August 31, 2010 by admin.

rationaloptimist.com

Reform the IPCC for the sake of science

By Matt Riddley, 2010 08 31

From today’s Times, my op-ed piece.

This month, after a three-year investigation, Harvard University suspended a prominent professor of psychology for scandalously overinterpreting videos of monkey behaviour. The incident has sent shock waves through science because it suggests that a body of data is unreliable. The professor, Marc Hauser, is now a pariah in his own field and his papers have been withdrawn. But the implications for society are not great — no policy had been based on his research.

Yesterday, after a four-month review, a committee of scientists concluded that the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has “assigned high confidence to statements for which there is very little evidence”, has failed to enforce its own guidelines, has been guilty of too little transparency, has ignored critical review comments and has had no policies on conflict of interest”.

Enormous and expensive policy changes have been based on the flawed work of these scientists. Yet there is apparently to be no investigation, blame, suspension or withdrawal of papers, just a gentle bureaucratic fattening of the organisation with new full-time posts….(Full Story)

________________
For another view of the IAC audit of IPCC processes and reporting quality, have a look at this:

Independent Audit Panel Slams U.N.’s Climate Group, by Jeremy A. Kaplan, 2010 08 30, Fox News

Posted in Taxes, Propaganda debunked, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

August 23, 2010 by admin.

Financial Post

Mike De Souza, Postmedia News · Monday, Aug. 23, 2010

OTTAWA — Sustained cuts to Environment Canada weather-service programs have compromised the government’s ability to assess climate change and left it with a “profoundly disturbing” quality of information in its data network, says a newly released internal government report.The stinging assessment, obtained through an access-to-information request, suggests that Canada’s climate network infrastructure is getting progressively worse and no longer meets international guidelines.

“Environment Canada is on the road to junior partner status with respect to other agencies, both provincial and international, in the area of climate data gathering, quality control and archiving,” said the report, released to the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental research group.

The analysis — Degradation in Environment Canada’s Climate Network, Quality Control and Data Storage Practices: A Call to Repair the Damage — noted the lack of data on climate conditions can affect decisions on major infrastructure such as roads, buildings and sewers as well as a number of “real-life” decisions made by Canadians every day….

Full Story

It is a good thing that the Pembina Institute made the Freedom of Information Act request, because very few of the rest of us mortals can.  However, the Pembina Institute puts its own political spin on the causes of the calamity by blaming Stephen Harper and his party instead of John Chretien and the Liberal Party, the real culprit responsible for the budget cuts, while the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.

Perhaps the report contained no information on what the elephant is.  If so, it is amazing that neither the author of the Financial Post article nor the Pembina Institute were sufficiently astute to notice the biggest problem of all, which is that the vast majority of Canada’s weather stations that once regularly reported on weather conditions now no longer exists.

One could argue that weather satellites eliminated the need for ground-based temperature measurements, but that would be far too simple a reaction. Weather satellites do not measure local conditions such as rainfall-and snowfall amounts, wind-speed and -direction, relative humidity and hours of sunshine — all absolute necessary not only for climate change modelling but also for accurately forecasting the weather.

The deterioration of the weather services programs was not only caused on account of automation, as claimed in the report, but primarily on account of closing down hundreds and perhaps thousands of weather stations.  That was done many years before Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada made it into Ottawa and even before the Conservative Party of Canada even came into existence.  The fault for the severe cutbacks to the data-collection network lies squarely with the Liberal Party.  It did not happen by accident.  It happened because it was a deliberate policy of the Liberal government.

Have a look at some pertinent comments on the report (at wattsupwiththat.com)

• MaxL says: August 23, 2010 at 2:45 pm

• Dave in Exile says: August 23, 2010 at 3:16 pm

• Dennis Nikols, P Geol. says: August 23, 2010 at 4:37 pm

One of those comments (the first on the list) was made by a Canadian weather forecaster.  It seems to be obvious that no other commenters either at the FP article or at the wattsupwithtthat.com posting have any appreciation of what is necessary to produce accurate weatherforecasts.  It even seems that most of the commenters see no need for accurate weather forecasts, which makes me wonder why they bother to comment on the article except to complain that funding for weather-forecasting is a waste of money.

Many of the commenters see the Environment Canada report as a cry to stimulate more funding, somewhat justifiably surmising that the bureaucrats responsible falsely feel that if we only throw more money at the problem, the quality of  the data produced by the Canadian weather services programs will be improved.  It is very doubtful that will any improvement will happen, although all extra funding will doubtlessly be used up.  After all, Environment Canada’s size grew within a relatively short time from an office with with about 15 employees to become a large employer with a workforce that grew to very large proportions.

Environment Canada is a federal government department with approximately 4,700 employees located in 100 communities. (Source: Environment Canada, “What We Do: Key Facts and Figures,” About Us, 31 March 2003, <http://www.ec.gc.ca/introec/keyfacts.htm> , 13 May 2004)

The Wikipedia entry for Environment Canada presently shows an employment figure of ~6,000, although I have no idea how old that figures is, while it seems to me that not very long ago I read an article that put the total number of Environment Canada employees at 10,000.  Darn it, I did not bookmark that.

Regardless of how much money is being thrown at that problem, even with the best intentions, the quality of the data outputs of the weather service programs cannot be better than the quality of the data that is being input: garbage in = garbage out.

Posted in Weather, Climate Change, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

August 23, 2010 by admin.

A family friendly website like this one is not the proper place to describe Pachauri’s portrait of Sanjay’s sex life.  It is not a pretty picture; parts of the book read like the Memoirs of a Disgusting Old Goat — by the kind of Old Goat that doesn’t understand the concept of too much information.

The quoted paragraph is from a book review by Walter Russell Mead: Rajendra Pachauri: Voodoo Scientist and Lone Ranger of Love?” at americaninterest.com,  Rajendra Pachauri being the “formerly outspoken head” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  As the book review explains, and as Rajendra Pachauri has stated during the time he was still much in the public eye as the head of the IPCC while putting his foot in his mouth time and again by making outrageous, justifiably-criticized, propagandistic claims about the alleged calamity of an imminent global-warming catastrophe but nevertheless finding time to create publicity for his book, Return to Almora, the book is claimed to have been dashed off by Pachauri while flying from one international meeting to the next.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Walter Russell Mead’s review.  Having read various excerpts from the book that others used to substantiate their assertions that Return to Almora is somewhat talented writing of a morally vacuous plot spiced with liberal doses of smutt, the review is right on target.

The short summary I posted here does not do justice to the marvelous review by Walter Russell Mead, but if you like short summaries, the comments posted in response to the book review are jewels:

4 Comments

There are few things I enjoy as much as a really skillful critical evisceration. Bravo.

Comment by Dave – August 22, 2010 @ 5:58 pm

Pachauri sounds like an excellent case study for Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed

Comment by Randy – August 22, 2010 @ 6:40 pm

Yet again Walter Russell Mead performs a selfless humanitarian service: reading this clot of codswallop so we don’t have to.

Comment by vanderleun – August 22, 2010 @ 7:05 pm

I will never read “Return to Almora”, but I am glad I read this review.

Comment by Dracovert – August 22, 2010 @ 10:30 pm

Read the full review, and don’t neglect to read also IPCC now in Bizarroland: Pachauri releases “smutty” romance novel, a January 2010 review, posted at wattsupwiththat.com.

Posted in Climate Change, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

August 19, 2010 by admin.

Thanks to Climate Realists:

Breaking: Leading US Physicist Labels Satellitegate Scandal a ‘Catastrophe’
by John O’Sullivan, 2010 08 19

That posting is an excerpt from a longer PDF version of the article and contains a typo (‘comprised’ should be ‘compromised’). Here is the link to the PDF version.

Leading US Physicist Labels Satellitegate Scandal a ‘Catastrophe’
By John O’Sullivan, 2010 08 19

In his post Satellite Temperature Record Now Unreliable Anderson’s findings corroborate my own that NOAA sought to cover up the “sensor degradation” on their satellite, NOAA-16. The U.S. physicist agrees there may now be thousands of temperatures in the range of 415-604 degrees Fahrenheit automatically fed into computer climate models and contaminating climate models with a substantial warming bias. This may have gone on for a far longer period than the five years originally identified.

Anderson continues, “One has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us.”

See also:

Satellite Temperature Record Now Unreliable 2010 08 18
By Charles R. Anderson

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

August 9, 2010 by admin.

The following shows excerpts from two research efforts that explain why CO2 contents of the atmosphere are not worth worrying about.

theresilientearth.com

Why Carbon Sequestration Won’t Work
By Doug L. Hoffman, 2010 08 08

For those who believe in anthropogenic global warming, carbon dioxide is public enemy number one. They warn that CO2 must be avoided at all costs or Earth will heat up uncontrollably causing all sorts of ecological havoc. One proposal for avoiding global warming is the sequestration of CO2 by trapping it at combustion sites or extracting it directly from the air. Supposedly, such sequestration could help avoid a large rise in atmospheric CO2 from the use of fossil fuels, avoiding the hellish fate that surely awaits mankind otherwise. Referred to as carbon capture and storage (CCS), the coal industry has seized on sequestration as a way to get greens off their backs and stay in business. However, it is not clear how effective different types of sequestration and associated leakage are in the long term, or what their consequences might be. A recent paper takes a critical look at the sequestration option….

In the ocean storage option, CO2  is injected at depths between 2,500 and 3,500 m ( 8,000 to 11,500 ft), in the low–mid latitude reaches of the ocean. Total dissolution of the CO2 into the water column was assumed. Quite unsurprisingly, not all of the carbon injected stayed sequestered, and their were some rather draconian side effects as well.

The study found that deep-ocean carbon storage leads to extreme acidification and CO2 concentrations in the deep ocean, together with a return to the adverse conditions of a business-as-usual projection with no sequestration over several thousand years. In other words, it won’t work in the long run and it will mess up the oceans. Bad idea….

…unsurprisingly, the model simulations found that all three of the leaky geological storage scenarios didn’t eliminate global warming, they just postponed it….

Depending on the storage mechanism, side effects include damaged underground aquifers and expansion of ocean “dead zones.” Moreover, once started down the sequestration route, mankind would be committed to a continuous effort for a length of time longer than all of human history past. What a deal….(Full Story)

By co-incidence, climaterealists.com shows an article, “Mean Free Path of Photons through the Troposphere and Time of Crossing Path of Photons,” by Dr. Nasif S. Nahle, Scientific Research Director at Biology Cabinet, 2010 08 09.

That article states that,

The CO2 is diluted in the atmosphere in a concentration of 0.038%, and it has been proposed by the IPCC as a main driver of the climate on Earth. Contrary to what the IPCC proposes, the physics of the thermal energy transfer indicates smashingly that the CO2 is not capable of changing the temperature of the atmosphere in a significant way….

The cited study report states that,

The water vapor in the atmosphere, at an average density, allows the photons go into the troposphere towards the outer layer of the tropopause in 0.024 s. Compared the water vapor ability to avoid the escape of photons from the atmosphere with the capacity of the atmospheric CO2 to avoid the photons escape to the outer space (0.0042 s), we can assure with 100% of certainty that the CO2 is irrelevant on warming the atmosphere or the surface. (p. 12, second-last par.)….

If we consider also that the carbon dioxide has a total absorptivity and total emissivity by far lower than those of the water vapor, we can fairly conclude that the carbon dioxide is not a driver of the climate on the Earth. The whole climate is driven by the hydrological cycle, and the main retainers of the solar thermal energy are the oceans, the land, the subsurface materials and the water vapor….(p. 13, 4th par., Full Report)

There it is, carbon capture and sequestration is a wild goose chase, a cure for a non-existing problem, but a lot of people will be employed to earn revenues — and even far more will be forced to pay for all of that — so that a few parties hyping up that particular, unfounded climate-change scare can make hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars in profits.

For those who argue that the science on all of that is settled, no, it isn’t!  The only thing that is settled is that there is an enormous profit incentive, and that there will be an enormous amount of profit that can be made for as long as those who need to pay for it all are willing to have the wool pulled over their eyes.

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Alarmist Insanity, Climate Change, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

August 5, 2010 by admin.

All of South America experienced a very harsh cold spell in mid-July that killed more than 400 people (mostly children), much life stock and many alpacas. (See Historical Cold Snap Freezes South America, July 21, 2010)

Now another consequence of the extreme cold spell emerges.

BoliviaBella.com

1 Million Fish Dead in Bolivian Ecological Disaster

(3 Aug. 2010 - Update: The number of dead fish and other water-dependent wildlife has increased to about 6 million.)

Over 1 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles, dolphins and other river wildlife are floating dead in numerous Bolivian rivers in the three eastern/southern departments of Santa Cruz, Beni and Tarija. The extreme cold front that hit Bolivia in mid-July caused water temperatures to dip below the minimum temperatures river life can tolerate. As a consequence, rivers, lakes, lagoons and fisheries are brimming with decomposing fish and other creatures….(Full Story — make sure to watch the video at the end of the article)

It would be surprising if the fish-die-off would not affect other South-American nations as well.

The mainstream media in the anglo-sphere kept totally silent on the ecological disaster and instead continued all along with raising alarm about catastrophic man-made global warming.

Posted in Censorship, Wildlife, Weather, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

August 3, 2010 by admin.

A Critical Review of Global Surface Temperature Data Products
Ross McKitrick, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph
Guelph Ontario Canada
July 26, 2010

This is a preliminary version of a report to be published in fall 2010 by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (http://thegwpf.org/) London, UK.

Comments and corrections are welcome: please send them to rmckitri@uoguelph.ca.

A PDF file (1.17 MB) of the preview of the report is accessible here.

For anyone wondering why a professor of economics gets involved in environmental issues, purported climate change trends result in policy decisions that will ultimately cost, globally, trillions of dollars and will make or break not only the economies of nations but the world economy itself.

Ross McKitrick is well qualified to write his current report on the state of the quality of the global surface temperature record and to state his well-founded concerns about the lack of confidence-inspiring quality of that record, expressed in his report, namely that,

The overall conclusion of this report is that there are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications. [Last paragraph on page 4 of the report]

Indirectly but inexorably (through vastly rising taxes and living costs), we all are users of the temperature data of unacceptable quality that is being used to justify policy decisions to address problems that quite likely are not man-made and quite likely by far not as severe as they are made out to be.

The policy decisions based on temperature trends derived from temperature data of demonstrated questionable quality will cost us as Canadians hundreds of billions of dollars and will have serious, negative impacts on our quality of life and standard of living.

We should all join in wishing Professor McKitrick the best of success in making policy makers around the world pay close attention to his well-founded concerns.

Once more, read the PDF file (1.17 MB) of the preview of Ross Mckitrick’s report.

Posted in Taxes, Propaganda debunked, Climate Change | Print | No Comments »

August 3, 2010 by admin.

From U.S. Senator Inhofe EPW Press Blog, August 2, 2010

Posted by Matt Dempsey Matt_Dempsey@epw.senate.gov

News9.com OKC  

EPA to Crack Down on Farm Dust

August 01, 2010

By Jacqueline Sit

Watch: Farmers Call Possible EPA Crack Down on Farm Dust ‘Ridiculous’

Link to Article

Comment on the Story on Inhofe Facebook Page

Posted in Alarmist Insanity, Climate Change, Community & Industry | Print | No Comments »

August 2, 2010 by admin.

Soot, in addition to CO2, is alleged to be the culprit of the day that drives climate change.

Although mentioned on occasion during the past few years, the remarkable thing now is that there have been two study reports lately that almost coincided with their release dates in identifying a neglected cause of alarm about climate change.  The first one of those was a University of Iowa News Release, July 27, 2010, announcing research published in the July 25 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

The second one was on research into the effects of soot on climate change by Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, July 29, 2010.

Especially the second one of those studies, the one by Mark Jacobson, has been picked up by the media, who are now in another feeding frenzy worrying over another cause of man-made “climate change”, soot that causes global warming, of course.

It seems to me that Mark Jacobson’s concerns, apparently based in part on the output of computer models, given that he previously voiced concerns that fit in well with many other Green causes, may not be entirely objective but possibly at least somewhat tainted by the agenda he helps to promote.  It appears that the computer models he used for his research were helpful in creating the evidence he needed to support his hypothesis.

According to Wikipedia, Mark Jacobson’s ideas on what is prim and proper in relation to mankind’s relationship with nature were expressed in and include the following:

• A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030, Scientific American, November 2009, p. 42;
• Nuclear power is too risky CNN.com, February 22, 2010;
• His group’s development of the world’s first wind map based on data at the height of modern wind turbines has served as a scientific justification for the wind component of the Repower America and Pickens Plan energy proposals.

The article by Mark Jacobson is not as of yet available to normal mortals.  The views expressed in the Journal of Geophysical Research are hidden behind a pay wall.  However, a number of journalists who write on environmental issues had something to write about; and they obviously loved what they read.  The Edmonton Journal, chiming in with the escalating onslaught on our climate sensibilities, blessed us with one particular interpretation by Randy Boswell, writing for Postmedia News.

The Edmonton Journal, 2010 08 02, page A3

Soot does climate change’s dirty work

Controlling black carbon best way to stop Arctic warming — study

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News August 2, 2010

From reading the article, it is not always clear whether the views expressed are those of Marc Jacobson or the opinions of Randy Boswell.  For that reason I will largely ignore who said anything and focus my comments on the assertions presented in the article published in the Edmonton Journal.

Given that the effects of soot estimated by Mark Jacobson concern “the visible residue of burned wood, crops, oil, biomass and other fuels”, it is difficult to understand how the soot emitted by the burning of wood, crops and dung in, for example millions of cooking fires in India, can be affordably controlled when most of the operators of those cooking fires can’t even afford proper chimneys, let alone any means of scrubbing soot from the smoke of their fires.

Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see a demonstration of how soot from India, with a residence time in the atmosphere of about a week, winds up in the Arctic, let alone in the Canadian portion of it.

Still, never daunted by such practical considerations, Mark Jacobson stated about soot that,

“We have to start taking its effects into account in planning our mitigation efforts, and the sooner we start making changes, the better.”

It is not clear whether it was Mark Jacobson or Randy Boswell who is the source of this:

As of mid-July, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center showed Arctic sea ice is retreating at about the same pace it did in 2007, when an unprecedented summer meltdown sparked alarm among scientists and governments.

There is no run-away melting of the Arctic sea ice.  Arctic sea-ice extent is presently substantially above what it was at this time of the year in 2007, about the same what it was in 2008 and 2009, and somewhat below the monthly average for the 1979-2006 interval at this time of year.  If soot is a major reason why Arctic sea ice is melting, its effects cannot be discerned in the observable trends of sea-ice extent, and neither can those of CO2.

The article states that “Previous research has identified soot as a significant factor compounding the recent, record-setting Arctic meltdown.”  It fails to identify the research that did so, but it asserts that “Jacobson’s research not only accounts for the warming effect of soot as it settles on snow and ice, but also the atmospheric impact as black-carbon particles suspended in the air absorb the sun’s heat and create higher ambient temperatures.”  Alright, I’ll bite, what is the evidence?  The article offers none.

The subsequent loss of sea ice only reinforces warming by replacing frozen ocean with dark stretches of open water, Jacobson notes.

Really?  Dark stretches of open water caused by soot?  If that were undisputably so, then why do the dark stretches of open water for August 1, 2010 cover a far smaller area than they did on August 1, 2007?

Arctic sea-ice extent Aug 1, 2010

Arctic sea-ice extent Aug 1, 2007

The article asserts that,

“There is a big concern that if the Arctic melts, it will be a tipping point for the Earth’s climate because the reflective sea ice will be replaced by a much darker, heat-absorbing, ocean below,” he states. “Once the sea ice is gone, it is really hard to regenerate because there is not an efficient mechanism to cool the ocean down in the short term,”

that “the impact of soot on worldwide warming has been seriously underestimated,…” and that,

“In 2007, the U.S. scientists behind another study of soot’s climate impact — also published in the Journal of Geophysical Research — identified Canada as key to any global effort to reduce the effect of black carbon emissions.”

Nevertheless, the article fails to identify what portions of soot affecting the Arctic meltdown stem from the various contributors, such as China, Russia and European nations, and how Canada’s curbing of its relatively insignificant contribution will have a significant impact on slowing down the alleged and apparently non-existent melting of the Arctic sea-ice due to soot.

“One of the co-authors, University of California researcher Charlie Zender, said in 2007 that fallen soot had the effect of “placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack.”

Still, the article asserts that, in referring to an earlier article on the impact of soot,

“Zender said at the time that although all nations contribute to the problem of snow impurity through the long-range transport of pollutants, Canada bears particular responsibility to push for cleaner-burning fuels and reduced industrial emissions of soot,”

and that,

“Just as Brazil is the custodian of the Amazon, a world resource whose deforestation has all sorts of negative consequences, so is Canada a custodian of an important swath of snow-covered land that helps to cool the planet,” he stated.

So, it is not quite obvious what Canada can do to save the globe, but I suppose that having Canadians pay more taxes to provide for more funding to enable the search for novel ways to raise alarm about a global meltdown would be a good start for keeping alarmist researchers well employed.
(Full Edmonton Journal Story)

Other than that, the Danish Meteorological Institute identifies that for virtually all of the summer this year the arctic temperatures were well below the average for the 1958-2002 interval:

(Click to see full size)

Clearly, notwithstanding any of the modelling used for raising alarm about climate change, the real world shows no obvious evidence that the growing production of man-made soot causes increasing arctic temperature trends. Moreover, while the arctic sea-ice extent experiences its annual reduction, the antarctic sea-ice extent is one of the largest it has been for as long as satellite measurement of that were made.

(Click to see full size)

Posted in Climate Change, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

July 29, 2010 by admin.

In the face of irrefutably declining sea surface temperatures, a new study (by Boris Worm et al, Dalhousie University, apparently published in Nature — I have not yet been able to locate the study)  causes cries of alarm that “microscopic marine algae known as phytoplankton have declined globally by roughly 40 percent since 1950 because of rising sea surface temperatures and changing ocean conditions.” (as per an article, “Dying algae a ‘global concern’”, The Edmonton Journal, July 29, 2010, A3)

• Crucial marine algae declining globally, says Canadian Study
  The Vancouver Sun

• Study: Phytoplankton Population Down 40 Percent In 60 Years
  All Headline News

• ‘Marine phytoplankton steadily declining over 20th century
  New Kerala

• Concern over declining marine algae
  Virgin Media

• New study reveals decline of marine phytoplankton over the past century
  Science Centric

•  Are our oceans dying? Phytoplankton has declined 40% in 60 years as figures reveal Earth has been getting hotter since the Eighties
  Daily Mail

• Phytoplankton in decline: bye bye food chain?
  New Scientist

• Warmer seas put marine food chain at risk
  ABC Online

• Food chain’s fuel runs low
  Scotsman

• Vital ocean phytoplankton a casualty of global warming?
  The Christian Science Monitor

• Base of Ocean Food Chain Is in Decline, Study Finds
  LiveScience.com

• Marine Phytoplankton Declining: Striking Global Changes at the Base of the Marine Food Web Linked to Rising Ocean Temperatures
  Science Daily

I became aware of this latest scare story when checking The Edmonton Journal this morning.  It carried a similar story, taking up about half of page A3:

Dying algae a ‘global concern’

Carmen Chai
Postmedia News

As of the time of writing this, that article was not yet available on The Edmonton Journal’s website.

The media feeding frenzy with respect to this latest instance of climate change alarmism brings to mind what Conrad Black had to say about the integrity of journalists.  In “The Establishment Man” (Peter C. Newman, 1982, MacLelland & Stewart Limited, ISBN 0-7710-6785-2) his views are described as follows:

    While Black does admire a few individual journalists, he despises their profession.  “My experience of the working press,” he says, “is that they are a very degenerate group.  There is a terrible incidence of alcoholism and drug abuse.  The mental stability of large elements of the press is more open to question than that of many other comparable groups in society.  A number of them are ignorant, lazy, opiniated, intellectually dishonest, and inadequately supervised.”

    “The individual journalist, if he has any panache or talent, becomes something of a celebrity.  Much of his social life is built up on the press-circuit: bars, hangers-on, media groupies, the stifling and depraved gossip of the degenerate little media community, and the fawning of unfulfilled women, boys, and hucksters…. Journalism tends to attract the sort of person who settles whimsically on it as a calling or comes to it after disappointments elsewhere, because of the relative ease of entry into the field.  These people, discouraged and purposeless are easily influenced by their angrier colleagues.  It is by inadvertence, inexperience, the investigative nature of the press, the antithetical role of the employee, and the negligence of the employer, and not by any organized subversion, that the press veered away from being a mirror to society, and became a perverse sort of irregular and often disloyal opposition.”

     Black blames this sad state of the journalist’s craft on the decline of resident media proprietors, who might have been excentric and curmudgeonly in character but at least ran their own shops.  “With the rise of the chains,” he says, “the publisher has become a local coordinator and functionary, answerable to his absentee employer on economic matters, with a mandate to ensure that the content is sufficiently anodyne to avoid disputes with advertisers, sufficiently formless to avoid strikes in the newsrooms.  The proprietors take relatively little interest in the journalistic aspects of the business….” [page 196]

It is curious that later, when Conrad Black acquired the Canadian Southam newspaper chain, he too became an “absentee employer,” one of those whom he castigated prior to 1982 for being at least in a major part responsible for everything that is wrong with today’s quality of journalism.

To come back to the “irrefutably declining sea-surface temperatures”, you may wish to follow these links:

• Sea-Surface Temperature Anomalies
  

• Global Average Sea Surface Temperatures Continue their Plunge
  June 18th, 2010 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

• Even doubling or tripling the amount of CO2′ will have ‘little impact’ on temps
  Posted on September 4, 2008 by Anthony Watts
  From New Zealand Climate Science
  Professor Geoffrey G Duffy
  DEng, PhD, BSc, ASTC Dip., FRS NZ, FIChemE, CEng
  “It is also interesting to note that NASA’s Aqua satellite system has shown that the earth has been cooling since 1998.   This corresponds with measurements from the Argos sub-ocean probes that the ocean is cooling.”

Never let facts come in the way of a good scare story.  Instead, raise alarm on pure speculation, such as, “The study suggests…,” or “This may well be one of the largest biological changes observed in recent times,” and project from there to asserting “simply because it affects most of the biosphere,” said study co-author Boris Worm,” and there you have it, a new scare story that will without a doubt drive a long-lasting wave of unfounded and largely unsubstantiated media hype and hysteria that will take a long time to simmer down into the mundane and boring reality that the whole concern was vastly overblown.  However, when that, finally and perhaps years from now, comes to pass, it will not make the front pages, if anyone in the mainstream media even should bother to report on it.

In the meantime, the funding for the researchers that fuel such media hype and hysteria keeps rolling in, wherefore they will keep stoking the fires of climate change alarmism.

–Walter

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Climate Change | Print | 1 Comment »