Gores Hockey Stick: The greatest scientific fraud since Piltdown man.

This graphic compares the RCS chronologies from the two slightly different data sets: red – the RCS chronology calculated from the CRU archive (with the 12 picked cores); black – the RCS chronology calculated using the Schweingruber Yamal sample of living trees instead of the 12 picked trees used in the CRU archive. The difference is breathtaking. Source Steve McIntire.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Piltdown man, sometimes called the man who never was. In 1912 a series of skull fragments and a jawbone were unearthed at Piltdown, a village in England. While the discovery was always regarded as controversial, it was not exposed as a fraud until 1943, consisting of the skull of a modern human and the jawbone of an ape. During those 40 years this hoax seriously impacted on the study of human evolution.

We can all remember the infamous hockey stick graph, made known to all of us in Al Gores “An inconvenient truth,” the one where the predicted temperature was to imminently go through the roof. Though widely discredited over the ensuing years it has continued to be used as a scare tactic in the quest for government action on global warming, the appeal for its promoters being profits in Gores case, and power over all over our activities and massive taxation in the case of governments. We would never consent to this other than in an emergency, so one has been manufactured for us.

I have maintained for some time now that GW is a scam having read numerous articles disputing the findings of the IPCC who maintain in an unscientific manner that the debate is closed. Now it appears that the basic information going into the hockey stick is shaky at best, and is most likely fraudulent.

In the following I have used Bishop Hill for the easy reading, the full article is recommended. For more information and ready reference to Steve McIntyre's posts go to “Watts Up With That?” “Quote of the week #20 – ding dong the stick is dead”

From “Bishop Hill”: l

The story of Michael Mann's Hockey Stick reconstruction, its statistical bias and the influence of the bristlecone pines is well known. McIntyre's research into the other reconstructions has received less publicity, however. The story of the Yamal chronology may change that.

… Back at the start of McIntyre's research into the area of paleoclimate, one of the most significant of these was called Polar Urals, a chronology first published by Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. At the time, it was used in pretty much every temperature reconstruction around. In his paper, Briffa made the startling claim that the coldest year of the millennium was AD 1032, a statement that, if true, would have completely overturned the idea of the Medieval Warm Period. It is not hard to see why paleoclimatologists found the series so alluring.

……. In typical climate science fashion, just scratching at the surface of the Briffa archive raised as many questions as it answered. Why did Briffa only have half the number of cores covering the Medieval Warm Period that the Russian had reported? And why were there so few cores in Briffa's twentieth century? By 1988 there were only 12 cores used, an amazingly small number in what should have been the part of the record when it was easiest to obtain data. By 1990 the count was only ten, dropping still further to just five in 1995.

The reasoning behind Briffa's subsample selection may have been a mystery, but with the other information McIntyre had gleaned, it was still possible to perform some tests on its validity. This could be done by performing a simple sensitivity test, replacing the twelve cores that Briffa had used for the modern sections of Yamal with some of the other available data. Sure enough, there was a suitable Schweingruber series called Khadyta River close by to Yamal, and with 34 cores, it represented a much more reliable basis for reconstructing temperatures.



McIntyre therefore prepared a revised dataset, replacing Briffa's selected 12 cores with the 34 from Khadyta River. The revised chronology was simply staggering. The sharp uptick in the series at the end of the twentieth century had vanished, leaving a twentieth century apparently without a significant trend. The blade of the Yamal hockey stick, used in so many of those temperature reconstructions that the IPCC said validated Michael Mann's work, was gone.

HuffPo silences stimulus critics, more stimulating needed.

Good old Huffington Post can always be relied on to spring to the defense of the left. The leftie has to contend frequently with that nagging doubt in his ability to keep the faith, especially in the face of needing to defend trying again ideas, which have failed repeatedly in the past.

To question items of faith is of course heresy leading to dangerous thoughts of individuality supplanting collectivism, capitalistic tendencies, and that long slippery slope to the final indignity, being reported as a thought criminal to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Take for example the bailout, well two of them actually. They were promoted as saving jobs and all that is good and American. Such was the confidence in them that the administration posted the following graph, showing the effects of this expenditure vs. not doing it. Unfortunately some counterrevolutionary revisionist has vandalized the only copy I have, by marking it with the real figures:

Graph: Innocent Bystanders.

I can understand just why there would be some downcast looks from those who still support the New Deal or the Great Society. HuffPo has come to the rescue however, with an article telling us just where the real solution lies; doing it all over again and again until we get it right.

… Unemployment of this magnitude and duration also translates into ugly politics, because fear and anxiety are fertile grounds for demagogues, weilding the politics of resentment against immigrants, blacks, the poor, government leaders, business leaders, Jews, and other easy targets. It's already started. Next year is a mid-term election. Be prepared for worse.

So why is unemployment and underemployment so high, and why is it likely to remain high for some time? Because, as noted, people who are worried about their jobs or have no jobs, and who are also trying to get out from under a pile of debt, are not going do a lot of shopping. And businesses that don't have customers aren't going do a lot of new investing. And foreign nations also suffering high unemployment aren't going to buy a lot of our goods and services.

And without customers, companies won't hire. They'll cut payrolls instead.

Which brings us to the obvious question: Who's going to buy the stuff we make or the services we provide, and therefore bring jobs back? There's only one buyer left: The government.

Let me say this as clearly and forcefully as I can: The federal government should be spending even more than it already is on roads and bridges and schools and parks and everything else we need. It should make up for cutbacks at the state level, and then some. This is the only way to put Americans back to work. We did it during the Depression. It was called the WPA.

Well, there you have it. The real issue for massive government spending is that without it politics will get ugly for the Democrats. For a long time we have been told that the real reason for the downturn was that we have been spending beyond our means. Now that the consequences are upon us, the solution is not to cut all that irresponsible private spending, but to replace it with government spending.

Years ago here in Australia Julien Disney from ACOSS (Australian Council on Social Security) was deservedly ridiculed for proposing that the way out of the recession we had at the time was to give more money to SS recipients so they could spend the country into prosperity. Something akin to a welfare led recovery if you like.

The big problem with this idea is that you spend a trillion here, you spend a trillion there, pretty soon you are starting to talk about big money.

“Warming Myth Exposed”.

By,Viv Forbes.

A mere 20,000 years ago, massive ice sheets covered much of the earth. The sparse population led a cold hungry existence.

Then just 12,000 years ago, there was dramatic natural global warming - ice sheets melted, sea levels rose and the warming seas expelled carbon dioxide. The warmth and extra carbon dioxide plant food in the atmosphere encouraged the spread of grasslands, forests, animals and humans over lands once covered by thick, barren sheets of ice.

None of these beneficial climate changes were caused by emissions from the camp fires of the Cave Men.

Since then earth has experienced a see-saw of minor natural heating and cooling.

The most recent warming phase started at the depth of the Little Ice Age about 300 years ago, before James Watt invented the steam engine. There were no emissions from cars, trucks, trains, planes or cement plants, but still the planet warmed up.

Climate fluctuations continue in modern times, but not in step with industrial man’s carbon dioxide emissions.

When industry declined in the Great Depression of the 1930s, CO2 emissions fell but temperatures rose to a peak.

Then during the immediate post war boom in industry, emissions soared but temperatures fell and there were fears of a new ice age.

Now, since the start of the new century, with emissions from China and India booming, world temperatures are again falling.

The message is there for those prepared to read – there is not a scrap of evidence that man-made carbon dioxide causes global warming (or pollution).

For the IPCC to continue promoting the man-made global warming scare in the face of clear contrary evidence is devious or incompetent.

The man-made warming myth is exposed. Both the IPCC and the CSIRO should be challenged to justify their reckless and baseless climate scare-mongering.

For more detail and supporting evidence of the above statements go here.

Viv Forbes is Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition which opposes waste of resources, opposes pollution, and promotes the rational and sustainable use of carbon energy and carbon food.

Big Government:taking care of your individual needs, one size fits all.

H/T Libertarian Republican.

This is a great spoof of an ad done for MoveOn.org (what ever happened to them).



I have in the past posted some great parodies of the gun control issue, this one is for healthcare.

Northern Territory: Sex and the Silly Season.

Image: Northern Territory News.

I have always had a soft spot for the NT although I have not been back there for quite a while. I generally stayed away from Darwin itself, working mainly out around the McArthur River, and Tennant Ck, and Pine Ck.

One of the great things about the place is the people, who tend to rather irreverent and fairly independently minded, something I hope has not changed. The most amusing aspect at the time was that Porky Everingham was Chief minister of a government which having delusions of relevance, was determined to improve the image of the people, railing about everything from how much they drank to their way of dressing. The people on the other hand, were quite happy to be as they were and were totally cynical on this issue and seemed to enjoy taking the piss out of them.

About now is the start of the silly season up there, and reading the paper it seems that it is very pheromone based this year:

AN arrested couple have been sprung shagging in the back of a police paddy wagon while being driven to a Territory cop station.

Hannah Walker was driving behind the police car and said she was shocked to find the couple bonking in the back when she pulled up behind them at a red light. …

"I saw the two people kissing and thought 'geez, in the back of a paddy wagon - they're keen'," she said.
Ms Walker, 18, said by the time she reached the next set of lights and got stuck behind the police car again the couple were having sex.

"It was a red light (I am not sure if this is significant) and I had to sit behind the paddy wagon for a few minutes," she said. "I couldn't believe it when I saw them just going for it.

Miss Walker seems to have followed the vehicle until it turned off at the watch house.

And another:

A MAN and a woman were charged after police interrupted their 25-minute drunken sex romp in an allegedly stolen four-wheel-drive at a Territory service station.

Their frisky bowser bonk - captured on security camera - and charges for motor vehicle theft and drink-driving could cost the duo time behind bars.

I would have thought that a bit of discretion would be the order of the day when driving pissed in a stolen car.

But it gets better:

A MAN was caught having sex while driving because he and his girlfriend could not wait until they reached their destination, a court has heard.

Bradley Dean Milne, 33, was charged with not wearing his seatbelt, driving without due care and drink-driving when a witness called police after seeing his car swerving all over the road. Darwin Magistrates Court heard that the couple were planning to drive to East Arm Wharf in the Mazda ute to have sex. ….

They turned right onto Berrimah Rd, and the woman straddled Milne while he kept driving, swerving into the kerbside and back into the middle lane.

When police stopped the car and Milne was asked why he had been drinking - with a blood alcohol concentration of .097 per cent - he said: "Come on, mate. What would you do? We were going to the wharf but we didn't quite get there."

Milne's lawyer Ian Rowbottam told the Northern Territory News last night that Milne was too embarrassed to speak about the incident again.

The odd thing about this one is that he would have been in more trouble if he had been talking to her on his mobile instead while driving, that’s a chargable offense over here. Luckily he was only having it away with her.

Then:

A TERRITORY man filmed himself speeding at 150km/h while masturbating at the wheel of his drug-laden car, a court heard.

His Holden SV6 was allegedly laden with 5kg of drugs, including two cannabis plants resting on the back seat, the court was told.

There is no information as to whether it is available on Youtube yet.

And finally:

A MAN who described himself as a "Jack of all trades'' has been fined for exposing himself and masturbating in front of a woman on a Darwin-bound flight.

Lucas Steven Knudson argued he was "just adjusting himself" because his jeans were too tight.

A hard on will do that.

National Solutions for National Situations.

A couple of interesting reports came my way over the last day or so, indicating some similar sentiment on both sides of the Pacific. In the first, Rasmussen reports that:

At last week’s G20 summit, the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations pushed ahead with plans for greater international coordination of their national economic policies. But 60% of Americans think international organizations should have less influence on U.S. economic policy, not more.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 15% believe international organizations should have more influence on U.S. economic policies, while another 15% say international oversight should remain about the same as it is now.

The second comes from the Institute of Public Affairs newsletter pointing to Kevin Rudds rather idiotic statement that we should welcome the G20 as the 'global economic policy coordinating body' because Australia is a member. It is accompanied by the graph above by Alex Robson, ANU Economist, showing the difference between the unemployment figures of Australia and the G20 average.

It asks, “What exactly are the policies we should coordinate with those other 19 countries?” Australias voice will be a small one among many, and unfortunately we are more likely to end up just like them unless we insist on conducting our own economic policies in our own way. The reason why we are in better shape than the rest of the G20 is that we had a better more competitive economy to begin with.

Nations need to solve their own problems at home in their own way, not adopt a one size fits all solution based on other countries average economic situations.

Mea culpa; National Party discover cause of financial crisis.

National Party Senator, Barnaby Joyce has a home page on “Agmates,” a social networking site, and has a thread going railing against the dominance in Australia of Coles and Woolworth’s in the supermarket business.

Not being a great fan of regulation I got involved, resulting in the following comment from one of the members of the forum:

“Jim, your views are as near as I can tell at the extreme end of the spectrum and you certainly have been caught up in the free market view of the world. Sadly we have followed your path for much too long and the world is now reconsidering its axioms as a result of excessive freedoms given to huge banks based on your very ideas.”

Barnaby tends to have a fair sort of fan club going for him, probably because he bucks the system and the party line on occasions. Because of these stands he tends to appeal to those who are disillusioned with the current Tweedeldums and Tweedeldumses style of government and opposition. With the major political parties we have in Australia, elections are a case of “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Regrettably I have serious doubts that he will make much of a difference in the long run as while he is more independently minded than most members of his party, his philosophy is rooted in the big government, nanny state camp.