The mammoth global warming scam

More evidence from the International Conference on Climate change last month which produced the Manhattan Declaration (see post below) of the way in which scientists who are sceptical about man-made global warming find their work is suppressed. A detailed piece on the website of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works reports:

During the conference, scientists revealed the lack of tolerance science journals and institutions have exhibited for skeptical climate views.

‘We [fellow skeptical scientists] talked mostly of work and upcoming papers and went through the standard ritual of griping about journal editors and the ridiculous hoops we sometimes have to jump through to get papers published. But some of the guys had absolute horror stories of what happened to them when they tried getting papers published that explored non-‘consensus’ views. Really outrageous and unethical behavior on the parts of some editors. I was shocked,’ wrote conference participant Dr. William M. Briggs, a climate statistician who serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review, on his blog on March 4. (LINK)

Prominent Hungarian Physicist Dr. Miklós Zágoni, a former global warming activist who recently reversed his views about man-made climate fears and is now a skeptic, presented scientific findings at the conference refuting rising CO2 fears. Zágoni’s scientific mentor Hungarian scientist, Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist, resigned from his post working with NASA because he was disgusted with the agency’s lack of scientific freedom. Miskolczi, who also presented his peer-reviewed findings at the conference, said he wanted to release his new research that showed "runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations," but he claims NASA refused to allow him. ‘Unfortunately, my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results,” Miskolczi said according to a March 6 Daily Tech article. (LINK) [Note: Clarification from original posting. Miskolczi worked with NASA, not Zágoni.]

Meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chairman of the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, noted that many of his scientific colleagues did not attend the conference because they “feared their attendance might affect their employment.” D’Aleo described the fear of retribution many skeptics face as a “sad state of affairs.” But D’Aleo noted that he believes there is ‘very likely a silent majority of scientists in climatology, meteorology, and allied sciences who do not endorse what is said to be the ‘consensus’ position.’ Other scientists have echoed these claims. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, asserted in December 2007 that skeptics have a much harder time publishing in peer-reviewed literature. ‘Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,’ Paldor, who was not in attendance at the New York conference, wrote in December.

In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, Argentina, New Zealand, Portugal, and France, groups of scientists have recently spoken out to oppose and debunk man-made climate fears… Atmospheric Physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and a founding member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, also announced his skepticism on February 18, 2008. “Sorry folks, but we're not exactly buying into the Global Hysteria just yet. We know a great deal about atmospheric physics, and from the onset, many of the claims were just plain fishy,” Peden wrote. (LINK)

In January 2008, environmental scientist professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder and director of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, announced publicly that he considered CO2 related climate fears to be ‘dangerous nonsense.’ Domingos, who retired in 2006, has more than 150 published articles in the research fields of Thermodynamics, Numerical Methods in Fluid Mechanics and Meteorological Forecast. ‘There are measurable climate changes but there is also an enormous manipulation in reducing everything to CO2 and equivalents. The main gas producing the green house effect is water vapor. The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning,’ Domingos said…

In addition, at least one scientist publicly pondered reconsidering his view of man-made climate fears after Senate report of 400 scientists was released in December. ‘It (the Senate 400 scientists report) got me thinking: I'm an environmental scientist, but I've never had time to review the “evidence” for the anthropogenic causes of global warming,’ wrote environmental scientist Professor Rami Zurayk of the American University in Beirut on December 27, 2007. (LINK) ‘When I said, in my opening speech for the launch of UNEP's (United Nations Environment Program) Global Environment Outlook-4 in Beirut: “There is now irrevocable evidence that climate change is taking place...” I was reading from a statement prepared by UNEP. Faith-based science it may be, but who has time to review all the evidence? I'll continue to act on the basis of anthropogenic climate change, but I really need to put some more time into this,’ Zurayk wrote.

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Bang goes that consensus!

Prof Philip Stott asks a simple but important question:

Why has the UK media, in pretty well all its forms, failed to report ‘The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change’, signed in New York on March 4, 2008?” The meeting at which the ‘Declaration’ was agreed [‘The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change’, March 2 - March 4] was attended by over 500 people (scientists, economists, policy makers, etc.), with over 100 speakers delivering keynote addresses, or participating in panel discussions. Sadly, I think we know the answer, and it is one that reflects very badly on our supine UK media [the only exception of note appears to be The Sunday Telegraph, March 9: ‘Climate dissent grows hotter as chill deepens’]. If ever evidence were needed of the dangerous ‘control’ of our media by pernicious grand narratives, then this is surely it.

And the Manhattan Declaration itself? This is it:

‘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.

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The war against the Jews (9)

Those who have been following the Mohammed al Dura scandal (see here, here, here, here and here) may be interested to read this report by Richard Landes of the latest court hearing which took place a few days ago. Judgment is scheduled for May 21.
Particularly noteworthy in this account is the extraordinary silence of the Israel government on this case. (Its chief press officer, Danny Seaman, has said that the ‘killing’ was staged by the Arabs but, strange as this may seem, the government refuses to follow suit.)

The weight of the Israeli silence in the French courtroom became so heavy that even the judge, in genuine puzzlement, asked Karsenty, ‘Why don’t the Israelis argue their case? Why haven’t they said anything?’… In fact, Israelis repeatedly express astonishment at why Jews from the diaspora care about setting this record straight when they just wish it would go away. When they realize how powerful the impact not only on Israel, but on Jews around the world, they express surprise. As Karsenty later explained to the judges, ‘The day after al Durah, one of my employees came into the office and challenged me, “Look at what your army has done, murdering an innocent child!’” In Brussels, a rabbi was attacked the next day on the way to New Year’s services, never having seen the footage.

At the Australian, the excellent Greg Sheridan gets it:

Without the rocket firings there would be no economic blockade of Gaza and no Israeli air campaign. Life in Gaza would be infinitely better. Why doesn't Hamas embrace this much better life for its citizens, which would certainly not require it to give up its goal of running an independent Palestinian state? There are four interlocking, plausible answers: it wants to damage Israel internationally, radicalise other Palestinians, ensure Israel's policy of disengagement from the Palestinians fails, and serve Hamas's Iranian and Syrian sponsors. Consider each of the four.

On Monday night, the ABC's Lateline program ran a report on the suffering of civilians in Gaza, an absolutely legitimate subject. Among the heart-rending footage there was an interview with a Gazan civilian who understandably complained bitterly about Israel's actions. But the ABC reporter didn't ask the absolutely obvious question: Do you wish your leaders would stop firing missiles into Israel, which make inevitable both the economic blockade and the Israeli military response? The ABC, as usual, was following more or less exactly the terrorists' preferred script for the Western media. Islamist terrorists have always been centrally concerned with the Western media and their understanding of its story presentation dynamics is acute, as this episode demonstrates. Hamas gets to sheet all blame to Israel.

Like the Australian ABC, the British media followed to the letter this degraded script that had been written for them by Hamas, thus inciting yet more hatred against their Israeli victims and turning the western media yet again into accomplices to intended genocide. Such propaganda ‘psy-ops’ are therefore a key weapon in the Arab armoury. The staging of the killing of Mohammed al Durah was an example of those black arts which in itself directly led to the murder of countless innocents. It is Israel’s tragedy that it cannot grasp this fact.

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The war against the Jews (8)

The police claim that they had received no intelligence information warning of an impending attack in the capital. But there were several indications that one was about to occur. On Saturday night I was walking in a park above the Old City at dusk. Suddenly a crowd of Arab teenagers appeared and started yelling Allah Akbar. My big, barking dog scared them away. They were not serious but they were the harbinger of what came next.

Two days later mobs of Arabs attacked Jewish motorists in the city and nearly lynched two municipal inspectors whose car they assaulted with rocks and crow bars while trying to force them out of their vehicle. The pair escaped by the skin of their teeth as they swerved out of range and managed to drive away. I hate to think what would have happened if the Fatah-incited mob had attacked their tires instead of their windshield.

Between Iran, Egypt, Syria, Hamas, Hizbullah, Fatah and the Israeli Arab leadership, the incitement level this week was so high, that the violence level crossed a Rubicon. It was only a question of when and where the bullets and bombs would start exploding not whether or not they would.

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Unspeakable

From Haaretz, this evening:

Eight people were killed and nine others were wounded Thursday evening when terrorists infiltrated the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem, police said.

A single terrorist infiltrated the yeshiva, possibly armed with an explosive belt, and began firing in every direction. He was shot and killed, police said.

Three of the injured were listed as being in serious condition and taken to Hadassah Medical Center in Ein Karem, while the other six were lightly hurt and taken to Sha'arei Tzedek Medical Center. One of the injured is 15 years old…

Media reports said the terrorist was apparently a resident of East Jerusalem… In Gaza City, residents went out into the streets and fired rifles in celebration in the air after hearing news of the attack on the yeshiva.

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Britain's Chief Zealot

Christopher Booker writes a splendid piece in the Spectator on the eye-opening behaviour of Britain’s newly-retired Chief Scientist and man-made global warming zealot Sir David King:

On behalf of the EU, King led a team to a key international conference in Moscow, where their behaviour astonished those present. They demanded that scientists critical of Kyoto should not be allowed to speak. They frequently interrupted other speakers, or overran their own time at the rostrum. When King was floored by evidence from the tropical disease expert Professor Paul Reiter that the melting of the ice on Kilimanjaro was not caused by global warming, he stormed out. At the end Alexander Illarionov, President Putin’s chief economic adviser, was withering about the EU team’s conduct. Their pressure on Russia to ratify Kyoto, he said, ‘was equivalent to a war on truth, science and human welfare’.

a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism. 

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Mainlining subversion

Sometimes an article appears of such stupendous and brazen irresponsibility that one can scarcely believe one’s eyes. In the Times, Camilla Cavendish writes that cocaine should be legalised. She thinks that the reason its use is so ubiquitous is because its illegality makes it glamorous. This argument is somewhat undercut by her observation that

Most of my generation thinks of cocaine much as our parents thought of single malt

She brings up yet again the old chestnut of alcohol prohibition. But the availability of alcohol has created vast amounts of crime and destruction, as she herself acknowledges. The long-standing social acceptability of alcohol makes prohibition impossible; but given the harm that it causes, why should anyone in their right mind want to multiply such mayhem through legalising drug use?

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Genocide with jam on it

The BBC news gave pride of place this morning to a report by ‘aid’ and ‘human rights’ agencies —Oxfam, Amnesty, Care International — which accused Israel of causing the worst humanitarian crisis in Gaza for the past forty years.

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Could I trouble you to move so I can attack, please?

Yet more damning evidence of those ‘disproportionate’ Israelis:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak is seeking legal approval to evacuate thousands of residents of Gaza City to locations in the south of the Strip to enable the IDF to attack terror infrastructure without hurting civilians, Channel 2 reported Wednesday evening.

There’s Hamas going to all that trouble to line up thousands of women and children as air-strike fodder, only to find those damned Israelis are trying to wage war without hurting anyone!

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Not with a bang but a whimpering vote

So that’s it then. The EU constitution treaty is all but through the House of Commons, facing merely the formality of Third Reading. At a stroke, much of what remains of the UK’s power of self-government will now be negated and the rest will surely follow in due course. The solemn manifesto pledge by both Labour and the LibDems to give the British people the final say in the surrender of their nation’s sovereign right to rule itself has today been tossed into the garbage, along with what little remains of public trust in politicians. Three LibDem MPs have resigned from the front bench in protest. Who cares? Parliament now becomes Westminster Regional Council in the kingdom of Euroland, continent of Antidemocracya, planet Dystopia. One thousand years of British history have been extinguished without a shot being fired — and until now, in the virtual news blackout resulting from a conspiracy of boredom in the British media.

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