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.