More stick for Pachauri

This time from Megan McArdle.
Reuters interviews R.K.Pachauri and gives her a WTF moment-

this interview with the head of the UN's climate experts is ridiculous. He responds to concerns about the peer review process being stacked by saying . . . all the work was peer reviewed. I am open to being convinced that I should not care about hacked information, and I am a confirmed believer in AGW. So why can't, or won't, the climate change community mount a more compelling defense?

And the impression we got from his media chamchas(sycophants) was that this was a great mind. Ha!

Pachauri gets some stick

R.K.Pachauri is used to being treated reverentially by the media the world over.But the stick that is getting from online commentators now is unprecedented, though I suspect it will get much worse.

In response to Climategate he gave out a statement that completely skirts the major issues - just like a politician or a  government functionary would (Pachauri is a government appointee).Deny everything.Question the motives of the critics.

Over at the Dot Earth blog(whose author Andrew Revkin himself is a side character, an important one though, in the scandal) Pachauri is being excoriated in the comments.

A sample -

WIth all due respect, Dr. Pachauri just doesn't get it. Consensus and peer-review are part of the problem, since they can both be co-opted (as demonstrated)

and-

How does Dr Pachauri spell "naive", "hide the decline" and "scientific fraud"? Such bureaucratic baloney will not save the day for the IPCC.

and-

Dr. Pachauri has used a lot words to say very little. There are not tens of thousands of climate scientists involved in the IPCC, the number is relatively small and a few key players, like in all enterprises of this sort play a dominant role. Many of those are among the players in the disclosed e-mails.

As the author of several documents about the IPCC (see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/) I can say that Pachauri is being "economical" with the truth.
----------------
As for Pachauri's closing comment ...comprehensive, unbiased, open to the identification of new literature, and policy relevant but not policy prescriptive.", if there's one honest statement there I can't find it.

and-

The Russians had Stalin - and TD Lysenko.

The Chinese had Mao - and the Lost Generation.

Western Science has this mess. I'm just glad the second-rate intellects from third-rate institutions (or is it the other way around) have begun to be found out.

Heh, heh...

Climategate -a corruption of science and journalism

James Taranto describes the manipulation of the peer review process and how non-believers (infidels!)are kept out and the cozy symbiotic relationship between the alarmist 'scientists' and environmental reporters.A  corruption at the core of  the noble principles of science and journalism-

This email, dated Sept. 29, 2009, is from Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University to New York Times warm(sic-global warming?) correspondent Andrew Revkin. The crucial exchange begins with this question from Revkin (quoting verbatim):

I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre (Steve Mcintyre of Climate Audit -ed)et al attacks.

peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?

And here is Mann's response:

Re, your point at the end--you've taken the words out of my mouth. Skepticism is essential for the functioning of science. It yields an erratic path towards eventual truth. But legitimate scientific skepticism is exercised through formal scientific circles, in particular the peer review process. A necessary though not in general sufficient condition for taking a scientific criticism seriously is that it has passed through the legitimate scientific peer review process. those such as McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted.

In principle, Revkin and Mann are quite right. But as we noted Monday, one of the most damning findings in the archives concerns the corruption of the peer-review process.

In one email, under the subject line "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL," Phil Jones of East Anglia writes to Mann: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow--even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

In another, Mann--discussing a journal that has published a paper by skeptical scientists, puts forward a plan for such a redefinition:

This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the "peer-reviewed literature". Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board...

The scare quotes around "peer-reviewed literature" are Mann's. And it hardly needs to be said that peer review is a sham if papers that present alternative hypotheses are not even allowed into the process.

So how does Revkin, who two months ago took the words out of Mann's mouth, deal with this problem? Barely at all. In a Sunday amendment to a Friday blog post, he mentions it and quickly changes the subject:

[UPDATE, 11/22: Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post explores some email exchanges criticizing certain peer-reviewed papers and journals and focused on excluding the papers from inclusion in the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change report. I'm running down tips and assertions related to the theft and hackings. It remains interesting that before they were placed on an ftp site and dispersed across the Internet, someone tried to plant them on Realclimate.org and publish a mock post linking to them. Needless to say, if anyone has information or ideas, feel free to email dotearth AT nytimes.com.]

Yesterday, he had another post, titled "Report Aims to Clarify Climate Risk for Diplomats." Here's how it begins:

A team of climate scientists, seeking to remind the negotiators who will hammer out a new climate treaty of what is at stake, has produced The Copenhagen Diagnosis, a summary of the latest peer-reviewed science on the anticipated impacts of human-driven global warming.

Revkin reports that the "latest peer-reviewed science" shows that "the case for climate change as a serious risk to human affairs" is "clear, despite recent firestorms over some data sets and scientists' actions."

What we now know about the "peer review" process in this field indicates that this is a predetermined conclusion. Revkin misleads his readers by describing it as if it were a real finding.

Remember this when some MSM hack screams about a new study that says that the end of the world is happening faster than thought.

Climategate cartoon in WaPo

Did Al Gore Invent Climate Change?

Climategate: Bloggers vs MSM

Mark Steyn prefers to call it 'warmergate', which I think is quite appropriate as the data-manipulation by the top climate 'scientists' (after what they have done, they deserve the scare quotes)was to create the illusion of an ever warming world.

He explains the tragic gulf that has opened between the traditional and the new media-

Michael Gerson has lousy timing. In The Washington Post, in one of those now familiar elegies for old media, he writes:

And the whole system is based on a kind of intellectual theft. Internet aggregators (who link to news they don't produce) and bloggers would have little to collect or comment upon without the costly enterprise of newsgathering and investigative reporting. The old-media dinosaurs remain the basis for the entire media food chain.

That's laughably untrue in the Warmergate story. If you rely on the lavishly remunerated "climate correspondents" of the big newspapers and networks, you'll know nothing about the Climate Research Unit scandals - just the business-as-usual drivel about Boston being underwater by 2011. Indeed, even when a prominent media warm-monger addresses the issue, the newspaper prefers to reprint a month-old column predating the scandal. If you follow online analysis from obscure websites on the fringes of the map, you'll know what's going on. If you go to the convenience store and buy today's newspaper, you won't. That's the problem.

If anyone needs newspapers, it ought to be for stories like this. If there were no impending epocalypse(sic -apocalypse?), then "climate science" would be a relatively obscure field, as it was up to a generation ago. Now it produces celebrity scientists living high off the hog of billions in grants. They thus have a vested interest in maintaining the planet's-gonna-fry line. So what do the media do? Instead of exposing the thesis to rigorous journalistic examination, they stage fluffy green stunts, run soft-focus "living green" features with Hollywood "activists", and at a time of massive staff cutbacks in every other department create the positions of specialist "climate correspondent" and "environmental reporter" and fill them with sycophantic promoters of the Big Scare to the point that, as Dr Mann coos approvingly to The New York Times, "you've taken the words out of my mouth".

What Gerson writes ought to be true. Warmergate demonstrates why it isn't.

Quite so.
(emphasis mine)

Heads at the Hindustan Times go deeper into sand

It is now day 7 and the Hindustan Times still refuses to report on the Climategate scandal. Those heads in sand are going deeper.

I have sent a second email to the concerned addresses at the HT(no response to the first sent yesterday).The email is as follows-

Dear gentlemen(and ladies) of the press,


it is now 7 days after the exposure of Climategate and you still have not reported on it. Not one word. Not even a whitewash.

I don't think silence is a good option - nor is pretending that nothing happened.
Don't you think the readers of the Hindustan Times deserve to be informed of something so significant?
When can we expect some straight reporting -not spin -on the subject?


cheers and regards,
gurmeet

http://libertynewscentral.blogspot.com/

It was sent to-
chetan@hindustantimes.com,
htreporters@hindustantimes.com,
anika.gupta@hindustantimes.com,
letters@hindustantimes.com


Will publish any response if received.

Let's see if they continue to be dishonestly silent or if they can be shamed into doing the right thing -reporting facts in an unbiased manner.


Update-
Andrew Bolt could very well be speaking of the Indian media as he castigates the Australian one-

The mainstream media - with a handful of (conservative) exceptions - do not know what terrible damage they are doing to their credibility by ignoring or drastically downplaying the Climategate scandal. The story is out, a couple of million times over, on the Internet.

What do you think the people reading of this scandal there conclude when they then turn to, say, The Age or the ABC, and find there barely a word of coverage?

I’ll tell you: they’ll conclude that the media cannot be trusted to tell even the news, let alone the truth, when it conflicts with their agenda.

Exposing environmentalist's bitches -The Hindustan Times, part 2

Part 1 of this post below.

The amazing story of Climategate broke 7 days ago. Indian media has been carefully avoiding it, just as if it were cow shit strewn on the road. I call these media whores environmentalist's bitches.Among the bitchiest is the Hindustan Times.The following is what it has 'reported' on climate change and related issues in the last 6 issues after the exposure of the climate scandal, starting from the 22nd of November(the story was too late to be included in the 21st's issue). These are from the Delhi print edition, not all of them available online-
(this is a really long post out of necessity, I apologize)
(if you want a quick summary -just scroll to the last)

22nd November

1) Page 1
             A story on 'green Tihar jail', conserving energy, bio-mass,solar,yada,yada,yada -surprisingly, the reporter manages avoiding any mention of global warming.



2) Page 11
            Inderjit Hazra attempts a humorous take on global warming-

Exactly a fortnight away from the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, the organisers have banned conference ‘gift bags’ and bottled water to conserve energy. But apart from a few who will be cycling, para-gliding, walking and crawling to Copenhagen, most of the 14,000-odd delegates, media, industry lobbyists and environmental activists descending on the Danish capital will be transported into the city by airborn e vehicles that burn a lot of jet fuel. Apart from the hot air to be generated, that’s a lot of carbon emissions for one event. I implore the powers-that-be (including the forest deity of the Sunderbans, Bon Bibi) to submerge Copenhagen by a freak tsunami. And what is the reason for hosting this catastrophe-triggering summit? Yes, global warming.

This is something many have pointed out again and again -that Global Warming is a religion of sinners. In fact, some really big sinners.We must reduce our carbon footprint drastically or else -except the saints of this religion who are exempt.Rajendra Kumar Pachauri will jet set all over the world endlessly even if his emissions(carbon emissions, that is) are killing the planet. Al Gore will live in a energy-gobbling huge mansion and flit about in private jets to give speeches on environment. UN will organize huge jamborees in top hotels at beautiful locations -the carbon footprint of which could exceed emissions of some countries.

As Andrew Bolt put it-

No one is gassier than a global warming alarmist

But hey, sinning  for a good cause is just fine.

This issue has never been raised in the Hindustan Times,AFAIK. Just as only a court jester could say inconvenient truths about the king and escape execution, so it is only in jest that a writer in Hindustan Times can take potshots at the climate scare industry.Because it is understood -it's all tongue-in-cheek, it's a joke, not to be taken seriously, nod-nod-wink-wink...

Hazra continues-

After a suggestion by the wise and wisecracking Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, beef-eating will stop in the West so as to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, a-fifth of which comes from meat production. As a result, rich westerners will move to a corn-based diet triggering a global food crisis that will wipe out poor people.

Is this an allusion to the food crisis that many said was caused by the idiotic policy of diverting farmland to produce bio-fuels instead of food? Those idiotic policies had been advocated by environmentalists for years.If you read the Hindustan Times then that fact might not have reached you.They don't like to cast greenies as meanies.They were too busy blaming and snickering at George W.Bush.

Again Hazra gets away because he is the court jester.

 Nothing this day on Climategate -maybe the HT is getting its facts right before reporting the story -although that never has stopped the media from headlining something sensational.

23rd November

1) Page 2
             A lament that not many people buy and drive electric cars in Delhi (cannot find this article online)-

We might take the HT more seriously when all the large luxury sedans parked in its office's parking lot are replaced by tiny joint-pain inducing Revas.




2) Page 10
          Environmentalist Darryl D'Monte gets the prime op-ed space to assault the very inconvenient study of the Himalayan glaciers by V.K. Raina, a former Deputy Director General of the Geological Survey of India, that says that "it was premature to make a statement that the glaciers were retreating abnormally because of global warming".

The study by V.K. Raina, a former Deputy Director General of the Geological Survey of India, has apparently not been peer-reviewed. No less a person than R.K. Pachauri, who chairs the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has rubbished the report as “totally unsubstantiated scientific opinion”.

 That the study apparently has not been peer-reviewed should interest the HT in more ways than one.Along with fudging and cherry-picking of data, the tight control of the peer-review process is the heart of Climategate.As Robert Tracinski says-

If it is corrupted, peer review can be a mechanism for an entrenched establishment to exclude legitimate challenges by simply refusing to give critics a hearing.
And that is precisely what we find.
In response to an article challenging global warming that was published in the journal Climate Research, CRU head Phil Jones complains that the journal needs to "rid themselves of this troublesome editor"-hopefully not through the same means used by Henry II's knights. Michael Mann replies:

I think we have to stop considering "Climate Research" as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.

Note the circular logic employed here. Skepticism about global warming is wrong because it is not supported by scientific articles in "legitimate peer-reviewed journals." But if a journal actually publishes such an article, then it is by definition not "legitimate."

Also interesting is that D'Monte resorts to argument by authority - the great maharaja-dhiraj* "R.K. Pachauri, .............. has rubbished the report." It's like Moses himself pronouncing the word of God!

So R.K. Pachauri must be a top-notch climate scientist -right?
Wrong!! He studied Industrial Engineering and Economics.

But don't worry - he can rubbish any report he doesn't like - he's the chairman of IPCC. And that is as close to God as it comes nowadays(after Obama, that is).


Just to note-
Activists of extreme left  -from greenies to marxists- regularly get large space in the HT. I have never seen a libertarian getting major space in this paper - it might have happened, but must have been a blink-and-miss-it moment.



 3) Page 13
             A moronic piece on turning veg to save the planet by Bharati Chaturvedi - I have read her for years (just don't ask why) and not once has she risen above parroting greenie talking points in an dull, schoolmarmish manner.


Still nothing on Climategate. Maybe the HT is working on it.Maybe.





24th November


Still nothing on Climategate!
At this point the climate scandal has become huge around the world -there are demands for investigations, there are chances of  U.S. congressional hearings, a flurry of articles from all sides all over.Accusations and calumny are flying thick and fast. But the Hindustan Times sleeps on the job -press, they say, is the watchdog of democracy. This dog lies and sleeps among the thieves.

But it gets worse!

One of the worst things about the Global Warming scare is the traumatization of young minds -whole countries will drown,  giant walls of water will engulf skyscrapers, millions will die in famine, floods,droughts, hurricanes, desertification(all of them at the same time  -somehow they left out the locusts) - all this cannot but leave deep psychological scars on kids.This is psychological terrorism practiced on children!

This is one of the worst forms of child abuse.

 Brendan O’Neill in the article Panic, little ones, it's the Carbon Monster-

In 2007, a survey of 1150 seven to 11-year-olds in Britain found that more than half had lost sleep as a result of worrying about climate change. The children were most likely to be kept awake thinking about “the possible submergence of entire countries” and the “welfare of animals"…

And the Hindustan Times is fully complicit in it -not only by publishing screaming headlines in super-large font about the end of the world. Not just by shutting out reports and research and views that contradict the narrative.

It is now sending out its top honchos to schools to propagandize on Global Warming! This is criminal!

1) Page 4

India must show responsible leadership and go out of its way to act as a pioneer in the fight against climate change since it has begun to affect our lives directly.
This is the agreement a group of 25 Sanskriti School students belonging to Classes 8 to 12 arrived at during a discussion on climate change held in the school on Monday.

Hindustan Times managing editor Samar Halarnkar interacted with the students and discussed various ways and means — such as recycling and reusing — to reduce the climate change impact.

And the Hindustan Times is furiously peddling its narrative -

Halarnkar also discussed on the official stand India must take in the Copenhagen Summit to be held in December in Denmark.

Wow!No wonder this newspaper cannot be honest about climate change.It's not news but activism that clouds their minds -saving the world is so much better that just the facts, thank you ma'am.

And just for laughs-

“The discussion was very informative and it opened our minds to many things related to climate change which we were unaware of,” Aishwarya Shekhar, a Class 11 student, said.

In today's Orwellian times, group-think is debate, all agreeing with each other is 'opening our minds'. But Samar Halarnkar wouldn't know much about open minds anyway.He is an HT man.


Now for one of those regular end-of-world-is-approaching-faster-than-we-thought-so-give-us your-trillions-now! screamers-


2) Page 19

Scream of the day is -

Antartic ice loss vaster,faster than we thought

So is this study peer-reviewed? Darryl D'Monte wouldn't trust it, if not. The HT doesn't tell us. It also doesn't tell us that-

The latest data uses observations taken monthly between 2002 and 2009 from a pair of satellites flying in formation measuring gravity perturbations. Analysing data from the GRACE satellites is tricky and relating them to ice sheet mass estimates involves several steps and assumptions.
--------------------------------
The importance of this research is that it highlights the close scrutiny needed of the region, especially for the East Antarctic ice cap, to see if its rate of loss increases. At present it is not known if the loss is due to climate change or if such losses are in any way exceptional or cyclical. If the changes persist, and accelerate, then, “Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise”, the researchers write.

Others have expressed surprise at the results. A study in 2005 suggested that the East Antarctic ice sheet was actually gaining mass. What this latest work indicates is the need for more observations, an appreciation of the large uncertainties in individual measurements and the problem of relating them to each other. Overall it would be unwise to draw strong conclusions from this research.

Try telling that to the editors of HT!

Just curious - did that 2005 study about increasing Antarctic ice get screaming headlines?Small headlines?Really small headlines?Any headline at all? I didn't think so.We all know why -doesn't fit the narrative.

The HT also didn't tell us that(from the above link)-

East Antarctica, the researchers(of this study) say, is losing mass at about 57 +/-  52 GT/yr (note large uncertainty - it could be consistent with zero ice loss)

This is like saying my mother is 57 years old +/-  52, that is she could be 109 or she could be just 5, who knows but trust me I do!

Such 'research' is enough to get environmental 'reporters' howling away in their headlines.
They and their editors want to make an impact, save the world - no doubts will be admitted.To them, all 'studies' support the narrative. Those that don't, don't exist.(That's Kafkaesque)






25th November

No sign of Climategate in the HT. There is no doubt now. They are not reporting what they do not want to report.


1) Page 15
Environmental poodle Chetan Chauhan carries on the assault on V.K.Raina's study, this time in form of a 'report', not an opinion column.In our media, news and views mix freely.So who is saying that V.K.Raina is wrong?  -a  joint team of WWF-India and Birla Institute of Technology.

I suspect WWF have something to do with environmentalism and so have an agenda.But you wouldn't know it from the 'report'.


Mercifully that is all of climate change for this day.






26th November


I don't expect the Hindustan Times to honestly report on Climategate -but I thought they would do either a small side-column one paragraph whitewash or a little longer one minimizing the whole thing. But there is dead silence.The HT wants to pretend that Climategate didn't happen.Heads in sand. Will blow over,no publicity to the skeptics, storm in a tea-cup .....I can imagine what goes for thoughts in those crusading heads.

Meanwhile, business as usual continues-

1) Page 14
          Top HT honcho Samar Halarnkar continues his brainwashing of school kids, this time at the Tagore International School(cannot find this article online) -

I feel sorry for these children -so sincere, so full of passion to do the right thing.....and so brainwashed. They are unaware that they have become foot-soldiers in the war of Greenies against freedom and capitalism.



2) Page 17
            A small item (again cannot find this online) that tells us the solutions to climate change are good for India -we will get money!Lots of it! Other people's money! All free!
Hey, that's what we all dream of, no?

27th November


Still nothing on Climategate. Keep those heads in sand, guys, and have a nice time in there.But the fire is spreading. I expect a white-washing piece any day now.Even Moses R.K. Pachauri has issued a white-wash of a statement -all is well, nothing to see, move along.

Business as usual continues(this now has the quality of the band playing on a sinking Titanic)-

1) Page1, top news 
               The climate change is the main news -but not, as one would expect from objective journalists, about  Climategate.

Ramesh will meet Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Friday, a day after Beijing announced a “voluntary” and “binding” national goal of a 40-45 per cent cut in carbon intensity below 2005 levels by 2020. Carbon intensity is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic growth or GDP.

“China has given a wake-up call to us,” Ramesh told Hindustan Times
--------------------------------------------


“Biggest step forward,” said R.K. Pachauri, head of the UN’s panel on climate change. “Now rich countries should declare a financial commitment for saving the planet so that we can have a treaty at Copenhagen.”

Sounds impressive, no? A really serious commitment to cut emissions? Something substantial? That's the impression the writers(among them Chetan Chauhan again) seem to want to leave.

But- as with much about global warming 'reporting' -it's more smokes and mirrors.
After several such paras , the most revealing part is kept for towards the last part of the piece-

China’s new goal does not mean its emissions will reduce. With the new carbon-intensity cuts, Chinese emissions will keep growing with the economy, and faster than India, till 2020 or 2030 when emissions are expected to peak. Chinese officials have avoided announcing a year when emissions will peak before they start to decline.

So no effect on climate change(except the one of keep increasing it). So all that praise is for.....for what exactly? intentions?chanting the right mantra? Actually it's more devious than that. Planet Gore has the goods.



2)  Page 7
             Samar Halarnkar, Managing Editor, Hindustan Times , continues his whirlwind crusade through schools.This time hurricane Halarnkar hits Amity International School, Saket.I'm sure he had an open debate discussing all points of views.(Heh,heh, just kidding)

There are some sad stories of lost childhood due to global warming scaremongering - though I'm sure the HT does not see it that way-

As a school project, a group of students has meticulously calculated the carbon footprint of each student, faculty member as well as that of the whole school -- all in a pioneering environmental endeavor, now on display as a neat and structured report.

I remember, as kids we had much more fun.


3) Page 13
          Uh-oh.
               Here comes that full page scaremongering again. They love doing this.

This includes a softie interview with Dr.R.K. Pachauri in the style of a school master instructing a pupil.(No, the interviewer is not the schoolmaster).
No question of asking some real.....questions.About Climategate, for instance.About "hiding the decline".About a corrupt peer-review process. About why the earth hasn't warmed in the 21st century.About the quality of code. About the quality of surface station data. About the rise of CO2 historically following the temperature and not the other way round. About lucrative incentives to scaremonger -lots of free money.No way. That won't happen.

 Maybe the answers are so obvious to the HT that they assume that everyone knows. Maybe that is why they won't tell us -or ask questions.

Mr. Chetan Chauhan (yes, him again!), could you consider us all as all-out, full-scale, no-good ignoramuses and next time get us some answers? Of course, Mr. Pachauri may never speak to you again but.....or is it all about protecting the narrative?






 Whew, finished! This concludes my review of HT's marvelously biased coverage of climate change.And possibly the longest post on the LNC.

To summarize-

In 6 days-

1) 19 articles on climate change (including 1 related and 1 a satire)(note -there are multiple articles on pg19,on the 24th Nov and on page 13 on the 27th Nov)

2) 18 of them are scaremongering, follow the narrative,crusading to save the planet kind

3) no mention of Climategate -anywhere

4) No clue that not everyone believes the narrative -that there are thousands of scientists who are 'sceptics'

5) no questioning of the climate orthodoxy as represented by the IPCC.


No wonder, the Hindustan Times makes a splendid environmentalist's bitch.




*The colorful Indian language translator -

             maharaja-dhiraaj - king of kings


Update-
      4 ''it's" changed to "its" on the cue of the keen eyed Samar Halarnkar in the comments. Thanks, Samar.

Exposing environmentalist's bitches -The Hindustan Times, part 1

 Note - the meat of this post, the juicy bit, part 2, is here

This will be a series exposing the persistent lack of honest reporting on climate change in the Indian media.Starting with the Hindustan Times because this is the rag I'm most familiar with.

Climategate broke 5(I think) days ago -and for 5(I think) days I have searched the newspaper's site using keywords like - CRU... email... hack....Phil Jones..... And still-

nothing, zilch, nada!

Makes you wonder -

1)do they live in a cave with no internet connection?
2)have they not heard of Climategate( or Climaquiddick as some prefer it)?
3)if so do they not consider it newsworthy?

So the shocking story which(in Andrew Bolt's words)-

* caused an international controversy

* shocked world leaders in climate science

* triggered calls for an inquiry by a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer

* caused fellow Leftist and warmist crusader George Monbiot to call for the resignation of one of the warmist scientists, and complain that fellow Leftists who ignore it are in denial.

* helped to prompt a Liberal revolt against Malcolm Turnbull

* caused warmist crusader Tim Flannery to confess on ABC television for the first time that the world had indeed been cooling, and ”when the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem” and “we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn’t reflect it”.

* revealed that one of the co-authors of the IPCC report that Faine(another environmentalist's bitch -ed) cites as gospel conceded ”we can’t account for the lack of warming, it’s a travesty that we can’t”.

is not worthy of being covered?

Or, as is more likely -doesn't fit the narrative.

This, in these last 5 days, has been the Hindustan Time's agenda(as it has been for past several years -they don't take their eyes off the ball)-


UH-OH! This is going to be long post.....a mere five days and so much warmingering......so will continue in the next post.


Update -

Climategate broke seven days ago -making media's silence all the more damning.So I will cover last 6  issues of the Hindustan Times in the next post.



Update 2 -

Part 2 of this post is now online.

Greens and the MSM -pimp and the bitch

I have great respect for prostitutes -those who are in it voluntarily. They earn an honest living. One can't say that of the mainstream media(MSM). They give whoring a bad name. The way they have become mere megaphones of the environmentalists, their bootlickers, their...bitches -is simply astounding. It is a journalistic fraud of the highest order -if they were oil or financial company executives, most newspaper editors would be behind bars. They make up facts, they hide inconvenient truths, they delight in scare-mongering,they put up dodgy reports in screaming headlines, the way they carry the trumpet for the capitalism-hating, ideologically obsessed big-government greenies ......They make good bitches.

Remember acid rain?
From Planet Gore-

As with the Truth about Acid Rain, the MSM Wants to Bury Climaquiddick [Henry Payne]

David Skole, a professor of forestry at Michigan State University, visited the Detroit News offices earlier this month to argue that cap-and-trade legislation would be an economic boon to America. As evidence, he sited the 1990 Clean Air Act, which initiated a cap and trade program for power plant–particulate emissions. “Everyone said it would be too costly,” Skole gleefully announced, “but they were wrong and it worked.”

In fact, like global warming science today, the “consensus” science in 1990 — which argued that Midwest power plants were destroying Northeast lakes with acid rain — was bunk. So how can Skole (and his allies) boldly stake their claim? Because Washington politicians and their media parrots covered up the scientific evidence in 1990 so that it would not derail the regulation they had long sought. It is a cautionary tale for those who think that truth will win the day after the newly released Climate Research Unit e-mails — a.k.a., Climaquiddick — have revealed fraud in global-warming science.

The NAPAP (National Acid Rain Precipitation Assessment Project) study published in 1989 — which took ten years and cost $500 million, the most comprehensive federal study ever undertaken — proved that acid rain was a minor nuisance and that passing expensive regulation would do little to address the supposed problem.

I briefly covered the story in Washington at the time having read alternative media reports in the Washington Times by Warren Brookes and Reason magazine. But, as in Climaquiddick today, the MSM buried the story’s tawdry details. In 1989, I spoke with two journalists who knew of the report’s conclusions, but who refused to report on it lest it jeopardize passage of the Clean Air Act. I interviewed then-EPA Chief Bill Reilly (a green Bush appointee) who dismissed the report. Congress, despite having spent half-a-billion, quashed the inconvenient science. Only one brief hearing was held.

Months after the regulations were voted into law, 60 Minutes became the first MSM outlet to look into the allegations that acid rain science was a hoax.

“(NAPAP chief scientist Ed) Krug and then-NAPAP director James Mahoney explained and defended the project’s conclusions,” reported Reason. “Both argued that acid rain is not a crisis. On acid lakes, (60 Minutes reporter) Kroft repeated NAPAP’s belief that acid rain contributes to acidity of only ‘about 2 percent of the surface water in the Adirondacks.’”

Asked about a New York Times story that claimed acid rain had turned forests in Appalachia into “ragged landscapes of dead and dying trees,” Krug told 60 Minutes, “I don’t know where they got that from. It appears to be another assertion, unsubstantiated.”

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz also got wind of the NAPAP cover-up after the fact. Trying to explain why environmental reporters had ignored the scientific evidence that would have precluded $4 billion a year in regulatory compliance, he wrote: “Some reporters say privately that it is difficult to write stories that debunk the conventional wisdom of environmental activists, whom the press treats more deferentially than industry spokesmen and other lobbyists.”

Fortunately, the alternative press has grown since 1989 and today there are prominent news outlets like Fox and the blogosphere to help report the inconvenient Climaquiddick facts.

But as with acid rain, the MSM continues to filter out information that does not fit the Big Government green agenda. So that when MSU professor Skole spun his false tale of the Clean Air Act’s “success” before a group of journalists, he could assume ignorance of the science.

Just to emphasize-

I spoke with two journalists who knew of the report’s conclusions, but who refused to report on it lest it jeopardize passage of the Clean Air Act

They are not reporters -they are activists.They are agenda-driven whores.
Environmentalist's bitches.

(emphasis mine)

Hacked emails point to climate fraud!

 Update -the incriminating emails are now on net in a searchable form. Well done!


This is HUGE!!


Some noble soul has hacked into the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and what a treasure trove of incriminating emails has been found!


Scientic fraud to make AGW theories appear plausible? Silencing of skeptics? Deleting data to escape from responding to FOI requests?

 Yes, like a formula-ridden blockbluster, it's all there -scientists acting as partisans of a cause.

Andrew Bolt has many details. Steve McIntyre, the object of much scorn and fury among alarmist scientists in these emails, has more.

Those emails can be downloaded from here.

Update 2- more from the indispensable Tom Nelson.

This is Oh-bama!

From the excellent Michael Ramirez.

Bower-in-chief

Oh no, there he goes again!

Somebody forgot to tell him that-

The one thing that virtually everyone who teaches bowing etiquette stresses is under no circumstance try to combine a bow with a handshake.

Scraping and bowing before foreign royalty comes naturally to the appeaser-in-chief.

Finally, a moron in the White House

Obama at the helm of America is like a drunk at the steering wheel of a racing car on a highway doing 260mph!
-

Obama has been a prime malefactor in fanning confusion about the enemy and the means we will use to defend ourselves. He ran for president on pulling the plug on Iraq, although that was a central battlefield in the war against the same Islamic fundamentalists. Once in office, he not only declared war on the CIA by re-investigating its operatives and disclosing their methods, but he proposed closing Guantanamo and bringing detainees to the U.S. for trial and possible incarceration. In his grand address on health care, he tells the country it’s a shame we have to spend money fighting in Afghanistan. He has excised “war on terror” and “Islamic fundamentalist” from our official lexicon. And he has declared we won’t be using enhanced interrogation techniques to extract any useful information from those who would carry out dozens of Fort Hoods.

Somebody charge him for being an idiot while president.

Read it all.

Update-
         Related-

It’s pretty clear to the conscious that the President hasn’t a clue how to grow the economy. And, every day more of us suspect that job growth isn’t even part of his agenda for the next few years

Kumkum Dasgupta -no wind in those windmills

The moment I lay my eyes on this article on windmills by Kumkum Dasgupta in today's Hindustan Times, I just knew that it would be strong on uninformed tosh and unquestioning credulity. I was not disappointed(or rather was-  that this large article was no different from thousands of others).Here is the gist of it-

--------------------------------------
A little bit of push from the government always helps, as it did for Samsoe, which is located in the middle of Denmark, a country of 406 islands and peninsula Jutland. Thanks to its geographical position, the Viking explorers once used Samsoe as a meeting point. Today, it has become the centre of the country’s renewable energy (RE) programme. Thanks to a community initiative, the island now runs on 100 per cent RE.

That Samsoe’s contribution is part of Denmark’s larger plans of moving from fossil fuels to RE is clear: by 2025, Denmark wants at least 30 per cent of its total energy consumption to be powered by RE. As of today, RE accounts for over 15 per cent of the country’s gross energy consumption and about 27 per cent of the electricity that is generated.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The residents responded wholeheartedly: they gave up their oil-burning furnaces for centralised plants that burned leftover straw or wood chips to produce heat and hot water. They bought shares in new wind turbines. Then they invested in 11 large land-based turbines, enough to meet their electricity needs.

They also supported the construction of 10 massive offshore turbines. Banks backed the resident-investors because the Danish government assured the price of electricity for 10 years.
“We care about the production, because we own the wind turbines. Every time they turn around, it means money in the bank.


And, being part of it, we also feel responsible,” Hermansen said in an interview to a newspaper.
“The spin-offs have been enormous: the islanders not only saved on its fuel/electricity bills but Samsoe became an island for eco-tourism

-------------------------


“We care about the production, because we own the wind turbines. Every time they turn around, it means money in the bank. And, being part of it, we also feel responsible,” Hermansen said in an interview to a newspaper.

Ok, we get the narrative - a green island paradise that is now teaching the world how to give up completely it's dependence on fossil fuels, a sort of renewable energy kibbutz that actually works and makes money, grassroots collective action for nature and for profit.

Kumkum Dasgupta, following to a T other 'environmental' writers' techniques, raises no doubts, interviews no contrary voices, questions nothing.The truth, alas, is often not found in a newspaper article -a strange and tragic irony.

Ms. Dasgupta, here some facts that you seem to be unaware of -

The answer is that the president's (repeat) claim that "Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power" is false. Denmark actually produces much less of its own electricity from wind, as low as 4 percent depending on the year, with the recent average of 9.7 percent. This despite a massive buildout of what they flatteringly call the "wind carpet," on some of the most hospitable terrain for wind power in the world.

It is also in return for its households paying the highest eletricity rates in Europe. With a substantially lower per-capita energy use. That means, to get half of what Obama seeks, the U.S. would have to carpet itself twice over — which means lots of windmills where birds fly and Kennedys live — and pay Danish-style rates.

Oh. Wait. That still won't do it. Apparently Denmark's experience isn't even scalable to Scanadanavia. It turns out that, if the Norwegians and Swedes tried to replicate Denmark's expensive folly, well, it would blow the system up. Here's why. Denmark took advantage of long-since-paid-for interconnectors between Jutland and Norway, and the island on which Copenhagen sits and Sweden. It made a political decision that windmills would be their "national champion" industry, and as you will hear to no end throughout the Copenhagen COP, a big part of their national identity. So they built a lot of windmills, and started a mythology.

This buildout was only possible because the Norwegians and Swedes use enormous percentages of hydropower and nuclear, both of which can be dialed up or down according to the whimsy of the wind. When the wind does deign to blow, Denmark sends fully half of its very expensive, ratepayer subsidized wind power to its neighbors at cut rates, in return for said neighbors indulging Denmark's wind mill image-making by dialing up or down its hydro power or nukes at other times (which, most of the time, means "up").

When the wind picks up, the story gets worse. On top of subsidizing their neighbors' electricity and allowing them to go without building more of their own, it turns out that increases in wind generation, under the current buildout, are shipped nearly 100 percent and at a considerable below-cost discount right out of the country. With its politicians now vowing to massively increase installed wind ("50 percent of our elecricity" — how about getting to 20 percent first?), that means Denmark will be sending even more domestic wealth to its neighbors.

Because it is displacing carbon-neutral electricity — as a condition precedent even to deploying the machines, mind you, so this is not something that can be changed — you can kiss claims to massive CO2 reductions (or reduced fuel use) goodbye.

When it comes to Obama's claim that Denmark, not discredited Spain, is the model to follow: waiter, the food was horrible, and the portions too small. You can't replicate Denmark's model — and its a good thing, too.

Although, I'm informed that the Danish wind industry admitted the problems to the media this morning before muttering about needing further (ratepayer) investment, expect the American wind power industry to spin wildly in coming days. Which, incidentally, is more than we can say about their products.

So, the merry islanders are laughing their way to the bank while rest of Denmark pays the highest energy bills in Europe. Denmark has to ship out it's wind-generated electricity at a loss to it's neighbors. And to top it all, the alleged CO2 reductions are a myth.


And this you say, Ms.Dasgupta, is model for the world to follow. Really?



(emphasis mine)


Update -
missing links added.


Update 2-

        Related-



        BBC refuses to air a film not duly worshipful of windmills


       Artists against windmills

Iranian protesters taunt-plead-shame Obama with Bushspeak

One of the biggest transformations going from Bush to Obama has been the trashing of human rights by the new team in power. They are leftists, after all, freedom and human rights has never been the Left's forte.

A most heart-rending struggle of current times is the desperate struggle of Iranians against their brutal fanatic regime - a regime which does this:



(video link)

A girl is walking away and a riot guard stops her, she is all alone against the big metal gate, defenseless and not bothering anyone, but an anti-riot guard decides to lash her across the sheens a couple of times with his truncheon. But there is worse to come, another girl is pulled over and this time she is smacked in the face with the truncheon, she is knocked out and when a young man comes to her aid, he too is pulled away and kneed in the face before more women come to their rescue. Also notice the security agent with the camera who is filming the protesters. This is what they do in public, just imagine what they do behind the prisons.

For Obama the protestors have been irritants in his set-in-stone policy of  talking to the mullahs. He even cut off funding for center documenting Iranian human rights violations to suck up to the regime. The protestors are now trying to shame Obama into doing the right thing-

The New York Times reports that opposition protesters in Iran, in between beatings and tear-gassing from riot police and the regime’s hired thugs, have started a new chant: “Obama, Obama -- either you’re with them or you’re with us.”

In case you were wondering what the answer might be, the statement yesterday from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said it all. Gibbs declared that Obama administration officials were following reports of the unrest and “hope greatly that violence will not spread.” This was a great moment in the annals of diplo-speak. No mention of who might be committing the violence, or who might be its victims. Violence, it seems, has the capacity to spread without any human involvement.

Unpleasant as it may be for the president to hear, his policy is objectively aiding the Tehran regime and harming the opposition in their ongoing struggle.

The chanters are right. The United States can either be with them or against them. Right now, President Obama is against them. But it’s not too late for him to switch sides.

I hate to say it - but the most powerful man in the world has his moral compass pointing in the wrong direction
.

Hergé on climate change?

 Hergé drew a delightful series of comic strips on a couple of urchins named Quick & Flupke which were later published in form of 12 albums.

Going through one of these albums,Two of a Kind, this one story made me wonder -was Hergé making a veiled statement on the dangers of climate change? Or was he making fun of all those global warming alarmists that have now proliferated more extensively than rabbits?

 (click for larger image)

 Observe - the climate change in the comic is 'cooling'. The stories were published in the 1930's and 40's. Till 1940 the planet is supposed to have warmed(a time when CO2 emissions were low). It then cooled till early 1970's (even though the CO2 emissions were rising rapidly) then warmed again and then has cooled ever since 2001 forcing even the BBC(the Pravda of Global Warmingism) to sit up and take notice.


All of which makes me go -hmmm........

Note-
To our good fortune the series has been reprinted in India by EuroBooks India.

The troubled story of Ayn Rand's 'We the Living' movie

Some good news -the 1942 film of Ayn Rand's We the Living  is now out on DVD-

Big Hollywood has a review-

We The Living was made during World War II in Mussolini’s Italy, of all places.  The government warily allowed it to be filmed as a propaganda vehicle against the Soviet Union.  But when Mussolini realized the movie was a critique not only of communism but of all forms of statism, he banned it from theatres, where it was a smash hit.



The government rounded up and destroyed all copies of the film – save one, the original negative, which was secreted away.  As we are informed by the fascinating documentary (included among the DVD extras), the film’s reels languished unseen for decades until Rand’s attorneys went hunting for it among the Italian film community.

Duncan Scott, who produced the DVD release, explains how as a young editor he talked his way into recutting and subtitling the film alongside Ayn Rand herself. WTL had originally been released as two separate films.  They combined them, trimmed away some of the excess, and removed or redubbed pro-fascist propaganda speeches inserted at the insistence of the authorities.

The issue of re-dubbing is intriguing -

Scott tells how in the original version, Andrei delivered a heated diatribe against the evils of capitalism. Needless to say, this speech didn’t exactly belong. Not content merely to change the subtitles, Scott actually hired a sound-a-like Italian actor so he could redub the voice track in Italian to match the new subtitles.

Unfortunately the digital transfer was done in 1987, and the cost of a high-definition remastering was prohibitive for this DVD release, so the picture quality isn’t quite as crisp as one might wish. Nevertheless, it is completely watchable.

Glenn Kenny quotes J.Hoberman's description of the film -

"Shot mainly in close-up and entirely in the studio, We the Living evokes an atmosphere of total, demoralized corruption. As directed by...Alessandrini, a filmmaker with some Hollywood experience, the movie does not lack for mise-en-scéne. The grim sets are scrawled with hammer-and-sickle graffiti and Cyrillic exhortations, emblazoned with menacing posters of proletarian ape-men and encephalitic Lenins. That everyone is always layered with clothing adds to the sense of unpleasant crowding, just as the already high fog quotient is significantly augmented by a constant sucking on cigarettes. The atmosphere is as gray as the dialogue is purple."

If anybody gets a hand on the DVD, you know where to contact me.

(cross posted at the Ayn Rand India)

Declare hospitals 'Prime Minister-free' zones

Socialism kills, as does it's cousin -the welfare state.The huge state apparatus that allegedly exists for the common good inevitably becomes a supremely arrogant and brutal self-serving monster.Just visit any government office as an ordinary citizen -and you'll know(as if you didn't)how much the public 'servants' are really public 'masters'.

We are just chattel -we are forced to pay taxes to feed this monster, we must vote to legitimize the beast, we exist to bow before the powerful politicians and their goons, to grovel and bribe at the endless number of departments to get something done, we are there to serve...the public servants.

This monstrous reality is perfectly encapsulated in what is state murder in all but name-

A 32-yr-old patient lost his life outside the Post Graduate Institute for Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) hospital, Chandigarh, after he was stopped from entering the hospital due to security reasons. The Prime Minister was visiting the hospital. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has said that the Prime Minister is saddened by the incident and that it has demanded a full report on the incident.

Video from Times Now

(if the video does not play, here is the direct link)

The patient Sumit Prakash was reportedly shunted from gate to gate for almost two hours which allegedly led to his death. The deceased was from Ambala and was suffering from acute kidney problems that required him to visit the Inderjit hospital in Chandigarh on a monthly basis.

Today, he also developed respiratory problems which led Inderjit hospital to send him to the PGI in order to get oxygen. It was outside the PGI that he was refused entry as the Prime Minister was addressing a convocation there.

Did Manmohan Singh not know that his visit to the hospital would put patients' access to doctors in severe jeopardy? Is he so clueless? Or just plain vanilla callous like the rest of the political class to which he belongs?

Shouldn't he be prosecuted for knowingly putting patients at risk -finally killing one?(But which official has the balls to start such a line of inquiry -let alone a prosecution?)

At minimum, the hospitals need to be declared 'Prime Minister-free' zones.


Politics, they say, is a killer. For us chattel, it is.
But hey, he is 'saddened' .

(emphasis mine)

Will India be like(gasp!)California?

No, this is not a compliment -

California vs. Texas: The Verdict Is In

-----------------

Texas has usurped the leadership position that, decades ago, belonged to California. Today California is in decline, likely irreversibly so. William Voegeli draws the sad but instructive comparison in the Los Angeles Times:

In America's federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a "package deal" that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right. ...

California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau's latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. ...

Confronted with a stark choice between government dominance and freedom, Americans are voting with their feet:

One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive "net internal migration," in the Census Bureau's language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

So are higher taxes and greater public expenditure in California worth it?-

But those higher taxes in California must be going somewhere. Why aren't they benefiting those many thousands of citizens who are leaving the state for greener pastures?

In what respects, then, does California "excel"? California's state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California's public retirement funds. The "dues" paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.

I'm afraid the dynamic 2-in-1 do-badan-ek-jaan* superhero team of Chacha Manmohan S.Gandhi(as Sauvik Chakraverti so wonderfully likes to put it) is rushing India towards the failed California model -a numerous high-caste of sumptuously paid and pampered inefficient and corrupt public employees, large-scale(rather, huge-scale) spending on 'social' sectors in the name of the poor, higher taxes whether directly or indirectly(see all the goverment controlled charges increasing all around you -from transport to vegetables to electricity).The 2-in-1 team likes the 2-step tango -massive amount of spending(as if it is their baap's* money) and massive amount of debt(which we and our children's and our grandchildren's baaps will have to pay off).

We have only just begun to nibble on the fruit of partial liberalisation of the Indian economy. The 2-in-1 team is poisoning the fruit with it's 'social' obsessions.

Only it will be much worse in India because-
the size of Indian babudom is much larger and their predatory grasp much stronger,
their level of corruption and venality cannot be matched (not even close) by the Californian babus,
all of India will be California and there is no Texas to escape to.
(emphasis mine)



*The colorful Indian language translator-
       do-badan-ek-jaan - two bodies but one mind

       baap - father
       babu - (derisively) bureaucrat