The Predictable Lame Reaction

As Mark Steyn relates in this post to The Corner on NRO, the authorities are reacting in the predictable manner to the Detroit Weenie Bomber...by imposing more restrictions on everybody else. To Steyn's words, I would add only that these measures are aimed not only at increasing the perception of security at the expense of the reality, but at doing so in an exquisitely politically correct manner. What needs to happen here, at least until Zoroastrians and Anabaptists get into the suicide bombing business, is--let's all say it together now--PROFILING. Young Muslim men don't get to fly without a very extensive questioning and search...period. Inconvenient for the very silent majority of believers? Yep.\

Then clean your own house.

If Kevin Rudd jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?

Didn't young Johnny Key ever hear that from his mum? I guess not. And I guess party affiliation is no guarantee of immunity against getting lost in the deep weeds of warmenism. John Key will go to Copenhagen for the Climatefest because, well, because "Awww Mum, everyone else is going."

Name and Shame: Hyperwealthy Blowhard Watch

Almost nothing triggers my gag reflex like some hypocrite with a bloated bank account telling the rest of us how to live green while they suck up as much carbon and flatulate as much as they please. Tiny little beer can cars and poisonous flickering lightbulbs, holidays in the back garden and freezing houses for the rest of us. But for the Green Priesthood, it's private jets, 24 hour blazing incandescence, Humvees, and big stonking fireplaces. These people need to be exposed for the liars and hypocrites they are. They need to be singled out and ridiculed for their pathetic excuses and their preening arrogance. And so, presenting the Hyperwealthy Blowhard of the Day, the man NRO called the Green Governator, His Bloated Terminatorship, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold want's the rest of us to walk, bike, or take public transport (Right, Arnie, in LA.), while he drives one of these AND one of these, and he used to drive one of these. Now it's Governor Busybody's money and and he can spend it anyway he wants....but get off my ass, Arnie about how I spend my mine.

Meanwhile in New Zealand.

Niwa principal climate scientist James Renwick told the New Zealand Herald that:

"There is no cover-up going on.
"When you've got 100MB worth of emails from somebody's personal files, no doubt you can find sentences that taken purely out of context can sound really bad,"

Well OK. Here's an e-mail from Phil Jones to Kevin Treberth on which Renwick was copied. This is the whole thing so nothing was taken out of context, and it sures looks like the climate change cabal is trying to cover up the sloppiness and inexactitude of their underlying data.

Kevin,
I will be around tomorrow (so Dec 21) until Dec 23 inclusive. Then again from Jan 3.
I will be checking email during the break from Dec 28 onwards. Are you in control of the glossary additions and modifications?As to change of base period - this seems like a decision for the whole of WGI. To redo the global temperature average, I can just move the series up/down, but this isn't the correct way to do it. I should talk out a new base period from all the individual stations and recalculate anomalies for the oceans. For the oceans this isn't a problem, but the land it is a serious problem. Many stations have good (i.e. near complete base periods for 1961-90) but I'll lose hundreds, maybe over a thousand, stations if I went to 1981-2000.
For both surface temperature and precipitation we don't have spatially complete datasets(like models) so it will be quite difficult. For the circulation indices(like SOI and NAO) based on station pairs there is a variance term(SD).Some of the character of the series will change. We could easily adjust all these series by simple offsetting but it isn't doing it properly. I'm in the throws of a project with the HC checking all the 61-90 normals we have for series that are incomplete, to ensure we don't have any biases. This has taken quite a time and I don't want to waste the effort.
The arguments of Albert and Dave make a lot of sense-continuity with the TAR etc.These sort of things can be explained,but then the FOD will not be compatible with all the papers we are referring to. This will lead to lots of confusion. I would like to stick with 1961-90.I don't want to change this until 1981-2010 is complete, for 3 reasons : 1) We need 30 years and 81-10 will get all the MSU in nicely, and 2) I will be near retirement! 3)is one of perception.As climatologists we are often changing base periods and have done for years.I remember getting a number of comments when I changed from 1951-80 to 1961-90. If we go to a more recent one the anomalies will seem less warm-I know this makes no sense scientifically, but it gives the skeptics something to go on about!If we do the simple way, they will say we aren't doing it properly. Best idea might be to show some maps of 1981-2000 minus 1961-90 to show spatially where it makes a difference for temp and precip. Showing it is quite small and likely within the intermodel differences for years which are only nominally 1981-2000. This might keep both sides happy.
We also probably need to consider WGII.Also the paleo chapter will find 1981-2000 impossible.1961-90 is difficult for them but not insurmountable.
Cheers
Phil

Climate Fraud

The revelation of the CRU e-mails should have prompted politicains everywhere to a WTF moment. Pull at random nearly any one of these e-mail strings, and you will find a tale of dishonesty, incompetence, arrogrance, greed and occasional, casual criminal behavior. The entire warmenist enterprise is based on lies and fraud...and that's before people who are wiser than I in the ways of the digerati start tearing apart the computer code. Can you imagine what would happen if this sort of information should emerge from leading research facilities on genetic engineering, vaccine development or HIV studies?

Yet from Wellington to Copenhagen, Canberra to Washington, duplicitous and craven politicians are deperately pushing emisions trading schemes, vast new regulatory regimes and crushing taxation even though they know full well that it's all a fraud. The only sane conclusion is that it was never about climate at all, but about the extension of state power.

"This is not a principled fignt."

Do you still think the American Democrats pose no threat to the productive economy? Here's Illinois Democrat Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky on bringing command-and-control to the health insurance industry--by any means necessary.

More Taliban Barbarism

"Taliban gunmen have been filmed executing a surprised couple whom they repeatedly shot for the alleged crime of adultery." - The Telegraph

Their deaths were squalid, riddled with bullets in a field near their home by Taliban gunmen as the execution was captured on a mobile telephone.

In footage which is being watched with horror by Pakistanis, the couple try to flee when they realise what is about to happen. But a gunman casually shoots the man and then the woman in the back with a burst of gunfire, leaving them bleeding in the dirt.

The video of the little girl beaten for the crime of being present when the electrician came to call and now a couple murdered for alleged adultery. The religion of desert barbarians marches on against civilization. We know about it because they're proud of their insane death cult and have the habit of recording their crimes for posterity. All credit to the Telegraph reporter, Saeed Shah, for having the moral intelligence to call this by its proper name "barbarism".

Here's the video. Warning, the true nature of the enemy isn't pretty.

Three Rather Sad Choices for Americans

Watching Obama for his famous hundred days of crypto-nationalization of large swaths of the economy, the great apology tour, the amateurish indecision, the wholly unjustified arrogance, the nasty streak that slips out periodically, the foolish cabinet choices, the abdication of executive power to a corrupt and incompetent Congressional leadership,the bowing and scraping to the inbred barbarian king of the Saudis, the smiling acquiesence to a lecture by the murdering rapist Daniel Ortega (a man who fouls the air today only because of Ronald Reagan's misplaced mercy), one is left with three sad conclusions. The facts being what they are, and televised for all who have eyes to see and the critical faculties to think, Obama is either:

1. Stupid.
2. Incompetent.
3. Actively trying to destroy his own country, and with it, what remains of Western civilization.

Sad.

Bad News for Algore

So there we have it. Fat people cause global warming. Since the Prophet Algore is roughly the size of a medium hippo, this could be a problem for the whole warmenist cult. Photo credit Times Online

He's Back.

New job (a paid one at that), lots of travel, new location. All of which have prevented me from delivering pithy, insightful, nuggets of near genius to my many fans.

However, the threat to mankind from Obamania is too acute to ignore. So visit early, visit often. I'm back.