A Place to Stand

Well University of East Anglia have appointed their "independent" investigator into the climate fraud emails & he is indeed a "sound chap" as described by Sir Humphrey "sound chaps are the sort who don't have to ask what to do - a sound chap knows".

Sir Muir Russell, chairman of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland, who has no previous links with the climate science community, will lead the investigation into allegations that leading academics at the University of East Anglia manipulated data on global warming.

He will also look at whether the university’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) was in compliance with its Freedom of Information (FOI) policies and the Environmental Information Regulations for the release of data. contd

Nigel Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation has, at least to some extent gone for it

Benny Peiser, director of the "sceptic" thinktank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, welcomed the choice of Sir Muir, saying that it was essential that the university chose someone without connections to the climate science community.

"We're not giving the inquiry a blank cheque, we will be monitoring it very carefully," he said. "If the inquiry is done properly and the scientists are cleared we welcome their restoration into their jobs."

However what is not mentioned is that while Sir Muir Russell is not a climate scientist or indeed scientist at all he does have previous experience of whitewash which seems to have escaped notice in London.

He was appointed Permanent Secretary at The Scottish Office in May 1998, and to the Scottish Executive since its establishment in 1999. He was widely believed to be primarily responsible for the massive overspend on the new Scottish Parliament Building and was criticised by Lord Fraser of Carmyllie's enquiry for failing to keep the politicians informed that the expenditure was far in excess of the budget. - wikipedia

The Scottish Parliament building was the project of Donald Dewar, then Scottish Secretary & subsequently first First Minister. If "Tam Dalyell is wicked and alarmist in saying that the Scottish Parliament will cost a penny more than £40 million" would be truthful. In fact it actually cost officially £414 million (in practice £430-£470m including landscaping etc). It was a scandal of enormous magnitude here & correctly seen as the Holyrood politicians were "numpties" (overblown incompetent fools is the best translation).

The subsequent greywash managed to avoid making anybody to blame for this & in particular blaming any of the ministers. Insofar as anybody was in any way responsible it was "senior civil servants" who alone had decided to keep all the information from government ministers & decided not to put the contract out to a fixed price bidder. The most senior of these was the permanent Secretary Sir Muir Russell. The result "did not rule out the possibility of taking disciplinary action against civil service staff, although subsequent Scottish Government investigations resulted in no action being taken against individual public officials involved with the project."

Sir Muir's subsequent history does not show that being the alleged primary person responsible for blowing £400 million reflected adversely on his career prospects. Indeed the cynical could say that it looks rather more like reflecting political gratitude that he had prevented those in charge getting the blame they deserved.

All in all anybody want to bet against East Anglia's enquiry deciding that none of the emails are as bad as they look, there is nothing much wrong with breaking the Freedom of Information Act, that destroying the data was a sensible way to save space rather than a breach so basic to science that Jones & co simply can't be called scientists & that none of it impinges on the credibility of the theory based on the destroyed data.
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Meanwhile the IPCC have announced an enquiry into climategate

"Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that the allegations raised by leaked e-mails in the so-called "climategate" controversy were too serious to ignore.

"We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it," he told BBC Radio 4's The Report programme. "We certainly don’t want to brush anything under the carpet. This is a serious issue and we will look into it in detail."

& instantly concluded with the new line

The vice chairman of the IPCC panel, Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, says there had been a purpose to leaking the emails.

"The intention is clearly to distract the confidence negotiators have in the science," he said.

"I had to look at some of the emails, not all of them, but even if you remove the evidence that those scientists were working on, it doesn't change anything to the IPCC conclusion."

Which means business as usual for the catastrophic warming "believers" gathering in Copenhagen who in the interests of saving the planet have ensured "the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

Whatever one thinks of the original lentil eating Luddites of the "environmental movement & I have made it clear I do, they look pretty good compared to the corrupt parasites of big government who have co-opted their programme as a way of keeping us paying taxes to them.

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Dear Gordon Brown,
I understand you have called me & all the others who doubt that the current global cooling is is a sign of a catastrophic level of global warming "flat-earthers" I deny believing the Earth to be flat or indeed to be in any way anti-science.

I must ask that either you publicly retract that lie in connection with myself & anybody else of whom it is untrue, or provide some evidence that I hold such a belief. Obviously those 2 options are the only possible ones open to anybody who is, in any way whatsoever, honest

In the event, which I do not anticipate, you prove yourself to be a totally dishonest & corrupt person by not taking either option I will ask the Labour party to dissociate themselves from such claims. Obviously in the event of the party or any member not being wholly dishonest, corrupt & unable to be trusted ever on any subject whatsoever, they would have to dissociate themselves from the claim.

(I'll let you know if he or his party or any member retract)

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And finally
A couple of people have pointed out that I am named by Prof Jones as a "prat" in these leaked emails. That puts me in very good company & lets be fair - I haven't exactly been kind to him either.

I had sent Mr Briffa an email on the tree ring data actually being based not only on a sample of only 12 but much more damagingly that Russian tree rings from the same site which would have changed the average to show no warming had been excised.

This is the response they decided not to send

If we are to respond, it would be to indicate that there are multiple sources of supporting
evidence and that we continue to place our confidence in the international scientific
assessment process. This confidence has proven to be well placed.

Roger

This is simply fluff not answering the question. Since this "international scientific assessment" is based on these & related figures it seems this structure is being kept up there by each end using the other as its foundation.

Labels: British politics, Fear, global warming