That rather tells its own story. He couldn't handle the truth of what was being said
A professor who is accusing global warming skeptics of engaging in "tabloid-style character assassination” of scientists, called an American climate skeptic “an assh*le” on the December 4, 2009 live broadcast of BBC's Newsnight program. “What an assh*le!” declared Professor Watson at the end of the contentious debate with Climate Depot's executive editor Marc Morano. A clearly agitated Watson had earlier shouted to Morano “will you shut up.”
The remark was broadcast live on BBC and prompted an on-air apology to viewers from the BBC later in the program for the offensive language.
Watson (Email: a.watson@uea.ac.uk) is a professor at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, which was the source of the disclosed files. Watson's emails appear in the hacked Climategate files.
During the live debate, Morano challenged Professor Watson for being in “denial” over the importance of Climategate and noted that “you have to feel sorry for Professor Watson.”
“[Watson's] colleague, [Professor] Mike Hulme at the University of East Anglia is saying this is authoritarian science, he is suggesting the [UN] IPCC should be disbanded based on what Climategate reveals," Morano said.
"[UK environmentalist] George Monbiot is saying many of his friend in the environmental and the climate fear promoting business -- as Professor Watson is part of -- are in denial. You have to feel sorry for Professor Watson in many ways here,” Morano explained.
A clearly agitated Watson blurted out “Will you shut up just a second!?”
Morano summed up his views on what ClimateGate reveals during the debate. “It exposes the manufactured consensus. Your fellow colleagues are saying this,” Morano said to Watson.
SOURCE (See the original for links, video)
Sarah Palin comes out swinging
Palin Challenges Obama: Boycott Copenhagen, Investigate Climate Change "Experts"
Earlier today, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin posted the following note on her Facebook page, addressing the recent Climategate scandal and President Obama's upcoming trip to the Copenhagen climate change summit:
The president’s decision to attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen needs to be reconsidered in light of the unfolding Climategate scandal. The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming. I support Senator James Inhofe’s call for a full investigation into this scandal. Because it involves many of the same personalities and entities behind the Copenhagen conference, Climategate calls into question many of the proposals being pushed there, including anything that would lead to a cap and tax plan.
Policy should be based on sound science, not snake oil. I took a stand against such snake oil science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population has increased. I’ve never denied the reality of climate change; in fact, I was the first governor to create a subcabinet position to deal specifically with the issue. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. But while we recognize the effects of changing water levels, erosion patterns, and glacial ice melt, we cannot primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes. The drastic economic measures being pushed by dogmatic environmentalists won’t change the weather, but will dramatically change our economy for the worse.
Policy decisions require real science and real solutions, not junk science and doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that capitalizes on the public’s worry and makes them feel that owning an SUV is a “sin” against the planet. In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to “restore science to its rightful place.” Boycotting Copenhagen while this scandal is thoroughly investigated would send a strong message that the United States government will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices. Saying no to Copenhagen and cap and tax are first steps in “restoring science to its rightful place.”
SOURCE
Hot Earthers and the Era of the Post-Credible
An article published last year by current EPA Administrator Lisa Heinzerling reveals a startling shift in strategy by those arguing for significant policy changes based on the now—discredited “science” of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming.
In short, they have come up with a duplicitous strategy that goes from viewing the theory as an insufficiently supported scientific theory to portraying it as a sacrosanct piece of pseudo-science, immune to disproof by observational evidence.
In “Climate Change, Human Health, and the Post-Cautionary Principle” Ms. Heinzerling advocates that we move from thinking about manmade climate change “in terms of a pre-cautionary principle, which counsels action even in the absence of scientific consensus about a threat.” That, she feels, provides too much leeway for those who, based upon the data at hand, might argue otherwise.
Instead, she urges that it be considered a “post-cautionary” principle where some “very bad effects of climate change” are depicted as “unavoidable” and others are seen as avoidable only by drastic measures. And that, of course – since it is all post-cautionary – defines the matter as a closed case, a fait accompli, permitting no further discussion.
This, I would remind readers, comes from a woman who now has it in her power to foist such transparently shoddy thinking onto the entire scientific world.
Under the old pre-cautionary principle, its adherents tried to generate a sense of urgency for immediate government action by claiming that “the evidence of an impending catastrophe was strong enough” to justify such action notwithstanding the fact that the jury was still out on the science behind the matter. Give credit where credit is due: at least the old “pre-cautionaryists” conceded that all the evidence was not yet in.
Fast-forward to 2008. Heinzerling, deciding that she and her cohorts had not prompted sufficient governmental action with that far-too-evenhanded approach, now proclaims that “we probably blew past our precautionary opportunity.” Instead, she posits, we actually live in a “post-cautionary world” where we must act with a renewed sense of urgency to implement governmental policies combating the alleged ill effects of man-caused global warming – despite the lack of true scientific evidence.
She then makes a rather stunning declaration about what precipitated this change. Taking the line recently adopted and popularized by Al Gore, she states that: “The scientific debate over whether climate change is happening, and whether it will hurt us, is over…”
And just what is her support for this bold claim?
It seems to rest on nothing more than an appeal for a contrived consensus from scientists at the IPCC who themselves proclaimed that global warming was indeed happening and that humans are partly responsible. They “declared that the world was warming” and “identified a ‘discernible human influence’ on the climate.”
But, as it turns out, this appeal comes from an organization whose findings are now being brought under serious suspicion in the Climategate scandal. In order to generate and defend their contrived consensus on anthropogenic global warming, the Hot Earthers at IPCC relied heavily on data from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU). And according to recently uncovered e-mail exchanges, members of the CRU regularly modified or suppressed data that tended to disconfirm (falsify) the theory of man-caused global warming.
Now, it has become abundantly clear that those discredited CRU “scientists” still viewed man-caused global warming as nothing more than a scientific theory, capable of being proven false by observational evidence. Else why fudge the data? And why manufacture a counterfeit consensus where none actually exists?
In declaring the debate on anthropogenic global warming over, that is exactly what Lisa Heinzerling and Al Gore have done. And in so doing, they have deliberately plunged the world not only into the nebulous arena of the “post-cautionary,” but into the nefarious era of the post-credible as well.
SOURCE
Canadian broadcaster doesn't mince words about Climategate
CBC's Rex Murphy Unloads About ClimateGate: It 'pulls back the curtain on pettiness, turf protection, manipulation, defiance of FOIA, loss or destroyed data and attempts to blacklist'
Canadian CBC TV commentator Rex Murphy, unleashed on the top UN scientists involved in the growing Climategate scandal during a December 3, 2009 television broadcast. CBC's Murphy declared that Climategate “pulls back the curtain on a scene of pettiness, turf protection, manipulation, defiance of freedom of information, loss or destroyed data and attempts to blacklist critics or skeptics of the global warming cause.”
“You wouldn't accept that at a grade 9 science fair,” Murphy stated. Murphy's commentary appeared on “The National” program, CBC's flagship nightly news program.
Murphy was a former a executive assistant to the leader of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland. “Climate science and global warming advocacy have become so entwined, so enmeshed into a mutant creature,” he added. “Climategate is evidence that the science has gone to bed with advocacy and both have had a very good time,” Murphy continued.
Murphy's criticism aims directly for the top UN scientists involved in this scandal. “Too many of the current leadership on global warming are more players than observers. Gatekeepers not investigators. Angry partisans of some global reengineering, rather than some humble servants of the facts of the case,” Murphy explained.
“Read the emails, you will never think of climate science, quite the same way again,” Murphy implored. “Let's here no more talk of the 'science is settled' when it turns out some of the principle scientists behave as if they own the very question of global warming,” he added. 'Climate science has been shown to be in part to be a sub branch of climate politics,” Murphy explained. “Climate science needs its own reset button,” he added.
SOURCE (See the original for links, video)
New Australian conservative leader challenges Prime Minister to debate climate change
Rudd is too smart to get sucked into that one -- he knows he will lose -- but a refusal will undermine his credibility
FEDERAL Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has challenged Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to a series of public debates on climate change.
The Government plans to re-introduce its emissions trading scheme (ETS) legislation into Parliament when it resumes in February, after the bills were defeated in the Senate last week.
Mr Abbott says most people want more information on the scheme. "That's code for saying that they don't understand it," he told the Nine Network on Sunday. "I'd like to challenge the prime minister to a series of public debates on this subject before Parliament comes back. "This big emissions tax, it's going to be not just for this year or next year, it's going to be forever if it comes in, and it shouldn't come in with(out) the public understanding exactly what it means."
Mr Abbott said the debates could be in a town hall and broadcast to the public or beamed live from a television studio. "We'll debate it up hill and down dale, we'll debate it once, twice, three times, four times, however many times is necessary until the public feel that they have had their questions answered to their satisfaction," he said.
Referring to former federal opposition leader John Hewson's inability to explain a Goods and Services Tax (GST) to the public, Mr Abbott said: "Perhaps he (Mr Rudd) can explain what the emissions tax will do to the price of a birthday cake".
Mr Abbott said he was prepared to allow the prime minister to choose the debate venue. "It's really up to him but he can't and shouldn't run away from explaining fully this great big new tax to the Australian public," he said.
He said Mr Rudd often sounded more like a public servant in a seminar than a "retail", or one-on-one, politician. "But look, I don't under-estimate him. He didn't get to be the prime minister by being foolish or by lacking the ability to communicate and I'm sure he would give a good account of himself."
Citing comments from Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board member and economist Warwick McKibbin, Mr Abbott said Australia could reduce its carbon emissions by at least five per cent without an emissions trading scheme (ETS). "I haven't said it will be cost-free ... but I think there are all sorts of ways of paying for this that don't involve a great big new tax that we will live with forever," he said.
"Don't assume that I want regulation, what I want is appropriate incentives. "You could have a fund that would directly purchase emission abatements and that would be a lot less than the $10 billion or $12 billion a year money-go-round which Labor is proposing." Mr Abbott said tree planting and more energy-efficient buildings could make a significant contribution to slashing carbon emissions.
SOURCE
Bureaucratic inertia and vested interests block "Green" truck in Britain
Wacky Greenie schemes are celebrated but when an environmental initiative that makes sense comes along it is not permitted in sclerotic Britain
It was hardly The Dukes of Hazzard. The 74-year-old outlaw trucker donned his bifocal driving glasses, adjusted his panama hat and made a break for the highway. Barely 50m from the haulage yard, the local police chief was lying in wait to stop the supersized lorry taking to Britain’s roads. At 25.25m (83ft), he suspected that it was longer than the legal limit and the lorry’s inaugural road test would have to wait. Government inspectors do not want such long vehicles on the road, fearing environmental damage, wear and tear on the network and potentially devastating crashes.
But the double articulated lorry, designed to carry bulky supermarket freight, was simply too big to reverse back into the yard. So police guided the Denby Extra superlorry on a mile-long drive through the outskirts of Lincoln, as far as a roundabout on the A46, where the 18 wheels could find room to turn and take the truck back to its siding.
The driver, Dick Denby, a grandfather of six, descended from his cab and declared: “A change is as good as a rest. A new experience every day is my motto in life.”
In his hand was the pink notice served by an inspector from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) informing him that his pioneering vehicle would have to be removed from the road for inspection. “This is a notice really to bugger off, to get off the highway, ‘get back to your rat hole, matey’,” Mr Denby said.
And with that he followed the inspector and the head of collision investigation at Lincolnshire Police, Sergeant Dave Kay, into his office to be formally notified that the lorry could go no further. “Arrest is always the last option,” Sergeant Kay said. “I hand it over now to our VOSA colleagues.”
An inspection team set about measuring the 44-tonne lorry. Mr Denby claims that he is exploiting a legal loophole that allows such monsters on the roads. They are, he says, more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly than standard juggernauts, which measure 54ft. Tests on private land have found that the lorries burn 15 per cent less fuel than conventional trucks to carry an equal volume of cargo. Two trucks can carry the load of three existing lorries, so that fewer vehicles need take to the road, he says.
But the Department for Transport is against the road trials, fearing a backlash from drivers and the rail industry, which could see their market for freight undercut.
“Last year, following independent research, we announced that goods vehicles substantially larger than those currently permitted would not be allowed on UK roads for the foreseeable future,” a DfT spokesman said.
As inspectors set to work, the key point of contention on Mr Denby’s truck was the first trailer section — at 7.82m, according to VOSA, it was too long to run on British roads. Mr Denby said that a thick bulkhead fitted inside the Dutch-built lorry had reduced the length of the cargo hold to 7m and it was therefore legal under the 1986 Road Vehicles Construction and Use Regulations. The inspector’s report was to be sent to his superiors with the possibility of a prohibition order being imposed. Mr Denby was consulting his lawyers.
The DfT said that it was prepared to go to court to prevent a challenge to any prohibition order.
The haulage industry is divided on the merits of adopting the large trucks, even if they already operate in the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland. The manufacturers of light, bulky goods such as toilet paper are most interested in the technology.
With the lorry parked back in his haulage yard and the lawyers alerted, Mr Denby, who had not driven a lorry for 14 years, left for an old boys’ reunion at Fortnum & Mason.
SOURCE
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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