Mad Scientists really do exist.

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

If we needed proof that we live in an out-of-logical-control world, here it is:

Bird Flu: Scientists Develop New Strain Of H5N1, Avian Influenza, That Could Kill Millions. (The Huffington Post )

It sounds like the setup for a Hollywood thriller: scientists in a lab create a virus as contagious as the flu that kills half of those infected. We’re safe as long as the virus remains locked up, but if it escapes or gets into the hands of bioterrorists, it has the potential to become a pandemic and kill millions around the world.

But this isn’t the latest summer blockbuster. According to New Scientist magazine, researchers in the Netherlands studying H5N1 — commonly referred to as the bird flu or avian influenza — have created a strain of the virus that’s easily passed between mammals, and it’s just as lethal as the original virus.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the H5N1 virus has infected more than 500 people in more than a dozen countries and is known to kill around 60 percent of those that become infected.

Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, led the team that successfully created the mutation. Fouchier presented the findings at a conference in Malta in September and, according to NPR, is now seeking publication of his results.

But some in the scientific community are debating whether or not that’s a good idea.

“It’s just a bad idea for scientists to turn a lethal virus into a lethal and highly contagious virus. And it’s a second bad idea for them to publish how they did it so others can copy it,” Dr. Thomas Inglesby, the director and CEO of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh, told NPR.

Others, like Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), told Science magazine that “These studies are very important.”

From the Science magazine blog Science Insider:

The researchers “have the full support of the influenza community,” Osterholm says, because there are potential benefits for public health. For instance, the results show that those downplaying the risks of an H5N1 pandemic should think again, he says.

The study is currently being reviewed by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, a “federal advisory committee chartered to provide advice, guidance, and leadership regarding…biological research with legitimate scientific purpose that may be misused to pose a biologic threat to public health and/or national security.”

Sort of makes one wonder about mankind’s collective sanity? That scientists can conceive and go ahead with highly potential murderous plans without general approval. That there are some people who don’t find this abhorrent. That our social, academic and political systems have evolved to allow this to happen.

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AGW – Fudging the “science”

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

From the ‘Climategate II” email issue, covered extensively by WUWT and JoNova as referenced in other GTRule posts, I have selected one email of great value.

Nowhere here is there any support for the application of scientific techniques, principles or morals. Belief in this science of the warmists is certainly more faith than logic.

Text of an email from Mike Hume, UEA to associates.

There have been some requests re. CO2 and associated scenario data for the S550 and S750 runs. For now, let me suggest the following. This may require more debate on May 12th.
1. S550 CO2 concentrations are as listed in my Fast-track note of 21 July 1998, namely:
1961-90 = 334ppmv 1990 = 354ppmv 2020s = 410ppmv 2050s = 458 2080s = 498 2110s = 530 2140s = 546 2170s (and thereafter) = 550ppmv
[Note: these are 1-2 ppmv different from what I have just recalculated now (19/4/99), but if anyone’s model is that sensitive to 1-2 ppmv differences then we really are kidding ourselves about what we are up to].
IMPORTANT: This scenario says nothing about non-CO2 gases, i.e., stabilisation at 550ppmv is CO2 stabilisation at 550ppmv *not* anthropogenic forcing stabilisation at 550ppmv CO2-equivalent. If people want the latter then we are in to a completely new ball game because: a) IPCC do not specify non-CO2 species for stabilisation scenarios (IPCC Tech. Note simply explores effects of different assumption), and b) it brings us back to the role of aerosol forcing. In the original Enting/Wigley stabilisation scenarios they explored a number of different assumptions for these non-CO2 species, but made it clear that none of them were a priori consistent (see Comment 3 below). In effect, you could think of my suggestion as assuming that non-CO2 GHG and aerosol forcings cancel out and we are left with CO2-only forcing. Of course, this may not be what DETR had in mind when thinking about stabilisation since it does not meet the Article 2 FCCC definition of stabilisation which is ‘greenhouse gas stabilisation’ and not CO2-only stabilisation (but note: the FCCC Article 2 says nothing about aerosols so are we supposed to ignore them?!).
***************** So if people have a problem with this then they better shout now and loud, because the alternative will take some thought and more time than I have right now. *****************
2. For S750 CO2 concentrations we (i.e., Hadley and I) have determined the following, but are calculated with the same assumption as for S550 (i.e., it is CO2 that is stabilised at 750ppmv and we are assuming that non-CO2 GHG and aerosol forcings cancel):
1961-90 = 334ppmv 1990 = 354ppmv 2020s = 424ppmv 2050s = 501ppmv 2080s = 577ppmv 2110s = 643ppmv 2140s = 692ppmv 2170s = 724ppmv 2200s = 742ppmv 2230s = 749ppmv
3. Socio-economic assumptions. This is a really difficult issue, to which there are at least three solutions (see below). It is a difficult issue because IPCC (and may be no-one else yet) have created a set of consistent socio-economic indicators to accompany stabilisation scenarios. And, furthermore, it all depends on how stabilisation is reached. e.g. is S550 reached through climate policy in a world that looks like IS92a or SRES A1, or is it reached through climate policy in a world that otherwise would have looked liked IS92d or SRES B1? And what sort of climate policies and what effect do they have on economic production? If you believe the economic skeptics then any climate policy will have a detrimental effect on world production, thus lowering GDP whether from an IS92a or IS92d-type world! The three solutions are:
Solution 1: fudge the issue. Just accept that we are Fast-trackers and can therefore get away with anything. The best thing may be to take IS92d-type assumptions for S550 and stick with IS92a assumptions for S750. From the socio-economics perspective this is incorrect and we miss an interesting issue in thinking about the effects that climate policy has on future world growth. But it will give us something to work with.
Solution 2: try and tap in to emerging work in this area by IIASA (Arnulf Grubler). He has run the IIASA economic model (the one used by SRES) to generate consistent socio-economic indicators for a S550 outcome in a SRES-A1 type world. He is also (in principle) willing to re-run the model for us to generate an S750 outcome in a SRES-A2 (I think) world. Note: S750 is a daft outcome in B1, B2 and A1 world’s since 750ppmv is never reached anyway. I will need to investigate just what we can get and when but Arnulf has shown willing.
Solution 3: wait to see what IPCC decide. There is a WGIII meeting the first week of June in Copenhagen when mitigation/stabilisation scenarios is the focal point. There is some pressure for WGIII to come up with something on this (SRES will not do it), something that thinks through the issue of just what stabilisation scenarios mean for gas species (non-CO2, see point 1 above) and socio-economic indicators (e.g. effect of different climate policies on economics). Needless to say this is sensitive material and it is not clear how WGIII will handle it.
So this is the situation as seen by me right now. I guess Solution 1 would not pass decent Nature reviewers and Solution 3 may never materialise. If people want Solution 2 then I can ask Grubler for what he can give us.

Particular gems are:  (my emphasis’)

“if anyone’s model is that sensitive to 1-2 ppmv differences then we REALLY ARE kidding ourselves about what we are up to”

“since it does not meet the Article 2 FCCC definition of stabilisation which is ‘greenhouse gas stabilisation’ and not CO2-only stabilisation (but note: the FCCC Article 2 says nothing about aerosols so are we supposed to ignore them?!). ”

“fudge the issue. Just accept that we are Fast-trackers and can therefore get away with anything.”

“He is also (in principle) willing to re-run the model for us to generate an S750 outcome”  (Helloo!)

This does not sound like science to me!  The whole email content reveals the inexactness of the climate assessment, their approach to work things to suit the outcome and the underlying socio-economic factor which obviously drives the whole excercise.

To my reader friends who like to deny my version of the whole issue, please explain how the above does not prove my understanding to be correct.

Posted in climate change, Conspiracies, Corruption, Cover-ups, ENVIRONMENT, New World Order, World Issues | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Apt Quote – from TIP

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Thanks to ggita32Quantcast, see his post here.//

Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take this power away from them, and all the great fortunes disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control credit.”

–Josiah Stamp, former director of the Bank of England

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The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

A worthy viewpoint from a post by ‘JoNova’ with other up-line acknowledgements.

How do religions die? Generally they don’t, which probably explains why there’s so little literature on the subject. Zoroastrianism, for instance, lost many of its sacred texts when Alexander sacked Persepolis in 330 B.C., and most Zoroastriansconverted to Islam over 1,000 years ago. Yet today old Zoroaster still counts as many as 210,000 followers, including 11,000 in the U.S. Christopher Hitchens might say you can’t kill what wasn’t there to begin with.

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term “climate change” when thermometers don’t oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other “deniers.” And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse….

Due acknowledgements to Bret Stephens, ‘Wall Street Journal‘.

Read Jo’s post here.

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WFC – World Financial Crisis, getting serious.

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

This exists in so many variations – EU, US, global and individual countries, also in different cycles (time), if you like.

It is, as its name implies, an immense, civilization changing, global issue. I think it worth a current post because it appears we have really reached a pivotal stage. Not an original article because there are experts to do that. My idea is to note which experts are making sense – this is one of those moments.

Scaringly close to the possibility of being part of the ‘World Domination’ “conspiracy”.  Surely one needs to ask what part is being played by S & P, who choose when to make announcements and about whom?

European Union

Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to ‘Natural News’, here is some valuable, meaningful commentary.

Eurozone debt crisis worsens as financial world holds breath over impending financial apocalypse.

NaturalNews) Allow me to begin this article with a single paragraph published yesterday on Yahoo Finance:
“The world is watching Europe, waiting upon a solution. It’s not just the euro that’s at stake. If the euro fails, so too does the 27-nation European Union. Bank lending would freeze, stock markets would likely crash, and Europe’s economies would follow. Nations in the euro-zone would see their economic output decline, though temporarily, by as much as 50%, according to UBS forecasters. That economic meltdown would then spread to the U.S. and Asia, who would find themselves caught up in the credit freeze while their exports to Europe would collapse.” (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Euro-…)
If you had read these words just 12 months ago, you would have thought it to be fear-mongering conspiratorial nonsense. Words like “collapse” and “crash” and “meltdown” aren’t normally tossed around the mainstream media, even when their use is justified. To actually see these words in print is strongly indicative of the severity of the global financial crisis our world now faces — a crisis, by the way, which is nothing less than a global economic coup that has seen entire nations virtually taken over by criminal banksters.
It’s truly a global phenomenon now. As the paragraph above explains, it’s not merely that the very existence of the European Union is threatened by the current crisis, but that the “economic meltdown would spread to the U.S. and Asia,” says the report. What Yahoo’s finance article doesn’t explain, however, is that this is technically not even a scene of a failed fiscal policy… it’s actually a global crime scene.

Greg Palast, Max Keiser and others dare to report the truth…

Right now, the No. 1 network in the USA that’s hitting this story head-on is none other than InfoWars.com, led by Alex Jones. In a series of sizzling interviews with white-collar crime expert Greg Palast, Wall Street insider Max Keiser and trends researcher Gerald Celente, Jones has exposed the utter criminality of the global debt scam from top to bottom. Widely ridiculed by the New York Times, Bloomberg and even Forbes magazine, Alex Jones is cursed with an ability to accurately see the patterns of history developing in real-time, and he has repeatedly shown the courage to warn others about what he sees us all headed toward, even when being widely demonized by the (ignorant) mainstream media.
Recently, Alex Jones interviewed Greg Palast, author of Vultures’ Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores (http://www.amazon.com/Vultures-Picn…). See his website at www.VulturesPicnic.org
That interview, which aired on November 22nd, offered stunning insights into the depth of criminality that has brought us to the brink of global financial disaster.
YouTube channel astonisher1 has been posting lots of Alex Jones videos lately, under the banner of promoting “peaceful and informed resistance” against global criminality. Here’s the Nov. 22nd episode, during which Greg Palast was interviewed starting at roughly the 45-minute mark (part 4 of 9), available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13pX…
Alex also recently posted a stunning interview with Max Keiser, which aired November 21st. Watch that at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inYx…
As the editor of NaturalNews and having been named the second most influential person in alternative news (by ActivistPost.com), I am convinced that if you’re not tuning in to InfoWars on these financial matters, you are simply not well informed. There is no other media outlet on the planet hitting this subject with such ferocity and blatant honesty.
(Full disclosure: I am an occasional fill-in host for Alex Jones, a position for which I receive absolutely no compensation of any kind unless you count the donuts with the orange sprinkles that Jaron the producer keeps trying to trick me into eating…)

Stunning truths now coming out about the global banking elite

If you listen to the recent interviews conducted by Alex Jones, you will hear his guests make the following points (and many more):
• JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank and other major banks are all insolvent. Their financial collapse is inevitable.
• Your monthly statements from these financial institutions are total fraud, as that money doesn’t even exist in these banks. It’s like Bernie Madoff, but several orders of magnitude worse…
• The Goldman Sachs criminal banksters are brazenly trying to economically conquer the world by destroying those national leaders who oppose their toxic debt schemes while placing their loyalist economic terrorists in key positions of political power. Refer to Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins for more details on how this actually works.
• The economic devastation now being experienced by countries like the USA is a deliberately planned scheme of economic destruction designed to allow the global banking elite to confiscate enormous resources from targeted nations. Some nations have been forced into giving up their oil fields, water supplies and even their financial sovereignty to be used as collateral for global bankster bailouts.
• There are already increasing calls for bankers to be executedfor engaging in these crimes that are effectively stealing trillions of dollars (or equivalent in local currencies) from the people of our world. While calls for such drastic action may seem extreme at the moment, no doubt more people will join in such calls as they begin to lose their pensions and savings accounts when the financial collapse tidal wave reaches their personal bank accounts.

S&P downgrades credit risk ratings a dozen global banks

As yet more proof that the global financial house of cards is about to violently collapse, Standard & Poor’s took action late yesterday to downgrade the ratings of key globalist banks (http://www.foxbusiness.com/industri…). Banks downgraded by S&P include:
• Citigroup • Wells Fargo • Bank of America • Goldman Sachs • JPMorgan Chase • Morgan Stanley • Barclays
… and many others. These ratings downgrades stemmed in part from the realization that failures of these banks may not be covered by governments which claim to insure their deposits.
The FDIC, for example, can only cover a few hundred million dollars in bank losses, yet Bank of America recently engaged in some particularly wicked transactional voodoo that slopped a jaw-dropping $75 trillion (yes, with a “T”) worth of derivatives risk on the back of the FDIC (http://seekingalpha.com/article/301…). It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to realize that if just a tiny percentage of these BofA derivatives fail, the FDIC is instantly and irreparably bankrupt.
So much for your own bank account being “FDIC insured,” huh? Who is insuring the FDIC?
In other words, if you have deposits with these large banks, there is a very real risk that those deposits may suddenly disappear in much the same way that customer accounts at MF Global recently vanished, never to be returned.
It’s clear from all this that the financial quickening is upon us. The inevitable financial corrections stemming from the global spread of toxic debt are now at our doorstep. While it is possible that clever bureaucrats and finance fixers may be able to rig temporary solutions that delay “the big correction” a while longer, there is no questioning the fact that such a correction is inevitable — and the longer it’s delayed, the worse it’s going to get.
By historical comparison, what our world is about to experience will make the economic misery of The Great Depression look like child’s play. Think 50% unemployment, the collapse of multiple global banking giants, police state Martial Law in nearly every nation, and the eventual payout of perhaps ten cents on the dollar for all the masses who once thought they had FDIC-insured savings accounts.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034281_Eurozone_debt_crisis.html#ixzz1fBXEtEFI

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AGW – Tim Flannery Report absolute nonsense.

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Durban Sea Front

Image by BBM Explorer via Flickr

From the ABC News website:

A new report is warning Australians face dying in heatwaves and catching infectious diseases as a result of climate change.

The Climate Commission says climbing temperatures will lead to more natural disasters and changing rainfall patterns, which will have an impact on people’s health as much as on the environment.

The report includes a worst-case scenario where deaths from hotter temperatures in Queensland and the Northern Territory could multiply tenfold by 2100.

The dire predictions were released as the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released figures showing that 13 of the warmest years on record have occurred within the last decade and a half.

The year 2011 caps a decade that ties the record as the hottest ever measured, the WMO said in its annual report on climate trends and extreme weather events, unveiled at UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa.

“Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities,” WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud said in a statement, urging policy makers should take note of the findings.

AAP/AFP

 

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-30/climate-change-to-kill-australians2c-report-says/3703062

This report is completely unsupported by genuine scientific evidence. His attitude is worse than ‘grasping at straws’, it is simply wrong.

Check out the WUWT website for information supporting this comment, as well as this blog’s  “Carbon Attack’ and post archives “climate change”. AND many more climate change linked sites.

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World War III ?

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Image via Wikipedia

A few things I need to make clear:

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my motivations in publishing information or criticisms on global issues. The resulting sometimes outspoken views are generally supporting the ‘underdog’, the public well-being,(often the same thing’), and are sometimes about very contentious issues.

In publishing the following CEC Australia Media Release, I am very likely risking my credibility, but ask that you understand my point of view. I do not have serious agreement with the contents, I do have serious concerns that they may be, in fact, exactly the case.

Lyndon La Rouche has proven his credibility in the world finance crisis scene, also his understanding of the CAGW scam, now really becoming obvious to the public. His take on the British Empire world domination agenda seems possible from all that is going on, but is unclear and certainly not yet a ‘given’.

It may well be that he is right. If so, it will be apt if this blog is in touch with reality, albeit catastrophic. If not, we will still have learned much about the outside world and what makes it tick.  “There is much afoot”, I hope we get the facts right and succeed in unravelling the mystery.

Lyndon LaRouche: The British Empire’s WWIII plan must be stopped this weekend!

American statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche issued the following emergency statement on 24th November, the evening of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Russia has since deployed three of its warships into harms way off the coast of Syria, as a war avoidance measure since its warnings against an attack have fallen on deaf ears in Washington and London; Russia is betting its move will reinforce the position of the U.S. military leaders who are emphatically opposed to a war, and the saner heads in Washington will not want to risk a showdown. On the other hand, the British-Saudi manipulated Arab League has hit Syria with provocative sanctions, the Turks have stepped up their rhetoric and actions against Syria at the same time as they have signed deals with the British for military and strategic cooperation, and NATO inflicted enormous damage on its alliance with Pakistan after attacking the Pakistan border on the weekend and killing 28 Pakistani soldiers. We are witnessing the drive for a war designed by London as a chaos operation like the Seven Years War [ending 1763], designed to collapse London’s dupes one after another like ninepins, and thus to force Russia and China into the conflict, unleashing a thermonuclear World War III and bringing about the oligarchs’ goal of depopulation.

“This empire is determined to set the nations of the world into a war with one another, which is intended that civilization as we’ve now known it, will no longer exist. This is not only a general prospect; this is the immediate situation this weekend. This is not a weekend like other weekends. We’re now on the verge—and it’s set in place right now—of a chain reaction, which could mean the extermination of civilization as we’ve known it.

“Now this is being set up by the British Empire, and nobody else. And nobody else. If you don’t think the British Empire is the enemy, you don’t understand the ABCs of the situation.

“A war now, do you know what it means? Do you know what thermonuclear weapons mean? Do you realize that what’s going on in the Middle East, so-called, cannot be waged by anything other than nuclear weapons? This also means thermonuclear weapons?

“So don’t talk about this interest, or that interest. Don’t try to take sides in the silly quarrels which people are indulging in in the Middle East and elsewhere today. Pay no attention to this. They don’t have any reality except stupidity. If you try to win these wars, you lose everything. You have to prevent these wars from occurring, or you lose everything.

“And the best example is to look at the study of the Seven Years War, from 1756 to 1763. And that war is the war that established the British Empire as the dominant imperial force on this planet. Because they induced the leading nations of continental Europe, and others, to make fools of themselves by fighting wars against one another, where the trick was, to get them to bleed themselves into weakness by fighting one another, and thus opening the gates for a British takeover, British imperial takeover, of the whole system. And that is exactly what happened.

“The only thing that saved civilization in that period, was the struggle of the United States, to create the United States. This struggle began, formally, in about 1620. It came with the settlement—and tonight, this is Thanksgiving. What’s Thanksgiving represent? A party, a feast, that was being held in what became Massachusetts, including one of my ancestors. I’m one of those people who has a ancestor when that occurred … but, on the Mayflower.

“But out of that came the struggle which came out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was of the same kind of character, and this established in the United States, the concept which actually was attributable to Nicholas of Cusa. And this concept being created, despite the crushing of Massachusetts, in the latter part of the century, despite that, it set into motion something that stayed in motion, effectively from 1620 through the establishment of our Federal Republic.

“This is the only thing on this planet which has so far been able to cripple the attempts of the British Empire to realize the intention of becoming a new Roman Empire.

“We’re now at the point where the corruption of the United States, has reached the point, that if we don’t beat the Empire now, in what it’s trying to do, and what it’s trying to do with nuclear threats right now, we’re lost. Civilization is lost. “So the solemnity of our cause, the devotion to that cause, an understanding that it lies in our hands to think clearly about how we do avoid falling into the traps the enemy sets for us … And that’s what should be on our minds. Because this is not something for the distant future. This is this weekend, this weekend. The plan is in place! It will set into motion World War III, right now.

“I think we can beat that. But we have to be determined to do so.

“So I think the element of solemnity at this occasion, ought to be taken into account.

“What does our life mean after all? We’re born, we die. What’s important about our life is what we leave to the future of humanity.”

Food for thought, at least!  Your comments very welcome.

Source: http://www.cecaust.com.au/

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AGW – Significant Support for AGW sceptics/deniers. (The Emails)

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

AGW – Damning emails, wait, there’s more!    🙂

JoNova’s post on AGW, incriminating emails, 2nd release, reveals absolutely damning evidence of agenda bias and non-observance of scientific principles and morals. Continue reading →

Also WUWT latest email updates: (Anthony, Sincere acknowledgements).

UPDATE61: 12/5/11 9AM Mann o Mann, it seems the hockey stick was based on “questionable statistics” according to email 2383. Others discussed this.

UPDATE 60: Out of context comes understanding – a collection of contextual quotes from Climategate 2.0

UPDATE59: It seems that WUWT graphics have found their way into lectures at the University of East Anglia, first alluded to in a UEA Climategate 2 email where Phil Jones got it wrong.  Happy to help.

UPDATE58: 11:55PM PST 12/3 The Weekly Standard summarizes Climategate II in a cover story titled Scientists Behaving Badly Part II.  WUWT is featured prominently.

UPDATE57: 8:45 AM PST 12/2 The Team makes a call to get a PhD thesis revoked of a skeptic they disagree with. Only one problem (besides the ethics) their scientific basis is bogus.

UPDATE56: 8AM PST 12/2 Climate Science and “The Cause”

UPDATE 55: 12AM PST 12/2 Dr. Kevin Trenberth can’t seem to tolerate a dissenting idea, and suggests a scientist at the National Hurricane Center be fired.

UPDATE54: 5PM PST 12/1 Steve McIntyre talks with Andrew Bolt about Climategate 2 in this video interview

UPDATE53: Apparently a kid and his science fair project can invalidate the core premise of Mike Mann’s hockey stick, according to his dad, who happens to be an NCAR scientist.

UPDATE52: 11PM PST 11/30 BOMBSHELL Steve McIntyre has discovered more evidence of “hide the decline” and it’s worse than we thought.

UPDATE51: 7PM PST Tying WWF, UEA, Fenton Communications and “commissioned research” all together

UPDATE50: 1:15 PM PST 11/30 The genesis of RealClimate.org seems to have been found. Surprisingly, the BBC’s Roger Harrabin seems to have been involved in the genesis meeting.

UPDATE49: 10:00 AM PST 11/30 While not email related, just as Climategate breaks David Suzuki commits an egregious propaganda error second only to the 10:10 video where kids are blown up for not going along with carbon reduction schemes at school. He’s targeting kids and Santa Claus at Christmas – Santa’s home is melting.

UPDATE48: 9:20 AM PST 11/30 Dr. Phil Jones on the  “lack of warming” -he may need a backup plan.

UPDATE47: 9AM PST 11/30 Fudge factor collection in the emails, or is climate modeling a social issue?

UPDATE44: 9AM PST 11/29 Mike Mann reprises the role of Captain Queeg in The Cain Mutiny when seeing de Freitas being vindicated by the publisher of Climate Research (see the update in the article).

UPDATE43: 8AM PST 11/29 An Excel Spreadsheet with Climategate 1 and 2 emails ordered chronologically should be helpful in determining that supposedly missing”context”

UPDATE42:  7AM PST 11/29 The CRU crew says:  “what we really meant was…”

UPDATE41: 4AM PST 11/29 James Padget schools Steve Zwick – Guide to Defending the Indefensible. Some people just can’t handle Climategate.

UPDATE40: 12AM PST 11/29 Penn State has the same “look the other way” problem with Climategate as they did with the Jerry Sandusky scandal.

UPDATE39: It seems “vexatious” is Dr. Phil Jones favorite new feeling word after summer 2009.   [Dr Phil talks about nuisance aspects, not a lot about the science!]

UPDATE38: Severinghaus says Mike Mann didn’t give a straight answer regarding why trees don’t work as thermometers after 1950

UPDATE37: Climate sensitivity can’t be quantified with the current data according to NCAR’s Wigley, with paleo data – even less so.

UPDATE36: Dr. Chris de Freitas responds to the ugly attempt by The Team at getting him fired.

UPDATE 35: “Stroppy” Dr Roger Pielke Sr. shows just how much an “old boys network” the peer review process is.

UPDATE34: More internal dissent of the hockey stick. Mann tries to beat down the concern over “hide the decline” while not letting the dissenting scientist know there was a decline.

UPDATE33: Gobsmacking! Rob Wilson proves McIntyre and McKittrick correct in an email to colleagues at CRU, showing that when random noise time series are fed into Mike Mann’s procedure, it makes “hockey sticks”. The confirmation that M&M is right never leaves the walls of CRU.

UPDATE32: 9:30PM PST  11/27 BREAKING – Canada to pull out of Kyoto protocol. Another Climategate fallout ?

UPDATE31: 4:30PM PST 11/27 BOMBSHELL An absolutely disgusting string of communications that shows the tribal attempt at getting an editor of a journal fired on made up issues – all because he allowed a publication that didn’t agree with “the Team”. This is ugly, disturbing, and wrong on every level.

UPDATE30: 9:45 AM PST 11/27 Newsbytes. Major crack in the warming wall at the UK prime minister’s office. BBC in collusion with Climategate scientists.

UPDATE29: 9AM PST 11/27 The saga of the missing station data at CRU and the “pants on fire” defense of it as told by Willis Eschenbach. Dr. Phil Jones is between a rock and a hard place, quite.

UPDATE 28: 1:30PM PST 11/26 An email shows the UNFCCC considers activists an essential tool saying “…organized and deeply committed environmental activism has long been an important part of the UNFCCC process…”

UPDATE27: 7AM PST 11/26 Climategate 2 features prominently in WUWT’s newest feature “Hits and Misses“

UPDATE26: 2:50 PM 11/25 Two separate examples show obstruction and collusion by members of “The Team” to prevent any dissenting science from being properly considered by the NRC in 2007.

UPDATE25: 2PM 11/25 Keith Briffa asks another colleague to delete email to avoid FOIA

Posted in carbon tax, climate change, Conspiracies, ENVIRONMENT, Human Behaviour, Politics | Leave a comment

Somalia – Death and Corruption

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

Orthographic projection map of Somalia (blue v...

Image via Wikipedia

MICHELLE SHEPHARD, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER for the ‘Toronto Star’, has a heart-wrenching, enlightening report posted on http://somalia.thestar.com/, titled “Somalia – Where Famine is a Crime”

A couple of extracts highlight not only the health and starvation issues but also the political agendas that so commonly complicate human tragedy situations, agendas that severely hinder solutions and also engender suspicions of ulterior motives, at least in my mind.

“MOGADISHU—The medical chart Abdisalam Osman’s mother uses to flick away flies says her youngest son suffers from acute malnutrition and the measles. A chest X-ray will soon reveal he also has tuberculosis.” 

“The good news for Mogadishu is that there are few visible remnants of the Shabab, which has waged war against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for nearly three years.

Weakened themselves by the famine and claiming to withdraw for “tactical” purposes, hundreds of Shabab fighters abruptly left the capital this summer.

This is why Abdisalam’s family trekked here from the south, believing there would be help in Mogadishu from the TFG, the UN-backed parliament of 550, propped up by a 9,000-member African Union peacekeeping force of Burundian and Ugandan soldiers.

The TFG had an opportunity to repair its badly damaged reputation and make the famine a priority. That didn’t happen.

As people began to starve earlier this year, the country’s president and its parliamentary speaker — President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Speaker Hassan Sharif, who are known as the “Two Sharifs” — were locked in a dispute, trying to shore up political support as they debated at conferences in Djibouti, Kenya or Uganda.

“They say the fish starts rotting from the head,” says Abdi Rashid, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “At the height of the famine, there was a president who was busy holding meetings with clan elders, not talking about the famine, but about the struggle with the speaker of parliament.”

But the “Two Sharifs” are not the only members of the TFG accused of political gamesmanship or corruption.

One senior TFG official says he is disgusted with his government’s continued focus on politics and power.

“What are we doing?” he asks. “People are dying and we’re focusing on passing a road map?”

The “road map,” brokered by representatives with the United Nations, is intended to move the government beyond being transitional to drafting a constitution and holding parliamentary elections on Aug. 20.

Ken Menkhaus, noted American analyst on Somali affairs, calls this “a case of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Rashid agrees, saying he has abandoned any hope he once had for the TFG.

“The TFG is beyond the pale,” says Rashid. “It will fail and it will fail miserably. People who are at the helm of affairs at the TFG are not people who are interested in anything beyond their own interests.”

But Rashid also questions those who provide aid — the UN-funded groups and non-government organizations that have managed to ease the famine conditions now, but have wasted millions in Nairobi and have little presence in Somalia.

Rashid calls this the “crisis cottage industry,” which has exploded in the two decades since Somalia’s government collapsed. Pricey conferences, facilities, salaries, studies and projects — all concerning Somalia and all held in Nairobi.

“This is part of the saddest aspect,” says Rashid.

“You have a massive industry that has grown around the crisis … Sometimes it’s foolish interventions, or naïve, ill-informed approaches. I don’t think there’s a grand conspiracy by the NGO community to keep Somalia the way it is, no. A lot of the defective policies are because no one wants to do the hard work, the right things,” says Rashid.”

I believe it needs to be read world-wide to ensure the public get an un-biassed picture. The Somalian people are suffering and it is not clear why, droughts – yes, but that is far from the whole story. One wonders if the authorities really care, what they are actually fighting for?  Far too many questions have been publicly unanswered. Warning bells ring when I read about “UN ‘roadmaps'”.

Read Michelle’s article here.

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Posted in Corruption, HEALTH, Inhumanity, Justice, Politics, Somalia, World Issues | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Fukushima: Exposure underrated, outcome obscure

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Ken McMurtrie

 

RT.com posts this enlightening report on the continuing dangers from the Fukushima NPP disaster.  ( 29 October, 2011).

Photo from http://www.tepco.co.jp

Photo from http://www.tepco.co.jp

TAGS:Ecology, Health, Nuclear, Accident, Biology, Japan

The consequences of the Fukushima disaster will be emerging for at least several decades. According to the Japanese government, it will take up to 30 years for the complete clean up of the radiation released from the reactors.

Japan aims to reduce radiation by half over the next two years. To do so, it may have to remove and dispose of massive amounts of radioactive soil, possibly enough to fill 23 baseball stadiums, reports Reuters.

Experts say the areas inside the evacuation zone will have to remain uninhabited throughout the years of contamination.  All collected soil and other waste will be stored in the Fukushima Prefecture, in an “interim facility” with an estimated capacity of up to 28 million cubic meters.

Despite official information, some reports suggest the Japanese government is seriously downplaying the real amount of radioactive substances that leaked from Fukushima. Radioactive emissions from the crippled nuclear power plant may be five times higher than the numbers released by the authorities.

The Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journal published a report that suggests the figures of radiation released into the atmosphere could be underestimated by almost 80 per cent. The report says only 19 per cent of radioactive cesium-137 fell on Japanese soil, while the remaining amount ended up in the Pacific Ocean. Only some two per cent of cesium is believed to have reached foreign lands.

The author of the report, Andreas Stohl, says that the Japanese government was only using the data that came from Japan for their estimations and missed the cesium that got into the ocean, while Stohl and his team used measurement data from several dozen stations in Japan, North America and other regions.

The report suggests that some 36,000 terabecquerels of cancer-causing cesium were released from the reactors, which amounts to 42 per cent of the total release from the Chernobyl disaster.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Stohl said that estimates are very imprecise, that even 50 percent divergence should not be considered a major difference. Moreover, Stohl’s report is not complete and it has to be reviewed by the field experts before it is accepted as a formal publication, so the numbers may vary.

The evaluation of the consequences is also hindered by poorly-developed methods of extensive radiation measurement. So far no one can tell the exact number of people who received dangerous doses of radiation or draw a prediction of how many of them will be affected by cancer in the long-run.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was heavily damaged by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, which resulted in a reactor meltdown and the release of radioactive material. Since then, the authorities have struggled to contain the crisis, with pledges being given in the summer, that it will be resolved by the end of this year.

 To not keep this world-wide issue in the news is irresponsible. Don’t under-estimate the public health dangers. If interested keep a check on “Fukushiam Diaries” http://fukushima-diary.com/, disputed by some as unwarranted scaremongering, but probably not!

The original article.

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Posted in Cover-ups, ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH, nuclear, radiation | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment