I have always been sceptical about the more extreme claims of the Global Warming True Believers. However, despite news media and left wing politicians using the climate change issue to bludgeon the economy, I really had believed the underlying science.
However, many people saw the climategate emails as proof that the science had been manipulated. One blogger has done something very few people have done. He has read every single of the 1,000+ Climategate e-mails. He has a lengthy 4,500 word blog post on his findings. Poneke introduces it by saying:
This is the longest and most important article I’ve yet written for this blog and I make no apology for its 4600 words — more also than in any newspaper article. As a journalist, I believe the Climategate emails have exposed one of the most significant news stories of the decade. As the mainstream news media has so far barely gone beyond giving those who wrote them and their supporters time and space to deny their undeniable contents, I present here an extensive journalistic account of what they actually say in the context of the dates and events in which they were written, with full links to all the emails.
His conclusions:
Having now read all the Climategate emails, I can conclusively say they demonstrate a level of scientific chicanery of the most appalling kind that deserves the widest possible public exposure.
The emails reveal that the entire global warming debate and the IPCC process is controlled by a small cabal of climate specialists in England and North America. This cabal, who call themselves “the Team,” bully and smear any critics. They control the “peer review” process for research in the field and use their power to prevent contrary research being published.
The Team’s members are the heart of the IPCC process, many of them the lead authors of its reports.
They falsely claim there is a scientific “consensus” that the “science is settled,” by getting lists of scientists to sign petitions claiming there is such a consensus. They have fought for years to conceal the actual shonky data they have used to wrongly claim there has been unprecedented global warming this past 50 years. Their emailed discussions among each other show they have concocted their data by matching analyses of tree rings from around 1000 AD to 1960, then actual temperatures from 1960 to make it look temperatures have shot up alarmingly since then, after the tree rings from 1960 on inconveniently failed to match observed temperatures.
The emails show that some of them at least concede in private that the world was warmer 1000 years ago (in the Medieval Warm Period) than it is today, but the emails also show they had to get rid of the MWP from the records to claim today’s temperatures are unprecedented.
They show Team members becoming alarmed and despondent at global temperatures peaking in 1998, then slowly falling to the present, while publicly trying to hide the fact that there was a peak and now a decline.
Revealingly, they show them even smugly nominating each other for prestigious awards, using factually wrong details in the information sent in nominating letters in support of the awards.
He looks at the peer review process:
AGWarmers parrot the mantra that their view is supported by learned articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and that peer-reviewed contrary views cannot be found. The Climategate emails conclusively show that the Team control the peer-reviewed literature, to the extent they “peer review” each other’s reports, and veto publication of research they do not support, bullying the editors and owners of scientific journals.
Worse, though, is the emails’ revelation that even material they put into the hallowed reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was not peer reviewed, and knowingly shabby.
Poneke’s full post is a must read. It is also the sort of journalism that should be in the mainstream media. Has any major news organisation assigned a reporter to read all 1,000 e-mails?
In chapter two of his first year economics textbook, economist Greg Mankiw includes a table of propositions to which most economists subscribe, based on various polls of the profession. Below is the list, together with the percentage of economists who agree:
- A ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available. (93%)
- Tariffs and import quotas usually reduce general economic welfare. (93%)
- Flexible and floating exchange rates offer an effective international monetary arrangement. (90%)
- Fiscal policy (e.g., tax cut and/or government expenditure increase) has a significant stimulative impact on a less than fully employed economy. (90%)
- The United States should not restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries. (90%)
- The United States should eliminate agricultural subsidies. (85%)
- Local and state governments should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises. (85%)
- If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the business cycle rather than yearly. (85%)
- The gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged. (85%)
- Cash payments increase the welfare of recipients to a greater degree than do transfers-in-kind of equal cash value. (84%)
- A large federal budget deficit has an adverse effect on the economy. (83%)
- A minimum wage increases unemployment among young and unskilled workers. (79%)
- The government should restructure the welfare system along the lines of a “negative income tax.” (79%)
- Effluent taxes and marketable pollution permits represent a better approach to pollution control than imposition of pollution ceilings. (78%)
You want a better economy, with more wealth and jobs? Then take note of the above.
via David Farrar’s Kiwiblog.
In a landmark decison, the New Zealand government has assigned intellectual property rights in the traditional Maori haka, the Ka Mate, to Ngati Toa, a North Island tribal group.
The haka war dance, made famous by the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, was officially handed back to a Maori tribe on Monday 11 February to stop it being ripped off by Hollywood directors and international advertising campaigns.
While the government’s action is largely symbolic, it is considered immensely significant by Maori leaders. “Ngati Toa’s primary objective is to prevent the misappropriation and culturally inappropriate use of the Ka Mate haka,” the official settlement letter read.
Examples of uses that Maori have found objectional include a 2006 television advertisement by the car maker Fiat in which Italian women performed a slapdash rendition of the haka (traditionally performed only by men), and the 2007 case where a New Zealand bakery featured a mock performance by gingerbread men. Ngati Toa elders were also incensed when the haka was performed in the Hollywood movie Forever Strong, about a high school rugby team in the US.
The agreement was a special provision in a $NZ121m compensation package awarded to eight tribes as part of the Treaty of Waitangi negotaiations over land rights abuses. John Key, New Zealand’s prime minister, said the issue was about cultural redress and not money. If a company wanted to use the haka for commercial reasons there should be a recognition of the tribe’s cultural interests. How this would be handled in the final treaty settlement was still a matter of discussion, he told the New Zealand Herald. He said he did not believe the All Blacks would be considered as commercially exploiting the haka.
“They are our national sports team and they have had the rendition of Ka Mate for a long time … There will neither be any restrictions on them in terms of their use or rendition of Ka Mate, nor any charge for doing so,” he added.
Amazon currently offers DRM-free MP3 tracks from all four major music labels, something no other digital music store can boast. That’s 3.3 million songs from over 270,000 artists. But if you live outside of the US, good luck actually purchasing any of that music.
However, Amazon has announced plans to take its Amazon MP3 store global sometime in 2008. No word on whether that means February or December, but we’ll keep you posted.
The Sunday Star Times has labelled the decision for no member of the Royal Family to attend Sir Edmund’s funeral as a slap in the face for all New Zealanders. In a separate story, they also report on reaction quoting a UK royal correspondent who labels it an “astonishing” snub.
The Royal Family sent a member to the funerals of Norman Kirk (who died while PM) and Keith Holyoake (who died after he had retired from politics). They have been badly advised in their decision not to attend Hillary’s. There is no question that there were Royals available with no clashing engagements, and there was definitely time for a flight over to be arranged.
From The Hive:
We reported a few weeks ago on Professor Jane Kelsey’s positive attitude to the rising Cuban and Venezuelan influence in the Pacific. A very similar attitude seems to be adopted by leftist groups in Australia. This article is a few weeks old but gives the flavour of this viewpoint. The same website carries an interview with Venezuela’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs for Asia, the Middle East and Oceania, Vladimir Villegas.
Also see:
The battle between China and Taiwan for the Pacific,
analysis of a recent speech by John Bryan, ex New Zealand high commissioner to the Cook Islands,
and The Hive’s original post.
An interesting post on battle between China and Taiwan for the Pacific that analyzes a recent speech by John bryan, the departing New Zealand high commissioner to the Cook Islands.
It’s interesting to note that, like the Cook Island’s, Niue’s foreign affairs are managed by New Zealand. However, Niue has recently established diplomatic relations with China. The China v Taiwan issue is apparent there, too.
via KiwiBlog
New Zealand Police are to question medal dealers and international collectors in a bid to capture the thieves who robbed the Army Museum in Waiouru, making off with 100 medals.
A border alert has been put in place to prevent any of the medals, taken early on Sunday morning, from leaving the country.
The missing medals include nine Victoria Crosses and two George Crosses. Among the medals stolen was Captain Charles Upham’s Victoria Cross and bar, which sold last year, reportedly for more than $1 million and was on loan to the museum. Massey University associate professor of defence studies Glyn Harpersaid the average value of a VC was $500,000, but the Upham medal and bar was worth “millions because it is one of only three in the world, and the only one ever awarded to a combat officer”. A British Collector has offered $200,000 for the return of the medals.