s Odyssey … I came across a passage which I think is very indicative of the difference between the ancient Greeks’ attitudes and those of the (Plato-inspired) Christian ones which followed. The Classical Greeks thought of life as meaning life on this earth and were the first, and perhaps still the best, practitioners of a true mind-body integration. These fundamental attitudes are instrumental in explaining why the classical world was so culturally and materially successful, and why, when the Christians substituted the opposite approach, they ended up with a thousand years of stagnation and decline. . . ” Odysseus and Achilles
Our Australian Objectivist friend Prodos has a whole slate of great films organised for 2010 for the PRODOS Film Society (Melbourne, Australia). Great idea. Here's the full list (2 MB PDF file). PRODOS Film Society 2010 program
Here’s John Stossell on Ayn Rand’s relevance:
Keep an eye out for Stossell’s Ayn Rand special, which should be appearing on the interweb soon.
Two people you just have to read: Frederic Bastiat & Thomas Paine. Pens for Hire, Cheap
The ‘Austrian Economists’ blog has changed it’s name. Why? “The term "Austrian economics" has become as much a hindrance to the advancement of thought as a convenient shorthand to signal certain methodological and analytical presumptions.”Crikey! Boettke Et Al. Engage in Product Differentiation
Another endorsement for Tomas Woods’s essential book, Meltdown: Yaron Brook calls it a must-read. Meltdown by Thomas Woods, Review
Is this the year the Presidential bubble pops? [Cartoon by John Cox]
Here’s the world's tallest building shown superimposed on Wellington's skyline. If only! http://bit.ly/8Kv422
But the Burj creates a "crisis signal for the skyscraper index" says Mark Thornton http://bit.ly/8LdJ97
Quick question for you: Which economics book was highly recommended by Ayn Rand, comes between 'Economics in 1 Lesson' & 'Human Action,' & sells for just $10? Answer here http://bit.ly/6wXf7W
New blog post: http://tinyurl.com/ylmgkfr - SUMMER SIX-PACK: From altruism to break-up, with Irish demo and post-modern waffle in between
It's the end of the dumbest financial decade ever. Yaron Brook & the PJTV crew present the decade's 5 biggest blunders http://www.pjtv.com/v/2870
Stephen Hicks’ talk next week at BGSU should be a beauty: ‘What Philosophers Need to Know about Economics.’ Should be several hundred thousand economists who need the insights too. http://shar.es/aUOQw
Carl Menger Explains the Origins of Money. It’s not a government creation, it’s a spontaneous creation of the market. http://bit.ly/7dwzqnhttp://eCa.sh/pwkx
News Update: #Climategate: Breaking News – emails were leaked by a whistleblower, not hacked http://bit.ly/4uqKbh [UPDATE: A commenter at Catallaxy notes substantial discussion of the quality of the above-linked analysis, here. Hat tip Eric Crampton]
"Central Banks are the Last Vestige of Planned Economies"- we desperately need a “fall of the Berlin Wall" in the financial sector http://bit.ly/7cPOr0
Icebergs around NZ are "unprecedented"? Well, apart from the last 20,000 yrs maybe. http://bit.ly/4U3b2U
Here is a Forbes article titled, The Death of Global Warming, and here is a great synopsis of the science by Dr. Roy Spencer titled, My Global Warming Skepticism, for Dummies. And, in case you are keeping track, here is some skepticism on the recent "independent review" of the Climategate controversy conducted by approximately the same people who were accused of the cover-up.
[cartoon hat tip 
