Tuesday 28 December 2010

Gerald Warner: Weathering the true lies of global warming Newspeak - Scotsman.com News

A really great piece of journalism from Gerald Warner writing in The Scotsman on Boxing day 2010. There is so much cutting and satirical commentary on the now discredited Climate Change lobby it is hard to find a favourite part and you should read the whole article. But if I had to pick one it would be:

“Of the fragile construct of global warming mythology there is hardly a domino left standing. Declining polar bear population? Since 1970 the world population of polar bears has 'declined' from 5,000 to 25,000.”

Isn’t that wonderful? There is also an insight into the bias of the Met Office:

“Last week the Met Office was forced to issue a press release stating it "categorically denies forecasting a 'mild winter' ". In fact, in October, its long-range probability map predicted an 80 per cent probability of warmer than average temperatures from November to January in Scotland. It claimed Scotland, along with Northern Ireland, the eastern half of England and Cornwall, would experience temperatures above the 3.7°C average, more than 2°C higher than last winter.”

And this picture of the so-called melting ice-caps:

“The suggestion of a connection between "man-made" global warming and hurricanes has now been rejected by the scientist who first advanced it, Professor Kerry Emanuel, after further research. Melting ice-caps? When Lewis Pugh tried to paddle a kayak to the "ice-free" North Pole he had to stop 600 miles south of his destination and 100 miles short of where a canoeist had reached a century before. Even the IPCC has been forced to revise its forecasts of rises in sea level dramatically downwards. Global average temperatures reached a peak in 1998 and have been declining since.”

Maybe we should make a New-Year’s Resolution to find the facts and follow the evidence and perhaps insist governments stop wasting our taxes on impractical and unworkable “solutions” to a problem that doesn’t exist according to the man who first suggested it might.

Gerald Warner: Weathering the true lies of global warming Newspeak - Scotsman.com News

Sunday 26 December 2010

BBC News - Ministers accused of free book funding 'partial U-turn'

Happy Christmas kids. Don’t worry,  we’ll get you later.

Love

Dave and Nick

“The government has been accused of performing a partial U-turn over funding for a charity that gives free books to children.

Booktrust had been told it would lose all £13m funding for its bookgifting programmes in England, but ministers now say funding will continue.”

BBC News - Ministers accused of free book funding 'partial U-turn'

Friday 24 December 2010

BBC News - Why US exceptionalism is not exceptional

A thoughtful and insightful commentary on American exceptionalism by an American. Worth a read.

“When I moved to London a quarter of a century ago I certainly felt "exceptional". I could see what the problems facing British society were and thought, like many fellow American expats, that we could fix up Britain in about a month with a combination of American pragmatism and work ethic.

Get a written constitution in, abolish the House of Lords, pry the executive function of government out of the legislature - so that the prime minister was more like a president. Then do away with the symbols of the old class system and inherited privilege so that everyone felt that no matter how humble their circumstances at birth, they could become, if not the monarch, at least the prime minister.

Then embrace immigration, refresh the society with incomers who wanted to work hard and better themselves. In other words, make Britain more like America and Bob's your uncle.”

BBC News - Why US exceptionalism is not exceptional

Friday 3 December 2010

Warning of anarchy if death row Christian woman is pardoned | Christian News on Christian Today

“In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful...” Isn’t that how Muslims pray? So where is the benefit, where is the mercy when a rabid crowd seeks bloodthirsty revenge against a woman who is reported to have said something blasphemous? Why is vengeance and not mercy an instinct in Muslims? Why is death and not life the focus of their days? Why is killing and not charity the driving force of their lives?

Why, when some of the richest countries in the world are Muslim oil states, are so many Muslims living in poverty and ignorance, superstitious and driven by a sense of anger and vengefulness? The injustices of their lives are of their own religion and culture’s making so why blame Christians?

If they assuage their blood-lust it will be a momentary relief, for them and for the rest of us who must share this world with them. If they succeed in killing another Christian because of some imagined sleight their lives will be not one iota better. Lives are improved and enriched by the very mercy and charity they eschew with their empty prayers.

 

Hundreds of Muslims took to the streets of Lahore on Friday to demonstrate their anger as the Pakistani government makes its mind up over whether or not to pardon a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy.

Muslims in the country are outraged at the prospect of Asia Bibi’s death sentence being overturned. According to Agence France Presse, the rally was organised by a subsidiary of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a banned charity that the UN believes has terrorist links.

Warning of anarchy if death row Christian woman is pardoned | Christian News on Christian Today