corruption

As I've said before, one of the most worrying circumstances in our time is the obvious danger that the entire planet is steadily sliding into a new dark age. Things that used to be obvious - the need to truth and integrity in scientific debate, for example - are not only being forgotten, but the exact opposite (deceit, dirty tricks, falsifying evidence) is now being lauded by scientists, ethicists, journalists, and many others.

In this vein, one of the most dangerous and irresponsible documents ever produced on Australians' taxpayer dollars has appeared. Its purpose seems to be to establish what used to be called a Star Chamber - unelected, unaccountable, secret - to remove from the media anything that said star chamber finds objectionable. And who can say what that might be?

This is the new report, commissioned by the Gillard government, to 'solve' the problem of - well, it isn't exactly clear what the problem was, as I'll show in a minute. But first, Tim Andrews summarises the problem:

Mr. Ray Finkelstein QC, a left-wing former Federal Court Judge with no media experience, at the request of the Gillard Government, issued a 400 page report which calls for a Big Brother Super-Regulator to 'regulate' political speech and - among other things - impose new laws with the power to stop climate change realists from speaking up. 

Its “recommendations” will sicken every single Australian: They actually call for a Big Brother Super-Regulator to censor not just the newspapers and TV, but websites, personal blogs, and even what you say on Twitter!

They Burned a Child for Global Warming

This is one of the most disgraceful doings I could ever hope not to have needed to write about. A violent attack by troops evicted villagers from their homes and burned them to the ground, without even taking the elementary precaution to see if the homes were empty, let alone allow the villagers to remove their property before the attack. As it happened, a sick child in one home was burned to death. But don't worry, as the New York Times put it:

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

Oh so that's all right then: it was for a "good cause". Others have written about this terrible tragedy, and I can't better their efforts, so let me try to widen the discussion to get at the root cause of why it was possible for this to happen at all.

New Scientist has reported that Chinese companies are threatening to release vast amounts of a highly potent greenhouse gas, HFC-23, into the atmosphere unless they are paid a hugely profitable amount in carbon credits. They write:

Nobody needs HFC-23. It is a waste by-product of the manufacture of a refrigerant called HCFC-22, used mostly in developing nations. To curb the release of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, the signatories to the Kyoto protocol agreed to pay carbon credits to refrigerant manufacturers that agree to capture and destroy it. The manufacturers can then sell the credits to western companies that want to offset their obligations to cut emissions of other greenhouse gases, under a Kyoto scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The offer only applies to HCFC-22 plants that were built before 2000. Even so it has proved highly lucrative. By some estimates, the value of the carbon credits is up to 100 times the cost of incinerating HFC-23. The resulting income of Chinese companies alone is estimated to reach $1.6 billion by 2012. ...

As a result, the "waste gas" HFC-23 has become much more profitable to refrigerant factories than HCFC-22 itself. Watchdog groups like the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) say the compensation system ends up providing a strong incentive to overproduce HCFC-22, using methods that maximise the output of HFC-23.

Cutting a long story short, a review was started at the behest of the European Union, a threat was issued to release vast quantities of the gas, and the review was cancelled.

So let's get this clear:

James Delingpole "gets it":

“Environmentalism” is but one strategically significant theatre in a much greater ideological war being waged across the world. It’s the same one Toby Young is fighting over education; the same one the likes of Rod Liddle, Andrew Gilligan, Nick Cohen and Mark Steyn are fighting over political Islam; the same one Melanie Phillips is fighting over Israel; the same one Douglas Murray is fighting on pretty much everything.  And its ultimate outcome is at least as important as those of the ones we fought in 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. At stake is exactly the same thing the Greek alliance fought for when Western Civilisation was born at Salamis in 480 BC; the same thing we citizens of the West have been fighting for ever since: the right to forge our own destinies as free men and women, rather than remain infantilised, oppressed and enslaved as vassals of a tyrant state.

From CFACT:

Alarmist spammer unleashes Twitterbot to stifle climate debate 

An Australian software developer grew tired of debating climate realists on Twitter so he created spambot to wear down his opponents. The bot responds to anyone who expresses skepticism about man-made global warming by posting one of hundreds of canned replies in an attempt to frustrate skeptics.

The recent releases from America's NOAA National Climatic Data Center make a convoluted tangle of misinformation that has tripped up almost everyone - including many climate realists.

The confusion starts with NOAA's own website announcing the report at http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html. Here's a snapshot of the page (click to see a larger image):

See the image of the report cover at the top of the web page? That is not the cover of the Report. Now notice the pretty graphic "Ten indicators of a warming world" a bit lower down. That one is not in the Report, it is in the Report. Confused?

It turns out there are actually two reports, and the NOAA web page only links to one of them. At the bottom of the page, below the bit I screen-captured in the graphic, there is a link to "The Report" - which is the one whose cover is shown on the web NOAA page, and which is also the one written by "more than 300 scientists from 160 research groups in 48 countries". But that Report is not the Report that the NOAA website goes on to describe in detail!

There is a second Report, called "2009 The State of the Climate Highlights", which the NOAA web page does not link to (but which you can see here), which is the source of the alarmist statements quoted on the web page, including this one:

Wattsupwiththat brings us the story of the curving line. Just when the Arctic ice seemed about to break through the long-term average, it made a sudden downturn. Anthony Watts' reader Anthony Scalzi prepared this animation:

The shape of the curve for each day actually changes (goes lower) on the subsequent day. As someone with expertise in computer science, I cannot see any way this can be an outcome of an automated algorithm of any reasonable design. To make the shape clear, I interspersed the four days' images with an image showing all four shapes:

From The Times we have this shocking news:

Proposals to ban trade in bluefin tuna and polar bears were overwhelmingly rejected yesterday at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), meeting in Doha, Qatar.

A plan for a 20-year ban on ivory sales, to protect African elephants, is also likely to fail in the coming days — partly because Britain and other members of the EU are refusing to support it. Delegates are instead expected to approve a weak compromise, which would encourage poaching by allowing the sale of ivory being stored by several African nations.