I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.
This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.
I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.
Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.
Sorry for duplication – again!
[Mod/Clark: Fixed.]
“What we need to stand up and say is not only did they attack the USS Liberty, they did 9/11. They did it. I have had long conversations over the past two weeks with contacts at the Army War College, at it’s headquarters, Marine Corps and I made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period.” –
Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former Director of Strategic Studies at the US Army War College.
WOMEN of TRUTH (Bravo!) – Gwenyth Todd and Susan Lindauer
Gwenyth Todd, who worked beside Richard Clarke on the National Security Council, that Clarke (who was publicly fired from an earlier job for being an Israeli spy) is the top suspect as hands-on controller of 9/11 from the US end.
Former CIA asset Susan Lindauer may be the most dangerous whistleblower in America. Lindauer has gone on record about the CIA’s detailed foreknowledge of 9/11.
http://noliesradio.org/archives/51351
(Interviews start at 02:00 into podcast)
Scouse Billy 22 Sep, 2012 – 10:42 am
“Phil and other IPCC supporters, do you know who set up UNEP and the IPCC?”
You can feck off with your taunts.
I have at no point said anything about the IPCC. To be honest I hardly know who they are. I have only commented on a claim about a web site with 30,000 science signatures debunking climate change. I looked at that web site. That web site is propaganda.
Don’t start putting words in my mouth just because I reached a conclusion you don’t like.
Mark, that reminds of Netanyahu behing forewarned on 7/7 – originally by Scotland Yard according to one Israeli newspaper but later changed to “by Mossad” although this begs the question how would Mossad know.
Perhaps a look at the “science” would be better, Phil.
You could look at The Cloud Mystery it’s really interesting – actual new paradigm science now being actively pursued by CERN’s CLOUD experiments.
Scouse Billy 22 Sep, 2012 – 11:24 am
“Perhaps a look at the “science” would be better, Phil.”
Perhaps not scatter gun spouting hyperbole with an inability to nail anything might be better, Billy.
Chris Jones, you quoted the IAC’s criticisms of the IPCC.
The IAC founded the IAP, which released the following report. Please read it.
http://www.interacademies.net/File.aspx?id=9075
Sad to see Selma Yacoub throw in the towel because of George Galloway’s comments on Assange. She is a breath of fresh air and her succinct delivery of facts is so much lacking in politics, with waffle being the main language.
Had rather hoped that she would boot Galloway out of the party and on to a small island were he could boss his minions about. I fear Galloway will split up respect in his wish to re-join Labour.
GG is a political mercenary who sees nobody else more important than GG himself, he will do anything to promote the Galloway cause wherever it may lead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/sep/22/salma-yaqoob-respect-george-galloway
Thanks for that Clarke, some stark prognosis there. ‘Ocean acidification is irreversible in our lifetime’
Hmm, no quick Jimmy will fix it’s then,so, what do we do now?
Assume the ostrich position and bare our arses? or engage our brains, change our attitudes and practises as best as we can and get on with sitting it out, some 300 years should do it according to Aubrey Meyer’s contraction and convergence approach.
Sorry, that’s as fast as it will go, if there is a united approach at all, that is.
http://www.gci.org.uk/
I have a little £15 scope with half decent optics which is a wonder to behold, unlike most of the useless distractions in that price range. But little time for star gazing, with so many shitstorms at large.
Krill shortages
Recent studies (November 2004) have shown that stocks of krill in Antarctica have declined dramatically in recent years. The reason for this is likely to be a fall in the amount of sea ice in the winter months particularly in the Antarctic Peninsula region.
Krill numbers may have dropped by as much as 80% since the 1970’s – so today’s stocks are a mere 1/5th of what they were only 30 years ago. The decline in krill may in turn account for the decline in the numbers of some penguin species.
Dr. Angus Atkinson from British Antarctic Survey, says: “This is the first time that we have understood the full scale of this decline. Krill feed on the algae found under the surface of the sea-ice, which acts as a kind of ‘nursery’.
The Antarctic Peninsula, a key breeding ground for the krill, is one of the places in the world where there has been the greatest rise in temperatures due to global warming. This region has warmed by 2.5°C in the last 50 years (much more than the mean global rate), with a striking consequential decrease in winter sea-ice cover.
“We don’t fully understand how the loss of sea-ice here is connected to the warming, but we believe that it could be behind the decline in krill.”
—
As long as we dont fully understand, thats alright and nature will surely take care of it all. So these innane advisors say.
Chris Jones and ScouseBilly have done a lot to convince me that the arguments of the deniers are rubbish and propaganda. However, they both seem sincerely convinced of their own arguments. Those two need to diversify the sources they read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Nevermind, the ocean acidification chemistry is so simple; I think I was taught it when I was fourteen. Carbon dioxide is sparingly soluble in water, forming carbonic acid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid#Chemical_equilibrium
The oceans are alkaline, but the CO2 reduces the alkalinity.
Scouse Billy 22 Sep, 2012 – 11:24 am
“You could look at The Cloud Mystery it’s really interesting”
Ok, I spent a few minutes looking and it is interesting. Although Svensmark tempers his hypothesis to “cosmic rays have more effect on the climate than manmade CO2”. I also note CERN point out their surprising findings are currently far from verifying even this.
Look Billy. I know sweet fa about the detail of the climate change arguments. I was genuinely intrigued by the claims for that petition. After a little examination all I did was point out that the claim “30,000 respected scientists [debunk] global warming” is nonsense. Because it transparently is nonsense. There, I’ve said it again so you can ignore it again.
Phil – I don’t want to be right about any of IPCC’s misleading reports and would quite like to be proven wrong. Unfortunately the overwhelming amount of evidence about the unreliability of their reports and the resulting incorrect global scientific consensus, is overwhelming.
Maybe your slightly obsessing about one petition where neither of us has the time to check each of the 32,000 signatories but i find it quite odd that you don’t feel the same need to scrutinise and question the IPCC and others like them in the same way. Is there maybe a small element of double standards involved here? I questioned the anti global warmists for years and still do – its just that i question ‘the other side’ now as well.
Please allow me to condense my point regarding the IPCC: They are on record as admitting that they have a policy of modifying all their science reports to reflect political aspirations. Thats the crux of it. That is not,in any sense of the word,good news.
Thatcrab, where can I find one of those ‘scopes?
Useless for meteor watching (which seems to have been the context); meteors move too fast to follow, even with binoculars.
Chris, the CO2 / global heating debate became polarised years ago. No surprise there; big business hates being told to clean up any of its acts. Global heating became a concern at about the same time as CFCs and the ozone layer. CFCs were banned, and as I remember, global heating fell into the background and hardly got a mention. It took the Stern Review to create financial/political clout, which got the matter back into the corporate media again. So, sadly, polarisation got started.
Doesn’t matter, because…
CO2 is a BIG problem; see my link above.
Sure, Clark and carbonic acid is really strong and stable?
In any case, why not take a look at ocean composition:
http://www.usc.edu/org/seagrant/Education/IELessons/Unit1/Lesson5/teachertable.html
P.S. Lord Stern is an economist – another famous economist Preident Vaclav Klaus wrote a book on the political perversion of science wrt to AGW, Blue Planet in Green Shackles. I recommend it.
“The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Global warming has become a symbol, and example of this clash. The one politically correct truth has already been established, and opposing it is not easy.
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.
The advocates and promoters of the global warming hypotheses are mostly scientists who profit from their research, both financially and in the form of scientific recognition, and also politicians (and their fellow travelers in academia and in the media) who see it as a political issue attractive enough to build their careers on.
The current – so unfairly and irrationally led – debate about the environment and about global warming in particular is increasingly becoming a fundamentally ideological and political dispute.
The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism or communism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism. This ideological stream has recently become a dominant alternative to those ideologies that are consistently and primarily oriented toward freedom. It is a movement that intends to change the world radically regardless of the consequences (at the cost of human lives and severe restrictions on individual freedom). It intends to change humankind, human behavior, the structure of society, the system of values – simply everything.
Even through environmentalism boasts about its scientific basis, it is, in fact, essentially a metaphysical ideology that refuses to see the world, nature, and humankind as they really are. It has no regard for spontaneous evolution and takes the current state of the world and nature as an untouchable standard, any changes to which would be a fatal jeopardy.
The environmentalists’ attitude toward nature is analogous to the Marxist approach to economics. The aim in both cases is to replace the free, spontaneous evolution of the world (and humankind) by the would-be optimal, central, or – using today’s fashionable adjective – global planning of world development.
What is at stake is not environment. It is our freedom.”
Václav Klaus
http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/195
Scouse Billy, how does your link address the issues in the link I posted?
http://www.interacademies.net/File.aspx?id=9075
Yes, carbonic acid breaks down, by neutralising alkalis.
That IS the problem.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to get the Avaaz petition group to remove this offensive graphic:
http://avaazdesign.s3.amazonaws.com/Avaaz_graphic_concept2_VennOnly_a.jpg
which says that all Western Muslims are “crazies”, in mathematical terms a ten year old can read.
Clark: you have mail.
Glenn; give me a minute.
“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
Albert Einstein–
I misspoke. ‘ILLIMITABLE spirit…’
“Or are we claiming God to work within our lives on a day-to-day basis? If so, where’s the evidence? Why is this God such a teaser, a jester, so shy, so demanding and yet so absent?”
It’s a subjective thing. (I am taking on a role, here,( as though I were explaining Kant speaking in the first person) Agree that there is no empirical evidence of god, unless you see him as a first cause and then followed each event from our time, tracing it back to that first event. Even then, as humans, we would be challenged by our observations, which are extremely limited. The Universe is a mysterious place. Take the Hindus, for example. To sum up their philosophy, imagine you were God, and you grew bored with your activity after a few billion years because you’d done, and seen everything. How to make it all new again? Rediscover the World anew through countless lifetimes. I’m not suggesting that is my belief, nor is it evidence of god, but I’ve never seen a baby parakeet, either, yet I’m sure they exist.
Gotta run, right now. Neighbors birthday party calling for help.
Clark, is your chemistry up to A level standard?
The link below suggest that this is a pre-requisite to a clear understanding of their paper but here goes anyway.
Bi-carbonate availability is the prime consideration in calcification rates of corals and other animals – Kleypas et al.:
Toxic Seawater Fraud
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/toxic-seawater-fraud/
Also Demico et al (ref available if you require it) show that atmospheric CO2 rose as high as 2500 ppm between 60 and 40 Ma and even Caldeira and Wicket (authors of IPCC ocean acidification papers)say that there is no evidence for a greater than 0.6 decrease in pH in the last 300 Ma, so even with CO2 levels six and a half times greater than today, the oceans were still not acid.
Chris Jones 22 Sep, 2012 – 1:08 pm
“…and would quite like to be proven wrong”.
You have no intention of acknowledging when you are proven to be wrong. No, instead you continue to defend the defenceless.
“neither of us has the time to check each of the 32,000 signatories”
I found no ‘respected’ scientist among the signatories. I did find a vet and a PR consultant. You know this yet still you return, idiotically obsfuscating with platitudes.
BTW you are inflating the number of signatories now. You just can’t help yourself can you?
Perhaps Glenn was correct when he suggested you are a stooge, paid to fill space with stupid arguments reasonably phrased. See his comment at 22 Sep, 2012 – 1:19 am. Now bear with me – I have a story for you.
I live in central london. A year or so ago a beautiful friend, with a stranger, joined us at the local pub table. Overhearing the tail of our Iran conversation, this friend of a friend, a few wines happy, declared “I worked for Bell Pottinger for fifteen years and let me tell you, you would all be shocked to know how much the news lies to you.”
“Would we, do tell us more” I said.
He spoke of overworked journalists, stupid journalists, corrupt journalists. Everyone of them on speed dial. He said if he couldn’t manage it, which he normally could, then he would pass it on up and if required it would eventually be resolved over lunch in the house of lords. He said “government and corporations dictate the news through us”. Boy was he clever. He exuded cleverness.
“We can kill any story” he boasted. As a point of interest to some here, he did say the metro was the media they could least control. That sometimes stories, suppressed elsewhere, would uniquely slip into the early edition. This surprised me. But back to my story Chris.
He spoke of rooms full of SEO experts manipulating search results to hide the truth. And of countless stooges paid to flood blogs regurgitating whatever they’re told to. Funny enough he looked down on these ‘basement’ people, “most of them have no idea what is going on”.
Of course he himself had never heard of Bernays, Lippman nor even Chomsky. He thought Pilger was a “discredited communist”.
He was a confused, vain, miserable impersonation of a man. He admitted no compunction for his part in a system that leads, literally, to murder. “I’ve left now anyway” was all he could say before clamming up.
Subsequently, my friend didn’t shag him.
Is that you Chris? Are you a ‘basement’ type of person?
Anyway, the moral of my story, what I suppose I am trying to say is, stop being such a cunt and you might get better fucked.
[Mod/Clark, edited per as instructions, below.]
Phil 22 Sep, 2012 – 4:20 pm
“stop being such a soul less prick and you might have more fun.”
I self censored this last line, removing two swear words. Upon rereading this was a mistake. The revision lacks the punch and humour of the potty mouthed original.
Glenn 22 Sep, 2012 – 1:19 am
“there is a modest but reasonable living to be made by shilling for the polluting industries, the well-funded right wing “think-tanks”, not to mention Israeli foreign policy and so on. You get money for quality posts on high profile website, calling into TV/radio shows and putting your message out.”
Glenn, or anyone else, do you happen to know how that works? How do you get the job?
Phil, post them again and I’ll edit them in.
Scouse Billy, what is the significance of this conclusion of yours?
“so even with CO2 levels six and a half times greater than today, the oceans were still not acid.”
Jon, you watching?
Just learn some science before repeating every doomsday scare that the MSM and politicians put out there.
“The way that nature designed the earth/atmosphere ensemble roughly 90% of the IR radiation that cools our globe emanates from the atmosphere. Currently that is roughly 239 W/m2, which corresponds to a “blackbody” temperature of circa -18 °C. Under the atmosphere’s current design that temperature is found near the atmosphere’s center mass, circa 500 hPa. At that altitude ½ of the atmosphere is below and ½ of the atmosphere is above. The air below that altitude is warmer than -18 °C due to compression and the air above that altitude is cooler than -18 °C due to decompression.
Why then, if the atmosphere is cooling from its center mass at an effective radiating temperature of -18 °C and this center mass temperature is in thermal equilibrium with the amount of sunlight that the earth/atmosphere ensemble is absorbing, is the air near the earth’s surface, some 5-6 km lower in altitude, about 33 °C warmer? Is it because the air in the lower atmosphere is somehow being physically blocked from moving away from the warm ground like what happens in a greenhouse? Is it because “greenhouse gases” in the lower atmosphere are trapping thermal energy in the lower atmosphere and re-radiating it back towards the ground? Or is it because of the Ideal Gas Law? Personally, I believe it is due to the Ideal Gas Law, which dictates that when air from the atmosphere’s center mass, which is at -18 °C and in thermal equilibrium with the amount of sunlight that the earth/atmosphere ensemble absorbs, descends to replace ascending air it warms on average about 33 °C by the time it reaches the ground because it is compressed into a smaller volume by the progressively increasing air pressure.”
In quotes because Carl Brehmer pus it very succinctly and I can’t be arsed rewriting essentially the same for the upteenth time.
There is NO greenhouse effect nor is ocean “acidification” ever going to happen for the reasons elucidated in the paper I already linked to.
If you people can’t understand basic science then please stop acting like “useful idiots” or better still learn it and think for yourselves.
Real polution is a problem – CO2 is not.