Douglas points to why youth unemployment doubled

This graph from ACT’s Roger Douglas illustrates John Key’s duplicity in first helping to cause, then pretending to care about, youth unemployment.

National, Labour and the Greens — all parties bar ACT — voted down Roger’s bill to reinstate youth rates and get kids off the couch and into work.

By refusing to allow kids to be paid less than adults, Key deliberately allowed the number of young unemployed to double.

Now he’s offering a dollop of your money to any boss who pays a kid an adult’s wage.

Why not just let the boss pay the kid a kid’s wage, and let the kid work their way up — the way most of us did?

Excellent graph, whoever did this.

Ad that Dom banned cleared by ASA

My ACT ad that contained 40 statements of fact has been cleared by the Advertising Standards Authority.

MAORI RADICALS ADVERT NOT IN BREACH – ASA

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected a complaint about ACT’s controversial “Fed up with pandering to Maori radicals?” newspaper advertisement.

Twelve people argued the advert was “misleading, offensive, racist, in breach of the requirement for a due sense of social responsibility and likely to play on fear”.

The ASA said a political party advocating a robust view on matters of public interest allowed the public to see the party’s position. There was no breach of codes and no grounds for the complaints to proceed, it ruled.

Yet the Dominion Post refused to “allow the public to see the party’s position”. 

As a private company, they had the right to ban the ad. (Whether they had the right to charge ACT full price for the space is another matter.)

But the public also has the right to know that the capital’s daily newspaper is politically biased against ACT.

This is the ad that the Herald ran, and the Dom banned:

What sort of democracy do we live in when a monopoly newspaper can be so cravenly politically correct as to ban a question that most of its readers would answer Yes to, backed by 40 true statements?

The Evans Bay Turtle

What is it about Wellington and its circular landmarks with eccentric nicknames?

The under-50s won’t remember when the twin-domed Welsh Dragon Bar in the middle of Kent and Cambridge Terraces used to be a public toilet block, known by all as the Taj Mahal.

At the far end of the same dual-dragstrip is the Basin Reserve, so named after the 1855 earthquake turned Basin Lake into a swamp, which the council then turned into a sports reserve.

Over in Thorndon there’s the parliamentary Beehive, which Sir Basil Spence designed on the back of a serviette. And the Cake Tin, named by yours truly in response to a call for a nickname by the Evening Post’s Angus Morrison.

(Note: popular rumour has it that the Cake Tin was named by an Auckland talk show host, which is why it wasn’t popular for a long time with Wellingtonians. Still others say it was Andrew Mehrtens. Being a rather obvious name, it was probably all three of us.)

And now we have a new stadium to name: the Kilbirnie Indoor Sports Centre in Evans Bay. It’s not quite circular, but near enough.

The Dom Post’s Hank Schouten is calling for nicknames, so I sent in this letter:

Like the Cake Tin, the new Kilbirnie Indoor Sports Centre is a good example of smooth, single-minded design.

Now, what to call it?

I worry that the architects’ favourite, The Limpet, while anatomically accurate, might be a bit, well, limp to catch on.

So what about the Saucer (as in flying), the Clam, the Oyster, the Stingray, the Flounder, the Slater or the Frisbee?

(Had they built it where Councillor Andy Foster wanted, it could have been the Downtown Indoor Sports Centre — DISC.)

A friend of mine argues noisily for The Trilobite, a creature I had not heard of, but which it clearly resembles.

But the nickname with the best combination of stickability and seaside relevance would have to be the Turtle.

What do you think? Feel free to suggest a name of your own. I may run a poll of the best of them.

But to me, if I squint as I drive round the bays I see a beached, bleached white turtle shell whose occupant is wisely staying indoors.

(As well he might. When I drove past on Monday, there was thick snow just around the corner in Shelly Bay.)

How we make the news in Aussie these days

The Tasman wage gap, which John Key once pretended to want to close, is also a poverty gap.

Here’s how it’s being reported in Australia. 

Of course, setting the poverty line at 60% of median income is a typical lefty linguistic trick. 

Poverty is starvation. Being only 60% as rich as the averge person is envy.

Still, relative to 30 other First World nations, New Zealand’s performance is shameful:

20th for children living in poor households

21st for infant mortality

29th for measles immunisation rates

29th for child health and safety

3oth for teen suicides.

Thanks Ross for sending me this clipping.

Putting it bluntly — a police chief speaks his mind

I dedicate this post to Garth McVicar.

It’s a San Francisco police chief giving the bedwetter media a bollocking for making a big deal of the speed one of his officers was travelling when he was killed chasing an armed felon.

This guy would make a great politician. He knows people despise the liberal media’s warped sense of justice, so doesn’t hesitate to get straight on the front foot.

Why do most public figures lack this instinct and resort to weasel words and apologies?

We should celebrate people who speak plainly. They’re islands of truth in a sea of deceit.

Thanks Digby for sending me this video.

Out of the frying pan into the fridge: the hysterical record of climate change

Since Queen Victoria’s time, climate “scientists” have been telling us climate change was going to kill us. But they keep changing their minds on whether we’re going to fry or freeze.

The media, of course, are happy either way, as long as they can scare us into reading all about it.

Read this timeline and weep — or steam. (Blue you freeze, red you fry.)

It’s nearly all from the interesting site But Now You Know — The Search for Truth in Human Action .

The Ever-Changing Climate Change Timeline

1895
 Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again 
New York Times

1902
Disappearing Glaciers…deteriorating slowly, with
a persistency that means their final annihilation…
scientific fact…surely disappearing. 
Los Angeles Times

1912
Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age
New York Times

1923
Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada
Chicago Tribune

That scientist was Professor Gregory of Yale University, the US representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress.

1923
The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and the
southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given
rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age 
Washington Post

1924
MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age 
New York Times

1929
Is another ice age coming?
Los Angeles Times

1932
“If these things be true, it is evident,
therefore that we must be just teetering on an ice age”
The Atlantic
This Cold, Cold World

1933
America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776;
Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise 
New York Times

 So now they claim global warming’s been going on for 25 years. Yet for that whole 25 years, they were warning of an ice age.

1933
“…wide-spread and persistent tendency toward
warmer weather…Is our climate changing?” 
Federal Weather Bureau

1938
“Global warming, caused by man heating the planet
with carbon dioxide “is likely to prove beneficial to mankind
in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power.”
Royal Meteorological Society

1938
“Experts puzzle over 20 year mercury rise…Chicago
is in the front rank of thousands of cities throughout the world
which have been affected by a mysterious trend toward
warmer climate in the last two decades.” 
Chicago Tribune

1939
“Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they
were boys are quite right… weather men have no doubt that
the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.”
Washington Post

1952
“…we have learned that the world has been
getting warmer in the last half century.”
New York Times

1954
“…winters are getting milder, summers drier.
Glaciers are receding, deserts growing.”
U.S. News and World Report

1954
Climate – the Heat May Be Off
Fortune

1959
“Arctic Findings in Particular Support
Theory of Rising Global Temperatures”
New York Times

1969
“…the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that
the ocean at the North Pole may become
an open sea within a decade or two”
New York Times

1969 
“If I were a gambler, I would take even money
that England will not exist in the year 2000″
Paul Ehrlich

(Erlich now predicts doom from global warming, so this
quote gets an honorable mention, even though he was
talking about his crazy fear of overpopulation)

1970
“…get a good grip on your long johns, cold
weather haters – the worst may be yet to
come…there’s no relief in sight”
Washington Post

1974
Global cooling for the past forty years
Time

 Huh? But for just about all of the previous forty years (whizz back to 1934) they’d been saying the earth was getting hotter!

 1974
“Climatological Cassandras are becoming
increasingly apprehensive, for the weather
aberrations they are studying may be
the harbinger of another ice age.”
Washington Post

1974
“As for the present cooling trend a number of leading
climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed”
Fortune
(Winner of a Science Writing Award
from the American Institute of Physics
for its analysis of the danger)

1974
“…the facts of the present climate change are such that
the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty
to major crop failure…mass deaths by starvation,
and probably anarchy and violence.” 
New York Times

1975
Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing;
A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable
New York Times

1975
“The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside
nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death
and misery for mankind.”
Nigel Calder
Editor, New Scientist
in International Wildlife

1976
“Even U.S. farms may be hit by cooling trend”
U.S. News and World Report

1979
The Cooling of America
Time

1981
Global Warming “of an almost unprecedented magnitude”
New York Times

1988
“I would like to draw three main conclusions.

“Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than
at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.

“Number two, the global warming is now large enough that
we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause
and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.

“And number three, our computer climate simulations
indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large
enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme
events such as summer heat waves.”
Jim Hansen
Testimony before Congress
(For context, see His later quote
and His superior’s objection)

1989
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound
to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must
include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts.

“On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human
beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world
a better place, which in this context translates into our working
to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change.

“To do that we need to get some broad based support, to
capture the public’s imagination. That, of course,
means getting loads of media coverage.

“So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make
simplified, dramatic statements, and make
little mention of any doubts we might have.

“This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find
ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula.

“Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.
I hopethat means being both.”
Stephen Schneider
Lead author 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Discover

1990
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue.  Even if the theory
of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing –
in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Senator Timothy Wirth

1993
“Global climate change may alter temperature and rainfall
patterns, many scientists fear, with uncertain
consequences for agriculture.”
U.S. News and World Report

1998 
No matter if the science [of global warming] is all phony . . .
climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity
to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart
Canadian Minister of the Environment
Calgary Herald

2001 
“Scientists no longer doubt that global warming
is happening, and almost nobody questions the fact
that humans are at least partly responsible.” 
Time

2003
“Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been
appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-
makers were relatively unaware of the global warming
issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil
and tar sands were receiving strong consideration”
Jim Hansen
NASA global warming activist
Can we defuse The Global Warming Time Bomb?

2006
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation
of factual presentations on how dangerous it is,
as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to
what the solutions are, and how hopeful
it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”
Al Gore
Grist

2006
BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED.
Climate change isn’t some vague future problem — it’s
already damaging the planet at an alarming pace.
Time

Now: The global mean temperature has fallen for four years in a row, which is why you stopped hearing details about the actual global temperature, even while they carry on about taxing you to deal with it…how long before they start predicting an ice age?

 

The actual Global Warming Advocates’ chart, overlayed on the
“climate change” hysterics of the past 120 years. Not only is it
 clear that they take any change and claim it’s going to go on
forever and kill everyone, but notice that they even
sometimes get the short-term trend wrong.

Of course NOW they are talking about the earth “warming for
the past century”, again ignoring that they spent much of
that century claiming we were entering an ice age.

The fact is that the mean temperature of the planet is,
and should be, always wavering up or down, a bit,
because this is a natural world, not a climate-controlled office.

So there will always be some silly bureaucrat, in his air-
conditioned ivory tower, who looks at which way it’s
going right now, draws up a chart as if this is permanent,
realizes how much fear can increase his funding, and proclaims
doom for all of humanity.

2006
“It is not a debate over whether the earth has been warming
over the past century. The earth is always warming or cooling,
at least a few tenths of a degree…”
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology
MIT

2006
“What we have fundamentally forgotten is simple primary
school science. Climate always changes. It is always…
warming or cooling, it’s never stable. And if it were stable,
it would actually be interesting scientifically because it
would be the first time for four and a half billion years.”
Philip Stott
Emeritus professor of bio-geography
University of London

2006
“Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling 
and warming scares during four separate and sometimes
overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930′s the media
peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920′s until the 1960′s
they warned of global warming. From the 1950′s until the 1970′s
they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern
global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote
opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.”
Senator James Inhofe

2007
“I gave a talk recently (on fallacies of global warming) and
three members of the Canadian government, the environmental
cabinet, came up afterwards and said, ‘We agree with you,
but it’s not worth our jobs to say anything.’ So what’s being
created is a huge industry with billions of dollars of
government money and people’s jobs dependent on it.”
Dr. Tim Ball
Coast-to-Coast

2008
“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated  NASA’s
official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did
not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s
effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming
out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his
testimony before Congress”
Dr. John S. Theon
Retired Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program 
NASA

 
Next time you see the usual “global warming” chart, look
carefully: it is in tiny fractions of one degree. The ENTIRE 
global warming is less than six tenths of one degree.

Here is the Global Warming Advocates’ own chart,
rendered in actual degrees like sane people use.
I was going to use 0-100 like a thermometer,
but you end up with almost a flat line, so I HELPED
the Climate Change side by making the temperature
range much narrower, and the chart needlessly
tall to stretch the up-down differences in the line.

JA: I made this other picture as a variation on the one at the top:

 

What would Maggie have done with the rioters?

After the pathetic response by British authorities to the riots, I can’t help wonder what Margaret Thatcher would have done in David Cameron’s shoes.

A lot more than talk tough, I bet.

She’d have had those watercannons and rubber bullets on the streets faster than you could say Arthur Scargill.

This is what she said at the time of the miners’ strike:

“What we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and it must not succeed. It must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it. The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.”

And again, casting the miners as unpatriotic:

“We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty”.

By the way, did you know Scargill’s strike was funded by the KGB?

After his Wellington talk, Lord Monckton was telling us about his time with Thatcher, and how the government were tracking Scargill travelling round the Soviet Union collecting money and instructions.

New London Olympics logo

    

Thanks Mike for sending me this. Wish I’d thought of it!

 

Well done, DomPost

After hammering the Dominion Post on Close Up for banning my ACT ‘Maori radicals ad’ that contained 40 statements of truth, I’m pleased to be able to congratulate the paper for yesterday making these two letters their lead and second letters of the day:

Where does that ‘science’ definition leave Al Gore, then?

Lorna Sutherland’s comments (Letters, August 8) highlight an interesting attitude to democracy and proper science. 

(That’s meant to say August 8. Of all the eccentric habits of WordPress, automatically turning the number eight followed by a close bracket into a smile takes the cake!) 

Does she agree that her denial that Lord Monckton should be permitted a platform to discuss climate change extends to former United States vice- president Al Gore, who is similarly lacking expertise and experience in science?

Is she aware that Dr John Abraham’s comments on Lord Monckton are subject to critical comments about misrepresentation and falsehoods ?

By what measure would we ever give the Greens, Niwa’s Dr James Renwick or anybody else the right to decide what may be presented by any person on any subject in public?

Real science is proven by sceptical trial and debate. False science has hidden data, insufficient record of proof, and protection from open query and dissenting opinion.

Real science isn’t proven by so-called consensus, authority or taking someone’s word for it.

Is Ms Sutherland aware no peer- reviewed scientific proof appears to exist that climate change, warming or whatever is driven by human-induced carbon-dioxide emissions, and the theory is supported by conjecture only?

I suggest she take tuition on what it means to live in a democracy.

GRAHAM CLAYTON
Taupo 

What have these people to fear?

Our climate change scientists and, maybe, politicians, seem to be running scared. They have refused to debate climate change with Lord Monckton because the matter is now agreed upon and settled among scientists. Really?

It was also said that to debate with him would give Lord Monckton and his unscientific ideas credibility. If our scientists’ views, which cost a lot of money, are so right, what have they to fear?

IRENE FAGAN
Island Bay

Well said, Graham and Irene.

Monckton, Greenpeace, NASA and Nazis

This is a good video to watch if you want a quick insight into the sceptic side of the global warming debate.

You’ll see clips from The Great Global Warming Swindle, the movie featuring Greenpeace founder-turned-sceptic Patrick Moore, NASA scientist Roy Spencer and other eminent sceptics.

Then in the middle you’ll see Lord Christopher Monckton completely monstering (with logic) a noisy gang of young Climate Scientologists who were silly enough to  disrupt his Copenhagen meeting.

Seizing upon the parallel with the bullying tactics of the Hitler Youth in the same city, he quickly gained a global audience by describing them as such.

When a Jewish member of the gang objects, Monckton front foots like a true Thatcherite. He tells the offended heckler that if he and his mates ares going to behave like the Hitler Youth, he’s going to keep calling him that.

(What a shame Monckton isn’t the Lord Mayor of London right now.)

This is all great sport, but in amongst it all is Monckton’s point:

Although these young hecklers are rude rather than murderous, There is a very real parallel between the green movement and evil regimes like the Nazis.

And that is the huge number of deaths from starvation being caused by food shortages, caused by rising food prices, caused by the conversion of food crops to biofuel.

The greenies never have an answer to that one. I made this little ad about it:

This is the way to defeat the Left. Tell the graphic truth about how their pathological stupidity invariably hurts the people they make such a play of pretending to care about.

I want to start a ‘teach tank’ to put ads like this in front of the public.

Right-wing politicians have tried to bust the media blockade, but failed. Ads like this will  cut through. If the media won’t run them, we just plaster them on poster sites.

They needn’t be big ads, but they do need to be plentiful, and regular. There are so many issues to cover. 

Such a campaign, from a brand that becomes trusted for its clarity, will change the polarity of politics.

Now, who wants to fund it?

If the IPCC was a corporation, its leaders would be in jail — Auditor

This interesting comment from auditor Mervyn Sullivan on the blog But Now You Know– The Search For Truth in Human Action. I’ll soon be posting my version of their Climate Change Timeline.

But for now, read this (I’ve bolded my three favourite lines):   

As a professional auditor, I’m forever obtaining and evaluating evidence. I became interested in the climate debate because of Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”. So I decided to examine the evidence.

I have spent thousands of hours researching… to understand both sides to the climate debate (e.g. I went through the IPCC’s AR4 report, but I also went through the “Climate Change Reconsidered report by the NIPCC; I read books, blogs, magazines, research papers, authoritative web sites, and more).

Sounds like a thorough kind of guy. And what did he find?

I have come to the firm conclusion that nothing about our weather and climate is unprecedented. I have come to the conclusion that climate scientists still need to learn so much more about earth’s complex chaotic climate system before they can be so bold as to claim that CO2 is the key driver of catastrophic man-made global warming and climate change, or that certain weather events have been caused by man-made global warming. I have also learnt that predicting weather beyond say a couple of weeks is too difficult, and on that basis, predicting future climate is simply impossible.

Climate is average weather, is it not? 

I have not found any persuasive evidence that proves CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming or even driving climate change as claimed by the IPCC… there is no empirical evidence supporting this view. 

I have come to the conclusion that the evidence is stronger in support of the idea that our climate is driven by numerous complex factors involving, for example, solar magnetic activity, cosmic rays, cloud formation, lunar position, and ocean currents.

Just as the sceptical climate scientists have been saying. 

I also think the Central England Temperature record is probably a reliable temperature proxy record to work off. It shows no evidence of any runaway global warming since the mid 1600s.

I wonder if this news has reached East Anglia. (As in the University of). But here’s his killer finding: 

If I had to issue an audit opinion on the IPCC AR4 report, it would have to be a disclaimer opinion. In fact, I would go so far as to state that if the IPCC AR4 report were subject to the same standards of accountability as under corporations legislation, the IPCC members would probably be facing jail sentences for releasing misleading information to the public, and grossly deceiving the public by claiming its report was based only on peer reviewed scientific literature (the best science) when in reality, approximately 30% of the 18,500+ citations are now known to have related to “grey literature” such as articles by campaigning organizations like WWF and Greenpeace… which are not even close to being peer reviewed scientific literature. 

Surely the United Nations wouldn’t really parrot left-wing propaganda? And surely — despite one of its head honchos being Helen Clark — it’s not really using eco-catastrophism as a pretext for socialist world government?

What I have also learnt from my research is that the climate change debate has become over-politicized to the point that it now overrides real climate science. It’s now all about regulating and taxing ‘carbon’ to fix an imaginary future problem. To even think that certain people could assume that humans could tame and control the weather and climate, Mother Nature, demonstrates the madness on the part of some, in relation to this debate over man-made global warming. 

Comment by Mervyn Sullivan | February 9, 2011  @ 06:48 |

Now at this point, of course, our resident warm-mongers Judge Holden and David Winter will immediately leap in to somehow blacken this auditor’s name. (The Green Party Black Ops Manual on the Flaming and Defaming of Heretics offers a host of plausible smears.) 

And I can’t defend him, because I have no idea who, where, or how good an auditor, Mervyn Sullivan is. 

Nonetheless, I thought you might find it interesting to hear from a man who spends his life sifting truth from lies.

To socialist-pessimists from capitalist-optimists: Cheer up!

A word to all you red-green (and, of late, yellow) malcontents who infest the comments section of this blog with your relentless nit-picking and overweaning planetary pessimism.

Whether you like it or not, guys, (and I know you don’t), you are members of a species with a stellar record of problem-solving.

I’m very sorry to have to say that, but the optimists among us (AKA capitalists) just keep dreaming up ways to make our lives better and better.

Including yours. Have you noticed? I guess not. It’s not really in your interests to look.

Despite the best efforts of communism and socialism (which I call Applied Pessimism), not to mention eco-pessimism (Applied Pessimism for Profit), things are getting better on this planet all the time.

If you think it’s not, ask yourself: which time and place in history would you like to be transported back to? (When some clever capitalist develops the inevitable time machine, I’m sure that can be arranged.)

When you’re back there in your colonial house or pre-colonial whare, liberated from annoyances like electricity and motor cars and vaccines and flush toilets — as you contemplate your new-found squalor and imminent demise — you may start to feel that life in the 21st century wasn’t so bad after all.

You may be forced to concede that all those gizmos you used to take for granted came to you via the evil capitalist Industrial Revolution and the fertile minds of geniuses with incentives.

As we speak, all over the Third World, that same reprehensible system of market capitalism is lifting millions out of poverty in former socialist-pessimist societies like China and India. 

Like it or not, capitalism has been doing this now for 200 years. Have a look at Hans Rosling’s beautiful moving graph of the Health and Wealth of Nations and you’ll see which nations have gone ahead the fastest — and which haven’t.

And you’ll see that all nations are healthier than they were in 1800. And all but a few corrupt African basket cases are wealthier.

You can’t stand the idea of that, can you? Especially as all your doomsday prophesies never quite complete the journey from wishful theory to reality.

The history of Western civilisation in recent times has been one of relentless, inspiring and beneficial progress.

Yet always you gloom-mongers would have us believe that all we hold dear is about to collapse.

Either it’s our economic system, or our health, or the computer system, or the climate and life as we know it.

The disgraceful thing is how you’re quite happy to frighten the children to further your goals.

But you don’t frighten the grown-ups. That’s because people who’ve been round the clock a few times recognise your tactics. We’ve noticed how most of these scares can be avoided with the payment of a large amount of money to some socialist cause.

Meanwhile society, fueled by capitalism fueled by optimism, advances regardless of your wishes. The rich get richer. And so, as long as their governments aren’t corrupt, do the poor.

So how about dropping your absurd addiction to socialism-pessimism and drink to the good times (ie the last 200 years)?

Your latest crisis of convenience is global warming. Sadly for you, many, if not most, people now agree this is an eco-socialist-pessimist plot to transport us en-masse back to your colonial house.

That’s because, despite all the efforts of the socialist brainwashing factory that purports to be the state education system, these people have somehow retained the capacity for joined-up thinking. You should try it.

Instead of creating diversions and parroting the party line about whether Monckton is qualified to make the sense he makes, how about doing the unthinkable and thinking for yourselves?

Yes I know it sounds an odd thing to suggest.

But how about actually watching his debate with Tim Lambert and making up your own mind?

You can do it in the privacy of your own home, so the Church of Climate Scientology doesn’t have to know.

And you don’t have to worry that Tim doesn’t hold your end up, because he does. He argues his case well. You may even conclude that he won the debate. Or you may be persuaded by Monckton. That’s what an open mind is for.

So have a look. Assess them both on their merits. With your eyepatch off.

And afterwards, if you feel like it, tell me what you thought.

Meantime, I’m raising my glass (which is a lot more than half-full) to my ingenious species and the continued success of capitalism-optimism. 

Tip for right-wing political marketers everywhere:

Our philosophy of freedom and free markets is, above all, the philosophy of optimism. So: own it. Move voters 5% to the right by embracing optimism and optimists as the antidote to socialism and pessimists.

(Note to Nats: optimism does not mean managing socialism with a smile. :-))

The real reason the Greens chickened out of debating Monckton

You may have heard the Greens trumpeting their principled decision not to debate global warming sceptic Lord Monckton. 

You may not have heard that they discovered their principles only after seeing this video of Monckton debating scientist Tim Lambert in a more tolerant land called Australia:

Before they saw this video, they were happy for their climate spokesman, Kennedy Graham, to accept Monckton’s challenge.

After they saw it, they were not. They pulled out.

Not because they didn’t want to dignify him. (Ever heard of a politician turning down a chance to humiliate a high-value opponent – especially one so supposedly inept?)

No. They pulled out because they knew they weren’t going to win. They were either going to lose or — just as damaging to their claim that the science is settled — draw.

It wasn’t his showmanship they were afraid of. It was his facts. 

And what was the fact they were most scared of exposing to the light? What was the truth they were terrified of the public finding out?

That Monckton is clearly not the nutter they’ve been pretending he is.

When you see the debate, you’ll see that his grasp of the science is every bit as credible as that of the scientist he’s debating. You might even think moreso.

But the point is, to make his point he doesn’t have to be more credible. Only as credible.

The proposition before us is that the science is settled.

Settled in favour of global warming being a huge crisis that we need to rectify immediately by diverting trillions of dollars from otherwise productive activities.

That’s the line we’ve been fed. That’s what the Greens would have us believe. That’s why we’re saddled with an ETS.

And that’s why the poor are struggling to cope with higher food prices and higher petrol prices and higher most other prices.

That’s the sacred gospel of the Church of Climate Scientology that gets non-believers branded deniers or denialists — modern-day heretics.

And that, I think you’ll agree after watching this debate, is a myth. One that Monckton, among others, has busted.

I suggest you watch it from start to finish. It’s 1 hour 53 minutes — 15 You Tube videos — but worth it.

The moderator is sceptic and former Wallaby coach Alan Jones. He occasionally makes his bias clear, but is otherwise fair.

I think it’s a good scrap. Lambert is less polished than Monckton. (Aren’t we all?). But after a nervous start, he makes his points well.

Monckton, when challenged, is assured in his rebuttals, and both men answer each others’ probing questions pretty well.

It’s a debate everyone should see. It’s just a shame that New Zealand’s red-green-yellow politicians, scientists and journalists do not possess the courage of their convictions to allow the public to examine both sides of this supposedly crucial issue.

How disgraceful that a government would steal people’s money to avert what they claim is a crisis, then refuse to debate its reasons in public. 

Not only that, but it empowers its employees to brand anyone who asks it to do so as the modern equivalent of a witch.

(Thank Gaia for the blogosphere!)

STATE MOUTHPIECE MUZZLES MONCKTON: Is TVNZ the new BBC?

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post about TVNZ banning climate sceptic Lord Monckton, it so happens that I myself have been invited to appear on Close-Up tonight to talk about race issues. Should this drive more visitors here, I’m promoting this post to the home page so it’s the first thing they see! I saw and met Monckton today in Wellington and his accounts of similar attempts by the Left to shut him down and smear him were chilling. I’ll be posting on the experience soon. Now on with this post of two days’ ago…

You may recall the recent Close-Up interview with global cooling-warming (take your pick — he does) proponent James Hansen.

And do you recall which sceptic our government TV channel brought in to debate with him to provide balance?

Me neither. 

That’s because they didn’t make him debate anyone.

(The science is settled, remember?)

Now fast forward to this week. Same programme. Same channel. Same issue.

Only this time, the visiting climateer is a sceptic — with a flair for political incorrectitude.

He’s none other than Margaret Thatcher’s former science advisor Lord Christopher Monckton, here for a few days after a rip-roaring tour of Australia.

Now whatever else Monckton may be, he’s not boring. He’s articulate, amusing and opinionated, in the great tradition of British celebs.

In other words, he’s great television. 

So why won’t TVNZ let him on?

Because they can’t find anyone to debate him.

Huh?

Seems at government TV, only the sceptics get challenged. Warmists — even confused ones who used to be coolists —  just get believed.

We’ll come back to TVNZ’s obvious bias later.

But isn’t there something fishy about not one of our loud, proud warm-mongers being prepared to defend their position on this supposed crisis?

After all, the government has just conspired to ratchet up the price of your food and petrol and most everything else.

Why? Because of the supposed desperate need to impose a carbon trading scheme on our already struggling economy.

So wouldn’t you think Nick Smith would be itching to get stuck into the guy who’s been telling him for years that the climate crisis is a hoax?

Or John Key, who used to agree it was a hoax — till he figured there were more votes in saying it wasn’t?

Or any number of Greens, those brave eco-warriors whose relentless pessimism and loathing for their species got us into this mess?

Or one of the eleven experts at the so-called Victoria University climate debate I went to and blogged about — all of them clustered courageously on the same side?

Why doesn’t even one of these ‘believers’ have the courage to defend their position against the man they like to dismiss as a ‘potty peer’ and a ‘swivel-eyed loon’?

Seems Monckton is a man the warm-mongers love to hate, but hate to debate.

Why?

Seems that after all their huff and puff about the science being settled, Messrs Key, Smith, Norman, Trenberth and co. are decidedly unsettled by the thought of being found out.

(As, of course, was Al Gore.)

Of course, they’ll say tangling with Monckton is beneath them. He’s a nutter. Must be. Listen to that posh voice! Get a load of  those big bug eyes!

(The result of an hereditary condition, oddly enough unconnected with the ability to think.)

No mention of why Margaret Thatcher would choose him out of thousands to advise her on matters scientific.  They didn’t dub Maggie the Iron Lady for being soft in the head.

If these climate sages are so sure of their case, why not front up and use their superior logic to shut Monckton up once and for all?

Isn’t that what a real expert would do?

What does their mass no-show tell you about the honesty of our nation’s climate scientists and cabinet ministers?

And prime minister?

And anyway, why does TVNZ feel the need to have anyone at all debate Monckton? Why not apply the same standards to the sceptic as they applied to the scaremonger/warmist/coolist?

Is TVNZ trying to outdo the Biased BBC?

New evidence of eco-exaggeration

How ironic that Close-Up’s attempt to close down the climate debate should come in the same week as the Daily Mail ran this story:

Climate change far less serious than ‘alarmists’ predict says NASA scientist

This is, of course, another NASA scientist, not Hansen: 

Dr Roy Spencer, who works on the space agency’s temperature-monitoring satellites, claimed they showed ‘a huge discrepancy’ between the real levels of heating and forecasts by the United Nations and other groups.

After looking at the levels of radiation in the atmosphere over the past ten years, he believes the Earth releases a lot more heat into space than previously thought.

In other words, the computer models were wrong — just as thousands of sceptics (sorry, deniers; sorry, denialists) have been saying.

Now, come to think of it, this is not the first time I’ve heard about global heat escaping harmlessly into space. I first heard a leading sceptic bring it to light about two years ago.

And which sceptic would that have been?

You guessed it: the apparently not-so-mad Monckton.

I’ll be at his Wellington talk on Friday. I hope to see you there. (Whether you see him on state telly is another matter.)

For details of how to see Lord Monckton in Auckland on Thursday, Wellington on Friday and Whangarei on Saturday, hurry to the Climate Realists website.

Warm-mongers pressure PRINZ into pulling plug

Neil and Esther Henderson have been doing an excellent job bringing a dose of sanity to the climate debate — and Lord Monckton to New Zealand.

But one of Monckton’s scheduled events lost its original sponsor thanks to pressure from our brave eco-exaggerators.

Rest assured, though, Neil and Esther have saved the day.

Read this excerpt from their latest newsletter to see what they’ve been up against:

PRINZ, having volunteered to host two of the public events, has received an overwhelming barrage of negative publicity for their gall in allowing someone whose opinions are perceived as being ‘outside the politically correct mantra’ to speak in public.

PRINZ hunted far and wide to find someone to oppose Monckton in a debate and was unable to find anyone willing to front up.

Funny that.

PRINZ was prepared to continue and turn the debate into a ‘discussion’, but the vitriolic hatemail continued to such an extent that PRINZ has now made the decision to pull out of the Auckland event, and we, the CLIMATE REALISTS have taken over the arrangements.

Well done, that couple.

(And a brickbat to PRINZ for being cowed — but a bouquet for still going ahead with their Wellington event.)

The organisers of the business luncheon with Lord Monckton on Thursday have also received some very strongly worded correspondence questioning their integrity in hosting Lord Monckton and urging them (pressuring them!) to cancel.

Are business people are made of sterner stuff than communication people? Surely not!

Neil and Esther continue:

People, this is horrific!!!

What has happened to free speech in New Zealand?

We would like to urge every single one of you who is concerned about what is going on here, to contact Close Up closeup@tvnz.co.nz and challenge them about their decision not to interview Lord Monckton.

Do it now. I sent them this:

Your bias is showing

Mark and team,

 I was going to say I can’t believe your cowardice in canning your interview with Christopher Monckton.

 But then I guess I can.

If any of you at TVNZ still believe in free speech, I urge you to reconsider, stop being brainwashed by socialist liars, and let the man be heard.

Otherwise be prepared to incur the wrath of the blogosphere – a not-insignificant challenger to your supposed omnipotence.

John Ansell

Back to Esther and Neil:

Did Jim Salinger, Gareth Morgan, Rod Oram, Martin Manning, James Renwick, Kevin Trenberth, James Hansen….(think of anyone else you’ve heard prating the AGW mantra) need someone to present an alternative perspective before they were reported in the mainstream media?

We strongly believe Lord Monckton has a right to be heard. And we believe the public of New Zealand has a right to hear him and make up their own minds. There are an amazing number of accusations flying around the internet about Christopher Monckton. Here is a quote from one of our members who shall remain anonymous:

• “Until this week, I thought Christopher was a rather obscure eccentric Englishman, with a keen interest in mathematics and climate change and a talent for entertainment. “Now, after dredging through endless pages of biography by Greenpeace, Bickmere, Abraham, etc, I’ve discovered that he is an international celebrity of huge importance. “Whole libraries havebeen written about his exploits; newspapers and bloggers record his every move and mood; scholars minutely analyze his spoken word, correspondence, logo, status, etc; activist groups mobilise at his approach.“Seldom does little New Zealand have the opportunity to hear directly from an orator capable of generating such controversy and excitement on the world stage.” 

For my money, Monckton did more than any other single person to inform the world about the Climategate scandal and the shonkiness of Al Gore’s movie, and to neuter the Copenhagen talkfest.

I confess I believed Gore at first.

I was wowed by the slickness and clarity of his PowerPoint show.

I loved the way he got up in that cherrypicker to highlight the hockey stick graph.

And I had no reason at all to doubt his facts. (Like the fact that his hockey stick graph was bogus.)

It took brilliant communicators like Monckton — and Bob Carter and Ian Wishart and Jo Nova — to alerted me to the depth of my own gullibility.

Never again.

Neil and Esther:

We need to get out there and let people know that we have a right to doubt —  we have a right to be skeptical about everything we are spoonfed by the media, and having just witnessed what manipulation goes on behind the scenes, we need to call the media to account and demand balanced reporting and open debate.

Damn right we do.

The real deniers are the scientists and journalists who try to deny us our right to be sceptical about scientists and journalists.

I know from personal experience that the media are far more interested in entertaining than informing. And if the facts aren’t entertaining enough, they just make up facts that are.

They need to be exposed every time they do that. Which is almost certainly many times a day.

I am, of course, rather sensitive to press bias, given that less than a month ago the Dominion Post refused to run ACT’s 40 true statements on the race issue.

What has happened to free speech indeed.

The Ballad of Brave Sir Russel

[With apologies to Monty Python and The Holy Grail, and especially Brave Sir Robin.]

Bravely bold Sir Russel
Did love to scam a lot
He was not afraid to lie
O brave Sir Russel!
He was not afraid to claim
We’d be killed in nasty ways
Due to climate change
Brave Sir Russel!

He was not in the least bit scared
To make the children cry
With tales of terrible drought
And polar bears drowned
To exaggerate the threat
For the votes that he could get
And put us deep in debt
Brave Sir Russel!

And then the man he loved to hate
Did challenge him to a debate
To see who’s global view was true
And what did brave Sir Russel do?…

Brave Sir Russel ran away
Bravely ran away, away!
When Monckton reared his ugly head
He bravely turned his tail and fled
Yes, brave Sir Russel turned about
And gallantly he chickened out
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat
Bravest of the brave, Sir Russel!

NOTE: Sir Russel is really an amalgam of John Key, Nick Smith, Russel Norman, Al Gore and all the courageous climate scammers who insist the science is settled, yet refuse to debate the facts.

The Climate Con is one of 4 Big Cons being perpetrated upon the people of New Zealand — the others being the John Key Con, the Maorification Con, and the Education Con.

I’ll be doing my best to expose them all as clearly as I can.