Monday, November 30, 2009

One in Six Children Clinically Obese Before Starting Primary School

It's not necessarily because we feed our kids too much. It's because the food additives make them fat. At the very least, you must avoid MSG, high fructose corn syrup, anything with the word hydrogenated associated with it, and artificial sweeteners. In short, you must not feed them - or yourself - processed foods. That includes bread and cereal, no matter how "healthy" they claim to be. As Jack LaLane said, "If man made it, don't eat it."

    NaturalNews -

    One in every six children in some parts of the United Kingdom are already obese when they begin primary school, according to a report from that country's Department of Health.

    Nationwide, the statistics show a continuing and dangerous rise in childhood obesity, with one in 10 children classified as obese by the age of five, and one in five classified as obese by the start of secondary school. Seventeen percent of children in the United Kingdom are believed to be so overweight that their health is at risk.

    Childhood obesity increases the risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease later in life.

    "There is a lot of literature now that confirms the first year of life is absolutely critical -- and that fat children are in danger of staying fat for the rest of their lives," said Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum. "A huge number of women are going into pregnancy overweight and increasing the risks that their babies will also be obese."

    Among low-income communities, rates of obesity are even higher, with up to one in six children already obese at the beginning of primary school.

    Previous studies have shown a strong link between lower income and higher rates of childhood obesity. Fry attributes this in part to lack of information about nutrition and cooking among lower income populations, and in part to the relative cheapness of nutrient poor, processed foods.

    A recent study showed that 70 percent of parents who have obese children underestimate both the degree to which their children are overweight and the scale of the health risk that this poses.

    "In the first half year of life babies are naturally plump, but after that they should be starting to grow into their weight," Fry said. "Doctors have traditionally been trained to think that a huge bonny baby is a good thing but that's now been proven to be extremely bad advice."

    Sources for this story include: www.dailymail.co.uk.

Iran enrichment plans largely bluster, experts say

But we still get to bomb them into the stone age, right? You betcha!

    Associated Press -

    TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's announcement of plans to build 10 more uranium enrichment facilities is largely bluster after a strong rebuke from the U.N.'s nuclear agency, analysts said Monday. Nonetheless, the defiance is fueling calls among Western allies for new punitive sanctions to freeze Iran's nuclear program.

    U.S. and European officials were swift to condemn the plans, warning that Iran risked sinking ever deeper into isolation. Iran responded that it felt forced to move forward with the plans after the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution Friday demanding that it halt all enrichment activities.

    Iran's bold announcement Sunday appears to be largely impossible to achieve as long as sanctions continue to throw up roadblocks and force Iran to turn to black markets and smuggling for nuclear equipment, said nuclear expert David Albright.

    "They can't build those plants. There's no way," he said. "They have sanctions to overcome, they have technical problems. They have to buy things overseas ... and increasingly it's all illegal."

    A more worrisome escalation in the standoff would be if Iran reduced its cooperation with the IAEA, as some Iranian officials have threatened to do if the West continues its pressure. The U.N. inspectors and monitoring are the world's only eyes on Tehran's program. The head of Iran's nuclear agency on Monday ruled out an even more drastic move, saying Tehran does not intend to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Enrichment is at the center of the standoff between Iran and the West because it can be used both to produce material needed for atomic weapons as well as fuel for nuclear power plants. Iran insists it only wants the latter.

    New enrichment plants, on the scale of the one Iran already operates in the town of Natanz, would be extremely expensive, take years to build and would be difficult to stock with centrifuges and other necessary equipment while sanctions are in place, Albright said.

    Further dimming the credibility of the plan, 10 new facilities on the scale of Natanz would put Iran in league with the production levels of any of Europe's major commercial enrichment suppliers, said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

    "And also they don't have enough uranium. They would need a massive amount of uranium," he said.

    A diplomat from one of the six world powers attempting to engage Iran on its nuclear program described the Iranian announcement as a "political move" with little immediate significance beyond demonstrating Tehran's defiance.

    The diplomat, who follows the nuclear dossier the IAEA has gathered on Iran, noted that Tehran appears to have significant problems with its present enrichment program, to the point that it cannot even keep the centrifuges it has set up at Natanz running without breakdowns.

    The diplomat demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the issue.

Gibbs: Despite research dispute, 'climate change is happening'

Yes, it is happening. I admit it. You see, it's late Autumn, and soon it will be Winter. The days are getting shorter, and the weather is getting colder, and windier. Then after a few short months, as the days get longer again, the weather will warm. Yes, Robert Gibbs, this is climate change. It's called the seasons, you idiot.

    The Hill -

    The White House on Monday made exceptionally clear that it wants nothing to do with the furor over documents that global warming skeptics say prove the phenomenon is not a threat.

    Despite the incident, which rocked international headlines last week, climate science is sound, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed this afternoon, and the White House nonetheless believes "climate change is happening."

    "I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore," he said during Monday's press briefing.

    Climate change skeptics have asserted over the past week that the publication of more than 1,000 private e-mails and documents once housed in the University of East Anglia's computer system refutes most modern global warming evidence.

    The documents, unearthed by a blogger who hacked into Climate Research Unit's (CRU) private system, have since touched off an international debate over the veracity of those scientists' works.

    But the dispute is proving especially troublesome for the Obama administration as it prepares to head to Copenhagen next week for a climate change summit -- a forum the president will attend.

    Not only has the White House faced criticism from the left for offering too few concessions ahead of the meet, it is now fielding dissatisfaction from the right for participating in a summit sponsored in part by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- one of the research organs touched by the CRU spat.

    "I think there's no real scientific basis for the dispute of this," responded Gibbs to questions about those scientists' credibility.

    Nevertheless, congressional Republicans this week hope to ramp up their criticism of both global warming policy and the science that informs it.

    Most vocal seems to be Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe demanded on Friday a hearing into the IPCC's research to determine whether it "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."

    "[T]his thing is serious, you think about the literally millions of dollars that have been thrown away on some of this stuff that they came out with," he told reporters, noting it was "interesting" the e-mails surfaced before the Copenhagen summit.

Leaked emails won't harm UN climate body, says chairman

When the agenda was unscientific the entire time, a few thousand leaked emails exposing a profound lack of scientific integrity, not to mention class, isn't going to deter you. The agenda is world government funded by the carbon tax. Now you will see true tyranny rear its filthy head. Notice that the article makes no mention of skewed, manipulated data, or the conspiracy to destroy raw data rather than comply with FOIA requests. All they did was silence a few skeptics. Ho hum.

    London Guardian -

    Rajendra Pachauri says there is 'virtually no possibility' of a few scientists biasing IPCC's advice, after UAE hacking breach

    Read part one of our Pachauri interview: 'Our lifestyles are unsustainable'


    Rajendra Pachauri: batshit crazy.

    There is "virtually no possibility" of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN's top global warming body, its chair said today.

    Rajendra Pachauri defended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel's fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007.

    The emails were made public this month after a hacker illegally obtained them from servers at the university.

    Pachauri said the large number of contributors and rigorous peer review mechanism adopted by the IPCC meant that any bias would be rapidly uncovered.

    "The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report," he said.

    "Every single comment that an expert reviewer provides has to be answered either by acceptance of the comment, or if it is not accepted, the reasons have to be clearly specified. So I think it is a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which insures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening."

    The IPCC, which was set up by the UN in 1988, is the world's leading authority on climate change. It advises governments on the science behind the problem and was awarded the Nobel peace prize along with Al Gore in 2007.

    Pachauri was responding to one email from 2004 in which Professor Phil Jones, the head of the climatic research unit at UEA, said of two papers he regarded as flawed: "I can't see either … being in the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

    Pachauri said it was not clear whether the wording of the emails reflected the scientists' intended actions, but said: "I really think people should be discreet … in this day and age anything you write, even privately, could become public and to put anything down in writing is, to say the least, indiscreet … It is another matter to talk about this to your friends on the telephone or person to person but to put it down in writing was indiscreet. If someone was to say something like this in an IPCC authors' meeting then there are others who would chew him up."

    Jones has denied any suggestion that he tried to suppress scientific evidence he disagreed with or that he manipulated data.

    Some commentators, including the former chancellor Nigel Lawson and the environmental campaigner and Guardian writer George Monbiot, have called on Jones to resign but Pachauri said he did not agree. He said an independent inquiry into the emails would achieve little, but there should be a criminal investigation into how the emails came to light.

    Pachauri said he doubted that trust in the IPCC would be damaged by the affair. "People who are aware of how the IPCC functions and are appreciative of the credibility that the IPCC has attained will probably not be swayed by an incident of this kind," he said.

    He pointed out that five days after the emails were made public, Barack Obama announced a major commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

Oil companies promote global warming agenda

The misconception that oil companies are fearful and fiercely opposed to the climate change alarmist agenda is common and needs to be better addressed. In a recent op-ed, prominent climate alarmist George Monbiot attempted to justify the climategate scandal, in part because the scientists were driven by an overzealous desire to keep the "flawed" research of skeptics out of peer reviewed journals so that evil fossil fuel companies couldn't use them as an excuse to justify their horrible polluting of the planet.

It's not like it's privileged information that Algore collaborated with Enron and Goldman Sachs, for whom his cohort David Blood (Blood and Gore...you can't make this up...) represents, to write up the cap and trade scheme. Why would one of the world's largest energy corporations, as well as the biggest oil speculator, be pushing an agenda that's supposedly detrimental to the industry?

Why would the largest oil company in the world, Rockefeller-owned Exxon Mobil, throw its weight behind a tax on carbon emissions? Don't oil companies supposedly fund climate skeptics to forward their agenda? "As a businessman it is hard to speak favourably about any new tax. But a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach," Exxon's chief executive Rex Tillerson, said. Could this be because the carbon tax would be paid to international banking oligarchs, to which the Rockefellers belong?

Similarly, in February of this year Royal Dutch Shell, for which Bilderberg member Queen Beatrix is the majority shareholder, launched an impassioned defence of emissions cap-and-trade schemes, arguing that cap-and-trade schemes remain the most effective way of cutting emissions. Earlier this month Dutch Royal Shell came out again in favor of cap and trade. “We need cap-and-trade mechanisms to come up in more parts of the world; we need these mechanisms to be linked to each other,” Ranjit Prasad, global head of CO2 trading at Shell International Transport & Trading, said. There's no point in cutting carbon emissions if carbon wasn't driving climate change, so how can it be that oil companies favor cutting carbon emissions while simultaneously claiming climate change isn't real?

This is how the schemers get their way. They put up a facade of opposition, so that people think, well, the big bad oil companies spewing tons of carbon into the atmosphere killing the planet think climate change isn't real, so we need to do the opposite of what they want. Meanwhile they were for the carbon tax and cap and trade the entire time. This is precisely the way the American people were scammed when the Federal Reserve was spawned. The bankers opposed it vigorously when it was they who wrote the bill. It's a little like Brer Rabbit begging not to be thrown into the thorn bush.

Adventures in Neoconland: Exit strategy? We don't need no stinkin exit strategy!

The very fact that they don't want an exit strategy is the surest reason why we need an exit strategy, and that exit strategy should be, pack it up and come home yesterday. There is no defined strategy for victory - not one that they can openly talk about, anyway. In their eyes, every day we stay there is a victory, not for our troops, not for the American taxpayer, and certainly not for the Afghans and Pakistanis who are being slaughtered, but for the bankers loaning us the money for this racket and laundering the drug money from Afghanistan's now record opium trade - upwards of 92% of the global market from a country that produced almost no opium prior to our invasion. But don't dare tell a neocon sheep we're in Afghanistan guarding opium. What a grotesque sacrilege that would be.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

UN scientists turn on each other

UN Scientist Declares Climategate colleagues Mann, Jones and Rahmstorf ’should be barred from the IPCC process’ — They are ‘not credible any more’

Marc Morano
Climate Depot
Saturday, Nov 28th, 2009

A UN scientist is declaring that his three fellow UN climate panel colleagues “should be barred from the IPCC process.” In a November 26, 2009 message on his website, UN IPCC contributing author Dr. Eduardo Zorita writes: “CRU files: Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process.”

Zorita writes that the short answer to that question is: Short answer: “Because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.”

Zorita indicates that he is aware that he is putting his career in jeopardy by going after the upper echelon of UN IPCC scientists. “By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication,” Zorita candidly admits, a reference to the ClimateGate emails discussing how to suppress data and scientific studies that do not agree with the UN IPCC views.

Zorita was a UN IPCC Contributing Author of Fourth Assessment Report in 2007. Since 2003, Zorita as headed the Department of Paleoclimate and has been a senior scientist at the Institute for Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Centre in Germany. Zorita has published more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific studies.

Zorita’s stunning candor continued, noting that scientists who disagreed with the UN IPCC climate view were “bullied and subtly blackmailed.”

“In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the ‘pleasure’ to experience all this in my area of research,” Zorita explained. [Zorita's full statement is reprinted below.]

Continuing fallout of ClimateGate

Zorita’s revelations are the latest in a series of continuing fallout to the global warming establishment and to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since the email and data scandal dubbed “ClimateGate” broke earlier this month.

Zorita’s defection from the global warming establishment comes after the shocking news today that one of the scientists employed at ground zero of what has been termed “ClimateGate” has suggested disbanding the United Nations climate panel, the IPCC. See: Pressure Mounts From Inside: Disband IPCC? Scientist from U. of East Anglia Suggests ‘UN IPCC has run its course…politicizes climate science…authoritarian, exclusive form of knowledge production’ – Mike Hulme Excerpt: ClimateGate reveals science has become ‘too partisan, too centralized…more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures’

In addition, scientists from around the world are now demanding that the “ClimateGate” scientists be banned from future UN IPCC climate work. See: More ClimateGate Fallout: Prominent German Scientist Declares ‘Compromised’ UN Scientists should be excluded from IPCC and Peer-Review Process – November 24, 2009
Meanwhile, pressure to fire or resign continues to increase for the man at the center of the ClimateGate scandal, Phil Jones. See: Phil Jones, the Fall Guy? Scientist in climate change ‘cover-up’ storm told to quit – UK Daily Mail – Nov. 25, 2009

Caught in Another Untruth? THEN: UN IPCC’s Phil Jones, Dec 3, 2008: ‘About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all’ – NOW: UN IPCC’s Phil Jones, Nov 24, 2009: ‘We’ve not deleted any emails or data here at CRU’

The New ‘Deniers’: UK Greenie George Monbiot: ‘Most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial’ — ‘Pretending the climate email leak isn’t a crisis won’t make it go away’ – Monbiot: ‘There is no helping it; Phil Jones has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get’ – UK Daily Mail – Nov. 25, 2009

More Defections! Center for Env. Journalism’s Tom Yulsman: ‘I’m standing with George Monbiot on this’ – Nov. 25, 2009 – ‘I believe the CRU (Climate Research Unit) should agree to an independent examination of what happened…to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again’

Shock — Et Tu, DeSmogBlog?: Climate Alarmists at DeSmogBlog Call for Phil Jones to Offer his Resignation! – Nov. 25, 2009 – ‘It would be savvy for Jones to at least offer to step aside before someone in authority makes a move to give him a push’

Et tu? Head of UN IPCC Pachauri Now throwing global warming under the bus?! There is a ‘larger problem’ than climate fears?! – Nov. 23, 2009 – Urges ‘time and space to look at the larger problem of unsustainable development, of which climate change is at best a symptom’

As the UN IPCC’s ClimateGate scandal unfolds, it appears New Zealand may have their similar type scandal involving manipulation of temperature data by a government agency. See: More Warmist Woes: New Zealand: Government agency accused of ‘cooking the books to create a warming trend where none exists’ – Nov. 26, 2009

Scientists from around the world now are questioning the propriety of a UN climate conference during all of this unraveling controversy surrounding the credibility of top UN scientists. See: UK Scientist: ‘Case for climate fears is blown to smithereens…whole theory should be destroyed and discarded and UN conference should be closed’ – Nov. 26, 2009

All of this has caused skepticism of man-made global warming to become the new political expediency. See: Losing Their Religion: 2009 officially declared year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears – Oct. 13, 2009 and see: ‘Welcome to the delayers’: Obama’s ‘half-hearted climate efforts’ welcomed by skeptics – Nov. 17, 2009 [Editor's Note: ClimateGate may have prompted President Obama to attend the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen. There is such a sense of panic in the global warming establishment that they now feel it is "all hands on deck" time to help save the movement. See: 'Series of inconvenient developments for promoters of man-made global warming fears continue unabated' – August 25, 2009]

New Political Reality: Five Australian MPs lead the way by resigning in disgust over carbon tax – November 26, 2009

NASA Warming Scientist James Hansen says Gore ‘deceiving’ himself – Nov. 26, 2009 – Hansen: “What really worries me is that Gore sounds optimistic that we’re now on a track to solve this problem. Hansen lets out an incredulous chuckle. “We’re not, however, on a track, and that’s clear.”

#

Complete Statement of UN IPCC Scientists Dr. Eduardo Zorita on the UN IPCC’s “ClimateGate” scandal.

CRU files: Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process.

Short answer: because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.

A longer answer: My voice is not very important. I belong to the climate-research infantry, publishing a few papers per year, reviewing a few manuscript per year and participating in a few research projects. I do not form part of important committees, nor I pursue a public awareness of my activities. My very minor task in the public arena was to participate as a contributing author in the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC.
By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication. My area of research happens to be the climate of the past millennia, where I think I am appreciated by other climate-research ’soldiers’. And it happens that some of my mail exchange with Keith Briffa and Timothy Osborn can be found in the CRU-files made public recently on the internet.

To the question of legality or ethicalness of reading those files I will write a couple of words later. I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. They depict a realistic, I would say even harmless, picture of what the real research in the area of the climate of the past millennium has been in the last years. The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.

These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the ‘pleasure’ to experience all this in my area of research.

I thank explicitly Keith Briffa and Tim Osborn for their work in the formulation of one Chapter of the IPCC report. As it distills from these emails, they withstood the evident pressure of other IPCC authors, not experts in this area of research, to convey a distorted picture of our knowledge of the hockey-stick graph.

Is legal or ethical to read the CRU files? I am not a lawyer. It seems that if the files had been hacked this would constitute an illegal act. If they have been leaked it could be a whistle blower action protected by law. I think it is not unethical to read them. Once published, I feel myself entitled to read how some researchers tried to influence reviewers to scupper the publication of our work on the ‘hockey stick graph’ or to read how some IPCC authors tried to exclude this work from the IPCC Report on very dubious reasons. Also, these mails do not contain any personal information at all. They are an account of many dull daily activities of typical climatologists, together with a realistic account of very troubling professional behavior. [End Eduardo Zorita's full statement regarding ClimateGate.]

The Day Global Warming Stood Still

by Mark Sircus
LewRockwell.com

From the mainstream press we read, “As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria.

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the leading Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee said, “Until this year, any scientist, reporter or politician who dared raise even the slightest suspicion about the science behind global warming was dismissed and repeatedly mocked. Today I have been vindicated.”

And then we find out that hackers broke into the computer network run by the Hadley Climate Research Unit, removing 61 megabytes of e-mails and data, which they promptly spilled onto the Web and reveal something startling: The scientists at Hadley, one of the world’s leading climate change study centers, aren’t scientifically objective at all. If true, this is massive scientific fraud.

It was almost two years ago that I first reported on Global Cooling and I had waited a full year before I did so because I wanted to be sure before I risked being such a contrarian on this hugely important subject. Now even the BBC is weighing in on global cooling as are many others.

October 2009 will go down as the 3rd coolest October on record for the United States, according to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Records go back to 1880.

The mainstream press is finally coming to the conclusion that the entire climate debate about global warming is about to collapse so they had better get out of that game and come clean with what is happening with the sun and what that means for planet earth and all the people on it. The global warming gig has played itself out and has only gone on as long as it has because climate change was a weapon for more mass taxation.

Global warming is hard to maintain as heaters across the country are being turned on much earlier than usual. Stunning records for cold were set across the nation increasing the demand for heating fuels over the weekend. The Chicago Marathon, according to the Chicago Tribune, had its coldest start since a 33 degree low in 2002 which they say was a far cry from 2007 when temperatures soared into the upper 80s and officials canceled the marathon after 3 1/2 hours into the event.

In Denver it was reported that an arctic cold front moved in and broke a cold temperature record that stood for 104 years. In fact on the 9th of October Denver saw temperatures plunge 23 degrees in five hours setting the stage to make that record low. There were record lows in many parts of the country like Wyoming, Utah, Illinois and Iowa and if records were not broken in many areas it was extremely close.

So it might be a long hard winter in the northern hemisphere and that is bad news for the many who can hardly afford increased heating bills. It was not that long ago that we read the headlines of thousands dying from the heat; soon it will be from the cold and already we are hearing of the mounting deaths from the flu, which gets its fuel from the cold weather.

Throughout history we have had men and women leaders from the earliest times leading humanity toward destruction and ruin and it is not hard to understand their motives of corruption, power and greed. In December leaders from all over the world are gathering in Copenhagen and the good news about this meeting is that God himself did an end run around them mocking the meeting and exposing these men and women who work for the world’s elite; who just cannot seem to get it straight what it means to be a human being. The Copenhagen Treaty was meant to create a world government for the purpose of policing all nations for their carbon emissions but they are being foiled by Nature who just does not want to cooperate. The best laid plans of both mice and men get broken asunder and that’s just the way life is.

As politicians they were making their plans to sign an international treaty about global warming and carbon taxes – setting up structures for increased power of the now partially in place world government – record-breaking cold temperatures were being set in both Europe and America. We still see news about global warming when it is clear that the world is in a period of cooling as the sun cycles down and sun spots vanish and the oceans cool.

As a startling example of how a central world leader can weigh in on the wrong side; a few weeks ago U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he’s hopeful the U.S. Senate will pass a significant bill to limit carbon emissions because of global warming. Such is the arrogance of the world’s elite and the political people who follow them that even with the deep chill surrounding window panes everywhere even before real winter sets in they had every intention of signing this treaty until President Obama threw in the towel.

Prof. Don J. Easterbrook comes to the conclusion, “Global warming (i.e., the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming – it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years. The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977. Just how much cooler the global climate will be during this cool cycle is uncertain. Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945–1977 cool cycles. A more drastic cooling, similar to that during the Dalton and Maunder minimums, could plunge the Earth into another Little Ice Age, but only time will tell if that is likely.”

Meanwhile despite the international financial crisis pollution is still increasing as we continue to blanket the planet with mercury from coal fired electrical plants around the world. Mercury and thousands of other chemicals continue to be released in staggering tonnages and this is the real threat that we and our children face. Again they had most people worrying about the wrong thing – our old friend CO2.

Should we count the huge tonnage of Coke and Pepsi into our calculations of poisons released on earth directly into peoples’ guts?

Things are quite a bit different today than in 1918 when the last pandemic (first large experimental vaccine program) happened. Today people and our children are walking chemical time bombs. Diseases are accidents only waiting to happen and the triggers that will set us off get more fine-haired every year. The global catastrophe with chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart and neurological diseases has more too do with chemical poisoning running head on into nutritional deficiencies; and the fact that too many have lost their souls and don’t know truth from untruth anymore than anything else.

We could easily conclude that vaccines and influenza viruses both are hair triggers but for some unfortunately they are hard hammers.

This article originally appeared on GlobalResearch.ca.

ClimateGate scandal demonstrates intellectual protectionism of modern scientists

NaturalNews -

The inconvenient release of private email conversations among climate change scientists has been a boon for climate change skeptics. What emerges from the leaked emails is a depiction of a group of scientists who practice "intellectual protectionism" -- meaning they know they're right and they'll do anything to protect their beliefs, even if it means hiding or manipulating data.

Sound familiar? Scientists in the pharmaceutical industry have been practicing this for decades. If you think the ClimateGate emails are revealing, just imagine what kind of similar emails are flying around between Big Pharma scientists who routinely manipulate study data and commit scientific fraud in the name of medicine. Time and time again, we see revelations of manipulated clinical trials where data was intentionally distorted in order to make a dangerous, useless drug appear to be safe and effective.

What ClimateGate scientists and Big Pharma scientists have in common is that they have both abandoned the core principles of good science in their quest to be right. Rather than asking questions of nature and humbly listening to the answers provided by the data, these scientists have staked out a position and decided to defend that position at all costs -- even if it requires hiding or distorting data!

That approach is entirely unscientific, of course. In my mind, it now puts much of the recent global warming science in the same category as Big Pharma's research: Pure quackery.

As Christopher Booker explains in The Telegraph, "The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated. What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...)

Claiming to save the planet is no excuse for scientific fraud

Global warming may, indeed, be a real phenomenon. But trying to "prove" it by conspiring to manipulate the data in order to be right is absolutely the wrong way to go about studying the issue. In fact, these ClimateGate revelations have soundly discredited much of the global warming scientific community to the point where whatever these people say from now on simply cannot be trusted.

And that's a shame because the question remains: What if the global warming scientists are really right? What if they're right for all the wrong reasons, and they let their egos and their professional pride get in the way of conducting real science, thereby discrediting the very notion they were attempting to prove? That's a possibility we would still do well to consider.

Yet, from their released emails, it's quite clear these scientists were manipulating data to make the "science" fit their beliefs. They weren't focused solely on the real facts; they were interested in forwarding their climate change theories using any means necessary -- including scientific trickery.

What's truly sad about all this -- both in the climate change community and the pharmaceutical community -- is that real science has seemingly been replaced by pseudoscientific quackery. I've known for a long time that you can't trust scientists who work for pharmaceutical companies because they tend to distort their findings to support their employer. Now learning that a similar approach to junk science was apparently pursued by climate change scientists is more than a little disconcerting. It makes me wonder: Are there any honest scientists left anywhere?

The structure of scientific revolutions

It seems that in all realms of science, egos are more important than observational data. Whether you're dealing with astronomy, oceanography, anthropology or biology, every scientist wants to be right, and most will do whatever it takes to defend their proclaimed theories and beliefs. This is why it remains so ridiculously difficult to penetrate the minds of modern doctors with facts about vitamin D and cancer, for example: These "scientific thinkers" have already decided what to believe, and they'll defend those beliefs at all costs, even in the face of strong evidence that contradicts their beliefs.

What I've come to realize in all this is that many of today's scientists aren't scientific thinkers. They're really just followers of their own private cult. Some "scientists" belong to the Cult of Pharmacology, and they believe pharmaceuticals are the answer to everything. Others belong to the Cult of Climatology, where scientific evidence is replaced with "faith" beliefs that are not allowed to be questioned. These micro-cults of scientific "truth" explain why science usually doesn't advance until a whole generation of scientists either retires or expires.

It all brings us back to the amazing book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. As this book explains, science almost never advances based entirely on new research, new ideas and new data. Instead, these new understandings collide with a wall of ego-driven resistance from the established scientific community. At times, such new ideas may linger for decades or even centuries before finally being seriously considered by the scientific community and then adopted as "truth." The classic example of this is the "Earth is the center of the universe" belief that was eventually replaced with the current sun-centric solar system model -- but not before many scientific thinkers were condemned (and even put to death) for their "preposterous" belief that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

In reality, modern science advances much like vomit -- in sudden wretched heaves that are both painful and revealing. The modern scientist is far more interested in being right than in being humbly informed about the mysteries of nature, and this makes much of so-called science more of a laughing matter than anything to be taken seriously. There are, no doubt, many very good scientists operating today who truly take to heart the Scientific Method and who avoid entangling their egos in their work, but I'm coming to discover that the number of such scientists may be far smaller than I had hoped.

In my mind, all of this further discredits the very idea that science is a reliable pathway to knowledge. There are many ways to glean knowledge about the world around us, and science is only one of them. Other methods included meditation, "communing" with nature, spiritual study or even embarking on spirit journeys with the help of plant medicines. Western science has given us much in terms of practical discoveries in fields like electricity, chemistry and physics, but it has utterly failed to provide us with answers on the things that really count: What is the meaning of life? What is the nature of human consciousness? What is the human soul?

None of these questions, it seems, will ever be answered by an ego-driven, profit-focused scientific community that would rather be right than enlightened.

Three questions we need to be asking

In order to know what's truly happening with human-caused climate change, we need to get accurate answers to the following three questions:

Question #1) Are CO2 emissions on the rise? And by how much? (The answer to this is clearly yes. This part isn't being debated.)

Question #2) Will high CO2 levels in the atmosphere cause global warming? If so, what will be the climate effects at different CO2 levels? (This is the part being debated.)

Question #3) What can we do to prevent devastating climate change from occurring? (This is also being heavily debated.)

In my mind, there's no question that what we dump into the air affects the climate in some way, but as I'm not a climate scientist, I must rely on others to determine what levels of carbon dioxide are correlated with observable climate effects (such as a change in atmospheric temperature or lack thereof). What I've learned from the ClimateGate scandal is that I really can't trust these scientists to tell the truth about their findings, and that leaves me in a position of having more questions than ever before.

It won't change my behavior, though. I'll still engage in recycling. I'll continue with my plans to install solar panels to power my house. I'll keep planting trees and growing most of my own food locally. Regardless of who's right about ClimateGate, we all have a responsibility to reduce our footprint on this planet, or we may someday discover some other environmental tsunami rising up to haunt us in ways we may have never imagined.

The ClimateGate scientists may have made complete fools of themselves, but I believe we must still practice ecologically-sound "green living" in our own way, each and every day, to the best of our abilities. In other words, don't let the egos of a small group of scientists distract you from the very real need to protect the future of life on our planet. Reduce your own environmental footprint in ways that you can. Conserve and protect what we have on this planet, and we may yet have a planet left for our children a few generations down the line.

Remember: Just because these scientists manipulated the data doesn't mean we all have free license to endlessly pollute the planet. If these scientists really were hiding data indicating global warming isn't as bad as we thought, that would only be a blessing because it would mean we have more time than we thought to reduce the eco-footprint of human life on Earth (hopefully without invoking nefarious Big Brother population control measures...)

It will be fascinating to see how this story develops. We'll continue to cover it here on NaturalNews.com.

Sources for this story include
http://www.smh.com.au/world/univers...
http://features.csmonitor.com/polit...
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/82...
http://www.prisonplanet.com/climate...
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/1...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...

9/11: Pentagon Aircraft Hijack Impossible

PilotsFor911Truth.org -

Newly decoded data provided by an independent researcher and computer programmer from Australia exposes alarming evidence that the reported hijacking aboard American Airlines Flight 77 was impossible to have existed. A data parameter labeled "FLT DECK DOOR", cross checks with previously decoded data obtained by Pilots For 9/11 Truth from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) through the Freedom Of Information Act.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 departed Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles at 8:20 am Eastern Time. According to reports and data, a hijacking took place between 08:50:54 and 08:54:11[1] in which the hijackers allegedly crashed the aircraft into the Pentagon at 09:37:45. Reported by CNN, according to Ted Olson, wife Barbara Olson had called him from the reported flight stating, "...all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers..."[2]. However, according to Flight Data provided by the NTSB, the Flight Deck Door was never opened in flight. How were the hijackers able to gain access to the cockpit, remove the pilots, and navigate the aircraft to the Pentagon if the Flight Deck Door remained closed?[3]

Founded in August 2006, Pilots For 9/11 Truth is a growing organization of aviation professionals from around the globe. The organization has analyzed Data provided by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for the Pentagon Attack, the events in Shanksville, PA and the World Trade Center attack. The data does not support the government story. The NTSB/FBI refuse to comment. Pilots For 9/11 Truth do not offer theory or point blame at this point in time. However, there is a growing mountain of conflicting information and data in which government agencies and officials along with Mainstream Media refuse to acknowledge. Pilots For 9/11 Truth Core member list continues to grow.

http://pilotsfor911truth.org/core.html for full member list.

http://pilotsfor911truth.org/join to join.

[1] Hijacker Timeline - http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=17

[2] Common Strategy Prior to 9/11/2001 - http://pilotsfor911truth.org/pentagon.html

[3] Right click and save target as here to download csv file with "FLT DECK DOOR" parameter.

Use of food stamps in US up 20 percent

The recession is uhhh...over. If you mean that the recession has now become a depression, well, yeah, you're a little late on that one. The whole world is circling the drain, and the only question is: are you preparing yourself?

    London Telegraph -

    One in four American children relies on food stamps, the US welfare programme that has seen a 20 per cent rise in participants since the recession hit two years ago.

    One in eight people is now taking advantage of the nationwide subsidised scheme, with 20,000 more signing up each day, according to research by the New York Times.

    It found that in 239 counties, at least 25 per cent of residents collected food stamps, which are plastic cards that can be used for a wide range of staple goods at supermarkets.

    The scheme has existed for years, and was made easier to apply for by George W Bush, despite conservative opposition. Under Mr Bush, the scheme was also given a less pejorative formal title, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme.

    But officials have put the rapid increase down to hard economic times, with demand rising most sharply in places blighted by collapsed housing markets. The newspaper's research showed there are about 60 counties where registration has doubled since the foreclosure crisis was unleashed in 2007.

    One new recipient, an electrician in Ohio, said the monthly benefit of $300 (£180) was plugging the gap left by the collapse of his overtime payments and rising health insurance premiums.

    "I always thought it was people trying to milk the system. But we just felt like we really needed the help right now," said Greg Dawson, a father of five.

    Critics maintain that the system is widely abused, with beneficiaries piling up on steaks and soft drinks, but its defenders argue that genuine need for help with food is overwhelming.

    "This is the most urgent time for our feeding programmes in our lifetime, with the exception of the Depression," Kevin Concannon, a senior agriculture department official, told the New York Times. "It's time for us to face up to the fact that in this country of plenty, there are hungry people.

Learn how to spike a drink the CIA way

1953 manual detailing tricks of the agency's trade is published

Independent -

Forget poison-tipped umbrellas and exploding cigars. At the height of the Cold War, the CIA issued its top spooks with a more prosaic piece of equipment: a beginner's guide to magic, educating them in the old-fashioned arts of conjuring and sleight-of-hand.

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception was written in 1953 by a well-known performer called John Mulholland. It included tips for hiding objects up your sleeve, spiking someone's drink (while pretending to light a cigarette) and communicating with colleagues by tying your shoelaces in a special way.

In 1973, as the Cold War showed signs of thawing, the CIA ordered every copy of the "top secret" document to be destroyed. But one managed to escape the agency's paper shredders and was recently unearthed, in mysterious circumstances, by the espionage historian H Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, an author and former CIA staffer.

The duo managed to get the manual declassified, and have now turned it into a book, with chapters on "the surreptitious removal of objects by women," and making and concealing "droppers" for liquids and powders. There is also a basic protocol for handling several small objects at one time so that one of them will secretly end up in your pocket.

A good magician looks grey and unremarkable, Mulholland advises, saying he "should be so normal in manner, and his actions so natural, that nothing about him excites suspicion". When carrying out a trick, spies should distract their audience by putting on a silly face. "The more facial muscles are relaxed and eyes thrown out of focus, the greater the effect. Doing these actions to a mild degree merely shows a lack of alertness or disinterest."

Some of his advice is basic conjuring lore. A good trick "must be simple in its basic idea" and should be tirelessly "rehearsed" in a mirror. Some is more advanced. He showed how stage magicians use perspective to saw a woman in half, and gave detailed advice on how the various pockets in a normal suit can conceal dozens of objects.

A small blob of wax on the bottom of a hardback book can be used to pick up paper, he writes. A pill concealed in a matchbox can be secretly dropped in someone's drink if you pretend to be lighting their cigarette. A hollowed-out pencil containing powder can be emptied while you pretend to use it to sketch a diagram.

Meanwhile shoelaces can be used to pass on a range of different messages, depending on the way in which they're tied. A chapter in the book outlines how different knots can mean "I have information", "Follow me", and "I have brought another person."

Mulholland, was a well-known performer who edited the magicians' magazine, The Sphinx, for 23 years, and earned the then-princely sum of $3,000 (£1,800) for the book. It was originally published as part of a wider CIA programme called Project MKULTRA, which (among other things) experimented with using LSD to counter advanced Soviet "mind-control" techniques.

In the foreword of the new edition, published by William Morrow, the current deputy CIA director John McLaughlin writes that "magic and espionage are kindred spirits", revealing that "Mulholland's writing on delivery of pills, potions and powders was just one example of research carried out back then in fields as diverse as brainwashing and paranormal psychology."

The smoking gun: Tony Blair accused of betrayal over law chief's memo saying war was illegal

Daily Mail -

ony Blair was accused of a 'gross betrayal' of the Queen and Parliament last night after it emerged that the Government's chief law officer warned him eight months before the Iraq invasion that regime change would be illegal.

In a previously undisclosed memo, described as 'the most vital piece of the jigsaw so far', Attorney General Lord Goldsmith told the then prime minister that the war would be a blatant breach of international law.

But rather than slow his rush to war, Mr Blair froze Lord Goldsmith out of Cabinet meetings and sent two of his closest allies to menace him into changing his mind.

President Bush
Minds made up: Blair and Bush in September 2002, months
after
they had secretly agreed on war with Iraq

On March 13, 2003, a week before the invasion, the then Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Mr Blair's political fixer Baroness Morgan reportedly launched a 'pincer movement' on Lord Goldsmith and 'pinned him up against the wall and told him what Blair wanted'.

Home-schooling parents may face criminal record checks

For the good of the children, of course, to make sure these parents - weirdos that they are, for not wanting their kids to be turned into mindless automatons in the State indoctrination camps - aren't pedophiles. I'm not sure if I should feel pity for the British or disgust. Pity that they're the victims of a grotesque, ever-expanding police state, or disgust that they submit to it.

    Daily Mail -

    Parents who teach their own children at home must undergo criminal records checks, say Government education inspectors.

    The estimated 40,000 parents who choose not to send their children to school should be vetted, says Ofsted.

    It said that parents whose records throw up suspicions should be barred from teaching their own children.

    Mother home-schooling child

    Checks: Parents who teach at home must be vetted, education inspectors say

    Vetting to root out any record of violence against children would be by the Criminal Records Bureau.

    It would reveal to local authorities parents’ criminal convictions, cautions and warnings, and even information that did not lead to a criminal conviction.

    It would also show any unproven complaints noted by the controversial new Independent Safeguarding Authority, set up to vet adults working with other people’s children.

Climate change data dumped

Well who didn't see this coming a mile away? Skeptics have been pounding their door in demanding their data for which they base their crackpot theories on, and they have been stonewalled at every turn. Then the emails leak, several documenting their intention to delete data should it ever be subject to freedom of information requests, others showing the arrangements made by the "scientists" to make sure any FOI requests are denied. In the wake of this scandal the UEA promises to release their data, but, whoops! less than a day later, they regret to inform us that the data's gone. Oh my. So sorry! But you just hush up, you mean climate change deniers! Climate change is real!

    London Times -

    SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

    It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

    The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

    The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

    The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

    In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

    The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

    Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

    Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.

    He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

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

They know they're busted, and they know that pretending this scandal doesn't exist won't make it go away. Of course, they won't just admit they're criminals and liars who tried to screw the world out of prosperity and wealth, and skewed a real issue - environmental health - into a eugenics scheme designed to take control of every aspect of human life, including who is born, who lives and who dies. Knowing that the vast majority of the establishment believes the Earth is overpopulated by about 6 billion people, we know what the endgame is. Or was. Keep the heat on. Expose these psychotic criminals and bring them to justice.

    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.

    London Telegraph -


    David Holland is seeking prosecutions against some of Britain's most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws.

    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.

    The publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre. The full data, when disclosed, is certain to be scrutinised by both sides in the fierce debate.

    A grandfather with a training in electrical engineering dating back more than 40 years emerged from the leaked emails as a leading climate sceptic trying to bring down the scientific establishment on global warming.

    David Holland, who describes himself as a David taking on the Goliath that is the prevailing scientific consensus, is seeking prosecutions against some of Britain's most eminent academics for allegedly holding back information in breach of disclosure laws.

    Mr Holland, of Northampton, complained to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) last week after the leaked emails included several Freedom of Information requests he had submitted to the CRU, and scientists' private responses to them.

    Within hours, a senior complaints officer in the ICO wrote back by email: "I have started to examine the issues that you have raised in your letter and I am currently liaising with colleagues in our Enforcement and Data Protection teams as to what steps to take next."

    The official also promised to investigate other universities linked to the CRU, which is one of the world's leading authorities on temperature levels and has helped to prove that man-made global warming not only exists but will have catastrophic consequences if not tackled urgently. Mr Holland is convinced the threat has been greatly exaggerated.

    In one email dated May 28, 2008, one academic writes to a colleague having received Mr Holland's request: "Oh MAN! Will this crap ever end??"

    Mr Holland, who graduated with an external degree in electrical engineering from London University in 1966 before going on to run his own businesses, told The Sunday Telegraph: "It's like David versus Goliath. Thanks to these leaked emails a lot of little people can begin to make some impact on this monolithic entity that is the climate change lobby."

    He added: "These guys called climate scientists have not done any more physics or chemistry than I did. A lifetime in engineering gives you a very good antenna. It also cures people of any self belief they cannot be wrong. You clear up a lot of messes during a lifetime in engineering. I could be wrong on global warming – I know that – but the guys on the other side don't believe they can ever be wrong."

    Professor Trevor Davies, the university's Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement, said yesterday: "CRU's full data will be published in the interests of research transparency when we have the necessary agreements. It is worth reiterating that our conclusions correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

    "We are grateful for the necessary support of the Met Office in requesting the permissions for releasing the information but understand that responses may take several months and that some countries may refuse permission due to the economic value of the data."

    Among the leaked emails disclosed last week were an alleged note from Professor Phil Jones, 57, the director of the CRU and a leading target of climate change sceptics, to an American colleague describing the death of a sceptic as "cheering news"; and a suggestion from Prof Jones that a "trick" is used to "hide the decline" in temperature.

    They even include threats of violence. One American academic wrote to Prof Jones: "Next time I see Pat Michaels [a climate sceptic] at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted."

    Dr Michaels, tracked down by this newspaper to the Cato Institute in Washington DC where he is a senior fellow in environmental studies, said last night: "There were a lot of people who thought I was exaggerating when I kept insisting terrible things are going on here.

    "This is business as usual for them. The world might be surprised but I am not. These guys have an attitude."

    Prof Jones, who has refused to quit despite calls even from within the green movement, said last week in a statement issued through University of East Anglia, "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues."

    He suggested the theft of emails and publication first on a Russian server was "a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks".

    He added: "Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them."

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.

London Telegraph -


CO2 emissions will be on top of the agenda at the Copenhagen summit in December

A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.