But should they be “spinning” quite so hard? After all as the old wisdom goes: “when in a hole, stop digging!“.

In the Sunday Telegraph today Robert Mendick reports that a “source close to CRU” is saying:

“One option is a mole was placed inside the university to leak emails to deliberately discredit the work being done at the CRU” (my emphasis).

A mole “was placed“?

This brings to mind John Le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy“, so wonderfully dramatised on the box all those years ago. Ian Richardson played Bill Hayden, the “sleeper” right at the heart of British secret intelligence – the “circus”.

Does CRU have its own “Bill Hayden”? How long has the mole been a sleeper? How was the mole recruited? By the KGB at Cambridge? Or maybe by ExxonMobil?

Or should we conclude that UEA are trying just a little bit too hard to distract from their scientific embarassment by conjuring up such sinister scenarios?

“Snow fell as the House of Commons debated Global Warming yesterday – the first October fall in the metropolis since 1922. The Mother of Parliaments was discussing the Mother of All Bills for the last time, in a marathon six hour session. ” More on this

How does the UK Met Office’s forecast compare?

“25 September 2008
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.“

So now of course we have extraordinary cold weather in October (triggering Government cold weather payments) and floods in Devon!

‘Nuff said?

The sinning article is here:

Unbelievable!

“Shall we endure longer that the succession of the seasons be changed, and the temper of the heavens be stirred to anger, since the embittered perfidy of the pagans does not know how to preserve these balances of nature? For why has the spring renounced its accustomed charm? Why has the summer, barren of its harvest, deprived the labouring farmer of his hope of a grain harvest? Why has the intemperate ferocity and the winter with its piercing cold doomed the fertility of the lands with the disaster of sterility? Why all these things, unless nature has transgressed the decree of its own law to avenge such impiety?” –Novellae Theodosiani, 438 CE

(Spotted in Benny Peiser’s excellent CCNet)

September 26th 2007: Connie Hedegaard, the Danish Minister for Environment, in the Washington Post: “European leaders are getting a bit impatient, not on our own behalf but on behalf of the planet. China, India and the other industrializing countries will not do anything unless the U.S. is moving.”

September 29th 2007: From Point Carbon: “Denmark’s CO2 emissions rose 16.1 per cent in 2006 compared to the previous year on the back of strong economic growth and electricity exports from coal-fired power plants, according to statistics released today.”

The Montreal Protocol is all about curbing the gas emissions that damage the ozone layer so that we don’t all get skin cancer.

Now Rajendra Shende, director of ozone issues at the United Nations Environment Programme (which administers the Montreal Protocol) is calling foul, claiming that the Kyoto carbon trading scheme is perversely subsidising an increase in the Ozone depleting refrigerant gas HCFC 22.

What happens is that folks in the West are paying money through “carbon trading” to salve their carbon conscience. Quite a lot of that money is going to Indian and Chinese industry to help pay for the cost of destroying greenhouse gases. One of these – HFC 23 – is a waste product that is produced in the course of manufacturing the ozone-destroying refrigerant HCFC 22.

So carbon credits are making it cheaper to produce ozone-unfriendly gases, and the consequence is, as you would expect, that production of those bad guys is increasing.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions“!

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html

The test comes with a health and safety warning:

“This section contains sound science, not media hype, and may therefore contain material not suitable for young people trying to get a good grade in political correctness”

Monte Hieb is chief engineer at the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health Safety and Training. Unfortunately this association with the coal industry will doubtless encourage the dismissal of his test out of hand by those with ad hominem tendencies!

I Particularly liked this:

“…George W. Bush’s ranch in Texas is more environmentally friendly than the Gore mansion in Tennessee. According to the Nashville Electric Service, the Eco-Messiah’s house uses 20 times more electricity than the average American home. The average household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours”

And this on the concept of conscience-salving by “carbon offsets“:

“How do “carbon offsets” work? Well, let’s say you’re a former vice president and you want to reduce your “carbon footprint,” but the gorgeous go-go Gore gals are using the hair dryer every night. So you go to a carbon-credits firm and pay some money and they’ll find a way of getting somebody on the other side of the planet to reduce his emissions and the net result will be “carbon neutral.” It’s like in Henry VIII’s day. He’d be planning a big ox roast and piling on the calories but he’d give a groat to a starving peasant to carry on starving for another day and the result would be calorie-neutral“

More of this excellent knockabout stuff here

I guess most “contrarians” are driven by the idea that the AGW conjecture has been hijacked by various folks to serve some nefarious agenda: anti-capitalism, displaced post-christian guilt, anti-americanism, and so forth.

In the popular imagination the media has created a consensus where that symbol of capitalism the car is deeply implicated with the idea of “global warming”. We have to tax/cut down/ban/ the use of gas-guzzling vehicles (especially in the good ‘ole USA of course!).

How interesting then to discover that in fact according to a new report from LEAD:

The livestock sector is…responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport

Now when you think about it, especially in the current climate of “climate change hysteria”, that is a pretty amazing assertion. It sets a bit of a different perspective, no?

So who is LEAD? If you’re thinking it’s some conservative think-tank “funded by big oil” (the knee-jerk response to inconvenient truths for those sympathetic to Gore’s Incovenient Truth), you’d be quite wrong. LEAD (Livestock, Environment and Development LEAD Initiative) is a multi-institutional initiative of FAO formed “to promote ecologically sustainable livestock production systems”. OK, I hear you ask, who is FAO? Well they are the FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS. Now these good people are NOT contrarians and deniers (what a surprise!). In fact in the same report from LEAD we read the perfectly politically correct:

With rising temperatures, rising sea levels, melting icecaps and glaciers, shifting ocean currents and weather patterns, climate change is the most serious challenge facing the human race

But where in the current political and media debate about global warming do you see any acknowledgment that it is livestock that is a bigger problem than transport?

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