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Via Benny Peiser at GWPF
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. –Harry S. Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, 8 August 1950
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Skainos is partly funded by the EU. Denies access to UKIP. Shameful
An ought to read
“Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise has been watching the climate world since 2009. What she sees isn’t pretty.” — strap line from her blog. Donna has now put up a transcript with slides of a talk she gave to World Federation of Scientists in Erice, Italy, during August 2015
The IPCC?
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2015/09/01/3-things-scientists-need-to-know-about-the-ipcc/
Hatfield Colliery closure speeds up UK exit from deep coal mining
Britain’s Hatfield Colliery will stop producing coal with immediate effect after being unable to sell its coal following the sharp rise in the UK’s carbon tax, Prospect union said on Tuesday.
The closure of the employee-owned mine in South Yorkshire is 14 months earlier than expected. Around 500 employees work at the mine.
In April, Britain’s carbon tax, which charges power producers for each tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit, almost doubled to 18.08 pounds per tonne to encourage utilities to switch fuels, as coal-fired power generation produces almost double the amount of CO2 as gas-fired plants.
“Hatfield has been unable to sell its coal because of the government’s refusal to sponsor coal contracts with generators and the doubling of the UK’s carbon tax,” Prospect negotiator Mike Macdonald said.
— http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/06/30/uk-coal-closure-idUKKCN0PA1FU20150630
Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger being given weekly whippings, as an introduction to his ten year sentence, by the oppressive regime it is his misfortune to live under, wrote in praise of the religious scholasticism which characterises islamic science institutions. This from a longer article sampling his writings in the Guardian.
In September 2011 Badawi launched a witheringly sarcastic attack on Saudi clerics after a TV preacher called for astronomers to be punished on the grounds that they encouraged scepticism about sharia law.
Actually, this venerable preacher has drawn my attention to a truth that had been hidden from me
and my dear readers – namely, the existence of the so-called “Sharia astronomer”. What a wonderful appellation! In my humble experience and in the course of my not inconsiderable research into the universe, its origins and the stars, I have never once come across this term. I advise NASA to abandon its telescopes and, instead, turn to our Sharia astronomers, whose keen vision and insight surpass the agency’s obsolete telescopes.
Indeed, I advise all other scholars the world over, of whatever discipline, to abandon their studies, laboratories, research centres, places of experimentation, universities, institutes etc. and head at once to the study groups of our magnificent preachers to learn from them all about modern medicine, engineering, chemistry, microbiology, geology, nuclear physics, the science of the atom, marine sciences, the science of explosives, pharmacology, anthropology etc. – alongside astronomy, of course.
This is a partial reblog of a post by the Scottish sceptic. Head on over to his site to read the full article.
The Climate wars – toward a washup review.
the Scottish Sceptic
…………………………..Time…………………………….
As I said a while back (The limits of Climate Hysteria) we’ve now reached the stage in these “climate wars” whereby the climate itself is the main combatant forcing the ranks of the delusional public academia, to be dragged kicking and screaming to the reality of our ever varying climate, as the climate itself now imposes discipline where the idiots in the so called “institutions” of so-called “science” failed.
In other words, when we only had a few years of data and a lot of climate variables, it was far far too easy to “investigate” the most worrying trends and then to further cherry pick the data. Then to write up this cherry picked data and publish in buddy review journals, put on Wikipedia as “settled science” and try to convince the world your religion has a credible basis. But, the more data that is acquired and the more people look into every nook and cranny and not just the short-term worrisome trends, the more the real picture of a continuously varying climate emerges and so the less important any one short-term change appears. The more people who gather data, the less any individual can cherry-pick the data to e.g. claim “snow is disappearing” in a warm winter or “floods are increasing” in a floody year or “droughts are increasing” in a dry year.
Guest post from Peter Morecambe aka ‘Galloping Camel’
CLIMATE SCIENCE
The Kyoto Protocol
Elites around the world tend to believe that rising levels of CO2 in our atmosphere will cause catastrophic climate changes. Collectively they wield enough power to shape energy policies in many nations according to commitments laid down in the “Kyoto Protocol” and subsequent accords. It is interesting to compare the fate of the Kyoto Protocol based on the work of “Climate Scientists” such as Michael Mann with that of the Montreal Protocol based on the work of people like McElroy.
The Montreal Protocol essentially banned the production of Freon and similar compounds based on the prediction that this would reduce the size of the polar “Ozone Holes”. After the ban went into effect the size of the ozone holes diminished. This may mean that the science presented by McElroy and his cohorts was “Robust” or it may be dumb luck. Either way, McElroy has credibility and “Skeptics” are ridiculed. The Kyoto Protocol did not fare so well.
After Mark Reckless MP’s spirited defence in parliament of what most people want (66% say no to 0.7% of gdp being earmarked for foreign aid, only 7% in favour), I considered our recent story on £1Bn of our climate fund donations being used to build coal fired power stations in Indonesia, and decided to set up this petition on the govt’s e-petition system.
I don’t for a moment think it’ll achieve enough signatures to force a debate, but at least it might have made some govt person think for a minute while they decided whether to approve it. Click the image or visit the link.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/72814
Image collages have been doing the rounds on social media of empty green benches where MPs are debating serious issues like child abuse or low pay, juxtaposed with a packed house of commons where MPs are allegedly debating MPs pay or expenses. Telegraph journo Isabel Hardman who also edits the coffeehouse blog at the Spectator has been taking the facebook and twitter denizens to task for gullibly believing these memes, which she ascribed to ‘two anarchist sites’ while on on Radio 4 ‘today’, where she discussed her coffeehouse article this morning. She told us that it was odd but true that people didn’t believe what they were told by the BBC or other MSM, but believed uncritically what they saw on facebook or twitter. One of the meme images as seen below has been shared 65,000 times or more.
But has Isabel done her due diligence here? Lets take a look.
![Propeller city [credit: BBC]](https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/windfarm1.jpg)
Propeller city [credit: BBC]
‘A Danish university has fired one of its professors who was critical of wind farms. Acoustics expert Henrik Møller, who is internationally recognised in his field, was ostensibly sacked because he did not generate enough revenue for the university, although some are questioning this explanation.’
Why are they questioning it?
From 2020 drivers of all but the most efficient diesel cars and older petrol cars will be charged an additional £10 a day to use the London roads they already pay road tax and a ‘congestion charge’ to travel on. Boris Johnson is bringing in the new levy in response to EU pressure to further reduce emissions. The unelected EU commission launched legal proceedings against Britain in February.
Elsewhere, Labour is planning a network of low-emission zones that would force older diesel vehicles out of many cities. Sheffield, Leicester, Bradford, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol and 14 other cities are considering bringing in the zones to cope with poor air quality.
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Another step towards tyranny in the US (and no doubt the UK too): Secret guidelines about adding people to ‘the little list’ (not so little these days).
From a memo put out by the unelected EU commissars, compelling evidence for why we should demand an EU referendum before our remaining industries are forced to flee to less oppressive regimes.
What is the Energy Efficiency Communication?
The Communication on “Energy Efficiency and its contribution to energy security and the 2030 Framework for climate and energy policy” (onwards, the Energy Efficiency Communication) does two things:
It assesses whether the EU is on track to reach its 2020 target to increase energy efficiency by 20% and outlines what is necessary to ensure that the target is achieved.
It proposes a new energy saving target of 30% by 2030. This completes the 2030 Framework on Climate and Energy which was adopted by the European Commission on 22 January 2014. The Framework called for a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels and for a renewable energy share of at least 27% of energy consumption, and indicated that the cost-effective delivery of the greenhouse gas emissions reduction target requires increased energy savings (http://ec.europa.eu/energy/2030_en.htm). That is what today’s communication is delivering on. When setting the target, the Commission aims to strike the right balance between expected benefits and costs.
Following the EU court ruling that retention of phone email and internet use records for 18months is no longer required, a new law is to be rushed through within a week to force telco and ISP’s to keep old records and continue to retain citizens data. To try to head off criticism they are incorporating some measures to ‘reassure’ the population that the snooping powers won’t be abused.
The Spectator has a good analysis on the BBC climate reporting bias debacle which coins a new phrase – ‘Climate Correctness’. A few excerpts:
It is only a matter of time before Nigel Lawson — if he is allowed on the BBC at all — has to have his words spoken by an actor in the manner of Gerry Adams at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign during the 1980s. In the case of Mr Adams, whose voice was banned from the airwaves by the government, the BBC stood up for free speech. But it is quite a different story with Lord Lawson. The BBC has effectively banned the former chancellor (and former editor of this magazine) from appearing on its programmes to debate climate change, unless he is introduced with a statement discrediting his views.
When people try to close down debate rather than engage with it, there is a pretty clear conclusion to be drawn: they lack confidence in their own case. The suppression of debate was shown again this week when Vladimir Semonov, a climate scientist at the Geomar Institute in Kiel, Germany, revealed that a paper he wrote in 2009 questioning the accuracy of climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was effectively censored by the scientist to whom it was sent for review.
I had a brief chat with a journalist friend yesterday whose sister is a QC. He’s going to sound her out for me about the possibility of a class action against the BBC for breaking its charter. This from the Telegraph:
BBC staff told to stop inviting cranks onto science programmes
By Sarah Knapton, Science Correspondent – 04 Jul 2014
BBC journalists are being sent on courses to stop them inviting so many cranks onto programmes to air ‘marginal views’
The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation’s science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues.
The report found that there was still an ‘over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality’ which sought to give the ‘other side’ of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.
Some 200 staff have already attended seminars and workshops and more will be invited on courses in the coming months to stop them giving ‘undue attention to marginal opinion.’
“The Trust wishes to emphasise the importance of attempting to establish where the weight of scientific agreement may be found and make that clear to audiences,” wrote the report authors.
Excerpts from David Rose’s Mail on Sunday article, plus a couple of tweets from Richard Betts:
BBC spends £500k to ask 33,000 Asians 5,000 miles from UK what they think of climate change: Corporation savaged for ‘astonishing’ campaign survey on global warming
David Rose – Sun 29th June 2014
The BBC has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money asking 33,000 people in Asian countries how climate change is affecting them.
The £519,000 campaigning survey by little-known BBC Media Action is designed to persuade the world to adopt more hard-line policies to combat global warming.
It was immediately condemned yesterday as a flagrant abuse of the Corporation’s rules on impartiality and ‘a spectacular waste of money’ by a top academic expert.
Every year, BBC Media Action gets £22.2 million from the taxpayer via the Foreign Office and Department for International Development.
BBC Media Action has a £40 million annual budget, and the proportion not funded by the taxpayer is paid by the European Union, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the US government.
‘Anders’, the proprietor of popular warmist blog ‘and then there’s physics’ issued me with a challenge when I commented on his post about the ‘little ice age recovery‘.
“Try doing some actual physics” he said. So I responded:
From Spiked Online:
According to the Financial Times, NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen told an audience at Chatham House in London that the Russian government has been working with NGOs to ‘maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas’ by ‘funding anti-fracking groups’ to mislead the public and lobby governments. Maybe, maybe not. But such Gazprom conspiracy theories are irrelevant. Large green NGOs were born out of the excesses of British and European politics; they were created by politicians in Westminster and Brussels, not by Vladimir Putin.
Forget alleged Russian meddling – just consider how close and incestuous the relationship between European politicians and green NGOs, including ones that oppose fracking, has become in recent years.
An article in today’s Telegraph links to a letter from over 30 scientists deploring the way peer review stifles ‘unfashionable’ innovative research. Small wonder we cannot get any funding to develop our planetary theory. It would need a tiny fraction of the kind of money poured into carbono-centric studies, but since UN-IPCC authors find it UN-PC, it is off limits. I notice only a couple of the signatories are from leading ‘climate change’ pushing univerities. Beatrice Pelloni; University of Reading, and James Ladyman from Bristol university, who has this to say on another matter:
Tallbloke's Talkshop 