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.

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

Warmenists vs The Poor, III

I thought I remembered this story from the London Times awhile back. It seems that if you're rich enough, you can assuage your guilt over your carbon crimes by sending a poor Indian peasant from the 21st Century back to the tecnhnology of the Bronze Age.

As the Times story (from 2007) puts it:
"Somewhere in the Indian countryside, a farmer is about to repay Mr Cameron’s debt to the planet. Climate Care’s latest enterprise is to provide “treadle pumps” to poor rural families so they can get water on to their land without using diesel power. The pumps are worked by stepping on pedals. If a peasant treads for two hours a day, it will take at least three years to offset the CO2 from Mr Cameron’s return flight to India"

So once that treadle pump is in place, who you do think is going to provide the muscle power? No, not Big Al Gore, although he could use the exercise. It will be the children who will in all liklihood be taken out of school to do the work.

Climate Care, an arm of JP Morgan's environmental markets group is the benevolent gang behind the scheme to let Third World peasants do the heavy lifting so green robed hypocrites can keep flying around to conferences.

Warmenists vs. The Poor, II

As I noted yesterday, the direct diversion of food crops into biofuel production and the change in cultivation from plants for food to plants for fuel will inevitably decrease the amount of food available in the market, raise prices and push the marginal poor right over into starvation. This Wall Street Journal story from Japan is an apt example. The farmer is being subsidized to grow a variety of rice suitable for conversion into ethanol instead of the food rice he used to grow. This wouldn't happen without subsidies. I don't know how ecofanatics sleep at night. Maybe they'll send some starvation offsets to Manila or Jakarta.

Warmenists vs. The Poor Part I

As anyone in an undergraduate economics class could tell you the fuel market and food markets were essentially separate. Rises in oil price had only an indirect marginal effect on the price of food through fuel and fertilizer costs. Climate fanatics however have suceeded in linking the two directly by enlisting Big Agriculture and Big Government in forcing biofuel mandates on the world. Not only are food crops like palm oil and soybeans now diverted directly to fuel production, agricultural land is diverted to the production of fuel crops rather than food crops. If you're growing corn for ethanol, you plant high sugar varieties, if you're growing for food, you want high protein. Less wheat, more corn, and so on. None of this could have happened without the perverse incentives of government subsidies. Congratulations for joining at the hip two groups who couldn't care less about the poor--climate fundmentalists and agribusiness.
When even the BBC gets it, it should be obvious to everyone.

Warmenists Finally Go Around the Bend

This can't be parodied. This man is to all appearances serious about putting climate realists on trial. Junk science is what should be a crime. On the positive side, this kind of madness usually means that a trend has run its course. But does this wacko have a security clearance?