Curbing the lobbyists - but which ones?

(nb. I am not DK)

David Cameron's pledge to "curb the lobbying industry" has been widely welcomed by the pundits. Spam wants to shine “the light of transparency” on lobbying so that politics “comes clean about who is buying power and influence.” Sounds more like he's trying to divert the public's contempt away from politicians and onto those evil corporations but if it reduces bribery and keeps a few ex-ministers' snouts out of the trough, it can't be a bad thing. 

fakecharities.org has been shining the "light of transparency" on a certain type of lobbyist for some time. Unfortunately, it's not the state-funded pressure groups who are the target of the Tory purge, in fact they're delighted with the plan. Less access for business means more access for them.

David Miller of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency welcomed Mr Cameron’s admission that something needs to be done about lobbying.

But he added: “If they are serious about listening to ordinary people, the Conservative Party must pledge to introduce a mandatory register of lobbyists as soon as possible so that the public can see who is lobbying whom, and the extent to which national policies are being influenced by commercial forces.”

And what is the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency? A group of "ordinary people" trying to get their voice heard? Is it fuck. It's a coalition of predominantly windmill-worshipping, anti-capitalist lobby groups. They include War On Want, the Pesticide Action Network, Action Aid and Friends of the Earth, all of whom help create the illusion of public support for 'climate justice', big government and higher taxes. Just the kind of groups the political class like, then, and - with faith in the 'scientific consensus' dropping to a pathetic 26% - they need them more than ever. All four of them are, of course, funded by the European Commission.

The Alliance also includes Unlock Democracy (AKA Charter88) which is not even allowed to be a charity because of its campaigning activities, quite an achievement when you consider what the rest of them get up to. It includes the anarchist arseholes at Corporate Watch, as well as the mighty Greenpeace. And the whole thing is co-ordinated by Spinwatch, the blogging home of Andrew Rowell, the activist-journalist who wrote the non-peer reviewed article which resulted in Amazongate.

It is part of the wider Alliance for Lobbying Transparency & Ethics Regulation (Alter-EU), an organisation dominated by Friends of the Earth and other eco-campaigners, who monitor corporate lobbying and produce reports for the European Commission. The fox patrolling the chicken-coop, in other words. The EC, in turn, funds these groups to lobby itself:

In 2006 the EU gave more than 7.7m euros (£5.5m; $11.2m) to at least 40 environmental organisations to help them lobby in Brussels.

They included big campaign groups such as WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) and FoE Europe.

You have, then, unelected European Commissioners throwing money at unelected pressure groups to lobby for policies which have minimal support amongst the public. This is the type of nice, honest, transparent lobbying that the politicians would like to see replace those dodgy deals done in smoke-filled smokefree rooms - the corporate elite replaced by the political elite.

As long as this cosy relationship between the state and its army of activists remains, Dave is in no position to complain that "a tiny percentage of the population craft legislation that will apply to one hundred per cent of the population." Whatever the merits of reforming the lobbying system, if it results in more power resting in the hands of the political class and its favoured pressure groups, it will merely substitute one set of vested interests for another. 

Any clamp-down on corporate lobbying must be accompanied by a clear-out of the parasitic NGOs who have thrived for over a decade. Since not a single one of them has political views that are even vaguely of the right, there is no chance of Labour ever stripping them of their ill-gotten gains. For any Conservative government it should be a no-brainer.

"No scientific merit"

Andrew Lacis: telling it like it is.

Meet Andrew Lacis, a physicist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and colleague of James Hansen.

Education:

• B.A., Physics, 1963, University of Iowa


• M.S., Astronomy, 1964, University of Iowa


• Ph.D., Physics, 1970, University of Iowa

Publications

• Go to bibliography

Lacis's bibliography is pretty huge, so I haven't represented it here; suffice to say that Andrew Lacis is not only prolific and well-respected but also "mainstream"—he is not "a denier".

Bearing all of this in mind, I would like to call your attention to his comment on Chapter 9 of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Now, Chapter 9 is extremely important, as Bishop Hill explains...

Chapter 9 is possibly the most important one in the whole IPCC report - it's the one where they decide that global warming is manmade. This is the one where the headlines are made.

So, bearing all of these facts in mind, here is Andrew Lacis's comment on the Executive Summary of Chapter 9 of the IPCC's AR4. [Emphasis mine.]

There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn't the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community—instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.

This is pretty damning stuff and would, surely, have given even the most enthusiastic Warmist some pause for thought. So why did no one pick up on it?

Because, of course, Andrew Lacis's comment did not appear in the report. Like many other even mildly sceptical comments, it was rejected and left out of the report. And the reason why the editors rejected the comment?

Rejected. [Executive Summary] summarizes Ch 9, which is based on the peer reviewed literature.

Frankly, I am staggered. That is the complete explanation for the rejection.

Further, as we are now beginning to find out, vast swathes of the IPCC AR4 are based on non-peer-reviewed reports from Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund; even where those organisations have used scientific reports in their pieces of propaganda, they have cherry-picked and twisted data to suit their own agendas, e.g. Amazongate.

This is how the "consensus" has been constructed—by posting sceptical comments down the memory-hole; by disappearing all but the most alarmist of opinions.

Is there anyone who now thinks that the IPCC are to be trusted as a truly scientific organisation?

If there are any such people left, then I have a bridge that I'd like to sell them...

IPCC's dodgy citations

As we all remain thoroughly amused at the barrage of attacks on the IPCC's rapidly waning credibility, it's all too easy to miss a dodgy citation or two.

As such, and via Climate Sceptic, I am happy to point you towards a rapidly expanding compendium of all of the dodgy citations in the IPCC's AR3 and AR4 reports, hosted by the informative ClimateQuotes.com.

In other news—just in case you missed it—55% of the Netherlands is not below sea level, as claimed by IPCC AR4: the figure is more like 20%. This may sound like nit-picking, but it's annoyed the Dutch; apart from anything else, the report made outrageous claims about the effect on the Netherlands's productivity should the sea rise a couple of inches.

The worrying thing about the sudden outrage by the Dutch is worrying—as my peripatetic Greek friend pointed out...

Now, anyone can make a simple blooper like this, even if it's the sort of howler you would expect any Dutch schoolboy to spot. No, my question is this: did anyone in the Dutch government actually read the fucking report before signing the Netherlands up to slashing their carbon emissions?

More to the point, have any of our ministers read the IPCC report? I think we should be told. I think they should be asked.

I sincerely doubt that any of our moronic, lazy fucking politicos have read any of the reports—or even the bastard summaries. They are too busy helping themselves to our money and posturing like pricks on the world stage.

Oh, and just to throw yet more thrills at you all, ClimateQuotes.com thinks that they have found yet another dodgy citation.

In AR4, WGIII, section 8.4.5 Potential implications of mitigation options for sustainable development:

"Agriculture contributes 4% of global GDP (World Bank, 2003) and provides employment to 1.3 billion people (Dean, 2000)."

That is a fairly specific number, 1.3 billion. What census, survey, or study did they cite that came up with this number? Dean, 2000 is referenced as:

Dean, T., 2000: Development: agriculture workers too poor to buy food. UN IPS, New York, 36 pp.

The UN IPS is the United Nations Inter Press Service. They cited a news article.

Interestingly enough, the actual title of the article is different than the IPCC's reference. The title is "Agriculture Workers Too Poor to Buy Food, Say Unions". Here it is also referenced with the 'say unions' ending. But the IPCC's reference drops the 'say unions' from the end. If you search for this article on IPS' site, you get to see a link to the article with the title. It includes 'say unions'. Is this an intentional omission of a reference to unions, or just sloppy work? Here is the article, see for yourself...
...

The article only mentions the 1.3 billion number in passing:

Currently, 1.3 billion people (out of a world population of about 6 billion) work in agriculture-related jobs, 450 million of whom are waged agricultural workers.

The rest of the article is about how the workers are too poor to buy food. The magazine does not cite any source for its 1.3 billion number.

Well, what a fucking surprise, eh? This, my friends, is the UN's IPCC: the gold standard of scientific research. Actually, it's just a shoddy collection of half-truths and skewed bollocks of the sort written by some dishonest and thoroughly second-rate blogger.

It's a massive con—just like the UN itself.

As CACC collapses, the Tories continue to fuck up

Professor Philip Stott has an excellent piece questioning the wisdom in George Osborne's announcement that Nicholas Stern would be helping them to draft their environmental policy. Amongst other things, Professor Stott resurrects a particularly cutting quote about the Stern Review which I thought would be good to place here once again.

"If a student of mine were to hand in this report [the ‘Stern Review’] as a Masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I would give him a 'D' for diligence; but more likely I would give him an 'F' for fail. There is a whole range of very basic economics mistakes that somebody who claims to be a Professor of Economics simply should not make. [...] Stern consistently picks the most pessimistic for every choice that one can make. He overestimates through cherry-picking, he double counts particularly the risks and he underestimates what development and adaptation will do to impacts.”

[The environmental economist, Dr. Richard S. J. Tol, Research Professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Dublin, Professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and Associate at Hamburg University.

James Delingpole headlined the news that the Tories were consulting Lord Stern in the following manner:

Cameron and his suicidal eco-rats clamber aboard sinking ship

Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it? Similarly disbelieving ejaculations came from EUReferendum, and Professor Stott opines...

Has Lord Snooty’s Sidekick Gone Stark Raving Bonkers, Readers?

So, what has happened to the Tories? Have they taken leave of their senses? Why on earth was Osborne even approaching Lord Stern in the first place?

Well, quite possibly they have.

But Osborne’s lack of political judgment and timing go even deeper. One cannot believe that the Shadow Chancellor has been so stupid as to make this now seemingly-unfounded pronouncement at the very moment when the Global Warming Narrative is collapsing on every front, political, economic, and scientific; when, in the US, even President Obama is retreating from from the cap-trade bill; when most of his own Tory party are highly critical of the whole ‘global warming’ scenario; when polls show that the public everywhere is increasing in its scepticism; and, when The Sun is once again flaring forth ...

On February 1, that Old Tory trooper, Lord Tebbit of Chingford, writing in the Conservative house rag, The Daily Telegraph, warned that “'Camp Cameron' should worry about the steady erosion of the Tory lead in the polls” - the latest YouGov product has the Conservatives on 38 per cent, down two points on last month. I am sure Tebbit is correct, and I can further warn Boy George that this latest nonsense over Lord Stern will not have helped one iota.

Indeed, Britain is now screaming out for a leading political party that will begin to talk real economic sense on climate change. That way, there might actually be some votes in the topic.

This is an argument echoed today by Burning Our Money; but as Wat Tyler also points out, there really isn't a credible alternative.

It's very difficult all this, isn't it. The horrible fact is, there isn't actually anyone we can vote for who will stop this happening. Sure, there are people we can vote for who will promise to stop it, but that's a different thing - under our grotesquely unfair first-past-the-post Westminster system of government, such people will never get the chance to actually implement their promises. Tyler's constitutional reform package includes separation of the powers and a directly elected President, but absent that, our real world choices are indeed very limited.

Which is why we will be out campaigning for the Tories again this time. They sure ain't perfect, and we share many of the Major's concerns, but in terms of forming a government to replace Brown's disaster, they're all we've got.

This is, of course, a damning indictment of our electoral system—but also of the people in this country. The simple fact is, in a weird fucking conundrum, that the only thing that keeps the major parties in power is the fact that people think that the major parties are the only ones capable of gaining power.

So, whilst Jackart may maintain that the Tories are simply the "shit that stinks least", do not be under any illusions that the Tories will, nevertheless, be utterly shit.

The climate hots up

The pressure continues to pile on the IPCC with a whole raft of MSM and blog stories seeping through today. His Ecclesiastical Eminence resurrects his Climate Cuttings series to try to round up the events.

In a story running in parallel in the Sunday Times and EU Referendum, Raj Pachauri is linked directly to a new set of erroneous statements in the IPCC reports. This time it's African rainfall they've been misleading us about. Since Pachauri is the author of the relevant part of the report and has repeated the claims elsewhere, he will find it harder to absolve himself of responsibility this time. Commenters noted a recent study that found that there has been a massive recent greening of the Sahel, with temperature rises leading to higher rainfall.

EU Referendum has picked up on this last story and expanded on it.

No sooner is the Africagate piece up then Bishop Hill comments on it. That brings up further comments which identify this article from the National Geographic News.

Confirming the observations of the Tunisian government in its "initial national communication" (where it suggested that rainfall might increase), the National Geographic article is headed: "Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?"

It states that, contrary to the picture painted of "desertification, drought, and despair" by the IPCC, emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.

Scientists, we are told, are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities. Furthermore, it seems, this desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.

Of course, climatology is not an exact science—which is just one of the reasons that the phrase "the science is settled" always worked me up into an incandescent rage. Added irritation was introduced because we knew damn well that not even the climatologists thought the science was settled—something that was confirmed by the CRU email conversations.

Haarsma now says that satellite confirms that during the last decade, the Sahel is indeed becoming more green. Nevertheless, as one might expect, climate scientists don't agree on how future climate change will affect the Sahel: Some studies simulate a decrease in rainfall. "This issue is still rather uncertain," Haarsma says.

Max Planck's Claussen says North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modellers. Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen adds. "Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."

There! How's that for settled science?

That precisely reflects the uncertainty projected by Professor Conway [PDF] and others, and completely contradicts the doom-laden certainty offered by Dr Pachauri and his IPCC colleagues. More to the point, since Haarsma was carrying out his studies in 2005, when the IPCC was in the throes of writing up the Fourth Assessment Report, it could or should have been aware of the work.

Instead, it relies on a secondary source written by an obscure Moroccan academic, and published by an advocacy group, which did not even accurately reflect its own primary sources.

Once again, the IPCC has been cherry-picking data in order to paint the blackest picture possible—in order, presumably, to scare the shit out of the politicians and to ensure that the great big Green money-go-round continues to drop manna into the lap of Pachauri and his corrupt cronnies.

But, to return to the science aspect, there is a wider point to be made here...

One of the most extraordinary claims of the CACC lobby is that warming will lead to disaster. In the Northern Hemisphere, all of the evidence points to warmer climes being a good thing: the Mediaeval Warm Period showed a massive increase of wealth and population supported, amongst other things, by far higher crop yields. It was only when the Little Ice Age hit that people started to starve by the thousand.

Mind you, we really need Ed Cook's words from one of the CRU emails illustrate the position. [Emphasis mine.]

Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).

Let me just parse that for you: for anything outside the tropical Northern Hemisphere, the climatologists know "fuck-all" for anything over one hundred years ago. There just isn't that much data for the Southern Hemisphere because—should you go and examine a globe rather than a Mercator projection map—there's remarkably little land.

In any case, even my A Level science tells me one basic thing: if you heat up water, you get greater evaporation and thus, eventually, greater precipitation. The problem is, given the wind system and other chaotic factors (such as mountain ranges), where that precipitation eventually occurs.

It is also the case, however, that deserts are not caused simply by a lack of rain, but also by a lack of plants to hold the top soil, etc. This lack of plant life often contributes to a fall in precipitation and so it goes in a vicious spiral.

Anyway, the Sahara seems to be getting substantially greener—for whatever reasons—and this can only be a good thing. Let's hope that the people living there take advantage of this fact and act to increase that trend.

And now, in a piece reminiscent of the televisual news, your humble Devil presents the amusing and quirky "and finally" piece...

THE scientist at the centre of the “climategate” email scandal has revealed that he was so traumatised by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide.

Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself “several times”.

This is the same Phil Jones who wrote, when sceptic John Daly died, 'In an odd way, this is cheering news!' Further, of course, one might point out that millions have gone hungry, and starved, and died, because of measures taken under the auspices of the lies and fabrications peddled by Phil Jones—with the doubling of basic food prices because of the land being turned over to biofuels being just one of those.

So—with all due respect, i.e. none—why don't you just fuck off, Phil?

Redesign and HTML5

A few weeks back, I did an Accessibility report on the Labour Party website (it failed, massively). During that post, I pointed out that this blog was not Accessible and that I would, to paraphrase Captain Picard, make it so.

This is still my intention, but I am going to go a little further—having found that I can support all browsers through various techniques, I am going to restructure the blog in HTML5 (and checking it all in this HTML5 Outliner!).

HTML5 is logical and neat—especially for a blog format website. Replacing endless divs with the new block-level elements—such as header, hgroup, footer, nav, aside, section and article all make reading the site structure so much easier.

Plus, of course, these elements allow for assistive software to recognise the page structure in a meaningful way, thereby increasing Accessibility—a subject that my recent article in Ability magazine expands on.

By the same token, I shall also be making extensive use of CSS3 and, as I intimated in my post about the iPad, deploying some effects—such as CSS animations—that will only work in the latest versions of Safari (and other Webkit-based browsers, e.g. Chrome).

All of this is as much to ensure that I continue to develop my coding skills, and learn the new syntax, as anything else. Naturally, however, The Kitchen will still be useable by every browser—but I do not intend to deliver the same experience to every browser.

For those who are interested, the rough browser breakdown for those visiting The Kitchen is as follows:

• Firefox: 40.97% (Rendering Engine: Gecko (Open Source))


• Internet Explorer: 34.22% (Rendering Engine: Trident (proprietary))


• Safari: 12.63% (Rendering Engine: WebKit (Open Source))


• Chrome: 7.11% (Rendering Engine: WebKit (Open Source))


• Opera: 2.90% (Rendering Engine: Presto (proprietary))

However, whilst all of this technical stuff might be interesting to your humble Devil—and sundry other geeks out there—it is, ultimately, you people who read this blog. As such, if you have any suggestions for the design—e.g. perhaps I should be using light text on a dark background—please feel free to sound off in the comments...

Libertarian Roundup #3

Biased BBC has found out why the BBC is so keen to promote the idea of man-made global warming: it helps their pension!

The UK Libertarian says the blind squirrel has found a nut.

The Appalling Strangeness wonders why we have politicians at all.

Leg-Iron has seen the future and he's not all that keen on it. And he's miffed about the denormalisation of smokers.

Iain Martin (along with many other people) wonders what the hell the Tories are actually saying. Salted Slug has something in a similar vein.

Steve Shark has discovered that Sion Simon wants to downsize.

Boatang & Demetriou has a useful summary of thieving cunts.

Douglas Carswell points out another regulatory failure. Mark Wadsworth concurs. And Timmy asks: "what's the next one beyond facepalm?"

Tomrat says councils can't have it both ways.

Rantin' Rab is unhappy with the fishing situation.

On a lighter note: people seem to feel like money's not worth much nowadays...

That's all for this week—thanks for those who sent submissions.

Toodle-pip!

Yet more IPCC bollocks

This has been a good year so far, certainly in the opinion of your humble Devil. The decision to prosecute even some of the thieving MPs is a small victory for those of us who have long maintained that those fuckers were stealing our money.

But far greater vindication, as far as I am concerned, has come in the slow but steady collapse of the climate change alarmist camp; as someone who has been calling "bullshit" on this scam—in writing at least—for five years, watching the destruction started by the leak of the CRU documents has been a joy to behold.

Whilst some of us swarmed over the emails and the data—delighting at the revelations about dirty tricks and shoddy statistical analysis that revealed the truth of our suspicions—EUReferendum was leading the charge against the High Priest of the IPCC. As Richard North showed, Dr Rajendra K Pachauri has redefined the word "compromised"—his nexus of power and money inextricably bound up with his position as IPCC Chairman and entirely dependent on the alarmist AGW position.

It is really the kind of investigative journalism that Private Eye used to do so well: on this topic, however, the Eye has dropped the ball. Or, rather, as The Englishman points out, they never even picked it up.

If you will allow me to digress for a second, the Eye's refusal to acknowledge the existence of blogs—a blindness born of a hatred and contempt that borders on the pathological—has combined with its pathetic online presence (such as the lack of an online archive) and its fortnightly release to render the magazine increasingly irrelevent. It is rare, now, to find a story in Private Eye that has not already been substantially covered—often in a rather better and more interesting way—by blogs. Private Eye will continue to be bought by many, but it is becoming more and more of a luxury for political anoraks, rather than the necessity that it once was.

To return to the general subject of this post, EUReferendum's most valuable contribution has been in the revelations of "mistakes" in the IPCC reports themselves.

Because, whilst Pachauri himself might be hopelessly compromised, true believers of the climate change faith could still point out that the genial Indian did not actually, personally write the reports and that the "scientists" who did so nevertheless knew what they were talking about.

Or, to put it in terms that an idiot could understand because it was an idiot who wrote it, here's Sunny Hundal on why the IPCC is good.

The IPCC [sic] contains hundreds if not thousands of graphs and claims — and yet one or two slips were used as an excuse to rubbish the whole thing.

Wow! The "IPCC" has hundreds of graphs. Well, fuck me: they must be right, eh?

What Sunny hasn't grasped—or, rather, wilfully refuses to grasp—is that if one or more claims are suspect, then they are all suspect. As I pointed out in a longish post entitled A Credibility Gap, if the IPCC has been cooking the books, then the entire catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (CACC) argument falls apart.

This kind of revelation strikes at the very heart of the CACC foundations because without the IPCC there is no catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
...

The trouble is that whilst climatologists might have a rather better overview of these studies than myself or Bishop Hill (who are, after all, merely amateurs with a day job to hold down), it is very unlikely that they have actually read all of these studies.

And the politicians certainly haven't.

All of these people rely on those at the IPCC whose day job is to study and collate these reports to draw the evidence together.
...

Think of the process as a massive inverted pyramid with the downward-facing point as the raw data and the ever-increasing mass on top as the multiplicity of reports based on said data. Obviously, if the data are wrong, so are all of the models, reports and prognostications based on them.

Similarly, the faith in CACC is based on the credibility of the IPCC simply because people do not have the time to do what the IPCC does, i.e. to collate and assess the many hundreds of reports on climate. And the IPCC is increasingly compromised.

It is not only that the IPCC has made "mistakes": as far as Glaciergate is concerned, it goes rather further than that.

Evidence is building that IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt by 2035 was not only a deliberate fraud, but efforts were made to cover it up when the figure was challenged.

Some of the pieces of the jigsaw are already there in the public domain, starting with Ben Webster's piece in The Times on Saturday – which we analysed in this post. This made it clear that Rajendra Pachauri was appraised of what he now claims was a "mistake" by an Indian science journalist, last November.

But the story is taken further by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times today, under the heading: "Panel ignored warnings on glacier error". There, he reports that the leaders of the IPCC had known for weeks and probably months about the "error" and had even convened private conferences to discuss it.

There is a lot more: your humble Devil has not been able to keep up with the pace of stories released by EUReferendum, but it appears that the IPCC knew that the claim was false, but it was kept in the reports in order to drive increasing levels of funding to Rajendra Pachauri's TERI Institute.

Further embarrassment for the IPCC has come in the form of Amazongate, again exposed by EUReferendum and enthusiastically taken up by the MSM.

From Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times we get an article headed: "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim," - one of several on climate change in today's edition

It tells us that a "startling report" in the IPCC report claiming that that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest "was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise."

This is "Amazongate" writ large, where the IPCC launched the scare story that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland – and the source turns out to be a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists.

They had based their "research" (Leake's quotations) on a study published in Nature which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.

The detail is familiar to readers of this blog, and some might note a small addition at the end of the piece which says: "Research by Richard North", in what has been a fruitful partnership.

Indeed it has—and the revelations have come thick and fast. Essentially, vast swathes of the IPCC ARA4 seem to have been based not on properly researched, peer-reviewed scientific papers, but from deeply biased, unscientific and poorly presented reports by such notable organsiations as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an article in Climbing magazine and, in one case, from a Geography Student's degree thesis.

In other words, far from being the last word in science, the IPCC ARA4 is a collection of third-hand anecdotes and poorly researched reports from organisations with an axe to grind.

And tonight Richard has released another long report into another aspect of the IPCC ARA4 which has already been dubbed—with wearying inevitability—Africagate.

Following an investigation by this blog (and with the story also told in The Sunday Times), another major "mistake" in the IPCC's benchmark Fourth Assessment Report has emerged.

Similar in effect to the erroneous "2035" claim – the year the IPCC claimed that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt – in this instance we find that the IPCC has wrongly claimed that in some African countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020.

At best, this is a wild exaggeration, unsupported by any scientific research, referenced only to a report produced by a Canadian advocacy group, written by an obscure Moroccan academic who specialises in carbon trading, citing references which do not support his claims.

Unlike the glacier claim, which was confined to a section of the technical Working Group II report, this "50 percent by 2020" claim forms part of the key Synthesis Report, the production of which was the personal responsibility of the chair of the IPCC, Dr R K Pachauri. It has been repeated by him in many public fora. He, therefore, bears a personal responsibility for the error.

In this lengthy post, we examine the nature and background of this latest debacle, which is now under investigation by IPCC scientists and officials.

It is a lengthy post—even by Richard's standards—but is well worth reading in full. Essentially, the IPCC and Pachauri have been cherry-picking data from various reports that are themselves not peer-reviewed—or in any way independently verified. Or, in some circumstances, unsubstantiated data from unreviewed reports have been used in the IPCC reports, which are then cited in similar reports and substantiated figures and then the IPCC uses those same successor reports to bolster the credibility of its own baseless "findings".

In short, the entire system is corrupt; evidence is being, effectively, fabricated; far from being the last work on the science of climate change, the UN's IPCC has been sticking to what that body knows best—corruption in the service of vested interests.

Still, in what seems to be a bit of a departure for UN staff, as least the bastards aren't pimping kids.

The process started with the confirmation of data corruption at the UEA, and the somewhat unorthodox practices of the CRU team; with The Club being so intimately involved with the IPCC, it was only a matter of time before interested parties followed the trail to Pachauri and the UN's climate body.

Now, the credibility of the IPCC, and its reports, is shot to pieces. Whilst true believers like Sunny Hundal continue to screech and wail, the evidence of corruption is swiftly overwhelming the anyway flimsy evidence for CACC.

You may take it from your humble Devil that vindication combined with Schadenfreude is one of the sweetest feelings in the world. Now, maybe, we can persuade our foolish politicians to get a grip and stop killing people with their environmental madness.

Although it might be quicker to hang them all and start again...

Charged!

It seems that charges of theft have been brought against three Labour MPs and one Tory Lord.

Former minister Elliot Morley, MP for Scunthorpe, will face two charges in relation to a total of £30,000 of mortgage interest claims on a property in Winterton, Lincolnshire between 2004 and 2007.

The charges allege he made claims "in excess of that to which he was entitled" and - for part of the period when "there was no longer a mortgage on that property".

David Chaytor, MP for Bury North, is accused of "dishonestly claiming" £1,950 for IT services and further sums of £12, 925 and £5,425 relating to rent claims on properties which he and his mother allegedly owned.

Livingston MP Jim Devine is accused of "dishonestly claiming" money for cleaning services and for stationery using false invoices.
...

Essex County Council leader Paul White - the Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield - is accused of "dishonestly" submitting claims "for expenses to which he knew he was not entitled" - including overnight stays in London.

So, four thieving, troughing little piggies have been charged—and one case is still under consideration. I think that I feel much the same as The Nameless Libertarian...

The time for rage and ranting is over – at least for me. My anger on this issue is spent. I’ve moved towards acceptance: acceptance that we have been rinsed by a bunch of troughing fucks who…

Wait, hold up, I’m drifting back to anger. Enough.

But this scandal shouldn’t end with the repayments and the charges. We have an election this year, and we should remember the frauds committed by our elected representatives when we go to the ballot box. A fundamental question that needs to be applied to each candidate is whether we feel they will act as a public servant, rather than just serving themselves from the public purse. As the actions of many of those in this parliament have shown, that is almost as important as agreeing with their ideologies.

I think that we should all bear in mind that these four men were not the only ones who stole our money—MPs have been ordered to repay £1.1 million more. It is simply the case that the Fraudulent Four happen to have been selected, and sufficient evidence collated, to be charged.

This does not alter the fact that we know that almost every other cunt in Parliament is a thieving shitbag with the morals of an alleycat.

So, it's a victory—but we have only won the battle, not the war.

Polly Toynbee: contrarian harridan

Your humble Devil has not turned his baleful eye towards Polly Toynbee for some time, partly because he has not had the time to engage in a thorough fisking of the evil old bag.

Unfortunately, such timing issues still persist but, nevertheless, it is always worth sending a few shots across her bows—if only to keep dear Pollyanna on her toes.

And in a neat example of such time-limited but timely reminders, this post will emphasise one of those little tics which—whilst not being exclusive to Polly—does illustrate just why she is one of the most abysmal writers in the MSM (as previously chronicled, at length, here at The Kitchen).

Yes, it's Polly's quite brilliant ability to contradict herself within the very same article that we are going to highlight today.

So, in today's worthless piece of crap, darling Polly is talking about a National Care Service—which sounds like it will be a fucking disaster—and the contradiction lies in Polly's justification for another massive fucking nationwide government-driven QUANGO. So, we have this...

One benefit of devolution is the real-life social experiments it offers as each nation adopts different social ­policies. But the chance to learn from one another is often ignored at Westminster.

Wow! Polly thinks that we should experiment on people—just like little lab rats. But then this hardly comes as a surprise—she is a socialist, after all, and believes that she is superior to the plebs who exist only to serve her need for social expiation.

But that is incidental—note, please, that she has said that experimentation between regions is a good thing because other regions can learn from one another—although, presumably, she would not think that any verdict should be passed on Saint Obama's health bill as a result of the recent electoral upset in Massachusetts.

Regardless, this idiotic nitwit now weighs in with a fantastically contradictory statement.

Nothing about social care is simple – not least because each local authority offers different levels of care at different rates and interprets the official criteria arbitrarily: that's why we need a National Care Service.

Erm... Right, so experimentation between devolved regions is a good thing because we can learn valuable lessons...

... but we need a National Care Service to ensure that regions cannot, in fact, experiment.

Well done, Polly, you fucking muppet.

UPDATE: it seems that Timmy has made the same point, albeit somewhat more succinctly.

UPDATE 2: the wife, by the way, maintains that Polly cannot be serious and that her columns are, in fact, a colossal practical joke—each one a more elaborate spoof than the next. Sometimes, I wonder if she might be right...

MR Hall might be the biggest cunt in the world

M R Hall: an utter, utter cunt.

Thanks to the commenter who pointed me to this article—which was actually the one that I was looking for in respect of the last post that I made.

I was going to add this as an addendum, but I thought that M R Hall—a former criminal barrister. What a fucking surprise—was such a colossally disgusting human being that he deserved a little piece of excoriation all to himself.

I mean, seriously, what insult can possibly describe the kind of bastard who can happily write something like this...?

But suffering has a positive purpose. Of course it's tough for the sufferer, but it's only through witnessing the pain and agony of others that we properly develop empathy and compassion.

What more can I possibly say?

Assisted suicide: just fuck off

There has been quite a lot of talk recently about assisted suicide and suchlike. I would just like to set out my opinion in the laziest of fashions—by quoting The Daily Mash's article on the subject, which is so spot on that it's barely satire.

PEOPLE who are opposed to assisted suicide are still absolutely convinced that it is any of their business, according to a new survey.
...

Meanwhile almost a third continue to believe it is more their business than the person who is actually trying to kill themselves.

The poll asked, 'Someone you don't know with a horrible disease wants a close friend or relative to help them end their lives - what the fuck has it got to do with you?'.

According to the survey 22% said 'a bit the fuck to do with me', 46% said 'a lot the fuck to do with me' and the remaining 32% said that absolutely everything was their business all the time.
...

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: "While there is always the risk of someone using it as a cover for actual homicide, in the vast majority of cases it really is none of your business, so just shut up.
...

Terminal illness sufferer Julian Cook, from Grantham, added: "If they're so sure that the number of days I choose to be alive has got something to do with them then perhaps they could give my wife the afternoon off and help me wipe my bum while telling me lots of fascinating things about Jesus."

There really isn't much more to say, except that the person who wrote this article—his name is Francis Davies and he believes that "assisted suicide is "liberty" run riot"—is an absolute, inexcusable, Grade A cunt and I hope to be in charge of the morphine button when he is dying inch by excruciatingly painful inch.

This bastard's argument is, essentially, that society benefits from your pain because you might write an inspiring novel all about your brave recovery. The man is, without doubt, a weapons-grade bell-end.

Let me make this absolutely fucking clear: the single most important liberty that you have is over your own life—and if you want to end your life then you should be able to do so.

Anyone who says different is a screamingly illiberal fucknuts and, probably, a fucking god-botherer who needs the law in order to curb the secret desire that they have to murder the mother that they still live with.

You might also call them "a cunt". As you like, really.

Apple's iPad

Apple's iPad: a thing of beauty—but is it any use?

A number of people—commenting on the blog and in email, IM and physical conversations—have asked your humble Devil for my thoughts on the Apple iPad. Having had a few hours to digest the announcement, and glide around the web to see the opinions of others (most notably this superb rundown from Daring Fireball), I am now ready to unburden myself (with the usual disclaimer^*).

First, I would like to say that it is quite obviously a thing of beauty. When Steve Jobs first held it out, between his two hands, I was unconvinced; once he sat down to use it, however, holding it in one hand, I realised that the proportions were exactly right.

Second, there are some features that are sorely lacking (although I expect them to be in the next release). The first is that there is no camera; no, not in the back, but in the front—surely being able to make video-calls via Skype or iChat is an obvious use for the iPad? I cannot understand why this would have been left out, as it would have been superb to demo too. As such, I shall have to put it down to a desire to keep something back for the next edition.

The next gripe here is the lack of multi-tasking—and I have two specific problems (which may or may not transfer to the final product). The first is with music: on the iPhone, some of Apple's applications do run in the background—I am thinking of the Mail programme and of the iPod element. As such, I can listen to music whilst doing other things, e.g. answering an email, etc. I have heard that one cannot do this on the iPad at present and it seems counterintuitive since one can perform these tasks on its smaller sibling.

Further, I have heard that one cannot have more than one Safari browser window open at a time: this, too, is a problem since one of my main activities—blogging—requires me to shuttle back and forth between windows, copying and pasting sections of text and URLs.

As I have pointed out, however, both of these features are present in the iPhone, so it may simply be that the software was not ready for the demo and that Apple intend to replace these features in the two or three months before the iPads actually go on sale. Or, of course, they may be provided in a software update shortly afterwards.

One of the other main criticisms is, of course, that the iPad ecosystem is, like the iPhone, entirely closed—even to the extent that you cannot see the file system. For many, this is, of course, a deal breaker but I am not sure that it entirely matters.

Why? Well, the iPad is clearly not intended, for most people, to be their main computer but an adjunct to it. As long as one can transfer files between the iPad and one's main machine (a Mac Pro in my case—this has relevance later) then this is not really a problem.

In fact, for many people, it might actually be a virtue—as Frasier Speirs notes in his excellent Future Shock article.

For years we've all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the 'average person'. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.
...

I'm often saddened by the infantilising effect of high technology on adults. From being in control of their world, they're thrust back to a childish, mediaeval world in which gremlins appear to torment them and disappear at will and against which magic, spells, and the local witch doctor are their only refuges.

With the iPhone OS as incarnated in the iPad, Apple proposes to do something about this, and I mean really do something about it instead of just talking about doing something about it, and the world is going mental.

Fraser makes the point that many techies are up in arms about this because "secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism" but for many normal people, a computer can be a massive hassle.

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get "real work" done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the "real work".

It's not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.

Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.

If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.

I couldn't agree more, and I think that the iPad is aimed at precisely this market.

It is also worth noting that a consensus is forming, amongst those who have actually used the iPad, that there really is no substitute for getting the machine in your hot little hands—here's Cruftbox on its power.

Well, I am lucky enough to have been at the Apple Event today. Deep within the Reality Distortion Field. I saw the demo live, not snap shots on a web site. I got to use the iPad and see how it worked in person. I talked with other people that had tried it.

And you know what, just like Steve Jobs said, you need to hold it for yourself. It’s a different computing experience. It’s intuitive and simple. The device is blazingly fast and obvious how to use. It is a third kind of computing between a smartphone and a laptop.

For those that have iPhones, you know the experience of showing someone the iPhone for the first time. The look in their face, when they first flick the screen or squeeze the image to zoom. The realization that this is something different, very different, than what they have experienced before.

I am a technology professional. For almost 20 years I’ve tested, used, broke, fixed, and played with all kinds of technology from broadcasting to air conditioning to software. I am not easily swayed in these things. But even with all my skepticism, I think the iPad is something different. A new way of computing that will become commonplace.

Oh Internets, I know you won’t believe till you hold one in your hands. You’ll bang on about features, data plans, DRM, open source, and a multitude of issues. You’ll storm the message boards, wring your hands, and promise you won’t buy one till ‘Gen 2’. The din will grow and grow as time passes.

And then one day, in a few months, you will actually hold one and use it. And you will say, “I want one. Iwant one right now.”

This lack of multi-tasking is massively offset by just how fast the damn thing is—applications launch instantly. John Gruber points out that a very significant development—not simply that the iPad is fast but that one of the reasons for this is that it's driven by an Apple-manufactured chip. This is extremely significant: Apple have never manufactured their own chips before—yes, they had financial input into the AIM chip group (before the switch to Intel) but they didn't actually design or manufacture the chips. Apple really do want to control the whole eco-system—because the company believe that this allows it to make better products (and thus more money).

Now, I know that very many people object to this—after all, they have popped up on this blog to criticise Apple's control of the far less closed Mac platform. And that's just fine—you don't have to buy an iPad (or a Mac).

But, your humble Devil simply isn't worried about such things: I am a designer, a graphic artist, a website coder, a writer, whatever—I don't want to get down and dirty with my computer. As Fraser Speirs points out (above), fucking around with my computer is not my Real Work—my computer is a tool that allows me to do my real work more efficiently. As soon as I spend even an hour fixing, hacking or otherwise configuring my tool then I am able to do an hour's less of my Real Work.

Do I really need to start mucking about in the guts of my machine? After all, as Jeff Lamarche succinctly puts it...

I'm a techie, but I don't need to be able to program on every electronic device I own. I don't hate my dishwasher because I can't get to the command line. I don't hate my DVD player because it runs a proprietary operating system. Sheesh.

And how much more exciting would websites be if the only browser that anyone used was WebKit? As it is, we will have to wait many years before we can use the amazing CSS advancements—such as CSS-driven animation—that the WebKit group have built in.

Unless, of course, you are designing websites purely for the iPhone or iPad—because they run WebKit as the rendering engine for Safari. In the same way that I currently design websites for standards-based browsers and then hack for those that aren't (yes, IE, I'm looking at you) can see myself starting to design websites for WebKit browsers, and then hacking for less-advanced browsers such as Firefox and IE. It's incredibly exciting.

Anyway, that is slightly off-topic and yet also relevant because, ironically, the iPad is also desirable to techies like me (and yes, this is where I answer the question, "will you get one, dear Devil?")—and, yes, I will get an iPad when they are available. Why?

It is because I am a power-user that I will get an iPad. Let me explain...

I have had Apple laptops but I never really used them very much. The screens were too small for me to do graphics work on them and, besides, the trackpad is not much good for that. So, I used to find myself carrying not only the laptop and its heavy power block, but also a mouse so that I could use it half-way effectively.

But still I didn't really use it—I had no real need to. With a bigger, more powerful machine at home and a reasonable one at work, I had no need to use the laptop in any meaningful way—it felt underpowered and, as such, rather frustrating (although this is partly because Adobe's software is increasingly bloatware). As such, I always felt that I was wasting its potential. And, of course, once it was nicked, I felt no need to get a new one.

In short, because I am a power-user a laptop does not have enough power for me—and yet it is too expensive and too powerful for me not to try using it for the power work.

Nevertheless, I do travel more and more these days—both for work events and for speaking engagements on behalf of the Libertarian Party—and, given the volume of it, I want to be able to get work done whilst I am travelling.

What I mainly need to get done is presentations or speech-writing: these are two activities which the iPad—equipped with the new iWork Suite—is admirably suited for. In fact, it gets even better...

One of the problems that I have is that I am constantly translating my Keynote slides into Powerpoint so that we can present them on the work's demo laptop—and, of course, a lot of things just don't translate tremendously well. Sure, there are other options, but at present I still need to spend the time to check and make corrections to my slides. But with the addition of a VGA-out dock, I can simply connect my iPad to the projector, thus avoiding all of the translation problems that I currently have—plus I can use a remote control to move my presentation along without breaking my rapport with the audience.

In addition, the iPad will do all of those other things that I want to do whilst on the move—although an iPad edition of Coda would make my day (hear that, Panic?)—and in a package that is smaller and, crucially, cheaper than one of Apple's (admittedly superb) laptops^**.

In other words, the iPad does enough for me to use it as a mobile device, whilst being cheap enough for me to justify buying one.

Plus, of course, it is a thing of beauty—and, yes, I just want one.

^* DISCLAIMER: I own an insignificant number of Apple shares, which have provided a pretty good return, i.e. 200%+ over the last few years. They have, as usual, fallen after the news of this announcement (they feel pretty heavily after the iPhone announcement too—and I picked up some more on the cheap) to a current price of $192.06. It's a good price since they were up at around $217 a few weeks ago. Not, of course, that I am giving anyone investment advice.

^** This is not to say that I think that Apple's laptops are overpriced—I don't think that they are. It is just that they are too expensive for me to justify buying another one given the very limited use that I would get out of it.

Why won't Ed Miliband shut the fuck up?

Ed Miliband: bug-eyed twat refuses to sort out obvious thyroid problem—looks to kill millions instead.

Seriously, Ed, you bug-eyed moron, when you're in a hole, the generally accepted advice is to stop digging—especially when you don't seem to understand practical philosophy.

"Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk."

Thus spake Ed Miliband, and it's bollocks. Look, Eddie-baby, the point of the precautionary principle is that actually doing something about the posited risk has little or no cost.

As I have pointed out innumerable times, that is simply not the case in this instance.

Counting Cats has pretty much filleted most of the rest of the article and, as always, is worth a read. However, there's another little point that I want to make—and it concerns these lines.

If the UK did not invest in renewable, clean energy, it would lose jobs and investment to other countries, have less energy security because of the dependence on oil and gas imports and contribute to damaging temperature rises for future generations.

It's this whole energy security thing, you see: I've seen it elsewhere. Now, where was it...? Oh yes—it was in this reply to a constituent by David Cameron.

Whatever your views are, we cannot afford not to go green. The UK economy is still dependent for more than 90 per cent of its energy needs on fossil fuels, which increasingly come from imports. With the era of cheap oil now well and truly over, our fossil fuel dependency is making us uncompetitive and vulnerable to geopolitical shocks.

We can build a secure, prosperous future, but only if we start the work of transforming our national energy infrastructure now, by increasing energy efficiency and reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Being at the cutting edge of new technologies in the energy industry is precisely the action that is needed to prevent the power cuts the Government is predicting by 2017, and it ensures that Britain’s consumers and businesses are protected against the consequences of volatile and rising oil prices into the future.

We need to make the transition to a low carbon economy urgently, and I hope you’ll agree that our plans for a Low Carbon Economy will help create hundreds of thousands of jobs, raise skills and improve Britain’s competitiveness.

This is what the politicians are really aiming for—some kind of energy security. The trouble is that over the last few decades, successive governments have dodged the concerns about energy generation in this country.

We are in a bind: our nuclear stations are reaching the end of their lives (some have already passed their recommended limits) and energy blackouts are being predicted by 2014: any new nuclear station will take about ten years to come online—and we haven't even started building any new ones yet.

Any government that lets the lights go out is dead—and, right now, it looks like the Tories are going to be left with that particular turd.

Fossil fuel stations can be brought on-stream much more quickly, but Britain is severely hampered by the European Union's zealotry as regards climate change. In short, more fossil-fuelled power stations will earn us large fines.

As such, our politics are desperately casting around for some ideas. They must know that wind turbines are useless—they require some 90% conventional power back-up—and vastly expensive, but they are "green".

My guess is that a certain amount of investment in such pointless and expensive white elephants are necessary in order to earn some Carbon Credits—cash that might offset the fact that we are going to have to build more fossil-fuel power stations.

Whatever is the case, it is not good news that both Labour and the Tories are determined to pursue exactly the same doomed policies; it is even more suspicious that they are hanging their prognostications on precisely the same "energy security" hooks.

Meanwhile, the US keeps on funding research into sensible alternatives...

Breaking News: Alex Hilton breaks the US market!

I am very happy for Recess Monkey—our very own Alex Hilton (whose PPC site is very bare: perhaps he doesn't fancy his chances?)—who has, it seems, managed to break into the US music market, albeit in the children's category.

At least, I assume that this is what has happened, since recessmonkey.com now points to the website of Recess Monkey: "the acclaimed children’s music band from Seattle, WA!"


In all seriousness, I can only imagine that some nasty person has hacked Hilton's account since I am sure that a man who "knows a thing or two about blogging" and who is also "Director of Digital Engagement and co-founder of Game Changer" would not let his domain name lapse, would he?

Unless, of course, Mr Hilton feels that putting his shameful blogging past behind him might help his future prospects as the Labour PPC for Chelsea and Fulham? No, that cannot be it, for he mentions Recess Monkey—with a link—in his biography.

Who can tell? But your humble Devil might put in a request to be notified should the ownership of labourhome.org suddenly lapse...