Clueless Pundits

Vikram Sood, former Secretary, Research & Analysis Wing(RAW), India's external intelligence agency (it is frighetining that a person of such paranoid views - just read his articles - was in such a senior position. One may not know for a long time the damage he did)-

Why do I keep getting it wrong?

Four years ago, in May 2003 the Iranian authorities proposed a package deal to freeze their nuclear programme in exchange for an end to US hostility. The Iranians offered full transparency about their nuclear programme and full cooperation with the IAEA, on Iraq, terrorism and even material support to Hamas.
      - Vikram Sood,  October 15, 2007

(emphasis mine)

Clueless Pundits

Eminent Indian media person, Prem Shankar Jha-

What do I know?

The countdown to a massive aerial bombing of Iran, possibly using bunker busting nuclear weapons, has begun.
      - Prem Shankar Jha, May 04, 2006

Tom Friedman -all hot air and no balloon

Smacking down China lover Tom Friedman is now becoming a cottage industry. It is simply too easy. Even so Pejman Yousefzadeh does a masterful job that is worth reading. What is left of Friedman at the end of a thorough fisking is yet another clueless New York Times pundit, all hot air and no balloon that goes anywhere.

Do read it all.

Vir Sanghvi parades his prejudices

In a column about prejudices of all and sundry, the heavyweight(pun intended) of Indian media Vir Sanghvi does not shy away from parading his own-

"The real reason why we are so horrified by Terry Jones’ prejudice and venom is because we believe that somehow, Americans will be different. It is all right for some mad mullah on the West Bank to bless suicide bombers, we say, but how can an American pastor go on television and exhibit such prejudice and ignorance?


In doing so, we vastly over-estimate American sensibilities. It is tempting to see America through the refined prism of the East Coast establishment or savvy Hollywood film-makers. But far away from these global advertisements for American culture lies the heartland, a dark underbelly of foolishness and insularity.


Indians are always shocked to discover that nearly 75 per cent of Americans do not have passports. It is not as though they cannot afford to travel abroad. They simply don’t want to because they have no interest in the world beyond their borders. They regard it as mysterious and uncivilised."

So your prejudices against the decent folk of the American heartland are alright, Mr.Sanghvi?


As if on cue, Janet Daley had an article in The Telegraph the same day that had something to say about people like Sanghvi-

One publicity-crazed loony threatens to commit an irresponsibly offensive act, to the virtually universal disgust of his own countrymen and the populations of America’s allies, and that’s it: the annihilation of any chance of bridge-building or conciliation between Muslim countries and the Western nations.

That this absurdity became the immediately accepted received wisdom suggests that the world (and not just the Muslim parts of it) must be very eager indeed to find a plausible excuse for casting America as a cartoon country whose heartland is dominated by bigoted know-nothings.

Sanghvi had earlier distinguished himself by running the Hindustan Times as a New York Times' clone -with all the biases included.There's a shared ideology, a very broad consensus shared across the world by the ruling and media elites.That is why Sanghvi and his ilk(e.g. Barkha Dutt) are comfortable with "the refined prism of the East Coast establishment or savvy Hollywood film-makers" but not with the ignorant "rednecks", the pilloried conservatives or the dreaded neocons. That is why newsrooms across the globe(and certainly at the Hindustan Times) drooled over an Obama victory and sicced their attack dogs on Sarah Palin.


Note -
I left the following comment at Sanghvi's post. It has not yet been published(after approx.24hrs)-

Janet Daley, by coincidence, has an article today that seems to fit you well, Mr.Sanghvi. She speaks of people who-
"must be very eager indeed to find a plausible excuse for casting America as a cartoon country whose heartland is dominated by bigoted know-nothings."

That would be you, sir. Do read it all-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/7996761/The-Terry-Jones-saga-shows-the-strength-of-anti-Americanism.html

The bigger picture-Humans good for biodiversity

So the ever evil humans are bad for biodiversity? Like much of what is drilled into us by the dint of constant repetition in the media, it is a myth!

Ronald Bailey-

Here’s a fact that I suspect most people don’t know: Wherever we humans have gone in the past two centuries, we have increased local and regional biodiversity. Biodiversity, in this case, is defined as increasing species richness.
----------------------

The fear among opponents of "invasive species" is the aggressive outsiders will cause a holocaust among the native plants. That might initially seem reasonable because there are a few species, like kudzu, purple loosestrife, and water hyacinth, that grow with alarming speed wherever they show up. But that doesn't mean other species are in danger. “There is no evidence that even a single long term resident species has been driven to extinction, or even extirpated within a single U.S. state, because of competition from an introduced plant species,” Macalester College biologist Mark Davis notes [PDF]. Yet this spurious threat of extinction persists as one of the chief reasons given for trying to prevent the introduction of exotic species.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Beasts in South India and saints in Kashmir?

Beasts in South India? Well, they must be since the climate is pretty hot down there. As this study says -global warming makes us violent.

If global warming is a scientific fact, then you better be prepared for the earth to become a more violent place. That's because new Iowa State University research shows that as the earth's average temperature rises, so too does human "heat" in the form of violent tendencies.
--------------------------

the researchers estimate that if the annual average temperature in the U.S. increases by 8°F (4.4°C), the yearly murder and assault rate will increase by 34 per 100,000 people -- or 100,000 more per year in a population of 305 million.

 If increases in temperature makes monsters out of men then logically those living in hotter climes must be more beastly.

In South India,which is close to the equator, where it is warm in winters and searing in summers, they must be ferocious,bloodthirsty,flesh-tearing fiends. As also in the dry climate of Rajasthan.But there the nights are cold and the days burn -it's a desert thing.So the Rajasthanis are perhaps a lot of Dr Jekylls and Mr Hydes (or Mrs Hydes)- fiends by daytime and decent folks by night.



Kashmir, located at he footsteps of the Himalayas, must be full of saints -with little violence.

Must be. Distinguished professors said so.Craig Anderson, a Distinguished Professor of psychology and director of Iowa State's Center for the Study of Violence; and Matt DeLisi, an associate professor of sociology and director of ISU's criminal justice program.

Perhaps distinguished professors with lots of research funds(i.e. other people's money) to burn.

Update-

     Anthony Watts gives this 'science' some fisking.

If Paul Krugman were a North Korean

The Daily Mail -

A leading North Korean financial expert has been dragged before a firing squad and shot dead for ruining the country's financial affairs.

If they started shooting idiotic economists and experts in the West, that would be curtains for Paul Krugman, Jeffery Sachs and many,many others.If we were to line up against the wall those responsible for "ruining a country's financial affairs", whole swathes of political and 'expert' classes would be queuing up at the gates of Hell.

Come to think of it, that doesn't sound too bad !

Rich kickings

Reading John Hinderaker one realizes how easy and enjoyable it is to kick Frank Rich around.Rich will obviously not appreciate the treatment John gives him nor this great advice-

You really shouldn't read the New York Times. It has lower editorial standards than any other newspaper in America, and if you read it enough, it could make you stupid. Like Frank Rich.

Read the whole thing. A thorough take down of an idiot-pundit, the kind that infect the media all over.

Times of India -spinning so hard that the head muddles

Even as the Hindustan Times' climate alarmism has cooled down(at least for now), the Times of India, India's other major daily, is spinning furiously.These are the fanatics who even as their temple collapses around them will chose not to run but to congregate around the altar and keep chanting the mantra. Their full page hit-piece on skeptics has to be seen to be believed-

Click for a larger image

Shobhan Saxena in "On Thin Ice" tries to sound neutral but cannot keep up it up long- it's too hard to play the objective writer so he ends up with-

Experts fear all these controversies may end up sabotaging a possible climate treaty. The key is to try to get a legally binding treaty, securing no more than a two-degree rise in temperature. The problem is we are working in the wrong framework, says Monbiot. Its not likely to improve the situation.

Yes, Shoban, we knew all along where you were coming from.


Then there is an anguished piece by Chidanand Rajghatta lamenting that the noble Obama is being held back by political opponents and lobbyists from imposing that wonderful and magical Cap and Trade on the unwilling citizens.



At the center of the page, the ALL FACT, NO FICTION column is the funniest section, unintentionally of course.It's hard to find a fact here but it has such precious gems as-

FACT 1 | Heat waves rising. The commonest sign of climate change. There have been periods of warming, cooling over the last 5 billion years but the change has never been so extreme

Wrong!

FACT 2 | Shrinking glaciers. At the current rate of warming, all existing glaciers will disappear in the next 100 years

Even after Glaciergate the TOI believes this -amazing! Maybe they never got to the 2350 thing. Anyway, as I said earlier -2035 or 2350, who cares as long as they can cling to their pet narrative.Or maybe climate change has changed the concepts of math -2350 will fall within 100 years. Anything can happen in post-modern science.

FACT 3 | Rising sea level. Has increased by 25cm in last 100 years; will rise 4 times in next 100. Many Pacific islands will disappear

Really?

FACT 4 | Wild storms. Occurring more frequently & with higher intensity. Result: Soil moisture will evaporate faster resulting in dryness between rain periods. Dry areas will get drier

 Again wrong!Actually - Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows!

BLACK TIDINGS: A Nasa Earth Observatory image shows the spread of black soot (‘black carbon’ to climate scientists) over the Tibetan Plateau from August to November 2009. Places where the air was thick with soot are white, while lower concentrations are transparent purple. On the Tibetan Plateau, temperatures are rising and glaciers are melting faster than climate scientists would expect based on global warming alone. A recent study of ice cores from five Tibetan glaciers by Nasa and Chinese scientists confirmed the likely culprit: rapid increases in black soot concentrations since the 1990s, mostly from air pollution sources over Asia, especially the Indian subcontinent

But wait -doesn't that indicate there are causes and forces apart from CO2 that could and do impact the climate? Even more forcefully than CO2, as in this case? It weakens TOI's own case of AGW. Maybe they didn't realize it, maybe spinning so fast makes one's head turn.Thinking clearly is difficult in such circumstances.



To wrap it up we have standard alarmist fare from Jennifer L Morgan,director, Climate and Energy Program, World Resources Institute, Washington DC. Yes the same World Resources Institute that is an extreme leftist NGO-

Anti-capitalist think tank which is funded with taxpayer dollars

This is as bad as IPCC citing 'research' from WWF publications.

There are people who still live far, far away from civilization, in some deep cave in a remote place. Somehow the TOI manages to find them and gives them large space in it's paper.



Update- 
        oops! should have mentioned that this is the Sunday Times of India, 31st Jan, Delhi edition.
Update 2- 
        oops! my head must be reeling from all the TOI spin. Corrected the above date from the 30th to the 31st Jan.

IPCC lead author -"climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics"

Professor Andy Pitman, a lead author on the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports speaks to Eleanor Hall in a rare interview.

Rare because this is one of those few cases in which an alarmist has not been thrown softball after softball.

A couple of excerpts-

ELEANOR HALL: Well, the head of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri, is now being seen to benefit from that false Himalayan glacier claim with a funding grant to his institute. That just plays right into the argument of the sceptics, doesn't it, that climate scientists are making all of this up in order to get funding for their research?

ANDY PITMAN: I would have to admit that it looks extremely bad.

And -

ANDY PITMAN: Oh, my personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organised, have nothing else to do. They kind of don't have day jobs. They can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the general public whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this actually isn't one of them.

 I really love his description that the skeptics are rich idlers who have nothing to do.Certainly no day jobs -we don't need any, we are so well-funded.Sounds like a nice chap!

Read the whole thing.

Pachauri admits to 4 new errors!

 Pachauri-

Possibility of more errors in IPCC report minimal

Hindustan Times-

Pachauri won't quit, but admits to 4 new errors

More from the HT report-

--------------
The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who on Saturday refused to resign over the mistake, admitted to four more mistakes in the panel’s report. He attributed these to “human error” but expressed inability to take action against the scientists responsible, saying they were not IPCC employees.

The Himalayan blunder was first reported by HT on January 18.

According to the report, the present area of the Himalayan glaciers is 500,000 sq km, when in reality it is 33,000 sq km.

The report also says there are 15,000 Himalayan glaciers, whereas the actual figure is between 9,000 and 12,000.

Furthermore, the IPCC says the Pindari glacier in Uttarakhand is melting at a rate of 135.2 metres a year, when the factual position is 25.3 metres.

It also predicts that the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra will become seasonal rivers in the “near future” — based on the research of Indian glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain, who also made the 2035 meltdown claim.

“Without considering the glacial sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra in China, one can’t reach such a conclusion,” said D.P. Dabral of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology.

“We admit to the unfortunate mistakes,” Pachauri told a press conference on Saturday, adding that no Indian glaciologist pointed out the mistakes since the report came out in 2007.
The IPCC — the UN’s Nobel prize-winning body on climate change — has launched an investigation into the errors a month after the environment ministry published a paper questioning its claim.

They say when it rains......

Prannoy Roy to Pachauri-"Your credibility is impeccable"

In Hindi, a sycophant is called a chamcha. Chamcha is also the Hindi word for spoon. Thus, a common wordplay in India is to call a bootlicker(often in the context of politics) a spoon, say-

X is Minister Y's spoon.

A few days ago I was mildly amused to see perhaps Indian TV's most famous (and perhaps most influential) personality Prannoy Roy of NDTV play a fawning spoon to Rajendra Pachauri.I say 'mildly' because I have come to expect such servility from the MSM- it is their normal mode.Still, it's an amazing example of media's obsequiousness towards Pachauri.No wonder Pachauri gets miffed easily when criticized. He has had it so easy over the years.

Video(Youtube) -Prannoy Roy acts obsequiously towards Rajendra Pachauri
NDTV link

 Roy wanted to be reassured by Pachauri that the glaciers were melting, whatever the expected date of demise(it is true -certainty of disaster does comfort some people. The thought that catastrophic global warming might not be happening can disconcert them.)

The funniest part is Prannoy Roy's concern about 'Global Attack' on Pachauri.He thinks criticizing Pachauri and other alarmists is like finding "reds under the bed", like "cold war".I don't think Roy is very interested in hearing out the critics.
His 'Global Attack' also reminded me of images from all those sci-fi movies-

Listening to Roy one can almost imagine Richard North and other Pachauri critics to be hovering in the sky like Predator drones zapping IPCC scientists.And looking for Dr. Pachauri in particular.

Roy's fawning at the end has to be heard to be believed. He says-
"Your credibility is impeccable.Let's hope you fight back and win and clear your name in all these...in this widespread attack from one side against you."

Roy also didn't think it fit to disclose that his NDTV has been in bed with Pachauri for quite some time-

Rajendra Pachauri with Prannoy Roy- the guru and the spoon

Thank you, Dr.Prannoy Roy, for a seminal lesson in how not to be an unbiased mediaperson.


Update -
      Autonomous Mind has more

Pachauri stereotypes himself

For someone supposed to be the ultimate do-gooding world-saving genius, Pachauri can utter things perfectly moronic. One such thing is his claim that since whatever money he receives –and he receives a lot – never goes into his pocket but to his ‘non-profit’ organization TERI, so his conflicts of interest go poof!

As I have explained before, this is simply stupid. This is just like the stereotypical swindling guru of Bollywood films who claims that he would never take a penny but that the devotees are encouraged to contribute generously to the charity box.The money would of course be used for doing good, nod-nod-wink-wink.

Isn’t that just like Pachauri?

An original Libertarian Dog Cartoon

It is criminal not to contribute to climate change

If only Haiti had contributed much more to climate change – thousands of Haitians would be alive.
We are told that the rich(and evil) developed nations have been causing climate change due to their high Co2 ‘pollution’. The leaders of countries with low Co2 emissions have been tomtomming their own moral goodness at any number of international conferences. Look at us, we are so noble –our emissions are so low.
It is an idiotic assertion in more ways than one. And nature is not kind to idiots-

The ultimate tragedy in Haiti isn’t the earthquake; it’s that country’s lack of economic freedom. The earthquake simply but catastrophically revealed the inhuman consequences of this fact.
Registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, the Haitian earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. But the quake that hit California’s Bay Area in 1989 was also of magnitude 7.0. It killed only 63 people.
This difference is due chiefly to Americans’ greater wealth. With one of the freest economies in the world, Americans build stronger homes and buildings and roads, are better nourished, and have better health care and better search and rescue equipment. In contrast, burdened by one of the world’s least-free economies, Haitians cannot afford to build sturdy structures and roads. (Haitian builders often add sand to their concrete because concrete is so expensive there. The result is weaker buildings.) Nor can Haitians afford the health care and emergency equipment that we take for granted here in the U.S.
More than just anecdotes prove that richer societies are safer societies. Lots of data back up this observation.
For example, in a 2005 paper, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn found that, while rich countries experience just as many natural disasters as do poor countries, persons in rich countries are less likely than are persons in poor countries to die from such disasters. Specifically, a country of 100 million people with a per-capita income of $8,000 will experience about 530 fewer deaths from natural disasters each year than will a country with the same population but where per-capita income is only $2,000. Raise the per-capita income from $8,000 to $14,000 and the annual expected death toll from natural disasters falls by another 233 persons.
These stark facts should be a lesson for those who insist that human habitats are made more dangerous, and human lives put in greater peril, by freedom of commerce and industry.

A Haitian delegate at Copenhagen climate conference-
 
If only she and her government were more concerned about economic freedom and less about climate change.

In fact, as the example of Haitian quake shows, it is criminal not to contribute to climate change.And next time a third-world leader preens about the moral superiority of his country in not emitting enough Co2, the proper response is –shame on you that you didn’t!


Note –this post assumes for argument sake only that anthropogenic Co2 causes significant climate change. That is a theory far from being proven yet.

Only white people-monkeys allowed

Imagine if the artist had used Obama in this example of how to make caricatures instead of Bush-

For this exercise I chose to caricature US politcian George W. Bush. Bush is invariably caricatured as either a cowboy wearing an oversized stetson or as a chimpanzee - the former because he lives in Texas and the latter because unfortunately for him he resembles one. His body posture also suits either description as he seems to arch his arms away from his body, which makes him look even more like an ape or a cowboy ready to draw in a gun fight.
The next step was to transform this image into human form. Although I wanted his body posture to remain as close to a chimpanzee's as possible I also wanted him to look human, with human limbs and proportions - apart from the oversized head, of course.

There would be such a howl of outrage over "racism" that the publisher would probably recall all copies and the author would be forced to apologize.

That, in fact, would actually be like a burglar shouting "Stop, thief!" Figure this out-
lampooning a white man (Bush)- good! The whole world does it.
lampooning a black man (Obama) -(gasp!)racism!

 It is true that Bush resembles a monkey.So does Obama.Who can deny it? Not anyone honest.

And so does Michelle Obama -she is right out of Planet of the Apes.

In fact for most faces if you stare at them long enough some animal resemblance becomes apparent.Some have a greater animal 'look' than others.Nothing wrong in that.That's just the way it is.
But for the bien-pensants only white people are fit for caricature.

Definition of racism -treating individuals unequally on the basis of race.
So who are the racists?

Note- The pages are from the book Drawing Caricatures by Martin Pope)

If caricaturing is your thing then I recommend this well-written guide.It is a ***WtHA(What the heck is Art?) recommendation***.


Note- posted earlier at What the heck is Art?

Making Samar Halarnkar suffer a little more

I had earlier left a comment at Carbon Footprint, a Hindustan Times blog by the resident alarmist Samar Halarnkar. To which he had replied-

Samar Halarnkar Says:
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:33 pm

Er, I don’t really get your point. This isn’t a newspaper. it’s a blog. It has a point of view because it is meant to have one. The newspaper reports didn’t take any sides, just brought to you the nitty gritties of what happened in Copenhagen. As you suffered me, I suffer you. :-) cheers

My riposte is the following two comments left at the same blog post-

Samar,
I mainly meant your 'reports' in the HT.They are not blog, are they?

"The newspaper reports didn’t take any sides" -nice try at humor.Better luck next time.

I suppose it is the destiny of a newspaper man to suffer his readers -tells us much about the attitude.

By the way, why all quiet on the climate change front? You and Chetan Chauhan been very quiet these last few days -no screaming 'reports' on a world dying of human sins. As they say in Spanish -¿Qué Pasa? Planet not in peril anymore?

You must scaremonger soon -I find this tongue-tiedness creepy. It's not you.

By the way I congratulate your paper on not suppressing this study-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm

Gives a hint to how much the computer models on which the global warming alarmism is based get it wrong.

I hope the new year brings you happiness and wisdom.

Cheers

And-

Oh! forgot to mention -

You have been ignoring Pachaurigate( Pachauri's scandalous conflicts of interest) as if he were the mayor of Timbuktu.
Apart from an initial report -very inadequate and leaning towards Pachauri -where are your investigations? Whatever happened to investigative reporting? The conflicts of interest are glaring to even a blind mouse- what about you and your editors?

Why not suck up a little less and ferret a little more? Won't hurt. Just try.

Start here if you wish-
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-american.html

and follow the links. Like I said- won't hurt anything but your sensibilities. And that can be good once in a while.

Note -links added.
Update-
     the very first link corrected.

Update 2-
     I'm not a nice person. I just had to rub it in. So I left a third comment!

Sorry to make you suffer just a little more but-

how do you expect to atone for your sin of flying to Copenhagen and back and in the process being responsible for several tons of CO2 emissions?

I apologize if you walked -or took a sailing ship.

What's the matter with me?

Update 3-
         Oh no! I left a fourth comment-

Travel to Coorg?
Isn’ t that more CO2 emissions?

Why can’t the gentleman stay at home and emit less?The planet is dying, isn’t it?

Isn’t it strange that those who shout the loudest about CO2 emissions have an extra large carbon footprint?
Is it too much to expect them to live up to their own ideals?

I'm positively a bastard!

Precautionary Principle doesn't fit CO2 emissions

Willis Eschenbach has some powerful words. Throw them at those screaming scaremongers who soak up the airwaves, the "we-are-all-going-to-die-of-global-warming-unless-you-give-us-your-trillions-now" types-

The claim is that in fifty years, we’ll be sorry if we don’t stop producing CO2 now. However, we don’t know whether CO2 will cause any damage at all in fifty years, much less whether it will cause serious or irreversible damage. We have very little evidence that CO2 will cause “dangerous” warming other than fanciful forecasts from untested, unverified, unvalidated climate models which have not been subjected to software quality assurance of any kind. We have no evidence that a warmer world is a worse world, it might be a better world. The proposed remedies are estimated to cost on the order of a trillion dollars a year … hardly cost effective under any analysis. Nor do we have any certainty whether the proposed remedies will prevent the projected problem. So cutting CO2 fails to qualify for the PP(Precautionary Principle) under all three of the criteria.

Read it all.

My comment on Pachaurigate at Indian Express

On an article on the sensation created by the allegations leveled against Dr. Pachauri in the Daily Telegraph, I left this comment-

International Khiladi

The conflicts of interest listed in the article are simply too many to be brushed away. IMO, the main conflict of interest is not even the profit motive -even if he has not taken a penny from any of his posts(so what does he live on then -bhiksha(charity)?), he as the head of the IPCC is in a powerful position to influence policies of most countries in the favor of entities where he is the 'adviser'.

He is thus, for such companies and organizations, a 'fixer' of the greatest effect.Power lust is a motive sometimes far greater than mere lucre.

He is, as we say in India, an International Khiladi(player) and that is his reward.

Note -the formatting is slightly modified here for clarity.


Update -
       another commentator on the same article-

The article also states that he founded Glorioil. This is confirmed by online company information and he is still listed as a scientific adviser to them. According to the Glorioil website their corporate vision and mission are: "Our vision is to be the leader in bio-technology solutions to the global oil and gas industry and service provider of choice to both independent and major oil and gas producers. Our mission is delivering state of the art bio-technology solutions to improve and increase recovery from mature oil wells and to solve complex problems associated with the production of oil, gas and water." Founding a company which aims to maximise the extraction of oil and be a "partner of choice" to international oil producers does not seem to sit well with his position as Chair of the IPCC and its concerns about climate change due to GHG emissions!

Hanging polar bears

When the greens get mean -they hang polar bears!

 

Related -did you hear about Dr Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear biologist, whose views on global warming’s alleged threat to polar bears run counter to the climate orthodoxy-

More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

and -

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition".

 

Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

Whatever this is, it's not science.It appears that only one narrative is allowed.No wonder then that study after dodgy study comes out screaming that climate change is worse than we thought,that the world is ending soon (by teatime latest)-scientists' funding could very well depend on pushing the scare.

Copenhagen-world's most corrupt dictators and regimes extorting the developed world

LORRIE GOLDSTEIN on Copenhagen-

A good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

In that sense, the approach of the United Nations in Copenhagen to addressing climate change has been insane.

As they did 12 years ago in Kyoto, Japan, world leaders have apparently jammed together an eleventh-hour deal in an atmosphere of manufactured hysteria and artificial deadlines.

This is a farcical way to deal with what these leaders claim is an existential threat to mankind. Whatever they've agreed to has nothing to do with cooling our planet.

It has everything to do with some of the world's most corrupt dictators and regimes extorting billions upon billions of dollars from the developed world -- us -- which they will then spend not on reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), but in any way they please.

Never mind that the European cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions spawned by the Kyoto accord and financed by carbon credits, is riddled with profiteering, fraud, corruption and has been infiltrated by organized crime, which has already stolen billions of dollars.

Never mind that cap-and-trade -- soon to go global -- has done nothing for the environment, while driving up the cost of energy for consumers and funneling billions in undeserved profits to hedge funds, speculators and energy companies.

Remember -the greenies and their media-whores are blind to all this.Like a junkie who is beyond caring for any consequence, they want more of it.