We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
...the Climategate e-mails reveal an unprecedented, systematic conspiracy to stifle discussion and debate, conceal and manipulate data, revise temperature trends that contradict predictions of dangerous warming, avoid compliance with Freedom of Information requests, and pressure scientific journals and the IPCC to publish alarmist studies and exclude dissenting analyses so as to manufacture "consensus."
I am not a professional climatologist but a common-sense fellow. Therefore I think I have more credibility than the average person who makes a living from "climate change." I enjoyed Coyote's Catastrophe Denied, but I think even he gave too much credence to existing data.
It seems to me that there is no accurate way to measure "global temperatures" or "global climate" other than via the troposphere. Tree rings and sediments and weather stations are ridiculous "proxies" for "global climate." Furthermore, there is no such thing as a "global climate" anyway.
The reason is that, at sea level, the earth consists of thousands of climates and millions of micro-climates - all on land undergoing constant fluctuation and all impacted by natural ebbs and flows and much of it impacted in some way by man and his land use, urbanization, etc (The earth's population was 1.2 billion in 1850, now it is 6.8 billion.) - and the ocean remains incomprehensibly complex with all of its oscillations and strange fluctuating vertical and horizontal currents.
I am not a climatologist, but I am always a skeptic about whatever experts tell me. I am a skeptic even about the 0.6 degree F change in the past 150 years. I think all of our temperature data is meaningless beyond its immediate locale - except for the troposphere data which we have only for recent years.
Science is never about truth. It's just about the theory and hypothesis du jour. That's what it's supposed to be.
The Sam Adams Winter Classic selection is interesting and very tasty this year. The Cranberry Lambic is unique, but whether it is a true Lambic or not I cannot say.
(Disclosure: The Boston Beer Co. was kind enough to ship 1000 cartons of Winter Classics to Maggie's Farm as a neighborly thank you. That should get us through December, anyway.)
Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word. But I don’t see why the question was dismissed so readily, with the implication that only a tool of the fossil-fuel industry would raise it.
If Mann is telling the truth, he is utterly incompetent. I suspect he is lying, but a gullible Tierney appears to buy it. How would you not know how your cover graph was constructed?
Whether you call it global warming or climate change or greenie hysteria or a religion or Lefty politics, the fact is that it's an industry, and one which has become increasing lucrative over recent years.
Goldman Sachs, never a company to pass up on chances to make lots of money, has done extensive planning to capitalize on carbon credit markets - as has Al Gore. But don't forget Big Academia: Surber
Cheers on St. Andrew's Day to our Scots friends and readers!
Now we must move south of the border to take a good summary look at Climategate and its meaning, as far as we now know: Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation: "Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get
away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker."
Andrei, you've lost another submarine?....Most fascinating to me: they got rid of, or "lost," all of their raw data. That means the raw data from which the IPCC reports have been produced - after the data was played with. In science, "losing" data is a felony, and discredits everything you have ever done. Why?
Because it makes it impossible to either corroborate or refute the conclusions.
Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
I had read his paper before, but it seems especially relevant now. h/t, Classical Values.
Europe has felt the temptation, for sure. We Americans do not - or should not. We are supposed to be better and stronger than that. Prof. Paul Rahe via NRO
...we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere—in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.
We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.
And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.
When the government proposes a major program, one expects a meaningful national consensus behind it. I neither see nor sense any national consensus behind a government takeover of medical care. Quite the opposite, and the polls agree with my impression.
Watch this video at Gateway to see what I mean. I think there is far more dissension on this issue than I ever heard about going into Afghanistan or Iraq.
Not very many people want what they are trying to "give" us. One of the things they want to "give" me is to make my family's medical insurance - my carefully considered free choice - illegal.
My message to my government: Quit giving me stuff. I am an adult. Leave me the heck alone.
He's not in the showers in jail picking up the soap, so why do this so constantly? Is it a twitch? A twitch of submission, like a beta dog? I think it is pathetic - and it reflects on me as a free and proud American. Please tell me it's only because the Asian leaders are short of stature height-deprived, and not ass-kissing.
I cannot imagine Abe Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt bowing to a dictator premier of China, a Sheik of Arabie, or an Emperor of Japan.
The only people to whom the O does not bow is to people like me, the honest, hard-working, tax-paying, slightly overweight citizens of the USA. As Bob Grant says, "It's sick out there, and getting sicker."
Quite possibly. We have been calling "fraud" on this site since forever. The raw data has been carefully hidden for years (see conceal the decline). It's heart-warming to see a Viscount rant. One quote:
As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up. Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.
Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.
Too heavy for the field (as I am reminded on the rare occasions on which I use it in the field), but it's the only shotgun of the too-many I own that shoots straight. Wonderful for skeet, trap, and clays. I think the weight has something to do with its effectiveness, plus o/u and the single trigger. Nice engraving with gold ducks on one side and pheasants on the other. I have it set for a hair trigger.
A pity I prefer my antique 20 ga double-triggered s/s for comfort and feel, but the dang thing don't shoot straight at wacky birds!
Can you name my gun? It has beautiful oiled walnut to which my snap does not do justice:
...the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science.
Piltdown Man, move over. Sample:
From: Phil Jones To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers Phil
Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX University of East Anglia Norwich
Is this what they call "research"?These science frauds need to be fired - and/or indicted.They are government employees.
Readers know that I am opposed to death taxes - estate taxes. The wealthy find ways around them (how long has it been since a Kennedy or a Rockefeller held a real job as opposed to an optional job?), but merchants, the middle class, and farmers get screwed by them.
My friend in southern CT recently told me about a third-generation (the grandpa was an Italian immigrant) family-owned flower shop in their town which had to close up shop last month when Mom died. Why? They had to sell their small building to pay the estate taxes. Like a family farm, that is generations of dedication, good will, hard work, and a long-established part of a community down the drain.
Furthermore, I like the idea of middle-class families being able to build wealth over generations - and most people who work hard like that too. People like to feel that they are building something for the family's future, and for their family's independence from the kindness of strangers - and the government.
I do advise everyone, even if not wealthy, to do the best that they can to avoid the crushing effects of death taxes by getting the best estate-planning advice you can afford.
Brit Ted Dalrymple takes on the Fabians on the topic, in Let Them Inherit Debt. One quote:
There are many unfairnesses in life that we must learn to put up with, if we are to have any chance of happiness or even of tolerable contentment. For example, I should like to be taller, better-looking and more intelligent and gifted than I am. Every time I meet someone better-looking than I, taller than I, or more talented than I, which I do very regularly, I experience a brief spark of envy. What did they do to be as they are, my superiors? Why did providence, or chance, endow them with characteristics so much more attractive than my own? Needless to say, I never stop to think that, just possibly, some people might ask the same of me when they meet me.
But the differential endowments of nature are unfair, not unjust, because (at least as yet) no human intervention can prevent them. The inheritance of wealth is not like this: it is a human arrangement that could be abrogated if not easily, for political reasons, at least with some effort. And if injustice is unfairness brought about by human means, then inheritance of wealth is unjust. Ergo, inheritance of wealth ought to be forbidden because it is unjust, and we must always seek justice.
The question, then, is whether we should always seek justice to the exclusion of other desiderata. Is it true that justice always and everywhere trumps other considerations? I think the answer is no.
A propos our earlier post today about Immune from Logic, here's what they are doing in the UK: Health and safety snoops to enter family homes. Why people would put up with that is beyond me. Oh, I forgot. It's for the Greater Good. Meaning the good of the government.
It makes sense, however, in a sick sort of way: who pays the piper calls the tune. The more government controls the funding of medical care, the sooner they control what we do in our lives. Thus we get to things like this: A cost-benefit analysis of abortion vs. live birth.
Abortions are cheaper, of course. As Chicago Boyz says,
It’s as if we in the U.S. are moving toward a system where just about anything
can be justified because some government official says that it should
be so. It’s all for the greater good, right? What are pesky little
things like individuals and predictable rules in the face of all that
wonderful greater goodness?
The Sam Adams Winter Classic selection is interesting and very tasty this year. The Cranberry Lambic is unique, but whether it is a true Lambic or not I cannot say.
Whether you call it global warming or climate change or greenie hysteria or a religion or Lefty politics, the fact is that it's an industry, and one which has become increasing lucrative over recent years. 
Cheers on St. Andrew's Day to our Scots friends and readers!
When the government proposes a major program, one expects a meaningful national consensus behind it. I neither see nor sense any national consensus behind a government takeover of medical care. Quite the opposite, and the polls agree with my impression.
