Gareth – Page 144

Imagining 2020: The age of the bloody lucky

Third essay in the Imagining 2002 series comes from Imagineer Dave McArthur, who examines how NZ made the transition “from being per capita one of the most violent and polluting nations on the planet to a centre of harmonious practice”.

It is 2020 and we have finally worked out the nature of the mysterious force that came to dominate human affaires and transformed global society a decade earlier. A consensus now exists that if this force had not emerged then the existing play of physical forces were all set to form a confluence that would have resulted almost certainly in a catastrophic world war about 2013 in which many billions of people perished in terrible ways.

All manner of experts have endeavoured to identify this great force that prevented such misery and grief. Only now are we aware of how its enormous transformative potential existed in a latent form in nations for centuries. There are few records of it being mentioned in the daily discourse of people this last century or so and we still do not understand how humans suddenly were able to harness its powers so effectively. This much is known:

In the 20th Century we human beings had developed industrialised processes of slaughter of all kinds of creatures, including the massacre of our own species on continental scale. By 2009 many people were feeling helpless as they and their communities were buffeted by an aggregation of hostile forces – climatic, hygroscopic, hydrologic, carbonic, phosphoric and other elements that normally sustain human life. Studies of the language of the period reveal much self-hatred and the demonising of other races and cultures, carbon, climate change, water, global warming and even energy itself.

The rare accounts we have of those who don’t generally write the history books indicates that many people had gut feelings of increasing impotency and deep dread of imminent societal collapse. It is clear that media accounts and official statistics of the period did not accurately reflect their experience of growing inflation and loss of wealth, rising household debt, malnourishment, pollution and crime. It is evident that by 2009 this was also occurring on scale to the middle class in supposedly rich countries.

All manner of systems, including credit systems, built on a valuation of mineral oil of $US25 a barrel were imploding. They were set for imminent collapse as this immensely valuable mineral resource was being depleted in insane ways (private cars, trucks, jets, fertiliser, “disposable” items etc.).

This confluence of forces made a seismic lurch into catastrophic warfare inevitable.

It is probable that a combination of the widespread gut feelings of the futility of war and a desire for civilisation generated the behavioural change. It is instructive to study the transformation of the small country of New Zealand. It changed from being per capita one of the most violent and polluting nations on the planet to a centre of harmonious practice. We are now aware that the following prime changes occurred.

Education

Traditionally the abuse of the nation’s carbon, water, solar and electrical potential had been enabled by a curriculum that taught that science is a way of thinking devoid of moral force. The result was a reverence for an amoral, all-powerful god called “The Market” plus the destruction of most of New Zealand’s forests and much of its soil, water and air quality.

By 2009 the new neurophysics research capacity showed clearly the powerful and integrated roles of our primal psychology, “mirror neurons” and symbol use. Quantum physics indicated information is physical. We know some people were concerned too by documentation showing that the average New Zealander consumed resources at over five times the sustainable rate of planet Earth. We know some also realised the nation’s high level of destruction of remaining mineral oil and gas reserves would have an incalculable negative affect on our options in 2020 and beyond.

These are some of the possible reasons why a national consensus emerged in 2010 that an education system could no longer be evaluated by what its graduates said. The truer measure of quality education is what graduates actually do.

This new measure immediately revealed the traditional Education Curriculum Framework was fatally flawed. The subsequent review redefined the nature and role of science. Science became the driver of all education and was redefined as a state of being in which the following qualities are each necessary requisites for the state of science to exist:

Compassion in learning
Collegiality and sharing
Time and reflection
Inquiry and inclusiveness
Honesty and trust

The effects of this new National Education Curriculum Framework were almost instantaneous and profound. A great transformative force occurred. Students now understood science is a state almost every human is born into. They were no longer taught that Science is a special way of thinking, only attainable by a small clever elite called “scientists” who understood “science”.

Instead they now understood the state of science is a dynamic moral condition that enables the arts, language and civics to thrive. It is the essence of effective learning.

This new consciousness spread rapidly into communities. Schools restructured their learning activities and teachers their lifestyles. Their communities became excited by the changes and rapidly adopted them. There are many accounts in which people speak of their ”creative potential being unshackled” and experiencing “new and wonderful meaning” in their lives.

It is clear this restructured education curriculum played an essential role in releasing this mysterious potent force that came to dominate human affaires. It is difficult to determine how much the altered curriculum affected the simultaneous transformations that occurred in other spheres of human activity. [Sustainability Principles: NZ Curriculum]

Population

Previously any fall in a nation’s population was experienced as a sign of a failing economy. People who decided to have childless and sole child families were derided as greedy and spiritually deprived, particularly in Anglo-American nations like New Zealand. Now access to family planning facilities became a universal civic right and those who decided not to propagate became revered. A nation’s health was now measured by its ability to reduce its population in careful humane ways.

Copyright

For over a century an elite, usually those who most benefited from private corporations, fostered the belief that copyright law enabled creativity and wealth creation. The 2008 economic implosion in supposedly wealthy nations addicted to the copyright ethos may have alerted many people to the dangers of this myth. Nations like the USA and New Zealand which should most have profited from copyright were instead now revealed as bankrupt and dangerous.

The transformed education curriculum also made it obvious to most people that copyright destroys creativity and wealth because it disables all the requisites necessary for science to exist.

The review and mass rejection of copyright law that resulted caused a great flowering in the varieties of technology, media, music, arts and other meaningful options available.

The review and mass rejection of copyright law that resulted caused a great flowering in the varieties of technology, media, music, arts and other meaningful options available. It is difficult in 2020 to comprehend the scale of the starvation and under nourishment, wars, waste, inequity, pollution, wasteful devices and unsustainable practices that existed just ten years ago because of copyright.

“Energy” and “Power”

Study of all forms of media indicates that an oligarchy of merchant bankers dominated human discourse till a decade ago. This small group determined the use of these prime symbols. They promoted uses of these vital symbols by which the symbols were associated with the products they most profited from. By 2000 the “energy” and “power” symbols were synonymous with fossil fuels and Bulk-generated electrical products.

These symbol associations generated addictive uses of these resources and destroyed science on scale.

We now understand clearly the fatal flaw in this behaviour; the dangers of confusing energy/power with individual forms; and the dissonance generated in the denial of the Conservation Principle of Energy. All children are now taught a working knowledge of the wisdom in that great guide to symbol use –the Sustainability Principle of Energy.

Energy is now experienced as the potential of the universe(s) and power as a measure of the rate the potential is manifest. It is difficult in our current sense of bounty to imagine the sensations of deprivation and disconnection experienced by people a decade ago.

Media

The new education curriculum had a spontaneous effect on journalism schools. Students and professionals alike were filled with a refreshed sense of science. This was incompatible with the century old corporate media structures designed to serve the short-term selfish interests of the controlling oligarchy.

Dedicated journalists realised their lifestyles defined their journalism. Many elected to work part time in manual and other jobs for independence of income and to employ the new electronic media in ways that enabled deep integrity of journalistic practice.

Dedicated journalists realised their lifestyles defined their journalism. Many elected to work part time in manual and other jobs for independence of income and to employ the new electronic media in ways that enabled deep integrity of journalistic practice. Their dedication was soon rewarded. New Zealanders, motivated by the newfound feelings of stewardship and meaning enabled by the new education curriculum, responded by supporting quality journalists directly, just as they now valued and directly supported artists, musicians, researchers, teachers et al in their communities now. Public broadcasting facilities began to flourish as the charters governing Radio NZ and Television NZ were rewritten to enable true national discourse.

Carbon Potential

New Zealand’s history since 1800 is characterised by an abuse of its carbon potential -deforestation, monoculture, destruction of soil life and high carbon pollution of the atmosphere. In the 1990s it was in the forefront of the development of a global Carbon Trading scheme by which nations ceded sovereign rights and responsibilities to an oligarchy of stateless merchant bankers/traders. In 2008 it was one of the first nations to cede away stewardship of carbon and allow this stateless oligarchy of “carbon traders” to set the value of carbon forms.

It is easy now in 2020 to identify the psychopathy and psychosis of this brutal regime. It was not so easily apparent then. We know the 2009 reforms of this “Emissions Trading Scheme” (ETS) reinforced in many New Zealanders their gut feeling of great unease that the ETS represented a gigantic rort. They sensed the hideous course of the Carbon Trader pathology.

In 2010 we see the resurrection of the NZ Values Party, based on values of personal and sovereign stewardship of carbon. This Party had unique resonance in the new spiritual climate and soon other parties withdrew support for the ETS.

Since 2010 the majority of New Zealanders have welcomed the self-imposed annual doubling in value of carbon forms like mineral oil. This has allowed the investment required to create the wonderful electrical mass transit systems and work/recreational potential we enjoy today plus the elimination of our national debt.

Modern carbon uses, such as the use of polymers for transfer and storage of electrical products and of biomass for storage of data, illustrate very clearly it is not how much carbon we use but how we use it that matters.

Electrical Potential

New Zealand’s abuse of this potential is similar in magnitude to that of its abuse of carbon. The prevalent myth, propagated by this same oligarchy of merchant traders for a century, was that their Bulk-generated electrical products ARE energy, power and electricity. This myth soon dissipated in the much-enhanced state of science that emerged. Students now associate energy and power with bounty and variety. They also now comprehend that electricity does not exist. They are careful to symbolise each of the very different electrical phenomena that do exist and this is a reason why our dwellings are now such sustainable sources of amazing electrical products.

Students are now also skilled to differentiate between “smart” and “intelligent” electrical technology”. We now recognise that “smart” uses of technology can easily destroy democracy and put us all at risk. We know that “intelligent” uses involve all the community in an equal democratic conversation of how their local electrical potential is used. Most students are now capable of rating local grids on an intelligence continuum.

It is clear this proliferation of resources could not have occurred without the repeal of the 1993 and 1998 NZ Electricity Industry Reform legislation. This repressive legislation was designed with 100% effect to remove the historic right of all New Zealand communities to own the intelligence of their local electrical potential. By 1999 not one community retained that right anymore.

It seems the repeal and re-enfranchisement of NZ citizens occurred with surprising ease. Perhaps it was the prospect of the imminent and horrific war in which our large dams and other Bulk-generation devices would be prime targets of obliteration? Perhaps it was the gut level unhappiness of their families and their staff of their roles? Whatever, records show many top managers of the Bulk-generation corporations in the sector urged the Government repeal of the Electricity Industry Reform legislation. There are many subsequent accounts in which both executives and staff speak of the sense of release, exhilaration and reward they now experience working in the multitude of community-based structures that sprang up again after the repeal.

Solar potential

In 2020 we take if for granted that before enacting any major legislation we ask how it impacts on our capacity to conserve and maximise our solar potential. A decade ago nearly all building and “environmental” regimes were designed to serve the short-term interests of the banker oligarchy. They determined how we built and used our dwellings and communities. They controlled all electrical metering and most electronic information transfers, transport structures and food distribution. Speculators commonly built to destroy urban solar potentials whereas now we would not dream of building a dwelling without, for instance its roof facing to the sun. Whereas local councils were primarily Building Code enforcers a decade ago they and the new Building Code are now the prime drivers of research and education of sustainable design.

The power of the mysterious force alluded to is such that in 2010 the NZ Minister of Energy and Resources, Hon Gerry Brownlie, realised such a title is patently ludicrous. Unlike his immediate predecessors he gained the fortitude and inspiration to transcend his ego.

The power of the mysterious force alluded to is such that in 2010 the NZ Minister of Energy and Resources, Hon Gerry Brownlie, realised such a title is patently ludicrous. Unlike his immediate predecessors he gained the fortitude and inspiration to transcend his ego. In 2010 the pretentious and destructive role of Minister of Energy was laid to rest and in its place we now have various ministries, including the Ministers for Conserving our Solar Potential, our Mineral Potential, our Electrical Potential and our Carbon Potential.

Economics

This, like Environmental Education, exists mainly in our history books now. Both are superseded by the powerful discipline of civics. Economics a decade ago is best characterised as a religion in which believers defer to an omnipotent Being called “The Market”. Study of the literature and media of last century reveals a growing tendency to ascribe all manner of human qualities to this transcendent “Being”. Typical was media statements of belief that “The Market likes/does not like this decision/that Government policy”.

In 2020 we recognise the dangerous pathology of this religion and how it nearly destroyed humanity. We now are mindful to conserve the potential of the “market symbol” and know there are all manner of markets involving every type of human interaction. To each we give a name.

Similarly Environmental Education was a sophisticated form of Banker Speak that destroyed science on scale in our communities. The advent of the science-based curriculum placed personal stewardship at the centre of the study of all disciplines. This, plus an enhanced sense of integration with all, caused both concepts to fade into irrelevance.

Democracy

In 2020 in our privileged state of science the majority of citizens now embrace our roles as stewards. We are much more aware that our every action is a vote. In 2009 the average NZer had no awareness that they placed their most potent votes at the petrol pump, airline counter, supermarket checkout and dwelling switchboard. These votes determined the quality of their Parliament and thus New Zealand MPs were characterised by fear and amorality. Hansard records reveal that every party approved the ETS and Electricity Industry Reforms. It is hard now to imagine how impotent and exploited the average citizen was.

Some call 2020 the Great Solar-Electrical Age. Others who are aware of how close human kind came to triggering a catastrophic global war in 2013 call it the Age of the Bloody Lucky. Perhaps it is best known by the name of that mysterious transforming force that underpinned all the changes mentioned – The Age of Compassion. It was this force that enabled even members of the psychopathic Banker oligarchy to experience the moments of other sentient beings and to transcend their own greed and suffering for vital periods. They thus decided not to risk a vast escalation in needless misery by abusing the insights in articles like this one. Compassion prevailed.

NZ temps: warming real, record robust, sceptics wrong

The National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), accused last week of fiddling the long term New Zealand temperature record to create spurious warming, has released information showing that the attack mounted by the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition and Climate Conversation Group has no merit.

The NIWA announcement shows that the warming trend in the long term record is also found when weather stations with long term records that require no corrections are used. From the release:

Dr Jim Salinger has identified from the NIWA climate archive a set of 11 stations with long records where there have been no significant site changes. When the annual temperatures from all of these sites are averaged to form a temperature series for New Zealand, the best-fit linear trend is a warming of 1°C from 1931 to 2008. We will be placing more information about this on the web later this week.

I’ll have more detail on that series when it’s made available. So the warming in the record is robust, found in sites all round New Zealand, and doesn’t depend on mysterious adjustments. But the Treadgold/CSC report also made claims about data being hidden:

Requests for this information from Dr Salinger himself over the years, by different scientists, have long gone unanswered, but now we might discover the truth.

That’s an outright lie, as the NIWA release shows.

For more than two years, New Zealand Climate Science Coalition members have known of the need to adjust the “seven station” data. They have had access to:

the raw data

the adjusted data (anomalies)

information needed to identify the adjustments made by Dr Salinger

information needed to develop their own adjustments.

The NIWA release cites emails to CSC members Vincent Grey and Warwick Hughes in July 2006, which provided all the references required to calculate the necessary adjustments themselves. In particular, all the information about the station site changes has been publicly available since 1992 and details of the methodology since 1993!

So where does this leave Treadgold and the CSC? They have published a report, issued press releases and made blog posts that misrepresent the facts, and have shown themselves incapable of conducting good science. They have proven themselves morally and ethically bankrupt, and should — if they had any decency — withdraw and apologise. But I won’t be holding my breath.

Shock revelation: top NZ climate scientist admits global conspiracy to warm planet

WORLD EXCLUSIVE!: Hot Topic can reveal that the days of the great climate science conspiracy are finally over. In an unprecedented display of public candour Dr Jim Salinger, New Zealand’s leading climate scientist, admitted in a letter to the NZ Herald this week that he’s been part of a conspiracy to mislead the public about global warming. Responding to a perceptive column by investigative reporter Jim Hopkins, he wrote (and this is the unedited version which names names — I had to hack into his email system to get it):

I was very upset to see that the doyen of climate science investigators, Jim Hopkins, has finally got to the truth of NZ’s con of the century. Yes – he has uncovered it – the Great Aotearoa Climate Conspiracy (GACC) of the 20th century! My fellow schemers over the years include E Kidson, Ben Garnier, Blair Fitzharris, Trevor Chinn, Kevin Trenberth, John Kidson, James Renwick, Brett Mullan, and Rob Muldoon. GACC operatives have secreted heaters and concentrated sunlight on the permanent snow and ice that once clothed Aotearoa. The Mackenzie hydro scheme generates power for the heaters under Mt Cook. We have been so successful that the ice volume has dripped from 100 cubic kilometres in the 1900s to 45 cubic kilometres by 2008. Thus we have convinced the good peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand that the climate is indeed warming.

And indeed, to demonstrate that we have been in control, we were planning to turn the Land of the Long White Cloud into a lot of hot air. But we have been exposed by the mighty pen of Hopkins! Wait until The Guardian’s George Monbiot learns of this. I will have to consider a career change – perhaps to becoming a columnist so that I can write whatever I want without worrying about the facts. Long live the truth!

It’s unclear how the GACC operation fits into the wider global conspiracy revealed in my earlier post about the hijacking of Monckton’s emails, but my research indicates that Salinger commands a senior position in the hierarchy: he has taken to signing his emails as “Climate operative 007″. Meanwhile, sources close to Lucy Lawless, who has been a close companion of Salinger in recent months, tell me she is now refusing to let him anywhere near her shower.

[Disclosure: the author is GACC operative 287(b): (b) denotes blogger. We all have badges to wear at meetings, there’s a secret handshake, and members of the NZ GACC are also obliged to wear smocks made from Emperor penguin hides. Details of the Aussie branch regalia are sketchy, but seem to involve doing strange things with Tasmanian marsupials.]

[Update: For an alternative view on the merits of Hopkins’ reporting, see this post at Editing the Herald.]

Mycroft Monckton makes mischief

Scrotum wiped his sweat-beaded brow and shut down Monckton’s computer. The laird, concerned that a decade’s worth of personal emails might be stolen by some Green-fingered socialist geek, had instructed his wrinkled retainer to install “something that the buggers won’t be able to crack” on his laptop, and Scrotum had been pleased to do so. Every time Monckton sent an email, a copy was now automatically forwarded to Climate Con headquarters, where the one they call Gavin would scan them for information. In special circumstances, CC operatives might be despatched to make the Laird’s life a little more difficult than he had foreseen, but the pompous peer’s missives were mainly forwarded around the CC elite to provide a little light relief. However, Scrotum hadn’t counted on Monckton’s evil twin getting in on the act.

Mycroft Monckton, the Laird’s younger brother by some 30 minutes, was a constant thorn in his sibling’s side. While Monckton the elder had been studying classics at Cambridge, Mycroft had skipped university to take up a career setting crosswords for The Times. There were rumours he occasionally took on “projects” for one of the more anonymous offices of the British state, but Mycroft always laughed when taxed with this suggestion, and was given to noting that military intelligence was an oxymoron whatever number might be attached. While Christopher struggled on Fleet Street, and touched his forelock to the Thatcher hem (”No Monckton will ever lick arse”, grandfather “Machine Gun” Monckton used to splutter over his port on one of those long damp Scottish Sundays when his overuse of an ancient Gatling gun had scared the deer into the next glen and winged a few servants, “but they’ll do just about anything else”), Mycroft seemed to make money without effort. Property or shares? He would never say…

Mycroft’s chief delight, in those heady days of Thatcher’s ascendance, was to feed his brother with absurd ideas to put before the PM. There was the matter of the outrigger second hull for the new Type 42 frigate, sketched on the back of a menu at L’Escargot, elaborated by Monckton the elder in a series of papers that made Margaret laugh so much she started calling him “my little Polynesian poppet”. Earned him a gruff bark or two from Dennis, but Monckton didn’t mind. At least she knew he was there.

Latterly, with his brother so deep into his climate efforts — “Got to save the world, you know, Mycroft. Those bloody socialist billionaires and crooked scientists will have us all in penury!” — Mycroft seemed to have been keeping a low profile. But this morning the Laird’s usual eruptive pre-breakfast bellow had been more of a hacking cough, and Scrotum had seldom seen the peer so pale, at least when raptors weren’t around.

“Scrotum.” It was a quiet summons this morning. “How did Mycroft get into my emails?” The laird looked quizzical, a face he normally kept for working on puzzle schemes.

Scrotum nearly fell backwards, his surprise entirely unfeigned.
“I, I, I, er, don’t know, your Lordship. I can’t imagine… What has he done?”

“It appears, you snivelling little wretch, that your security precautions are no better than those at the University of East Anglia. Mycroft must have hacked into my machine, obtained the short opinion piece I was working on for electronic distribution, and altered it. It’s out there on the interweb thingy, over my name, but it has been so deviously and fraudulently altered that it hides my real meaning. Indeed it reads like a parody of my thoughts.”

“May I see it, your Lordship?” Scrotum asked. Monckton gestured at his desk, where the laptop showed the pink portcullis with entwined tutu and pith helmet that was the peer’s favourite screensaver. Scrotum began to read…

This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

This is beyond parody, Scrotum thought as he read. The laird’s willingness to find signs of global governance lurking everywhere had caused him trouble before. There was the sad affair in Sweden, when Monckton had attacked Abba for promoting world government based solely on a mishearing of the words of Dancing Queen. Rescuing him from the hordes of drunken blondes had been a challenge.

“In what way has this been altered, your Lordship?” Scrotum asked.

“He’s toned it down, of course. Taken out my reference to UN jackboots crushing the faces of the weak and defenceless rich. It’s a travesty. The Americans will think I’ve gone soft.”

Scrotum read on.

The tiny, close-knit clique of climate scientists who invented and now drive the “global warming” fraud — for fraud is what we now know it to be — tampered with temperature data so assiduously that, on the recent admission of one of them, land temperatures since 1980 have risen twice as fast as ocean temperatures.

“But your Lordship, are not land temperatures meant to warm faster than those of the ocean?”

“Precisely. Mycroft is trying to make it seem that I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

He doesn’t need to try very hard, then, thought Scrotum.

One of the thousands of emails recently circulated by a whistleblower at the University of East Anglia, where one of the world’s four global-temperature datasets is compiled, reveals that data were altered so as to prevent a recent decline in temperature from showing in the record. In fact, there has been no statistically significant “global warming” for 15 years — and there has been rapid and significant cooling for nine years.

Scrotum paused. He could never keep track of how long the world was supposed to have been cooling. Fifteen years seemed rather a long time, and “rapid cooling” for nine years a tad of an overstatement, perhaps it would be better to let this pass, but the peer was clearly incensed.

“You see, Scrotum, you see! Fifteen years! Ten years, eleven years, I have made both claims, but fifteen! This has Mycroft’s fingerprints all over it. He’s sabotaging my credibility.”

Scrotum had to turn aside to hide the grin that was creeping around the corners of his mouth.

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up.

“This section too, your lordship?”

“This too, Scrotum. Mycroft knows that I have to occasionally exaggerate to make my points — the threat of global climate conspiracy is so great that I have no option — but by putting these words into my mouth he makes me seem hippo, hippo…” He couldn’t get the word out. He was choking on it, turning red.

“Hypocritical, sir?” Scrotum offered gently.

“That too..”

Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

“These are strong words, sir. Are they yours?”

“Yes, of course they are, but the original was in Latin.” Monckton looked peeved.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offence. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be.

“What’s wrong with this section sir?”

“Nothing, nothing, just the subtle twisting of the style. He has removed my careful use of the Latin phrase cave canem, and the references to the data being conjured from their computers like the offerings before the oracle at Delphi.”

“Too straightforward then?” Scrotum asked.

“Not enough finesse, Scrotum. Finesse.”

What have the mainstream news media said about the Climategate affair? Remarkably little.

The few who have brought themselves to comment, through gritted teeth, have said that all of this is a storm in a teacup, and that their friends in the University of East Anglia and elsewhere in the climatological community are good people, really.

No, they’re not. They’re criminals.

Scrotum wondered if the laird had originally intended to libel the scientists of the world, or whether this was a Mycroft improvement, but the next section nearly made him choke.

With Professor Fred Singer, who founded the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, I have reported them to the UK’s Information Commissioner, with a request that he investigate their offences and, if thought fit, prosecute.

“Do you see that, Scrotum? He brings Singer into it. Fred’s a charming old buffer, a dab hand at the scientific sleight of hand, but even I wouldn’t use him as a reference. Too much tobacco money under the bridge to be taken seriously in the right circles – though the BBC seem happy enough to put him on. Just shows how standards have fallen there since the great days of the 1980s.” The laird’s eyes were beginning to glaze over.

But I won’t be holding my breath: In the police state that Britain has now sadly become, with supine news media largely owned and controlled by the government, the establishment tends to look after its own.

Police state! Scrotum could see Mycroft’s game. Hook the reader, lead them along, and then leave them gasping for breath. Would Rupert Murdoch take kindly to being portrayed as supine, his media an arm of government. And in a Britain where the Tannochbrae bobby had long since sold his bicycle and taken to riding around in a little white car, never to be seen unless it was closing time at the pub, it was clear that parody was spilling over into farce.

At our expense, and at the expense of the truth.

Scrotum closed the laptop. “Would your Lordship like me to check the security settings?”

“Check them! I want them quintuple checked, all security measures doubled, access to all but me denied. Use the usual password. And then see if you can sniff out how he did it.” Scrotum tugged his forelock and tried to look contrite.

The phone rang. Scrotum picked up the old-fashioned black Bakelite handset. “Tannochbrae Manor, Lord Monckton’s residence.”

“Has he worked it out?” Mycroft’s soft voice was unmistakeable.

“Yes,” Scrotum muttered. “He’s right here.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Your lordship, Mycroft is on the line. Do you wish to speak with him?”

Monckton snatched the phone. “Mycroft, what have you done? Are you trying to ruin me, make me a laughing stock, the butt of jokes around the American elite?”

Scrotum couldn’t hear the reply, but Monckton the elder turned a whiter shade of pale ale. He put the phone down in its cradle. “He’s got the lot, Scrotum. The whole bloody lot. All my email, all my research, the database of misleading references and the address of Fred Singer’s secret floating Kennebunkport lair. Everything. I am in his power…”

Scrotum tried to look serious, but knew his straight face would fail in moments. He took to clearing up the breakfast dishes — the untouched kidneys, black pudding and venison liver faggots gleamed in the morning sun, and all was right with the world.

Who writes Rodney’s rubbish?

Who’s this supporting the NZ C”S”C’s idiotic attempt to cast doubt on the NZ temperature record? Why, it’s none other than Rodney Hide, leader of the ACT Party, and Minister of Local Government, Associate Minister of Commerce, Minister of Regulatory Reform and Parliamentary principal climate crank. Hide has written to climate change minister Nick Smith, demanding that the NIWA release the temperature data:

There is only one process that is appropriate for matters of science, and that is to release all data, together with a detailed account of what adjustments have been made, with an account of the reasons for doing so, and the computer codes that have been used to adjust and smooth the final published series, together with details of which measurements have been discarded. All the data and the relevant computer codes should be available for scientific scrutiny.

Free the NIWA code! What a rallying cry. It’s a pity that he thinks the likes of Treadgold constitute independent scientific scrutiny. Hide’s also been taking instructions on the CRU hack, and is seemingly happy to completely misrepresent what’s been going on. Apparently the emails:

…reveal a systematic attempt to manipulate the historical time series data, together with what appear to be arbitrary adjustments to the computer codes which produce the averaged and smoothed temperature data…

Er, no. That’s not true. The Herald does a far better job than the Minister of Local Government of covering the stolen emails and what they actually say. But perhaps Rodney gets his “facts” from somewhere else. So, in the spirit of his letter to Nick, here’s mine to Rodney.

Continue reading “Who writes Rodney’s rubbish?”