Inside the Asylum

More CRU emails

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:40:15 +0000

I've had fun continuing to do my own searches through the hacked emails from the CRU global warming alarmism institute.
I found a few gems. For example, there's the occasion where Phil Jones writes in an email:

Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.

In other words, "I've managed to persuade the University of East Anglia to ignore all Freedom of Information Act requests from people who have anything to do with an organization that is asking inconvenient questions. I'd hazard a guess that this actually constitutes an illegal act, as I doubt very much that the FOI Act allows a university to ignore requests based on the identity of the person making the request. Whether the illegality is the responsibility of the university, of the person who persuaded them to behave illegally, or both, is a question of law. Later, there's another email from Phil Jones:

You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting in FOI requests for all emails Keith and Tim have written and received re Ch 6 of AR4. We think we've found a way around this.

Yeah, they're really acting like people with nothing to hide. Open scientific debate based upon the evidence. Hoorah!

The hopelessness of American media

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:06:53 +0000

I just scanned CNN's lead stories in both the "US" and "World" News sections, then I went to NBC News, then MSNBC, then Fox News, and ... well, I gave up at that point. What's the story that I've been searching for, and failing to find? Well, Xinhua (Chinese) news agency describes it as "high profile" ... but not as far as the US media is concerned anyway. What is it?

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew into the Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on Sunday afternoon, starting a high-profile visit to the United States. Before the trip, Singh said the issues he wants to discuss with the U.S. side are "global threats and challenges of our times," including terrorism, climate change and the economic downturn.

That's right. The leader of the world's second most populace nation (and soon to over take even China) comes to visit the US ... and none of the freakin' media considers this worthy of headline news? I didn't bother searching beyond the main news opening pages, but that's where a story like this belongs. I've got an idea for the MSM. How about some actual news content? Novel idea I know, but it might just work.

Obama & Hu Jintao press conference in Beijing

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:50:17 +0000

This has already been posted in numerous places, but I haven't laughed so hard in a long time as I did in the last minute or so of this Saturday Night Live skit. Enjoy.

They say a joke is funniest when it most closely resembles the truth.

Global Warming propagandists losing the war (in Britain at least)

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:20:54 +0000

A recent survey in Britain concludes:

Only 41 percent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made. Almost a third, or 32 percent, believe that the link is not yet proved; eight percent say it is environmentalist propaganda to blame man and 15 percent believe the world is not warming.

The leaks from the CRU could not have had any impact on this survey, because it happened too recently. Now that the global warmenists involved with the CRU have been exposed for the unscientific unobjective snake-oil merchants that they are, I somehow doubt that these figures are going to move in a direction that Greenpeace would approve of. Anyone care to bet against the likelihood that the figure for those "who blame environmentalist propaganda" is going to rise? Let's face it, even given the possibility that man made global warming really is a problem, are the interests of humanity really best served by concealing the data and trying to suppress opposing view points? Those with the strongest argument are usually least afraid of public debate. If they really believe in their cause, let them argue it without lies, without concealment, and with honest public debate. If they don't (and their conduct certainly gives the impression that even they don't believe their arguments will stand up to careful scrutiny), then let them resign in shame from their publicly funded positions. Since most of the public doesn't understand the science, they instead judge the issues using things they do understand ... and they understand the difference between the behavior of fraudsters, and those with a good case. The warmenist "scientists" are harming the very cause they claim to believe in. That makes them either enemies of mother Gaia, or con men, or both.

Our sun isn't best suited to support habitable planets

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:03:52 +0000

Recently Instapundit linked to an article in which the author discussed just exactly how habitable is the earth. The author argued:

to a space probe searching for somewhere that our kind of life can thrive, a truly random sampling of the Earth's surface (distributed over both time and area) would probably result in the conclusion that the planet is uninhabitable

Following on from that, I now see a new article over at Science News that argues that:

stars that are just right to support life might be dimmer and longer-lived than the sun... The “Goldilocks stars” with just the right conditions might be K-type stars, or orange dwarfs, Guinan says. These stars put out less near-ultraviolet energy than sunlike stars, are less likely to flare up than M dwarf stars, and have a habitable zone far enough away that planets in that zone are unlikely to be tidally locked. K-type stars also live five to six times longer than the sun, giving life more time to develop, Guinan’s team reasons. They’re also more common than suns, making up about 15 percent of the stars in the galaxy.

I guess that means that there chances of finding life around another star are higher than previously thought? After all, if our planet and sun are not the ideal locations to support life, but they nevertheless do, then it seems reasonable to infer that it isn't as hard for life to emerge and thrive as previously thought. Relating to this is yet another new study that moves us a significant step closer to understanding how RNA (the probable precursor to DNA) could come to be formed from the building blocks of life.

A key question in the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors. Now, in a study appearing in this week's Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water.

This of course leads us back to the Fermi Paradox. If life is out there, why isn't it all over the sky? The proverbial aliens should have colonized the galaxy by now. The latest issue of National Geographic has a fascinating story called Worlds Apart but unfortunately the online version doesn't seem to have the most interesting illustration. It's called Searching Space, and it shows the scale of our current feeble attempts to identify planets around other stars. The picture shows most of the Milky Way, and (to scale) a tiny box representing 400 light years with Earth at the center, which represents the area where most planets have been discovered. It also shows the scale of the new Kepler satellite's extended search of up to 6000 light years, which still looks very small on the scale of things. I guess you could say that we live out in the countryside, and we've been standing on our front porch looking around, wondering why we can't see any other people. Now we've bought a pair of binoculars, and we've just begun to have a more thorough look. I don't think we could say we've even yet reached the point (in this metaphor) where we can even be bothered to climb up on the roof to get a better view. I think it might be a little early to say we looked, and there's no one out there.

It's raining bears, hallelujah

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:44:19 +0000

Thanks to Lentz for pointing out this Polar Bear video. It's from "Planestupid.com" who appear to be a bunch of typical global warming scare-mongers trying to tell us that plane travel is bad (even as they jet off to Copenhagen to try to generate more money-making hysteria) ... but they've produced a priceless gem that really just goes to show that the people who made the video are indeed just plain stupid.

As one person commented over at Youtube,

So if the planet warms itself more it will rain polar bears? Sweet! I want me a rug and a polar bear jacket!

Yep, apparently polar bears will fall from the sky and crush your car if you fly in a plane. Personally I blame the the PBSG (Polar Bear Specialist Group). I kid you not ... there really is such a group, and they meet on a regular basis despite all of the plane travel involved.

The 15th meeting of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG), hosted by the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, was held at the Greenland Representation in Copenhagen Denmark , June 29-July 3, 2009. The Polar Bear Specialist Group is composed of researchers and managers representing each of the five circumpolar nations that signed the International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears of 1973. Since the late 1960s, the members of PBSG have met every 3 to 5 years

At their last meeting there were 21 specialists present. If that's an average, and they've met 15 times, they've managed to kill 315 polar bears so far. Or something. Actually, if they could arrange to meet in some starving area of Africa, they could solve world hunger. I imagine all of that bear meat would save a good many villagers in times of drought.
[Update] Here are a bunch more funny bear youtube clips. Enjoy.

Nice Kiwi blokes - shame about the women

Dr. Strangelove — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:19:10 +0000

Posted without further comment.

New Zealand men are among the most attractive in the world, but Kiwi women are among the world's ugliest.

That's according to a controversial website that allows only beautiful people to join.

Fewer than one in five New Zealand women (17 percent) have been accepted as members on beautifulpeople.com, but one in three (33 percent) Kiwi men successfully joined.

Chavez's latest: Carlos the Jackal a revolutionary

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:23:05 +0000

Yep, Chavez has defended Carlos the Jackal as a revolutionary fighter.

“I defend him. I don’t care what they say tomorrow in Europe.”

Well, what do you expect of Obama's buddy?

Only trust peer-reviewed studies, when those peers can be trusted to tow the party line

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:48:20 +0000

Mann's comments (previous post) about only trusting arguments published in peer-reviewed studies are put into their proper context by yet more revelations pouring out of the leaked data from CRU. There's a clear pattern of "fixing" the peer-reviews, by attacking publications and editors that dare to allow skeptics to have a voice. There's also evidence of ensuring that critical papers go to reviewers who could be "relied upon" to give the "right" feedback to it. Yes, the fix is in.
Let's take a look at a sample (use the link in the last post to find the full versions for yourself. No more MSM gate-keepers to keep you away from the real data, and now (finally) no more global warming charlatans masquerading as scientists hiding their data and biases:

Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)
Tom Wigley says that von Storch is partly to blame for sceptic papers getting published at Climate Research... Says they should tell publisher that the journal is being used for misinformation. Says that whether this is true or not doesn't matter. Says they need to get editorial board to resign. Says they need to get rid of von Storch too. (1051190249)
Mann discusses tactics for screening and delaying postings at Real Climate.(1139521913)
Reaction to McIntyre's 2005 paper in GRL. Mann has challenged GRL editor-in-chief over the publication. Mann is concerned about the connections of the paper's editor James Saiers with U Virginia [does he mean Pat Michaels?]. Tom Wigley says that if Saiers is a sceptic they should go through official GRL channels to get him ousted. (1106322460) [Note to readers - Saiers was subsequently ousted]
Later on Mann refers to the leak at GRL being plugged.(1132094873)
Jones says he and Kevin will keep some papers out of the next IPCC report.(1089318616)
Tom Wigley tells Mann that a figure Schmidt put together to refute Monckton is deceptive and that the match it shows of instrumental to model predictions is a fluke. Says there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model output by authors and IPCC.(1255553034)
Grant Foster putting together a critical comment on a sceptic paper. Asks for help for names of possible reviewers. Jones replies with a list of people, telling Foster they know what to say about the paper and the comment without any prompting.(1249503274)
Briffa discusses an sceptic article review with Ed Cook. Says that confidentially he needs to put together a case to reject it (1054756929)
Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with sceptics.(1107454306)

Search the CRU hacked archives yourself

Filthy Stinking No.9 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:31:52 +0000

That's the great thing about the internet. We no longer have to depend on the gate-keepers to decide what information we're going to be told. Instead, you can go here and search through the hacked emails etc. yourself. So I had a go with a few key word searches. I found an email exchange between journalist Robert Matthews, the science correspondent with The Sunday Telegraph, and Professor Michael E. Mann. Matthews' email is polite and reasonable.

I'm putting together a piece on global warming, and I'll be making reference to your paper in Geophysical Research Letters with Prof Jones on "Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia"...

He describes some criticisms that were made about the paper (including an internet link), and then asks

I'd be very interested to include your rebuttals to these arguments in the piece I'm doing. I must admit to being confused by why proxy data should be compared to instrumental data for the last part of the data-set. Shouldn't the comparison be a consistent one throughout ? With many thanks for your patience with this.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn't it? So, let's look at Professor Mann's response:

An objective reading of our manuscript would readily reveal that the comments you refer to are scurrilous. These comments have not been made by scientists in the peer-reviewed literature, but rather, on a website that, according to published accounts, is run by individuals sponsored by ExxonMobile corportation, hardly an objective source of information.

It's typical warmenist nonsense, and not at all the response of a scientist interested in objectivity. This part of the email starts with an attack without any attempt to actual establish anything ("it's obvious I'm right and people who attack me are idiots" doesn't classify as a reasoned response). Then there's a typical attack based on authority ("the criticism wasn't made by a cardinal of the church, and is therefore not worth considering") and goes on to another typical tactic, to belittle the criticism based on the fact that it is associated with oil money. ("The critics are funded by demons, and therefore we don't need to address their specific points.") Mann continues:

Owing to pressures on my time, I will not be able to respond to any further inquiries from you. Given your extremely poor past record of reporting on climate change issues, however, I will leave you with some final words. Professional journalists I am used to dealing with do not rely upon un-peer-reviewed claims off internet sites for their sources of information. They rely instead on peer-reviewed scientific research, and mainstream, rather than fringe, scientific opinion.

You're bad, you're unprofessional, and I'm not going to speak with you anymore. Nah nah nah. Not listening. Maybe if you started listening only to people who agree with me you might be worth talking to, but as long as you consort with heathens, get lost.

Yes. I do agree with Professor Michael E. Mann on one major point. It's not a good idea to trust people who show that they are not objective about things. Let's have a look at his website at Penn State. You'll see rapidly that all his work and funding depend on a belief in anthropogenic global warming. In short, without it, he'd be out of a job. Oh yeah ... he's also the guy behind the infamous and now thoroughly debunked hockey stick graph that Al Gore relied on for his movie. The graph that could only recently be proven to be nonsense because of determined efforts to keep the original data set hidden from critical inspection. Once that data finally did become available, it was shown that the hockey stick was created by cherry-picking the data to get the desired result. Oh yes ... I do agree with Professor Mann. Don't trust non-objective sources. As another British journalist wrote,

We “Global Warming Deniers” are often accused of ignoring the weight of scientific opinion. Well if the “science” on which they base their theories is as shoddy as Mann’s Hockey Stick, is it any wonder we think they’re talking cobblers?

Oh look ... a whole bunch of new hidden data has just been made public. To borrow Mann's term, I wonder how much more global warming alarmism is going to be shown to be scurrilous.