Barrel Strength

I like old James Lovelock, all 90 years of him. The founder of Gaia theory has been waging a lonely battle to win acceptance for what to most of us seems obvious, when you allow yourself to think about it. The Gaia theory says that the planet is a living system. Life on earth – the community of living organisms – does its best to maintain an equilibrium.

Take the atmosphere as an example. Gaia theory argues that life maintains oxygen in a dynamic process at 21% by volume of the atmosphere . Add even 1% more oxygen and fires might start too easily. Or consider methane, which is maintained at 1.5 parts per million over the last  million of years. Yet methane oxidizes so that 67% of it disappears every ten years. For methane to be kept so exactly constant, as ice core samples show, argues for processes which work towards an exquisite equilibrium. Life is doing something to maintain conditions suitable for life: that is the nub of Gaia theory.

Locvelock has many opponents.

• To the geologists the Gaia hypothesis is superfluous. The processes of geochemistry are sufficient to explain the equlibria.
• To the computer modelling crowd, the ones one foist anthropogenic global warming on us, Lovelock does not use computers and relies on actual physical measurements. This is way too empirical for their tastes.
• Gaia theory is all too purposeful for Dawkins and the othodox Darwinists, in that the randomness of the mutations is somehow threatened if the mutations work towards overall purposes, such as planetary stability.

So why do I like Lovelock? I like him for the same reason I like George Orwell. They both share a belief the prevailing error of their ages. In Orwell’s case, it was a belief that the market was finished and that a planned society was both better and historically inevitable. In Lovelock’s case it is eco-doomism of a certain plausible kind.  Their errors have had a paradoxical result. By allowing them to share the prevailing errors of their respective political epochs, each has been granted access into the intellectual  and social milieux of a variety of phonies, poseurs, and fanatics. If they had not shared those assumptions, at least in part, they would have stood aside from the main currents of their ages, such as Friedrich Hayek or Bjorn Lomborg, and have found themselves arguing from the outside inward. But by sharing just enough of the prevailing assumptions of their times, they have been allowed entry into worlds where you and I would be barred.

Thus it was Orwell the man of the left who skewered the idea of socialist revolution in Animal Farm, and who depicted the inner feeling of totalitarianism  in 1984. If he had not shared enough of the assumptions of the Left to get close to them, indeed to go fight the fascists in Spain, he would never have seen the Soviets executing the anarchist POUM militia in the Spanish civil war. He would never have shared enough of the socialist ideal to take seriously the betrayal of that ideal by Stalin and his regime. To a capitalist free trade liberal (hence conservative)  such as myself, the fact that socialists are envious little swine , and that communists are trying with all their might to become  social insects and to force you to join this experiment, so that you no longer think but just obey scent glands or something, is merely an observed fact.

So it was in that spirit that I at first perused and then devoured Lovelock’s  “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”. The more I read the more I wanted to have the fellow over for a drink.

• he has no use for “greens”; he thinks they vastly underestimate the problem of global warming;
• he has no use for the computer modellers; they fail to make observations of fact and can predict nothing;
• he thinks capitalism will adapt to green ideology by promoting vastly wasteful and stupid windmills and other green energy systems;
• He praises Nigel Lawson, the former British finance minister,  and his other geochemist scientific critics;
• He thinks it is folly for Britain not to rely extensively on the safe  energy of nuclear reactors;
• Most reasearch into the chemical dangers of this or that are spurious; our instruments are so sensitive that they can measure concentrations millions of times lower than that which can cause damage;
• The IPCC has failed to account even for the current climate, let alone the future one;
• the basis of his belief that global warming is happening is that sea levels are rising. All the atmospheric science is basically piffle, in his view.

“The sea level rises for two reasons only: from ice on land that melts and from the expansion of the ocean as it warms”. He has a chart at page 27 showing that the sea level has risen 8 centimeters from 1970 to 2007.

There are many rasons why a skpetic of man-caused global warming would want to read Lovelock. He is fair. He is honest. He has been proven right about many things. He thinks broadly, writes well, and though he may be wrong, he is possibly quite right. As regards the Gaia hypothesis, I suspect it will thrive long after Dawkin’s selfish gene metaphor has been consigned to the pile of reductionist twaddle. Regardless, Lovelock reveals himself the kind of person you would want over for a bottle of wine and maybe  to share a steak. The conversation would be frank, fascinating, and erudite, and he would be open to contrary thinking.

It has not taken long for the editorialists to put their fingers on the button: are the Tories suppressing the long form census for purely ideological reasons? And I ask: what ideology? Or is this just know-nothingism?

The reason why this issue has resonated is that it goes to the issue which all sensible people must ask about any government. Do these people actually care to make fact-based policy? Or worse, are the Conservatives “ideological” in the same way that the NDP are ideological?  My feelings trump your facts: the kind of rubbish we conservatives hear so often on global warming, or any other leftward hot-button issue. Or as the Citizen editorial bewails  today, “the increasingly anti-intellectual and anti-science orientation of the government.”

The data derived from the long form census is the basis of most government policy at municipal, provincial and federal levels, as well as private and public sector investment decisions.

The arguments of the know-nothings tend to be that a) privacy is invaded and b) that, by inference, by depriving governments of data they will somehow make better (more conservative) decisions.

The privacy invasion argument is rubbish, for two reasons. First, because Stats Can shares no personal information whatever with other departments, and has never been faulted for improper revelation of personal matters. As the former head statistician  Ivan Fellegi said on the radio, StatsCan is “obsessed” with the security of its data. The agency  is bound by law not to reveal it. Second, because compared to the data that all financial institutions are required to submit to the Department of Finance in relation to any “suspicious” transactions, the data collected in the long-form, such knowing how long it takes you to commute or how many bathrooms the average person has, is utterly without adverse effect on the citizen. The Privacy Commissioner reported three complaints in relation to the long-form census in the past decade. So if all the know-nothings were really concerned about privacy, they have exercised highly selective indignation.

No one has been bold enough actually to state that governments would somehow make better (that is, more conservative) decisions if it were deprived of accurate data. Yet that is the inference one must draw from the arguments the true believers are making. I am unable to elaborate this argument more fully; it cannot be done.  Not knowing what effects your policies are having  will not make those policies go away or cause them to be cheaper to deliver. Not knowing where and to whom services are to be denied or delivered will not increase efficiency.

Take a case dear to conservative hearts: reducing inappropriate immigration. Immigrants are continually doing less well with the passage of time. Their rates of assimilation  and finding jobs have worsened  overall as we change the composition of the immigrant populations away from Europeans. It is evident that, as we increase  immigration from non-European countries, the cultural transitions are harder for many immigrants to make. Mix in Islam and you can foresee massive social problems building up for the future. Does it profit us not to know exactly how badly or well new waves of Third World immigration are doing? I thought so.

The sad truth of the matter is that the know-nothings are as wrong about this issue as the global warming fanatics are about their pet obsession. They share the same tendency to believe something a priori (we are doing something terrible to the planet; all government is excessive) and to marshall the facts to suit the false premise.

They are missing the point that science – real knowledge- is the basis of material and intellectual progress. Knowledge, grounded in accuracy, assisted by diligence, and aided by perseverance, will finally overcome all obstacles, raise ignorance from despair, and produce happiness in the paths of science.

In turning away from science-based policy, the Conservative government is betraying reason, and demonstrating to a skeptical middle ground of Canadians that they should not be trusted with a majority. So to answer my colleague Duggan’s Dew, the statistics issue is vital to the march towards a Conservative majority. And they – we – are providing a stumbling block to that outcome.

Stephen Harper: this is your issue. Do something intelligent.

The White House  tosses NASA administrator Charles Bolden under the bus and flees from his presidentially-assigned  “outreach to Muslim nations” mission so fast, they’re red-shifting:

American diplomats concerned they’re being replaced by NASA employees, breathe easy: The Space agency and its administrator, Charles Bolden, are not responsible for reaching out to the Muslim world after all.

[...]

… White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday, “That was not his task, and that’s not the task of NASA.”

Having taken only one week to achieve, this reversal may be the fastest Obama initiative yet.

President Obama orders NASA to help make Muslims happier about their decline in the sciences:

In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.”  Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is “perhaps foremost,” because it will help Islamic nations “feel good” about their scientific accomplishments.

[...]

“NASA is not only a space exploration agency,” Bolden concluded, “but also an earth improvement agency.”

And so America itself declines from space pioneer to global psychotherapist.

I ask you, who will rid us of this meddlesome priest-king?!

UPDATE

Behold the contrast, a real American President who speaks to the genuine hopes and pride of his nation:

And Dr. Charles Krauthammer hits smartly for six in his rebuke:

Daniel Suarez’ “Daemon” marks a cunning sci-fi police procedural which turns into, simultaneously, a thrilling page-turner and a profound critique of capitalist society in its current computer-dependent state. What if I could get across an important techno-political treatise in the guise of a thriller? What if I could get across a chapter in Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles, or Machiavelli’s The Prince, both of which are brilliant essays on of western warfare and political evolution, as a high-tech police procedural? What if Hobbes wrote Leviathan not as learned discourse on the nature of the state in Renaissance Europe, but as a high-tech science fiction thriller?

Several important writers have tried to tell us that the modern state is finished. But what do we mean by the word “state”? Bobbitt told us that the nation-state was passing into the market-state, which is where we are now. Basically this transition from nation-state to market-state signifies the withdrawal of the state from attempting to equalize outcomes, to one which tries to maximize your opportunities. Bobitt writes brilliantly. I recommend him. Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age also dealt with the nature of the world where nanotechnology has destroyed the basis of the nation-state, and I recommend him, too.

But Suarez is at an entirely more effective level of discourse because you are going to find him in the front of the airport book store before you get on your plane. You are going to be absorbed by the detective story that constitutes the beginning of the novel, and you are going to be increasingly impressed by how good it gets: how much more complex the implications, and how very cleverly he conveys his ideas about the obsolescence of our current governmental-economic structures. Why are they obsolescent? Because the uniformity of the machine-level at which all data is stored, configured, and manipulated has left us essentially as vulnerable as a wheat monoculture to rust, or a potato monoculture to blight.

The blight in question is the “daemon”. The genius inventor of multi-player immersive computer games, Mathew Sobol, has died, and his death causes a number of events to spring forth.  Essentially the daemon, a sophisticated program, takes over the IT departments of many large corporations as a parasite, and threatens the total evaporation of their records unless they comply with Mathew Sobol’s requirements. Sobol speaks through videos recorded before his death. He (in the form of computer-generated videos) asserts that he is the first man fully to realize the implications of computer insecurity and to exploit them in a comprehensive way. His daemon has become a parasite upon computer-dependent civilization, just as it was designed to be.

Don’t be put off by my praise: this is a fascinating book. Daniel Suarez has written something worth your attention.

British Information Commissioner forces the hand-over of tree-ring data to “arch-skeptic”, and part time climate analyst, Doug Keenan. Professor Mike Baillie claims the decision is a “staggering injustice”.

The article concludes:

Keenan, who admits he has no expertise in tree-ring analysis, says that whatever the data may or may not reveal, the university has no right to keep the data secret. The deputy information commissioner agrees.

The finding, combined with Smith’s earlier strictures against the University of East Anglia, could have widespread repercussions for academic research. Baillie calls the ruling “a direct, and unpleasant, off-shoot of the information revolution. It now appears that research data can be demanded, and indeed obtained, by anyone.”

Keenan, meanwhile, has upped the ante. Following the ruling, he this week asked the university to supply emails between Baillie and the head of the university’s centre for climate, environment and chronology, Paula Reimer over the past three years. He told the Guardian they could reveal a conspiracy to prevent him getting Baillie’s data. “The university has obviously not understood how things changed in the wake of climategate,” he said. “They still think they can act with impunity.”

It appears that a prominent Tory politician, Maxime Bernier,  has made the mistake of telling truth in a public place:  caution should be exercised in relation to the global warming scare because the science is faulty. Whenever a politician tells the plain truth in public, and that truth has become subject to a politically correct untruth, which in this environment always trumps it, the act is called a “gaffe”. Hence the discomfiture with M. Bernier. Everyone knows he is right except the Liberals and the Canadian media.

A Liberal activist treats this as the wonderful wedge issue that will separate Tories from the Canadian mainstream. Robert Silver is an energy consultant seeking to develop clean energy for Ontario.

“As a Liberal I obviously think this is a wonderful idea. I have a funny feeling Stephen Harper will think otherwise. He may have a real internal problem on his hands and I would expect this wedge to be exploited mercilessly in the months to come.”

I think this is one of those situations where, once again, it is the Tories who are reading it better than the Liberals. With whom will this issue resonate?

A more substantial and worthwhile discussion ensues at Watt’s Up With That. A debate is taking place between Judith Curry and Willis Eschenbach on the question of trust in science, which is really what is at stake here. Eschenbach insists the issue is not one of communication: the issue is, as he reports tongue in cheek, 73.1% of peer reviewed papers are junk science. Communicating junk better is not the solution.

First, Geoffrey Sachs. Then me, in five carefully worded megatons.

Geoffrey Sachs in the Guardian:

We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.

Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to “read” the Earth’s history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth’s systems) in order to advance our understanding.

And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth’s climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet.

 On the motives of those who oppose the global warming agenda:

“the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.”.

Finally, it is our duty to obey:

“The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.”

So let us review his argument:

• Those who oppose us are against the scientific method itself, it is not a mere disagreement about some facts.
• Our side is filled with wonderfully intelligent minds.
• Their side is corrupt and evil.
• Obey or be damned.

And now I am going to  give some of it back.

[After the passage of a few days since first reading the Sachs article, I realize what drove me and Antony Watts up the wall about it. It was not intended to rationally persuade anyone who differs in the least from its views. It was the equivalent of an officer slapping a dazed private, saying "get back in line, soldier. Nothing has happened". The entire eastern front has collapsed. The shattered wreck of armies is drifting past the position, and the officer is merely trying to cow the soldier back into line. It was an assertion of authority over weak minds, and the insult lies in the author's belief that we are weak minded. But he was not talking to us. He was talking to the wavering fanatics.]

First, this line of attack is entirely typical of all global warming alarmists whom I have encountered personally and in print, without exception. I have not met any global warmist who has failed to use his adherence to the dcctrine as a signal of his moral superiority, rather than as a position in a rational discussion. The most disturbing thing about warmists is their religious enthusiasm and intolerance.

Second,  I have observed this form of argument many times before.  I have argued with Jews, of whom Geoffrey Sachs is one, for over forty years on all matters political, theological, factual or legal. Many Jews, if not most, exhibit a strong tendency to overstate the argument in the terms used by Sachs. We shall discuss what those features are below.

Third, the global warming movement shows many of the features associated with ideological movements of the twentieth century: Feudianism, Boasian sociology, and subsequent intellectual movements making  left-wing critiques of society (the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer, Marcuse et al). These were mostly Jewish in origin, composition, and working styles. These groups exhibited or exhibit:

• high degrees of authoritarianism: intellectual subordination of the group to a charismatic leader or his ideas;
• sharp in-group out-group distinctions, between the elect/the saved/the initated and the rest, who are divided into the possibly useful and the damned (those who knowingly disagree).
• a conspiratorial style: worldly success in ensuring members of the in-group are placed in the right spots to manage the propagation of the group’s ideas and the upward mobility of its members;
• Condescension towards and failure to respect the ideas of others. Indeed, failure to agree is a sign of psychopathoogy.

To summarize:

1. The pattern of thought and behaviour of the global warming alarmists exhibits many resemblances to the intellectual fads of the 20th century.
2. The style of argument of Geoffrey Sachs is particularly Jewish.
3. People should not be cowed by Sachs’  style of discourse, particularly they should not be afraid of being called anti-semitic for saying that this style of argument is obnoxious, authoritarian, and anti-liberal.

Freud, Boas , Marcuse and their doctrines  have turned into the equivalent of a pet rocks.  Global warming via CO2 emissions is rapidly joining these intellectual poseurs on the rubbish dump of failed ideas.

The style of argument, the conspiratorial methods, the inability to withstand criticism from members of an out-group: all this will persist. It will simply find a new authoritarian ideology to latch onto.

So Geoffrey Sachs can go fuck himself.

Settled science indeed. Phil Jones qualifies, recants, and suddenly has reason to mention the medieval warm period.

Oh, and he may simply have lost the papers containing the data underlying claims of anthropogenic global warming. Messy professor’s office, you know. Remember, trillions of income transfer were riding on this.

To quote Glendronach, “the global warmists are retreating so fast they are red-shifting.”

The AGW conferences seem to more about preening than science, but it is still important to get at least the basic facts right.  One hears frequently about how US is the largest emitter of green house gases on a per capita basis, but is that really the case?  The following two graphs provide data on methane and carbon dioxide emissions.

Like everything about the AGW “settled science”, it seems facts differ from perception.

Changed conceptions are as real as changing the direction of your search beam. They have the same effect, of illuminating what was previously not seen.

Take, as an example, the increasing flood of findings which have shown shown that the AGW scare was false. Moreover, I suspect that journalists, finally awakend from their doctrinal slumbers, will show how it was a concocted, long term, well-funded international campaign of  thought-control, with specific intentions to empower new ruling classes to govern the capitalist economies on the basis, for want of a better word, of a Gaian religion.

All from a change in perspective.

Today’s sermon arises from the sudden flood of damaging information on the fundamentals of AGW – man-caused global warming. The whole thing is going up in smoke before our eyes, for those who have eyes to see. Go to Climate Depot for the evidence of what I mean.
The story is as big as the fall of the Berlin Wall. It prefigures the complete collapse of the scam behind it.

This is not an inquiry into how it happened, nor is it intended to lay any more blame than I have already. The sudden revelations of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit emails showed to anyone who could read that the data was faked, the science was as cooked as your grade 12 science lab results, and worse, that a crew of enthusiasts has decided to blacklist those who did not breathe the same fumes. All true. But not what I am getting at.

It was Einstein who said “theory determines what is observed.” He meant that, until you can conceive of light being bent in a gravity field, you will not search for it. You will not assemble the instruments, go fo the funding, make a fool of yourself, if necessary, to disprove or prove a proposition that has not yet been framed.

As soon as the theory is properly framed, it can be tested.

The theory now being tested is that AGW is a scam, and suddenly vast amounts of false science are being exposed.

 The ordinary skepticism which journalists apply to statements of politicians regarding their noble motives is being applied to internationally important dignitaries preaching AGW. The miracle is that it took 15 years for them to begin asking skeptical questions.

But I am not asking you to notice the effect of the change of focus; I am asking you to notice the change of focus itself. I can think of no better demonstration of the power of our minds to change “facts”. The change starts in the mind and goes outward into the world.

So if you tell me that there is nothing in the universe but matter and its vibrations, I ask you to think, how do these vibrations of matter cause such huge change of perspective? Would not an upward evaluation of matter be appropriate if it were seen capable of such magical transformations? And if there is a second distinct substance in the universe, of which mind is the foremost example, would you be able to find a better demonstration of the power of mind to shape events, than the difference in the AGW juggernaut between last September, when it could not be stopped, and now, when it is broken and burning?

Moral: If you do not like your life, change your theory.

Fanaticism is shouted out by Cabinet ministers and policy choices continue to be made for purely political reasons, despite the collapsing “science”  of man-caused global warming. The zombie stumbles on.

 
Britain’s Climate Change Minister, Ed Miliband, declares war on climate change skeptics.

“Mistakes and attempts to hide contradictory data had to be seen in the light of the thousands of pages of evidence in the IPCC’s four-volume report in 2007, said Miliband. The most recent accusation about the panel’s work is that its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, may have known before the Copenhagen summit that its assessment report had seriously exaggerated the rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

“However, Miliband was adamant that the IPCC was on the right track. “It’s worth saying that no doubt when the next report comes out it will suggest there have been areas where things have been happening more dramatically than the 2007 report implied,” he said.”

“The danger of climate scepticism was that it would undermine public support for unpopular decisions needed to curb carbon emissions, including the likelihood of higher energy bills for households, and issues such as the visual impact of wind turbines, said Miliband, who is also energy secretary.

Yep, I guess it would.

Worse, in a way, is Canada’s Jim Prentice saying Canada will reduce its CO2 emissions by 17%.

 ”Canada has formally notified the United Nations that it has embraced the Copenhagen Accord and will cut its carbon emissions by 17 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice says it was the federal government’s plan all along to align its position with that of the United States.

Prentice has said that the first step towards a binding international treaty on climate change is for countries to outline their own emission-reduction targets before the UN’s official deadline of Jan. 31.

He says that although reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent will be challenging, he believes it is attainable.”

 In the case of Prentice, does he believe a word he is saying? Or is he just talking for the microphones?

Forget prorogation, which is a temporary blip in the microcosm of Canadian politics.   Remember Copenhagen. Do you? Do you know how big a victory we won?

The scale and speed of the collapse of the AGW scare ought to inspire us with trust that truth will prevail. It is doing so before our eyes.
 

The rats are leaving the ship. Andrew Weaver, one of Canada’s leading scientific bedwetters on the subject, has declared the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri,  tainted

“Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria, says the leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has allowed it to advocate for action on global warming, rather than serve simply as a neutral science advisory body.

 ”There’s been some dangerous crossing of that line,” said Weaver on Tuesday, echoing the published sentiments of other top climate scientists in the U.S. and Europe this week.

 ”Some might argue we need a change in some of the upper leadership of the IPCC, who are perceived as becoming advocates,” he told Canwest News Service. “I think that is a very legitimate question.”

To those more familiar with the story, Andrew Weaver has been foremost among those who have crossed the line into advocacy. But let that rest.

• Himalayan glacier melting has been shown to be speculation based ona telephone call to a glaciologist working for one of Pachauri’s organizations.
• Missing weather stations have been shown to have been selectively removed, not maintained or not reported (for whatever reasons) from places that are more remote, or at higher elevations, than the weather stations kept open. The result is selective favouring of those weather stations exposed to more urban heat, and a great reduction in sample size, and hence the reliability, of temperature records.
• The IPCC itself is under severe, and heeded, criticism for its methods and behaviour.

“Mr. D’Aleo and Mr. Smith say NOAA and another U.S. agency, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have not only reduced the total number of Canadian weather stations in the database, but have “cherry picked” the ones that remain by choosing sites in relatively warmer places, including more southerly locations, or sites closer to airports, cities or the sea — which has a warming effect on winter weather.”

 Some stories play out over decades. Global warming is one of them. Considering the amount of government funding which sustains it, it has proven remarkably fragile in the face of the email leaks of climategate. Considering also the massive buy-in of the MSM and ordinary people to its simple tale of global sin  through CO2 emissions and global redemption through carbon offsets, it is amazing how quickly intelligent people do not discuss it anymore.

If you are still skeptical as to whether sanity has prevailed, then read this: and this: The bedwetters are declaring it a disatrous year for global warming “science”.

Remember: whether the earth is warming or cooling is a matter of science; what we might need to do about that is a matter of policy, if we can affect the outcome at all. There is plentiful evidence that we are not causing, and cannot cause, much of an impact through CO2 emissions. There is absolute proof that we can cause environmental catastrophes without blinking an eye: deforestation, overfishing, overgrazing, and so forth. So while truth has prevailed against lies, hubris and folly, on this major issue, the latter three have plenty more force in them yet, and always will.

This might be a cheaper way to get high for the NASA astronauts.

A bag of cocaine has been found in a Space Shuttle hangar – sparking a Nasa investigation.

US space chiefs fear an employee was seeking a different kind of out-of-this-world experience in the restricted area at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

No details yet if the Commander-in-Chief lost his stash.

The New York Times is losing its climate science (should I call that phlogiston?) reporter. Andy Revkin has been a major corrupting influence on climate news. The climategate files reveal him to have been a willing collaborator with Jones, Trenberth, Briffa, Mann, Gavin Schmidt, et al.

I do hope readers will investigate phlogiston, while they are reading this. Our current understanding is that burning is the process of rapid oxidation, based on the work of Carl Scheele, Joseph Priestly and Antoine Lavoisier in the 1770s.  Prior to that time, it was supposed that “phlogiston” was the substance that was released when things burned. Accordingly, what remained after burning was supposed to be lighter than the substance before burning. However, exceptions were found to this rule. The ash (the oxides) of some substances were heavier , which meant that the phlogiston theory was wrong.

I see many parallels between phlogiston theory and man-caused global warming. Both were broadly believed, seemed plausible, and had scientific defenders.

Both turned out to be erroneous inferences from observed facts: things burn, atmospheric CO2 is rising. The facts are facts but the theories to explain them were rubbish.

The basic idea is that the rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration is supposed to  drive climate change. Nothing else does, according to the alarmist theory: not solar radiation, not cosmic rays, not cloud formation, not water vapor in the atmosphere, not ocean currents or undersea vulcanism, not plate tectonics, not the position of the solar system wheeling through dust clouds in the galaxy – not anything at all except human made CO2.

(Does imputing a single and exclusive cause to global warming not seem odd to you?)

If atmospheric CO2 continues to rise, but the temperature does not, then CO2 does not drive the climate. Years of “science”, billions of dollars spent in scaring everyone, and bubble reputations go up in smoke.

If CO2 does not drive the climate, then the man-caused global warming a mistake and, at some level, a fraud.

Remember also, we skeptics do not have to explain anything. We do not have to have a theory of climate change. Antarctica could melt to morrow and it would be a disaster. The relevant political question is: did we contribute to it? The answer is no. Not if the rise of CO2 concentrations follow rather than precede global warming.

 As long as human activity has not caused them, we do not have exlain or defend climate changes.