Free Republic

Voiceover (VO), reporter Martti Backman: Governments around the world are preparing for a grand climate conference, which should decide how humanity responds to the threat of a climate catastrophe. Negotiations are under way to replace the Kyoto treaty with a new treaty of Copenhagen. VO: The threat is based on assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. According to the panel, the Earth is going through an unprecedented period of temperature increase, caused by man and his carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal and oil. The Earth's climate has always been changing. But now we are told...

Professor Eric Steig last month announced in Nature that he’d spotted a warming in West Antarctica that previous researchers had missed through slackness - a warming so strong that it more than made up for the cooling in East Antarctica. Whew! Finally we had proof that Antarctica as a whole was warming, and not cooling, after all. Global warming really was global now. The paper was immediately greeted with suspicion, not least because one of the authors was Michael Mann of the infamous “hockey stick”, now discredited, and the data was reconstructed from very sketchy weather station records, combined with...

Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, once worked for a man who was an identified member of the Communist Party USA, a registered agent of the Soviet Union and a paid disseminator of Soviet black propaganda. This man went on to become a key Chicago political fixer who helped elect communist linked politicians including the late Chicago mayor Harold Washington and former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun. This man knew Barack Obama and was a key member of an organisation which endorsed Barack Obama in his 2004 US Senate race. Barack and Michelle Obama were active members of this...

The advice which forms the title of this post would be how Don Rickles, if he were a statistician, would explain how not to conduct times series analysis. Judging by the methods I regularly see applied to data of this sort, Don’s rebuke is sorely needed. The advice particularly relevant now because there is a new hockey stick controversy brewing. Mann and others have published a new study melding together lots of data and they claim to have again shown that the here and now is hotter than the then and there. Go to climateaudit.org and read all about it....

Excerpt - Zimbabwe deports 'coup mastermind' to EGuinea: lawyer Simon Mann, the alleged British mastermind of a foiled coup in Equatorial Guinea, has been deported from Zimbabwe to face trial in Malabo, his lawyer said on Friday. Jonathan Samkange said Mann had been deported on Wednesday night, before an unsuccessful appeal against his extradition was heard by a court in Harare on Thursday. "They deported him at night, late Wednesday night. There are affidavits to that effect," the lawyer told AFP. ~ snip ~

Some of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources. Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack. “There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,”...

The American Association for the Advancement of Science claims for its journal Science “the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million.” Be that as it may, Science is the Dan Rather of science journalism. “Fake Data, but Could the Idea Still Be Right?” in the July 14 issue actually makes the following statement (emphases mine): European investigators last week confirmed that a pioneering oral cancer researcher in Norway had fabricated much of his work. The news left experts in his field with a pressing question: What should...

7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Conclusion 1. The politicization of academic scholarly work leads to confusing public debates. Scholarly papers published in peer reviewed journals are considered the archival record of research. There is usually no requirement to archive supplemental material such as code and data. Consequently, the supplementary material for academic work is often poorly documented and archived and is not sufficiently robust to withstand intense public debate. In the present example there was too much reliance on peer review, which seemed not to be sufficiently independent. Recommendation 1. Especially when massive amounts of public monies and human lives are...

"We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" -- Phil Jones in a reply to climate skeptic Warwick Hughes in February 2005 as confirmed and reported by climatologist Hans Vans Storch at a National Academy of Sciences hearing March 2 on "Scientific Efforts to reconstruct surface temperature records over the last 1,000 to 2,000 years." "Getting caught is the mother of invention." -- Robert Byrne "People say that in politics, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up....

19-year-old threatened Bush's life, created phony Secret Service IDs... A teenager who was charged last year with threatening the lives of President George W. Bush and other federal officials has again been arrested, this time for manufacturing bogus U.S Secret Service credentials. Acting on an anonymous telephone tip, federal agents yesterday arrested Peter Bonfiglio, 19, at the New York City residence he shares with his grandparents. According to a federal criminal complaint, a copy of which you can find below, Bonfiglio admitted to manufacturing and selling the Secret Service IDs and even showed agents the computer and printer he was...

SEEKING to understand this nation's democratic spirit, Alexis de Tocqueville journeyed to the famous centers of American liberty (Boston, Philadelphia, Washington), stoically enduring their "infernal" accommodations, food and roads and chatting up almost everyone he saw. He even marched in a Fourth of July parade in Albany just ahead of a big float that featured a flag-waving Goddess of Liberty, a bust of Benjamin Franklin, and a printing press that spewed out copies of the Declaration of Independence for the cheering crowd. But for all his wit and intellect, Tocqueville never realized that he came closest to his goal just...

Media Advisory: The Hockey Stick Controversy New Analysis Reproduces Graph of Late 20th Century Temperature RiseMay 11, 2005 BOULDER—Caspar Ammann, a paleoclimatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is available to comment on the so-called hockey stick controversy discussed by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The hockey stick refers to the shape of a frequently cited graph of global mean temperature that shows a rapid rise between 1900 and 2000 after 900 years of relative stability. The graph first appeared in a research paper by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley,...

Troubles deepened for Lady Thatcher's disgraced son last night when a self-confessed coup plotter surfaced to accuse him of direct involvement in the attempt to overthrow the regime in Equatorial Guinea. Crause Steyl, the mercenary pilot who was to have been the star witness against Mark Thatcher had his trial in South Africa gone ahead, told Channel 4 News that Sir Mark's role had been kept secret, because "his mother was the previous prime minister of England". Mr Steyl described meeting Sir Mark to select a helicopter on which a gun could be mounted. He also alleged that the Spanish...

Volume 7, Number 26: 30 June 2004 In one of the more intriguing aspects of his study of global climate change over the past three millennia - of which he amazingly makes no particular mention - Loehle (2004) presents a graph of the Sargasso Sea and South African temperature records of Keigwin (1996) and Holmgren et al. (1999, 2001) that reveals the existence of a major spike in surface air temperature that began sometime in the early 1400s.  This abrupt and anomalous warming pushed global air temperatures considerably above the peak warmth of the 20th century, after which they fell...

THE 70 suspected mercenaries who were arrested in Harare early this month in connection with the foiled coup in the Equatorial Guinea yesterday appeared briefly before a court convened at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. The suspects, who are facing five charges under the Public Order and Security, Firearms, and Immigration Acts, were not asked to plead when they appeared before magistrate Mr Mishrod Guvamombe. They were remanded to April 13, when their lawyers are expected to make an application for refusal of remand. The suspects, made up of 10 whites, two coloureds and 58 blacks all clad in new prison...

Does anyone here subscribe to the online edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ? I need a copy of today's article relating to Mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann at the bottom of the Arkansas Page section entitled "Woodrow Wilson Mann Sr. : Served as LR mayor during trying period", in order to report details to The Political Graveyard Unfortunately, one has to subscribe to the newspaper to even access the articles, and I just need the one article. If anyone can help me out, I'd really appreciate it !