A Place to Stand

  Newspaper letter sent out a few days ago. That the entirely false Dalgety Bay radiation scare is promoted by SEPA and the BBC, is scandalous. The rest of the media are not willing to allow serious reporting of the facts either:

    In my younger days the BBC denied that Radio 1 censored the more racy records "we just don't play them". No such hypocrisy now - they not only ban such filth they fire the DJ who, not having sensitive enough political antennae, played it.

"A veteran BBC local radio DJ has lost his job after playing a song on his golden oldies show containing a racist word.

BBC Radio Devon DJ David Lowe, 68, said he was unaware that a 1932 version of The Sun Has Got His Hat On included the n-word."

   Here are the lyrics but, since I am a moderate fellow I have replaced the word:

Joy bells are ringing,
The songs birds are singing,
And ev'ryone's happy and gay.
Dull days are over,
We'll soon be in clover,
So pack all your troubles away.

The sun has got his hat on
Hip-hip-hip-hooray!
The sun has got his hat on,
He's coming out today.

Now we'll all be happy,
Hip-hip-hip-hooray!
The sun has got his hat on,
And he's coming out today.

He's tanning gender non-specific persons of colour out in Timbuctoo,
Now he's coming back to do the same for you.
So jump into your sunbath
Hip-hip-hip-hooray!
The sun has got his hat on,
And he's coming out today.
Never saw the grass so green
Never saw the sky so blue
What a lot of fun to ev'ryone,
Sitting in the sun all day.

All the little boys excited,
All the little girls delighted,
What a lot of fun to ev'ryone,
Sitting in the sun all day.

Now we all be happy
Hip-hip-hip-hooray!
The sun has got his hat on,
And he's coming out today.

He's been roastin peanuts out in Timbuctoo
Now he's coming back to do the same for you.
So jump into your sunbath
Hip-hip-hip-hooray!
The sun has got his hat on,
And he's coming out today.

     I note that the archaic use of the word "gay" to mean cheerful, has not yet become entirely offensive, or the term "coming out".

     Firstly it is obvious that it is not intended to be offensive. Indeed the "message" is one of us and the inhabitants of Timbuktoo being all "one under the sun" I do not see any possible way listening to these lyrics could turn one into a drooling racist.

     Indeed racism clearly has nothing to do with it. What we are seeing, as I said in a previous post about gay "marriage" is the redefining of language to make dissent more difficult, as described in Orwell's 1984, combined with an attempt to destroy our knowledge of history.

   I am not saying these lyrics are art, or even anything other than rather silly, but they are a sign that the words and values we used to hold are, in many cases, rather different than today's (and not so long ago - I remember Tony Blackburn or DLT or somebody equally innocuous, used to play it on radio). That different cultures, including our own, were different, is an important fact, without which it is impossible to judge the here and now. Also they are, like the smoking ban and gay "marriage", the Politically Correct proving they are completely in charge, by enforcing something obviously stupid and pointless and making it stick.

    And even a BBC employee shouldn't be fired "pour encourager les autres" on such a ridiculous excuse.







 

     Jerry Pournelle has used and answered my comments here. I was writing in response to a new "scientific" claim that the West Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing which is "irreversably" going to soon increase sea levels by 10 feet.
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Putting "Inevitable" Glacier Disappearance in Perspective 

Remember when, for several years the IPCC continued to proclaim that all the Himalaya glaciers were going to have melted by 2035? They even denounced skeptics who disputed it as doing "voodoo" science. 

"Indian Scientists: Himalayan Glaciers are Not Melting 

Andrew Orlowski, The Register 

Top Indian physicists have concluded Himalayan glaciers show little sign of retreat – in one of the largest studies of its type ever carried out." 

http://www.thegwpf.org/indian-scientists-himalayan-glaciers-are-not-melting/ 

I would be willing to take a bet that this new Antarctic glaciers melting story will also not stand up to scrutiny. And that when it is dropped it will get less media hoo-ha than the initial announcement has.
Neil Craig

I had much the same feeling. The credentials of the framers of the latest report seem to be in order, but how can you tell? The Manmade Climate Change Believers have engaged in many questionable, and some outright fraudulent, practices, and the Scientific Consensus establishment does not seem to have come down on them hard, as they should. I try to keep this a place for rational discussion, and I fully agree to the proposition that one is entitled to one’s own opinion, but there are facts – data – that must be agreed to.

In the case of Climate Change some data are not disputable. It has been getting warmer since early in the 19^th Century. This is observed all over the globe, in almanacs, growing seasons, scientific expeditions that recorded both land and sea temperatures, etc.

What cannot be agreed to is the precision of the measured lower temperatures in, say, 1825. Most of those were taken with mercury thermometers, and we have no idea of just how precisely they were calibrated. I know that the old mercury thermometer that we used at our house in the 1930’s purported to give body temperature to 1/10^th degree Fahrenheit. I also know it was subject to mechanical manipulation, and it was relatively delicate. The large red liquid thermometer outside the house was marked in 1 degree intervals, but it was large enough to let you estimate another decimal place.

Apparently the climate science community has decided that by 1870 data gathering and recording were good enough to allow establishment of an annual average global temperature accurate to 0.1 degree C. I have my doubts about this, but they are all what you would call “common sense” arguments, not data. Having had to establish temperatures accurate to 0.1 degree C in a laboratory, I know something of the difficulties involved. We only wanted a point skin temperature of an astronaut in a full pressure suit. Actually we wanted the temperature of a small copper disk to which we had soldered a thermocouple. The disk was smeared with a thermal conducting paste and taped to the back of the astronaut’s arm (others were placed at locations about his body); we assumed that the temperature of the disk was closely enough coupled with the actual skin temperature, and since all the disks and thermocouples were as identical as our technicians could make them, and all were taken on a setup that included a reference copper plate/thermocouple in a bowl of ice made from distilled water, this would have to do. After all, it was the relative temperatures taken in different conditions that we needed.

But that experience has made me leery of any temperatures said to be accurate to a tenth of a degree (C or F), and particularly of averages taken over vast areas. I would be hard put to come up with “the” temperature of Los Angeles right now to a tenth of a degree. It’s hot outside my house, hotter in the sun than in the shade. There’s a warm compressively heated wind from the high deserts fighting a cooler wind from the sea. If you then ask me to give you the average temperature in Los Angeles for the day (which would include the night) I’d have to argue that it can’t be done. We can take a series of measurements and average them, but the exposed to the sky temperature will depend on the cloud cover both day and night, while the temperature in the shade will depend entirely on air temperature and thus be more sensitive to which wind, Santana or ocean, prevailed at that location. I could go on listing difficulties, but you get the idea. Anything exposed to the night sky will be colder if there are not clouds. If there are clouds and it is not exposed to that 4 degree Kelvin dark, that changes things. But if it is exposed to the night sky at night it is exposed to the blazing sun by day. Unless there are clouds. At this point I begin to babble.

And when I see that the consensus of temperature rise from 1870 to present is measured to 0.1 accuracy (about 0.8 C), I just have to wonder how reliable that is. Surely different techniques and data gathering locations are used now from those employed back then. Yet it is widely reported that the Earth’s temperature rose by 0.8 degree C between 1870 and present

(https://www.google.com/search?q=earth+temperature+1870+to+present&sa=X&biw=1005&bih=473&tbm=isch&imgil=RxbUv-HjO79I9M%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcRPof3yjHmOVhfkNlH6-Yg4gmzdvUElWTBGMKbu3Ve7y0Bk1ydBpw%253B670%253B717%253B4Jwy4vvzj7WnOM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%25252Fwiki%25252FCurrent_sea_level_rise&source=iu&usg=__9Nry8HpHXiTQoKuPzztCXDHFEQ4%3D&ei=VdpzU4OfHcKgogSG94DICw&ved=0CIMBEPUBMA0#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=RxbUv-HjO79I9M%253A%3B4Jwy4vvzj7WnOM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%252Fcommons%252F5%252F5e%252FTrends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level%252C_1870-2008_%28US_EPA%29.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwiki%252FCurrent_sea_level_rise%3B670%3B717). That makes 0.1 degree fairly significant. And even this rise is disputed by those who find a cycle at work http://notrickszone.com/2013/12/03/german-scientists-show-climate-driven-by-natural-cycles-global-temperature-to-drop-to-1870-levels-by-2100/

Meanwhile current reports are that the ice is building up in Antarctica (Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday ).

I suspect you have good reason to doubt the inevitability of Antarctica land ice melting into the sea. All that ice forming down there must surely cool the water at the critical interface?
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Bishop Hill has a scoop, (or perhaps just news the MSM refuse to report) which shows our government deliberately lying to promote windmillery. We were told, officially, the recent blackout in eastern Scotland was nothing to do with the variability of windmills. If this newspaper letter from an engineer, is true, which it feels like, we were lied to:

SIR, I was amazed to learn that a Scottish Hydro Electric transmission spokeswoman said “repairs are being carried out on the faulty relay” that allegedly caused the power cut on April 16 (“works to fend off blackouts”, PandJ, May 10).

I have been an electrical engineer for over 40 years and have never heard of anyone “repairing” a hermetically sealed relay switch.

The relay switch operated perfectly on the windy night of April 16 when it detected a sudden surge of voltage and frequency that fell outside acceptable parameters.

A relay switch has two states: on and off. All of these relay switches operated perfectly on the night, independent of the relay switch at Knocknagael Substation which is, itself fed by at least two windfarms, Farr and Moy.

This was what is known as a “rolling blackout”. It is ludicrous to suggest that all lights went out all over the north at 8.30pm exactly. My area went out at 8.43pm when the blast of wind reached Novar windfarm and toggled the relay switch to off to protect its local circuit and so on up the coast.

Grid operators can switch windfarms on and off remotely – if there is a risk of too much wind generating too much “wrong time” low-grade electricity with what is known in the industry as “flicker”. The grid cannot handle more than 10% of flicker contaminated electricity at any given nanosecond and this limit was exceeded on the night.

The operators were caught on the hop. With no electricity, all the windfarms had to be isolated manually.

The spokeswoman goes on to say that they will be making changes to how the protective equipment operates. This is code for shutting down windfarms even earlier in windy conditions so that the operators get more and more constraint payments for not generating when the wind speed is just right.

Andrew H Mackay, Tain
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     Meanwhile, also via Bishop Hill, in an example of the totalitarian pressure being put on science by, in particular, the Obama government:

The Swedish climatologist, who has published more than 200 papers, said he received hundreds of emails from colleagues criticising his decision to switch to the organisation.

.... described him as a 'crybaby'. 

However, the main pressure came from the US, where a government employee refused to be a co-author on a paper because of his links to the controversial group.

Prof Bengtsson, who had only been in the position for three weeks, told Mail Online: 'There were quite a lot of people who were upset when I joined GWPF.
'I received emails from colleagues all over the world telling me it was a "questionable" group.

'But what made me the most upset was when a colleague from the US resigned as co-author of a paper, simply because I was involved....

He believes one of the reasons for this is the US Government's expanding role on climate change.

'The public are concerned that recent weather phenomenon have been as a result of climate change. But it is a natural occurrence,' he said.

'Some people like my views, other people don't, that is the way when it comes to science.' ....

'I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy.

Lord Lawson, the former Tory Chancellor condemned the behaviour as 'appalling' and said the reference to 'McCarthyism' was 'fully warranted'.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2629171/Climate-change-scientist-claims-forced-new-job-McCarthy-style-witch-hunt-academics-world.html#ixzz31mcRIQ1M
    I guess that is how you get a "97% consensus of climate scientists the particular state funded computer modellers they chose to ask
 

      Other polls have similar though not quite as bad for Labour, result.
YouGov/Sun – CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 14%
Populus – CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%
Ashcroft – CON 34%, LAB 32%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 15%
ICM/Guardian – CON 33%, LAB 31%, LDEM 13%, UKIP 15%


       One might think, looking at UKIP's 15% that should be worrying but I am very pleased with this.

       Labour's vote is falling. As the economy "recovers" (still only half world average growth despite it being fuelled by an artificial house cost boom) and equally, as we get nearer the fateful moment of an election, where being against the government really could put the other rascals in, we can only expect the Labour vote to fall.

      At 31% Labour cannot reasonably be expected to produce a majority.  Their policy seems to have been to hope for 35% and thus over 50% of seats but at 31% almost any parlay of votes leaves them in a minority.

       Because of our corrupt electoral system the Tories won't either. Indeed on the shares in the chart Labour will be the larger party - Tories 284, Labour 307, LDs 31, UKIP nil according to Electoral Calculus

      On the face of it that looks bad for UKIP. But -

    It spikes the Tories greatest, argument against us. Indeed the only one they have been using. The "if you vote UKIP you will put in Labour" one. Labour aren't going to be in. The people, including their core voters, have recognised how crap they are.

    For my lifetime  few people have voted Labour because they want Labour but because they fear getting the Tories. Equally, probably more than equally, few vote Tory because they like their policies but because the fear Labour's.

    Now the Tories don't have to fear Labour - and I am quite certain that even most Tory party activists would rather have UKIP's policies than their own party's (mass immigration, EU membership & gay marriage).

   And Labour voters are also free - to vote against a party who have nothing but contempt for their voters, and secretly promoted mass immigration to replace them.

    We are very close to a tipping point. Suppose UKIP picked up 6% from each of these parties.

    We get Tories 200, Labour 223, LibDems 12 UKIP 186 MPs

    Now this takes no account for targeting of winnable seats which UKIP is doing for the first time so almost certainly understates the UKIP and LibDim votes but you get the picture.

     Another regular factor in elections has been a swing to the LDs during the campaign because they got little TV coverage at other times, but they could not be denied coverage during actual election campaigns. This, obviously, applies in spades to UKIP.

    History also shows that Tory voters have less tribal loyalty to their party than Labour which is why elections against a Tory government have generally been more successful for the LDs than ones against Labour. Disaffected Labour just stayed home.

    And the EU elections

    So a 6% reduction for each of these parties - to UKIP seems not merely possible but quite likely.

    Lets have a bit of fun and try 7% on 36% of the vote: Conservative 127, Labour 172, LD 7, UKIP 316 MPs - 10 short of a technical majority but easily able to negotiate one with Ulster if nobody else.
 

    I am gratified, not to say astonished, that the Scotsman have published a letter from me today. 2 days running is unprecedented.

  My letter on the UKIP meeting has, rather to my surprise, been published by the Scotsman today. The bits in bold were edited out: