Monday, November 30, 2009

Who's to blame for Climategate?

The publication of damning emails about climate change could literally change the world. Gordon Rayner reports.
A little over a week ago, hundreds of internal emails written by scientists working at the CRU were obtained by a hacker and posted on the internet, some of which appeared to show that researchers had deliberately faked evidence of global warming by manipulating statistics. Read more.

The Web Discloses Inconvenient Climate Truths The world cannot trust scientists who abuse their power.

For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails,and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data.

The emails, released by an apparent whistle-blower who used the name "FOI," were written by scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. Its scientists are high-profile campaigners for the theory of global warming. Read more.

Rigging a Climate 'Consensus'

The climatologists at the center of the leaked email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science. They're ignoring the damage they've done to public confidence in the arbiters of climate science.

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious."
Read more.

Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row

It would appear that this is a victory of sorts - we will see.

Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data - dubbed Climategate - have agreed to publish their figures in full.

The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, "stolen" by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.

In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements. Read more.

Global warming consensus: garbage in, garbage out

As Air Force One heads to Copenhagen for the climate summit Dec. 9, it will presumably not make a U-turn while flying over the Climate Research Unit at University of East Anglia near Norwich, England. But perhaps it should. The 61 megabytes of CRU e-mails and documents made public by a hacker cast serious doubt on the ballyhooed consensus on man-made global warming that the Copenhagen summit was called to address.

The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have been suppressing and misstating data and working to prevent the publication of conflicting views in peer-reviewed science periodicals. Some of the more pungent e-mails:
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
"Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4?"
"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can't."
"I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU temperature station data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act!"
You get the idea. The most charitable plausible explanation I have seen comes from the Atlantic's Megan McArdle. "The CRU's main computer model may be, to put it bluntly, complete rubbish."
Read more.

Climate Change and Melting Glaciers

Nepal's poor have more pressing problems.
The lack of water in the shadow of the Himalayas may seem like a strong argument for drastic, short-term reductions in carbon emissions. Indeed, the plight of people like the Bishwokarmas has been used by Al Gore and other campaigners to argue for just such cuts. Climate activists argue that there is a link between melting glaciers in the Himalayas and water shortages elsewhere.
On the surface, this makes sense. But when we dig deeper, we find that the Himalaya glaciers are difficult even for scientists to understand. Most suggestions of rapid melting are based on observations of a small handful of India's 10,000 or so Himalayan glaciers. A comprehensive report in November by senior glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina, released by the Indian government, looked more broadly and found that many of these glaciers are stable or have even advanced, and that the rate of retreat for many others has slowed recently.
Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona, declared in the Nov. 13 issue of Science that these "extremely provocative" findings were "consistent with what I have learned independently," while in the same issue of the magazine Kenneth Hewitt, a glaciologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, agreed that "there is no evidence" to support the suggestion that the glaciers are disappearing quickly. Read more.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one

New Zealand’s NIWA accused of CRU-style temperature faking

The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there.
The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.
In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:


Read more here.

More AGW Controversy

Watts Up With That? describes the controversy surrounding New Zealand’s official temperature readings after the Climate Science Coalition replotted the raw data and found the “rising temperatures” were really flat. The rises in temperatures reported by the official (NIWA) figures were the result of adjustments. However, the agency defended its adjustments.

NIWA’s David Wratt has told Investigate magazine this afternoon his organization denies faking temperature data and he claims NIWA has a good explanation for adjusting the temperature data upward. Wratt says NIWA is drafting a media response for release later this afternoon which will explain why they altered the raw data.
“Do you agree it might look bad in the wake of the CRU scandal?”
“No, no,” replied Wratt before hitting out at the Climate Science Coalition and accusing them of “misleading” people about the temperature adjustments. Read more.

Climategate: The Skeptical Scientist’s View

As readers are now aware, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, the main climate research center in Britain, has had 128 megabytes of secret emails and other data placed online by someone calling himself “FOIA.” A number of scientists have been trying for years to get the raw data possessed by CRU placed online, filing requests under the British Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Although required by law to release this information, CRU has not done so, or has claimed that the data were accidentally erased. We now have proof in the emails that the illegal withholding of information was intentional, and that the erasure of data was also intentional. Read more.

Skewed science

What is the world coming to when you can trust a French source for information over a British one?!!! This is a shock and an out and out embarassment for all of us.

A French scientist’s temperature data show results different from the official climate science. Why was he stonewalled? Climate Research Unit emails detail efforts to deny access to global temperature data
The global average temperature is calculated by climatologists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The temperature graph the CRU produces from its monthly averages is the main indicator of global temperature change used by the International Panel on Climate Change, and it shows a steady increase in global lower atmospheric temperature over the 20th century. Similar graphs for regions of the world, such as Europe and North America, show the same trend. This is consistent with increasing industrialization, growing use of fossil fuels, and rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Read more.

China and India have vested interests in Global Warming - but what about these people?

Copenhagen climate conference: celebrity supporters


The campaign to stop global warming now has an A-list of supporters from the world of showbiz.
 

Read more if your stomach can take it.

Can you smell the BS coming from China?

They want us to think they are serious about this greenhouse gas thing - so that we will commit our treasure to the black hole.

China announces carbon target for Copenhagen

China has announced its first firm target to cut carbon dioxide emissions, ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen next month
Beijing is reluctant to commit to a concrete fall in carbon dioxide emissions, arguing that China remains a developing country. The carbon intensity goal means that as the economy continues to grow, overall emissions will continue to rise, but at a lower rate.  Read more.

Too much pain, too little to gain

The government says its emissions trading scheme tax will bring no risk to the economy. Indeed, Kevin Rudd constantly harps about savings of 15 per cent if we move early to implement the tax.

In fact, there is a considerable risk to the economy from the ETS tax and any alternative measures designed to force marked reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. Policies to force such reductions inevitably entail large hikes in energy prices. Even the super-optimists recognise that decarbonising the economy means dislocations in transforming the Australian economy. And the likelier outcome is that the price increases necessary to force abatement of CO2 emissions will cause dramatic reductions in living standards. Read more.

Climate Smokescreen At The New York Times

When holier-than-thou New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin decided not to publish e-mails that expose climate scientists as frauds because they were obtained illegally, Times watchers (including this one) rightly cried "Hypocrisy!"

One recent and one distant case of the newspaper rejecting Revkin's new standard of journalistic ethics leapt to mind. In December 2005, the Times ran a front-page expose on the Bush administration's covert wiretapping program against presumed terrorists even after being warned that it could jeopardize national security. And in 1971, the Times made history by publishing the Pentagon Papers about U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Read more.

Russian anchors - doing the job Canadian news networks won't do!

Watch video! View SDA for more details.

The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start.

How to Forge a Consensus
The climatologists at the center of last week's leaked-email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of the some of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science, which is as certain as ever.

"What they've done is search through stolen personal emails—confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world," Penn State's Michael Mann told Reuters Wednesday. Mr. Mann added that this has made "something innocent into something nefarious." Read more.

Support for Cap and Trade system crumbling in Australia

Embattled Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull still believes ETS will pass this week

ANGRY resignations from the Shadow Cabinet last night propelled Malcolm Turnbull closer to a leadership showdown which opponents to an ETS could ensure he loses.

Four MPs quit the front bench so they could fight the amendments to legislation creating an Emissions Trading Scheme negotiated with the Government by Mr Turnbull and senior colleagues.
Three senior figures, including Liberal Senate Leader Nick Minchin, who also quit the front bench, said they would vote against the ETS in defiance of Mr Turnbull. Read more.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Why 'climategate' won't stop greens

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
If you're wondering how the robot-like march of the world's politicians towards Copenhagen can possibly continue in the face of the scientific scandal dubbed "climategate," it's because Big Government, Big Business and Big Green don't give a s*** about "the science."

They never have.
What "climategate" suggests is many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't either. Apparently they stifled their own doubts about recent global cooling not explained by their computer models, manipulated data, plotted ways to avoid releasing it under freedom of information laws and attacked fellow scientists and scientific journals for publishing even peer-reviewed literature of which they did not approve. Read more.

Obama drinks Kool-Aid - Warmist Juggernaut seems unstoppable!

Obama to set goals to reduce emissions

The White House announced Wednesday that President Obama will attend U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen next month and commit the United States to specific targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The administration's decision to identify a series of goals, including cutting emissions over the next decade "in the range of" 17 percent below 2005 levels, is a calculated risk, given that Congress has never set mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. Read more.

CRU Emails - Searchable here

On 20 November 2009, emails and other documents, apparently originating from with the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

If real, these emails contain some quite surprising and even disappointing insights into what has been happening within the climate change scientific establishment. Worryingly this same group of scientists are very influential in terms of economic and social policy formation around the subject of climate change.
As these emails are already in the public domain, I think it is important that people are able to look through them and judge for themselves. Until I am told otherwise I have no reason to think the text found on this site is true or false. As of today, Saturday 21 November, there have been no statements that I have seen doubting the authenticity of these texts. It is here just as a curiosity!
View and Search emails here.

'You've Taken the Words Out of My Mouth'

The massive University of East Anglia global-warmist archives are now searchable at this site, and one particular email demonstrates the nexus between the scientific shenanigans and the popular press, on which most people rely for their information on global warming. This email, dated Sept. 29, 2009, is from Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University to New York Times warm correspondent Andrew Revkin. The crucial exchange begins with this question from Revkin (quoting verbatim):


I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.


peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree? Read more.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

“Climategate” and the Social Validation of Knowledge

Recent evidence that prominent climate scientists have tried to intimidate academic journals into not publishing papers submitted by “climate change” skeptics have caused a major brouhaha in the ongoing political battle over global warming. At least some of the scientists in question certainly seem to have put ideology above the search for truth. The effort to keep skeptical articles out of academic journals also raises the issue of whether the academic “consensus” supporting global warming theory is genuine, or a product of systematic exclusion of dissenting voices.

I lack relevant scientific expertise on global warming, so I don’t have anything useful to say about the scientific issues involved. The question I want to address is what impact these revelations should have on our views of the global warming issue. If, unlike me, you have enough expertise in climate science to assess the scientific literature for yourself, I don’t think “Climategate” should have any impact on your views at all. You can read the mainstream literature, as well as the skeptics’ writings (which certainly exist in print, even if the Climategate culprits have kept some of them out of peer-reviewed journals) and make an informed decision for yourself.  Read more.

Obama to go to Copenhagen for climate talks

President Obama will travel to Copenhagen Dec. 9, a day before accepting the Nobel Peace Price in Oslo, to help launch a U.N.-sponsored global climate change summit, a White House official said.

The president will meet with other world leaders gathered for the summit, which is scheduled for Dec. 7-18.
This is really starting to look like a setup - I guess Global Warming is going to happen come Hell or High Water!

What Is — and What Isn’t — Evidence of Global Warming

All the evidence we've heard regarding global warming never constituted, in any manner, actual evidence that it was taking place.

by William M. Briggs

“Climategate” has everybody rethinking global warming. Many are wondering — if leading scientists were tempted to finagle their data, is the evidence for catastrophic climate change weaker than previously thought?
Actually, the evidence was never even evidence.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding — shared by nearly everybody about the nature of anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) — over exactly what constitutes evidence for that theory and what does not.
Remember when we heard that the icebergs were melting, that polar bears were decreasing in number, that some places were drier than usual and that others were wetter, that the ocean was growing saltier here and fresher there, and that hurricanes were becoming more terrifying? Remember the hundreds of reports on what happens when it gets hot outside?
All of those observations might have been true, but absolutely none of them were evidence of AGW.
Diminishing glaciers did not prove AGW; they were instead a verification that ice melts when it gets hot. Fewer polar bears did not count in favor of AGW; it instead perhaps meant that maybe adult bears prefer a chill to get in the mood. People sidling up to microphones and trumpeting “It’s bad out there, worse than we thought!” was not evidence of AGW; it was evidence of how easily certain people could work themselves into a lather.
No observation of what happened to any particular thing when the air was warm was direct evidence of AGW. None of it.
Every breathless report you heard did nothing more than state the obvious: Some creatures and some geophysical processes act or behave differently when it is hot than when it is cold. Only this, and nothing more.
Can you recall where you were when you heard that global warming was going to cause an increase in kidney stones, more suicides in Italy, larger grape harvests in France, and smaller grape harvests in France? How about when you heard that people in one country would grow apathetic, that those in another would grow belligerent, and — my favorite — that prostitutes would be on the rise in the Philippines? That the world would come to a heated end, and that women and minorities would be hardest hit?
Not a single one of these predictions was ever evidence of AGW.
For years, it was as if there was a contest for the most outlandish claim of what might happen if AGW were true. But no statement of what might happen if AGW is true is evidence for AGW. Those prognostications were only evidence of the capacity for fanciful speculation. Merely this and nothing more.

So if observations of what happens when it’s hot outside don’t verify AGW, and if predictions of what might happen given AGW were true do not verify AGW, what does? Why did people get so excited?
In the late 1990s, some places on Earth were hotter than they were in the late 1980s. These observations were indirect — and not direct — evidence of AGW. The Earth’s climate has never been static; temperatures sometimes rise and sometimes fall. So just because we see rising temperatures at one point does not prove AGW is true. After all, temperatures have been falling over the last decade, and AGW supporters still say their theory is true. Rising — or falling — temperatures are thus consistent with many theories of climate, not just AGW.
Climate scientists then built AGW models, incorporating the observed temperatures. They worked hard at fitting those models so that the models could reproduce the rising temperatures of the 1990s, while at the same time fitting the falling temperatures of the 1970s, etc. They had to twist and tweak — and with the CRU emails, it now appears they twiddled. They had to cram those observations into the models and, by God, make them fit, like a woman trying on her favorite jeans after Thanksgiving.
They then announced to the world that AGW was true — because their models said it was.
But a model fitting old data is not direct evidence that the theory behind the model is true. Many alternate models can fit that data equally well. It is a necessary requirement for any model, were it true, to fit the data, but because it happens to is not a proof that the model is valid.
For a model to be believable it must make skillful predictions of independent data. It must, that is, make accurate forecasts of the future. The AGW models have not yet done so. There is, therefore, no direct evidence for AGW.
The models predicted warmer temperatures, but it got cooler. One of the revealed CRU emails found one prominent gentlemen saying, “We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
It is. But only if you were concerned that the AGW theory will be nevermore.

Global Warmists Dig in Their Heels over Climategate — Kind of

Coby Beck, author of How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic (PJM’s fisking of his work here):

I hear the conspiritorial cat is well out of CRU’s bag and the jig is up on the Global Warming hoax. I guess the Greenland ice sheet will be well refrozen by now, and the sea levels have stopped rising. Oh well, it was fun scaring you all while it lasted! Read more.

Machine Converts CO2 into Gasoline, Diesel, and Jet Fuel

This machine could encourage us to put more CO2 into the atmosphere.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a machine that uses the sun's energy to convert carbon dioxide waste from power plants into transportation fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The system could provide an alternative to carbon sequestration; instead of permanently storing CO2 underground, the CO2 could be recycled and put to use. Read on!

Hide The Decline - Climategate

It's amazing how fast these videos hit YouTube. Watch it!

Climategate and the “T”-word

We all know the “t”-word. Our President has used it many times, as did former UN Secretary General Annan. It’s – all together now – transparency. Now the “t”-word is promised us in almost every campaign by politicians (and mega-bureaucrats like Kofi) and never delivered, so we’re used to looking at it with a jaundiced eye from them. But scientists, scientists, they are the big brains, the honest ones, the ones who, unlike cheap pols, work for eternity, like Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein. Read more.

Nomenclature

Some have noted, and I agree that it’s a misnomer to call this “ClimateGate.” In addition to the fact that simply adding “Gate” to a scandal is so late twentieth century, calling it a “Gate” would imply that it’s something that the media will go into a frenzy over, because it’s a scandal about something politically incorrect (e.g., Nixon). No, a better name for it (again, not original with me — I think it showed up in comments at one of the PJM pieces) is “Climaquiddick.” In other words, expect the media to try to whitewash and minimize it. Read more.

The Climate E-mails and the Politics of Science

For years, the left has spun the debate over global warming in the starkest Manichean terms. Those who disagree with the scientific and policy orthodoxy have been maligned as greedy capitalists bent on raping the earth of its natural resources for cheap material gain; they have been cast as the benighted enemies of reason itself. Efforts to publicly challenge the science behind global warming have too often resulted in professional and political character assassination. To be skeptical about the fashionable scientific and policy platform aggressively advocated by the mainstream media and self-indulgently championed by the Hollywood elite is nothing less than an “assault on reason,” to borrow Al Gore’s hyperbolic rhetoric. In predictably technocratic fashion, the left has claimed its own peculiar position as the only scientifically legitimate one—everything else reduces to craven interest, manifest dishonesty, or antiquarian faith. Read more.

Deconstructing ClimateGate’s Smoking-Gun Email

The evidence that the human-caused global warming/climate change effort may constitute one of the biggest scams in all of human history continues to mount. The contents of emails and other data surreptitiously obtained from a UK climate research facility add further fuel to that already burning-hot fire. Read more.

Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud

In the geological past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher than at present. It is clear that the colorless, odorless, non-poisonous gas called carbon dioxide did not drive past climates. Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant. Read more.

Venus Flytrap Climate Scam

Among my favorite emails in the last couple of days are those coming from people who say if I am willing to trust the science on Vaccines, why I do I shrug off the science on Man Made -Sorry EVIL Man made-Sorry Evil Planet polluting Polar Bear hating Climate change. A scientist is a scientist I am told. So let me get this straight. All scientists are the same? James Hansen is with NASA. He is Al Gore's favorite Scientist.

James Hansen may be at Nasa and may be a poster child for the ARMAGEDDON crowd. But just because he is at NASA doesn't make him a rocket scientist. He is not. -- James Hansen won't get you to the Moon. James Hansen won't get you to North Bay - James Hansen we are told is an expert on radiative transfer models and attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. This we are told led him to the same computer codes being used to understand the Earth's atmosphere . Read more.

Climategate: MSM Writers Try to Ignore Scandal in Global Warming Stories But Readers Bring Them Back to Reality

An hilariously bizarre situation is happening in the wake of the growing Climategate scandal. Many of the mainstream media stories about global warming are simply pretending it doesn't exist. Perhaps they feel that by ignoring Climategate entirely that it will just go away. Unfortunately for them, the readers of these global warming stories keep bringing up the inconvenient truth of Climategate by mentioning the scandal in the comments section over and over and over again. Read more.

Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails

A few days after leaked e-mail messages appeared on the Internet, the U.S. Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories misrepresented the truth about climate change.

Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.
Read more.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

A classic video for our times - The Great Global Warming Swindle

The Ice is Melting, the Hurricanes are blowing. and it is all YOUR FAULT
SCARED
Don't Be, Its not True

Watch the video.

Global Warming With the Lid Off

'The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."

So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world's leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to "Mike." Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. We found this nugget among the more than 3,000 emails and documents released last week after CRU's servers were hacked and messages among some of the world's most influential climatologists were published on the Internet. Read more.

Natives demand to be treated like the rest of us.

Natives in the West have demanded and got private property rights! They no longer want to live under a dependant quasi-communist regime - I say this means there is hope for all of us! It also bods well for effective development of our northern energy resources. Read on.


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 23, 2009
GITXSAN AND NISGA’A BANDS PAVE WAY
FOR WORKABLE TREATIES


Native Proposals for Private Property and Abolition of Indian Act
Historical Steps in Right Direction


Vernon – The BC Conservative Party is commending the Nisga’a communities of New Aiyansh, and the Gitxsan native peoples for their historical and progressive moves toward independence and self sufficiency, said party President, Wayne McGrath.
The Nisga’a Lisms Government in New Aiyansh has become the first native community in Canadian history to move from a socialist model of government titled personal property to a private property model that will allow Nisga’a people living in that community to buy and sell their land to anyone they want, regardless of native status.
“This is monumental,” said McGrath. “It cannot be overstated how important this move is toward bringing Nisga’a people into the fuller community of B.C. with all of the benefits and wealth creation offered by the ownership of private property. It is a fact of history that virtually all personal wealth is dependent upon the ownership of private property. This is a first in Canada and we strongly support it.”
In the case of the Gitxsan, they have petitioned the federal government to remove their “Indian Status” which would mean they would forgo the reserve system and become taxpaying citizens in exchange for a share of resource wealth.
“The Gitxsan proposal has tremendous potential as well,” said McGrath. “But B.C. must insist that it is compensated by the federal government for any deal that is tied to a share of resource wealth which is the exclusive jurisdiction of the province,” McGrath explained.
“We would not oppose such a deal, so long as the federal government takes full financial responsibility for it as per its obligations according to the Terms of Union BC signed when we joined confederation.”
McGrath said that the two proposals of private property and resource sharing in exchange for relinquishing Indian Status could form the basis for all treaties to come. He said such an approach would be readily acceptable to all British Columbians.
“It is a way of bridging the gap between native communities and the rest of BC in a manner which would unite the province rather than divide it as the current treaty process has done.”
McGrath said that where a community such as the Gitxsan becomes prosperous and self sufficient, that the BC Conservative Party would like to see a “phase out period” where resource revenues are no longer dedicated specifically to those native communities, but are shared proportionately with them and the larger surrounding community. “Eventually, once they have achieved parity with other citizens of BC, then there is no longer a need to dedicate resources specifically to them,” said McGrath.
“The ironic thing in all of this is that we have been saying for years that the lack of private property ownership and the Indian Act are the biggest impediments to natives’ advancement. Yet the BC Liberal government has insisted that bloated treaties with cumbersome regulations entrenching natives as second class citizens via ‘Indian Status’ was the only way to go. Now the native peoples themselves are proposing this.”
“This is just one more file that the Premier has bungled to the detriment of all parties involved. We sincerely hope he will step back and adopt these principles, which we have been advocating, as the basis for any new treaties to come. This is a model that can actually work,” concluded McGrath.
A BC Conservative Government would scrap the BC Treaty Commission and replace it with an observer body that would oversee treaty making exclusively by the federal government, as per its constitutional obligations.
British Columbia would make lands and resources available on the conditions that private property ownership form part of every treaty, and Indian Status and the Reserve system be abolished, with compensation paid to BC for any/all lands or resources offered for settlements.


Wayne McGrath
250.542.7744
nwmcgrath@shaw.ca

Glen Beck on Climategate

Climate change coverup! Watch Video.

CRU emails reveal a worrying pattern of bad behaviour

Sometime last week the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia was hacked and materials stolen off its server. That information, including thousands of emails, has been posted on the internet (including at Wikileaks) and has caused a weekend of frantic blogging. There is more or less a rather juicy scandal brewing.

There is more to this story than the "ho hum, nothing to see here, the making of sausages, and science, shouldn't be seen by the public" attitude being displayed by warmenists. There is, however, less to the story than the "this proves the greatest scientific fraud in human history" attitude being taken by denialists. Read more.

Terence Corcoran: After Copenhagen, the end of the science

In the run-up to next month’s increasingly shaky Copenhagen global warming policy negotiations, the official advice from the world’s climatists is that the politicians and the rest of us should just pay no attention to the science of climate change. It is settled, they say, and all we have to do — as the Financial Times editorialized recently — is “follow the science” and get on with the business of reconstruction and redistributing world economic production. We must, in the words of Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker’s resident climatist, maintain our “faith in science.” Read more.

Canada stands fast on Arctic

Will defend its territory against all threats, foreign affairs minister says

It sure would be a lot easier to assert Canadian sovereignty in the North if we had a growing population and infrastructure in place. This is why an energy strategy to use the great untapped hydro power of the North is critical to the survival of Canada as we know her.

Canada remains ready to defend its Arctic border against nations that would "push the envelope," Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon says.

Although scientists are still mapping the country's icy and watery northern limits, an exercise that won't be complete until 2013, Cannon said yesterday Canada takes its responsibility for its Arctic lands and water seriously.
"This is why we react so strongly when other nations like Russia engage in exercises and other activities that appear to challenge our security in the North," he said. Read more.

Time for Tories to come clean on emissions

By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN, SUN MEDIA

The political fight over what to do about global warming is ultimately a fight over our money and standard of living.
It will involve a massive redistribution of our wealth, both domestically and internationally.
Given the long time frames necessary to study climate change meaningfully, no one alive today will ever know whether efforts to avert so-called "catastrophic" global warming by reducing mankind's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, actually worked.
Or whether, many decades from now, they proved to be worthwhile or even necessary.However, we will know in our lifetimes -- indeed it's already started -- what this effort will cost us as taxpayers and consumers. Read more.

Ingenious new ways to use the Green movement to confiscate your money

With any government mandated restriction their comes an army of parasites that will use it to their benefit. These “entrepreneurs” then become the regulation’s biggest lobbyists.
Green redemption
The world saved the bankers. Now it is time for the bankers to return the favour
DEPENDING on how you view it, climate change is either the biggest problem mankind faces or its greatest financial opportunity. For example, McKinsey has become known as a climate-change consultant, thanks to its greenhouse gas “cost abatement curve”. This clever little chart shows the relative opportunity costs of different abatement activities. McKinsey’s curve and expertise on climate change have opened the doors and pockets of ministries and industries around the globe.
Read more.

James Delingpole on Climategate

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?


If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.  Read more.

ClimateGate: Bombshell for some - Confirmation for others.

This is a huge revelation and confirms what many of us has suspected for years.

Watch video

Monday, November 16, 2009

Israeli Science Breakthrough Extracts Fuel from Water

(IsraelNN.com) Among the most important challenges facing science today is designing an efficient system for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The ability to do so will introduce hydrogen into the market as a clean, sustainable fuel. But man-made systems for getting to the root of water that exist today are very inefficient and often require additional use of sacrificial chemical agents.

Now, a unique approach developed by Prof. David Milstein and colleagues of the Weizmann Institute’s Organic Chemistry Department, provides important steps in overcoming this challenge. Their research demonstrated a new mode of bond generation between oxygen atoms and even defined the mechanism by which it takes place. It is the generation of oxygen gas by the formation of a bond between two oxygen atoms originating from water molecules that proves to be the bottleneck in the water splitting process. Their research has recently been published in Science Read more.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

DANGERS TO FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS AT FORTHCOMING UN COPENHAGEN SUMMIT

Lord Monckton has warned the public in Europe and the United States that the upcoming Copenhagen Summit in December this year will use global warming hype as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world unelected ‘communist-style’ government with enormous powers. Read more.

The Economic Uses of Al Gore Sincerity is no substitute for disinterestedness.

Last spring Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn asked Al Gore during a House hearing if his investments in green energy meant he would benefit personally from cap and trade.

"If you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don't know me," Mr. Gore responded (and, yes, according to two reporters present, he sighed).
Mr. Gore is quite right that his arguments should be judged on their merits, not on his investments. He's wrong to think his investments are irrelevant, and, even more, that sincerity is dispositive of anything. Sincerity is no substitute for disinterestedness. Read more.

Peter Foster: Climatism is more than a belief system

A fired official believes climate change is equivalent to a religious belief. Who could disagree?

The case of fired British “sustainability official” Tim Nicholson has attracted much interest. That’s because Mr. Nicholson is pursuing redress from his former employer, home developer Grainger plc, under the UK’s Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations of 2003. He claims he was fired for his convictions about catastrophic man-made climate change. Read more.

Climate change study shows Earth is still absorbing carbon dioxide

The research, by Bristol University, suggests that despite rising emissions, the world is is still able to store a significant amount of greenhouse gases in oceans and forests.

According to the study, the Earth has continued to absorb more than half of the carbon dioxide pumped out by humans over the last 160 years. Read more.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Top 10 Most Outrageous Things Said By Environmentalists

Tuesday, 03 November 2009 11:11 Environmentalists tend to say the darndest things, but here is a top 10 list of perhaps some of the worst things written or uttered by them- (In no particular order, of course):

Written by Joe Schoffstall


10. 'Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.' - Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!
9. 'If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower population levels.' - Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund
8. 'We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to brothels.' - Carl Amery
7. 'I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.' - John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
6. 'The extinction of human species may not only be inevitable, but a good thing...This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.' - Economist editorial
5. 'The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans'- Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project
4. 'Cannabilism is a "radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation." - Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995
3. 'To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem.'- Lamont Cole
2. If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS- Earth First! Newsleter
1. 'We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or social change to come and bomb us back into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion-- guilt free at last! - Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)

Patrick Moore- a co-founder of Greenpeace- states in 'Not Evil Just Wrong' he has a checklist he runs through with current Environmentalists, and one of the first things he notices is that they tend to be 'anti-human.' You be the judge...

Go to original article.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Euro Lobbyists are pushing hard on Obama - they see weakness

Merkel urges Congress to act on climate

Partisan divide that greeted German leader also seen on Senate bill

With Vice President Joe Biden looking on, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses a joint session of Congress, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Congress and the Obama administration Tuesday to take bold steps to address global warming, even as Senate Democrats and Republicans feuded over whether to press ahead with a climate bill. Read more.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

A 'notible reduction' should also be Canada's Policy

China says its Greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by a notable margin. I think Canada should copy the China policy and say we will also reduce our emissions by a notable margin. Economics are China’s first concern (as well as making the West pay for any emission cleanup) – economics should also be Canada’s first concern.

China's Climate Change Policy: The Dragon's Green Streak
In a landmark address to the U.N. Climate Change Conference last month, Chinese President Hu Jintao announced Beijing's commitment to trim the explosive growth of China's carbon emissions "by a notable margin." But he also reiterated his country's hackneyed dictum that industrialized countries should bear most of the burden for emissions-cutting. Hu's headline-grabbing speech captured the essence of China's Janus-faced climate change policy -- which, despite remarkable progress, continues to be bogged down with implementation problems and overshadowed by China's concerns with economic growth and its leadership role in the developing world. Read more if your stomach can take it.

The Green Cause is really a religious issue.

If science will not support their policies, then the left will employ emotion - after all man-made global warming is a religion.

Religious leader promotes 'green' causes
An unusual environmental lobbyist will be making the rounds this week on Capitol Hill: the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church. Read more.

Monday, November 2, 2009

The Cost of Climate Change Bill will be paid by Democrats

Climate bill faces hurdles in Senate


DEMOCRATS DEEPLY SPLIT
Deal on nuclear plants offered to court Republicans
The climate-change bill that has been moving slowly through the Senate will face a stark political reality when it emerges for committee debate on Tuesday: With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage. Read More.