Copenhagen: Epic Fail

It's no surprise to me that Copenhagen was a damp squib. Expecting such, I had hoped that it would fail spectacularly in hissy fit walkouts and bitter recriminations. Instead they patted themselves on the backs and claimed credibility for an agreement which is worth nothing.

Euro denial poster boy

Move over Nigel Lawson and Christopher Monckton, there's a new boy in town for the climate change Cult of Denial to pin their hopes on. Introducing Nick Griffin, BNP leader, who will be joining the EU delegation to the climate change talks at Copenhagen. Griffin, who already has form for his denialist tendencies over the holocaust, has hopes of challenging what he considers to be dodgy science in an attempt to suggest to the electorate that his party isn't only about racist bigotry, but that it's also a party of ingnorant anti science Luddites.

Now the top ten Tory bloggers who deny climate change, and our own local Curly, have someone in Europe to represent their views.

Origins, Climate, Science and Ignorance

Today marks 150 years since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The model of evolution through the process of natural selection was laid down so definitively within that book that the core principles are as firm now as they were then. The quality of that work set standards for scientific rigour and principle. Continuing research builds upon a huge body of knowledge.

However, since then those who have felt threatened by Darwin's work have desperately tried to discredit Darwin and his theory by cherry picking writings in letters and books which seemed to confirm their own evolution denial bias, a bias usually informed by dogma. Evolution deniers have ranged from claiming Darwin admitted God did it to Darwin was responsible for the holocaust. Even a story about a death bed recantation did the rounds.

So it's with some sense of ironic timing that the CRU email leak has the climate change deniers drooling. I haven't by any means read all the emails (frankly some of it was boring, some of it way above my head), but to me it seems like a storm in a teacup.

Admittedly there's no doubt that the leak is damaging to the perception of climate science, as the Cult of Denial has already started cherry picking quotes out of context as evidence of either a dastardly conspiracy to falsify the evidence to satisfy evil lefty political masters in their machinations to tax us all to penury, or of money grubbing Ferrari driving playboy scientists chasing after the next research grant to fund their lavish lifestyles.

Oddly though, most of blogland's Cult of Denial acolytes haven't actually referred to scientific evidence or even challenged it, instead the right wing blog hive mind seems to have decided to cross link to each other's rehashing of emails in a kind of free market fundamentalist mutual masturbation.

As with Darwin's theory, the deniers are cherry picking emails and phrases out of context to confirm their own wacky theories. Free thought and objectivity don't get a look in.

Let's face it, if any of the data produced by the CRU had been falsified, then a keen-eyed denial cultist would have spotted it long before now.

Sure, there's some personal score settling in some of the emails which is less than professional, but not particularly out of the ordinary, or as bad as some the current commentary on the right wing denial blogs. Most seriously though are the apparent attempts to silence sceptic research, which on the face of it is troubling. However, we haven't heard from the scientists themselves yet so any judgement on this issue is premature. That doesn't seem to stop some bloggers triumphantly cracking one off though.

It would have been great news if the emails contained definitive evidence that climate change science had been debunked, but the leaked emails are not the killer blow to climate science the deniers are wetting themselves about. Not even so much as a lightly smoking gun. Other than the damage from the media frenzy fed by the right wing deniers (and partially by a panicky and obtuse George Monbiot), the reputations of some scientists will have been soiled, their methodology will get a kick up the backside and their material re-examined.

So on the face of it, the Cult of Denial's inquisitors, despite their self righteous whooping, are so far burning only straw men. Unfortunately many will not see this and the emails will be permanently carved into their mythology of climate denial, and like their mindless hockey stick criticisms will continue to be a pain in the backside of those with respect for objective free thought.

The science is still strong but it doesn't stand still. Like all science, the current knowledge about our climate and our impact on it will continue to change as new research becomes available and new and better conclusions are sought. Like evolution, climate science moves on with advances in our understanding of the world.

The Cult of Denial can't accept that, instead loudly shouting down change, trying to drown out the rational voices of the science heretics who threaten their cosy dogma.

It's been 150 years since Darwin published his landmark work, and it's still an achievement to be celebrated. But 150 years later we are still facing the closed minds of anti scientific ignorance.

Wind loss

Despite enjoying the most bountiful wind resources in Europe, as a nation the UK is really poor at wind power. If this facility is allowed to fail, whilst our money is being pumped into a motor industry to fund business as usual, we'll see how green this government really wants to be.

Save Vestas

Flight Club

The First rule of Flight Club is: Aviation doesn't pull it's weight in the fight to reduce CO2 emissions.

The Second rule of Flight Club is: Aviation doesn't pull it's weight in the fight to reduce CO2 emissions.

Those are the rules according to the Miliband brothers.

Mili the Younger

Where I disagree with other people on aviation is if you did 80% cuts across the board, as some people have called for on aviation, you would go back to 1974 levels of flying. I don't want to have a situation where only rich people can afford to fly.

Mili the Elder

if we're going to fly more we've got to do much less of something else. Because what counts in the end is not whether emissions come from cars or homes or aeroplanes - what counts is that our carbon emissions are reduced.

So, what sector do the bros want to cut so folk can fly to Prague for a piss up and a shag? Health? Keeping houses warm?

Apparently, according to these guys flying is some kind of grand egalatarian right and deserves the state's protection. Most flights are populated by the well off or used to fly in kumquats (they are a fruit BNP readers), whilst being subsidised by everyone else through aviation's fuel tax breaks, money export and job losses abroad, not to mention the unaccounted externalities of climate change.

Protecting aviation is not about saving flights for the poor, it's about lining in the pockets of people like Willie Walsh and Michael O'Leary, whilst the poor around the world will be the first and worst hit by the unstable climate ushered in by short sighted policies like the ones the Milibands support.

Science not admissable in court

Facts are refused to be given in evidence and justice comes second to law. If any evidence was needed that the juduciary has become beholden to the string pullers of the status quo, it was in the case of the trial of the 'Drax 29 ' climate change protestors.

Like 'Justice' Eady's creative re-definition of the word 'bogus' to stack the deck in the bogus libel case against Simon Singh, 'Justice' Spencer similarly fixed the outcome of the case against the Drax train protestors by rejecting evidence about global warming as 'irrelevant', a key part of the defence. Spencer didn't make a legal ruling, he made a political decision, on behalf of a corrupt and dishonest government in thrall to a greedy power generator.

The filth beat 'em up, the beaks lock 'em up.

Labour's inaction on climate change

Joan Ruddock's hilarious defence in the Guardian of Labour's complete failure to get to grips with climate change, and the following responses, illustrates two important points:

1. Joan Ruddock is off her trolley.

2. Everyone knows it.

True, there'll be more than two points, but on every issue that Ruddock has tried to claim victory, Labour has failed miserably or fallen short of the required standard. The craven dishonesty even goes so far as to imply that Friends of the Earth's Big Ask campaign was somehow a Labour idea:

It's a model that Friends of the Earth campaign for other countries to adopt in their Big Ask, a sign perhaps of greater optimism and ambition than the Green party demonstrates.

Utterly utterly dishonest. The Climate Change Act was a result of FOE's Big Ask campaign, not it's progenitor. Parliament set about watering down the original Big Ask aims to such a point to make a Climate Change Bill just about toothless, except as PR fodder for Ruddock's rancid propaganda.

Dishonest. Fail.

How fucked are we?

The geniuses at the MIT Global Change Program have looked at the scenarios for climate change - what kind temperature change we can expect if we do something and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, or what we are looking at if we don't.

Take a gamble on the wheel of misfortune here.

An interesting analogy used on the site is one of taking personal responsibility to mitigate risk:

Human-induced climate change is a problem of risk management. It can not be proved that the outcome will be dire or shown with certainty that it will not. As with other problems we face in private life and public policy, from controlling your cholesterol level to defense against epidemic disease, uncertain dangers can warrant reasonable measures to reduce risk.

The answer - take care of the biospshere, like taking care of your heart - do something about it.

The great coal con

I wonder if the Gazette is being paid for advertising space, when I read tonight's shamelessly biased article calling for the return of coal mining. It's not the first such article to appear in the Gazette. When South Tyneside Green Party tried to respond to the last piece on carbon capture and storage (CCS) with this press release, the Gazette spiked it.

Tonight's piece is one of the most shocking examples of industry PR masquerading as journalism that I've seen for a long time. Claims are unsubstantiated and hyperbolic terms such as 'trailblazers' indicate an uncritical approach to coal. And frankly, the Gazette is wearing out the 'King Coal' brand.

Bryan has already covered the excellent U.S. this is reality campaign highlighting the simple reality: there is no such thing as clean coal.

Here is this is reality's new video, created by film gods the Coen Brothers:

Speaking of local MPs

As I said in the previous post, there's been little support for Jim Cousin's EDM. Perhaps it will come.

However, whilst others are trying to save Tyne & Wear's public transport, Jarrow MP Stephen Hepburn has been busy sniffing out information for accidents on the A1. It's no secret that Hepburn is one of the cheerleaders for dualling the A1 in Northumberland, and his enquiry through Parliamentary questions over accidents and deaths on the A1 looks like a continuation of his campaign of sucking up to the Journal.

Normally, his Parliamentary questions precede one of his regular Gazette propaganda pieces so don't be surprised if one on A1 dualling turns up soon.

Hepburn dimissed the government's own studies as "multi-modal rubbish", so it looks some like barrel scraping is going on to build a case.

Looking at the figures he's been given, it looks like there's nothing for Hepburn to use to justify dualling the A1 in safety terms, unless he takes a creative view to interpreting them. The figures given broadly support the European Road Assessment Program's (EuroRAP) assessment of the A1 as low to medium risk. The A1 doesn't even appear on the last 2006 report of Britain's most dangerous roads.

Here is a quick picture of the Parliamentary road safety stats:

The long term accident trend is downwards, but what I would find disconcerting is the proportionately higher number of deaths to accidents in Northumberland compared to Tyne & Wear, although this may have something to do with emergency services response times and distances to hospitals in rural areas. If an argument was to be had here it would be for an expansion and public funding of the Great North Air Ambulance Service, instead of it having to rely on charitable donations. That I would support.

But on terms of dualling the A1, nothing much here to see.

Keep Metro public

One of the few Labour MPs with any principles, Jim Cousins, has raised an Early Day Motion, EDM 792, calling for the Tyne & Wear Metro to avoid the greedy clutches of privatisation. The interesting thing about the EDM is the remarkable dearth of North East MPs - only three North East MPs have signed up to the EDM.

The PR bods at Nexus have been desperate to deny there's privatisation afoot, but any effort to move a function of the Metro infrastructure from the public to the private sector is privatisation.

I fail to see any benefit privatisation of the Metro would bring for the people of Tyne & Wear. Given the current economic climate, presumably the financing would have to come from government, either directly or roundabout via bailed-out banks. As the EDM describes, bidders include corporations from Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Germany, which means a key part of our local transport infrastrucure will be in the hands of board room directors in other countries.

Our national rail system is a shambles and the disastrous Metronet farce in London illustrate just how poor privatised rail can be.

Given that public transport systems like Metro also feature heavily in policies aimed at reducing car use and reducing climate changing emissions, it's irresponsible to hand it over to external bodies.

North East Top Guns

I've been busy over the last few days so this is a bit belated, so respect to North East Labour MPs Jim Cousins, Newcastle upon Tyne Central, and Chris Mullin, Sunderland South, for having the cojones and principles to vote against the government in last Wednesday's Heathrow debate. Top blokes.

Asshats to those other North East Labour MPs, like our own Stephen Hepburn and David Miliband, who voted for a project intended to increase London's economic dominance at the expense of the regions.

Nineteen

For a government with a working majority of 63, winning tonight's vote, on the Tories' motion that the government should rethink the Heathrow plans, by only 19 votes is a thin margin indeed, and is another illustration how far out of touch with people this government is - and how close to BAA. Yet again, this Labour government has no doubt whored itself out to the sectarian fuckwits in the Democratic Unionists to win a close vote.

This isn't helped by some Labour MPs who claimed to be against the third runway but stayed away from the vote to avoid being seen supporting a Tory motion. Where's your principles you fucking cowardly hypocrites?

Whilst the Tories will claim a kind of moral victory, there are still some in Cameron's ranks who support the third runway.

Oh, and Geoff Hoon is a complete tool.

Brrr, it's cold in the Antartic

But not as cold as it used to be. To many in the church of climate change denial ("climate scientologists" I think Curly calls them), Antarctic cooling has been the elephant in the room. To many deniers, a gap in scientific knowledge on the issue discredits anthropogenic global warming. Even climate scientists have acceded the point that there was a gap. Honestly reviewing the issue, the IPCC concluded in 2007 that:

"It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic (human-induced) warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent - except Antarctica."

Whilst some parts of the Antarctic have been getting cooler, the average across the continent shows a warming trend over the last 50 years. But those pesky scientists at RealClimage.org who prepared the work and have submitted their paper to Nature have been cautious in pointing out that:

"Our paper — by itself — does not address whether Antarctica’s recent warming is part of a longer term trend."

But it does address that gap in the IPCC's 2007 assessment.

It looks more than ever that the denial position is to climate science as the desperate "God of the gaps" philosophy is to physics and biology.

Shields Gazette: inaccurate and misleading

Part 1 of the Press Complaints Commission's Code of Practice states:

"The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures."

In this article in tonight's Gazette they've clearly broken this guideline with this statement:

"A CALL to expand Newcastle Airport has been given cross-party support by all South Tyneside's political groups"

Note "all South Tyneside's political groups". Well, that's quite a bold claim since only three local political groups, Labour, Tories and Alliance have been quoted in the article. Nowhere to be seen are the Lib Dems, Progressives or the Green Party. I don't know about the Lib Dems, they're schizo on matters environmental, the Progressives would probably love the idea but the Green Party definitely doesn't support the expansion of Newcastle Airport. Quite the opposite.

Plans to increase flights at Newcastle fail on both environmental and economic grounds.

The "sustainable jobs" and "more efficient and cleaner types of energy" claims from Coun Anglin are laughably nonsensical and stand up as well as used toilet paper. And smell as shitty too. David Potts may love the idea of flights to New York, but shouldn't expect many New Yorkers to come to the North East on lavish shopping trips. Ahmed Khan, as spokesman for the party that's not a party, is spouting the same development and trade bullshit that framed the arguments for concreting Fellgate. It's touching that all three councillors were so quick to jump together into the palm of professional lobbyist and Labour old boy Brian Wilson.

So much for opposition.

But given the Gazette's current editorial embargo on dissenting press releases, and careful news management for its chums, don't expect any real voices of opposition to appear in its pages any time soon.

Welcome to 2009

Happy New Year! 2009 is a year to celebrate two key anniversaries in science history - Charles Darwin's birthday (200th) and the publication of his groundbreaking and meticulous On the Origin of Species (150th).

A major event in history with probably the most influential scientist ever, it would be a shame if our government and schools failed to take the opportunity to celebrate and educate, particularly at a time when science is under attack from the religious fundamentalism of creationist myths and paranoia of climate change denialism.

Science education also seems worryingly at risk from a generation of teachers who have a flexible approach to creation myths. Hopefully the polls overrate the problem.

A recognition of Darwin and his achievements and science in general would go a long way to challenge ignorance, and celebrate, not flying a painted piece of cloth or a mythical saint, but a real person who has provided such a valuable addition to our rich heritage that the British can be proud of.

Massaging the pain

And the figures. As part of their stormtrooper fest at the Kingsnorth power station demonstration, the police manipulated a pliant media to paint a picture of participants hell bent on violence and terrorism.

Lib Dem MP David Taylor unearthed a list of horrific injuries police received during the event, which tells a chilling story of ruthless hippy demonstrators and of real courage under fire by our brave boys in blue:

"stung on finger by possible wasp"

"officer injured sitting in car"

"officer succumbed to sun and heat"

"pain in lower back"

"toothache"

Absolute carnage.

The horror, the horror.

We don't need no stinking coal or nukes

Word to punkscience.

Fucking A!

Dystopian present

Helicopter searchlights scanning the area. Armed shock troops intimidating citizens. Arresting innocents. Taking their possessions. Accusing them of uncommitted crimes. Inciting violence. Using dodgy laws to bludgeon peaceful protest.

Well, the police in Kent are certainly making a name for themselves. Welcome to Airstrip One in the 21st Century.

100 months to fix the planet

It's not alarmism, but a call to action, reeking with something the mainstream parties lack: an ideological desire for change for the better.