Blue moon

Still trying on this lens. But here's the moon:

MLA unable to muster quorum in defense of Wart

People wandering around going duh. Inside Higher Ed:

PHILADELPHIA – In the midst of a prolonged economic downturn, the Modern Language Association’s governing body took steps to ensure its own financial stability and (it hopes) that of its members at its annual meeting here Tuesday.

But, as the MLA Delegate Assembly’s session stretched into its sixth hour, drawn-out debate and vote on the most controversial issue on the agenda -- a resolution condemning the University of Colorado for firing tenured professor Ward Churchill, whose research came under scrutiny after furor over controversial statements he made about the 9/11 attacks -- was elbowed out by the rules of parliamentary procedure, as the crowd of delegates in attendance dwindled to well below the 80 required to reach quorum. Lining up behind Churchill's First Amendment rights has been a major goal of the MLA's Radical Caucus, which believes that the research misconduct findings were a pretense to get rid of Churchill because of his views. But many other association members, while not necessarily comfortable with the way the university investigated him, have been reluctant to focus on the issue.

Amazingly, even MLA members aren't that stupid.

While the assembly didn't vote on Churchill, it did vote to raise its membership dues for the first time in close to two decades, and to voice support for low-paid and untenured faculty members.

Take heart, Benjie!

(via commenter Orson Buggeigh at PB)

Update: Noj adds this at PB:

The meeting was five hours old by the time they got to Chutchology, so yeah, sorebuttitis was probably a factor. They considered a non-binding vote in the absence of the quorum, but they couldn't even raise a pro-Chutch consensus from the sixty-odd Iron Tushes left in the hall.

Can't understand it.

New twist

On the same ol' scam:

Hello My Good Friend,

My name is Sgt Ahmed Abdul .I am an American soldier serving with the 3rd infantry division in Iraq.I have summed up courage to contact you to seek your co-operation in moving some funds from here.

The said fund in US currency was discovered in barrels at a farmhouse during a rescue operation in one of the former military dictator's top men who died while trying to escape.I managed to conceal some of this fund with the help of a colleague.

It's a remake of Three Kings! (Or The Dirty Dozen or . . .)

Now that we are out of town and restricted to our camp till we pull-out finally,I have been able to get the money, which runs close to six million dollars,carefully packaged and moved safely out of troubled spot and spotlight to a British security courier company office which enjoys diplomatic immunity here.THEY DON'T KNOW THE REAL CONTENTS OF THE PACKAGE BUT BELIEVE THAT IT CONTAINS PERSONAL EFFECTS WHICH BELONG TO AN AMERICAN MEDICAL DOCTOR SOLDIER WHO DIED IN A RAID HERE IN IRAQ WHO BEFORE GIVING UP, URGED ME TO DELIVER THE LUGGAGE TO HIS FAMILY IN UNITED STATES.

With our impending return to America,I have decided to move the package (fund) out now.And this is where I need you : to act as the supposed relation of the deceased and thereby receive the package.

I have found a very safe way of getting this package to you at home and will discuss it upon your response provided I can be assured it will be safe till I return.I want you to indicate YOUR INTEREST to go on with me,and how much percentage you want for your co-operation.

Above all,I cannot over-emphasize the importance of confidentiality due to the sensitive nature of this mail.Whether or not you are interested,do not discuss this with anybody as it will spell doom to us here.

Do respond promptly so I can furnish you with more details.

Will do!

And not a word about Climategate

A completely credulous review of James Hansen's "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity" in the LAT concludes:

What we need, [Hansen] suggests, is a "linear phaseout of coal emissions by 2030 (emissions reduced to half by 2020)." But he has no faith that governments, driven by special interests, will manage that. "Quite the contrary," he argues, "they are pursuing policies to get every last drop of fossil fuel, including coal, by whatever means necessary, regardless of environmental damage."

The scientist catches himself, but it is too late: "Whoops. As an objective scientist I should delete such personal opinions, or at least flag them. But I am sixty-eight years old," he writes, drawing himself up on the page, "and I am fed up with the way things are working in Washington."

Yeah, whoops.

End: Wart

Our favorite fake Injun appears today with Derrick Jensen and some lesser (sic) lights at the Muddy Waters Collective Cafe in Portland (left coast) to try to raise funds to finish Derrick's laughable "documentary," End: Civ. The hoedown's sponsored by B.U.R.N (Bottom Up Radio Network--like I always say, if nothing else, rads have a way with the acronym.)

More: A couple of weeks ago the Daily Gamera named the Wart trial as number 7 on its top ten stories of the decade list. Now the brouhaha as a whole has been named number 5--just above "JonBenet unsolved."

The visual display of quantitative and qualitative fraud

Check out this pdf (it's big) tracing thirty years of AGW malarkey. Much of it will be familiar to those who've followed the story, but to have it all in one place redoubles the impact.



Being reasonably familiar with the scandal, what struck me was how often Keith Briffa expressed discontent with the actions of his alarmist colleagues. I wonder if he really was the leaker.

(via WUWT and their via, JoNova)

Apologies, by the way, to Edward R. Tufte

Update: Oops, got the Tufte link wrong. Fexed.

Truthforce set the high price

A recording of Ward Churchill's lecture at the University of Winnipeg in 2000, "Doing Time: The Politics of Imprisonment," costs from $6.05 to $999 at Amazon.

Westword gets it right about Ward

For once. But it's not Michael Roberts, the Wart-lovin', media-coverin' guy who does so, but Alan Prendergast. In a piece titled "The top ten Colorado feuds of the decade" (I know, stupid), Prendergast has "Ward Churchill versus reality" at number two:

One can argue, as his attorney David Lane did, that the charges of plagiarism and research misconduct would never have been formally raised (or resulted in his termination) if Churchill hadn't chosen to exercise his right to inane speech by calling World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns." But that doesn't make Churchill the anarchist martyr he wants to be. His entire delusional career has been built on excursions down the rabbit hole, whether he's denouncing CIA-infused conspiracies or claiming to be an ex-paratrooper or three-sixteenths Cherokee or an original thinker. In this world, a jury valued Churchill's damages at exactly one dollar -- and last summer a judge ruled that even that assessment was too generous.

And CU wants $52,000 back. In a generally dismal year, Wart getting whacked was the high point.

Confidential to Dougie Houser

If you like, come back and start commenting again. I'd like others to see (and critique) the arguments for global war--er--climate instability that you keep sending me. If you make a personal comment about me, of course, you will instantly be rebanned. I figure it's better for you to make your views known to (slightly) more than one person so that they can be debunked for the watermelon drivel they are.

Hope all's well with you and fambly, and Merry X-mas.

MLA to vote on condemning CU for firing Wart

Like the Palestinians, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. In this case, to just shut up.

Actually the proposed condemnation is for violating Wart's "free speech rights." Same diff. They actually did condemn CU back in 2007 for investigating Churchill in the first place.

New visions of hell

Wart at "Gelndale" Community College on November 19. Somebody throws something at him (about 2:09). That's all that's new. Everybody is yacking while he bores:



Part 2. He's making no sense at all. All over the place.

And part 3. What a wanker.

Update (re part 3): Reverse the polarity!

Past His bedtime, too

The Guardian is angry, my friends. On the front page, it calls the climate deal "feeble." It also quotes Obama:

10:22pm . . . . "I believe what we have achieved in Copenhagen will not be the end but the beginning."

Or the beginning of the end.

He said the most significant thing to come out of the conference was a "shift in orientation" in which developing countries that had never even voluntarily offered emissions cuts before had made offers. "That's what I think will end up being most significant about this accord," he said.

And the best line:

"Because of weather constraints in Washington I am leaving before a final vote."

Nightie-night. Let's hope Wee-Wee One (stolen from somebody somewhere) makes a safe landing in that snowstorm (for which I blame Gor-Al, wherever he is). Enviros are pissed off, of course:

10.04pm: Tim Jones, climate policy officer at the World Development Movement said:

"This summit has been in complete disarray from start to finish, culminating in a shameful and monumental failure that has condemned millions of people around the world to untold suffering. The leaders of rich countries have refused to lead. They have failed the poorest people in the world and history will judge them harshly because rich countries are trying to blind us to the fact that they have not offered the emissions cuts that science and justice requires. To say that this deal is in any way historic or meaningful is to completely misrepresent the fact that this deal is devoid of real content.

"These talks have been darkened by rich countries trying to save face, but not the climate. Rich countries have caused this problem and now they are trying to blame developing countries for stalling the talks because they are standing up to these insulting[ly tiny] and outrageous[ly small] bribes. The very survival of some of these countries depends on the outcomes of these talks but rich countries cannot see beyond the survival of business as usual."

Absolutely nuts

The Grauniad, of course:

The emissions cuts offered so far at the Copenhagen climate change summit would still lead to global temperatures rising by an average of 3C, according to a confidential UN analysis obtained by the Guardian. . . .

And it was a super, super secret analysis. How'd the Grauniad get it? Whatever, all is not lost.

Tonight hopes of the summit producing a deal were rising after the US, the world's biggest historical polluter, moved to save the talks from collapse.

The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, committed the US to backing a $100bn-a-year global climate fund from 2020 to shield poor countries from the ravages of global warming. Barack Obama is expected to offer even more cash when he flies
in tomorrow. . . .

I'm gonna cry like a little baby . . .

The document was drafted by the UN secretariat running the Copenhagen summit and is dated 11pm on Tuesday night. It is marked "do not distribute" and "initial draft". It shows a gap of up to 4.2 gigatonnes of carbon emissions between the present pledges and the required 2020 level of 44Gt, which is required to stay below a 2C rise. No higher offers have since been made.

God, God, God.

"Unless the remaining gap of around 1.9-4.2Gt is closed and Annexe 1 parties [rich countries] commit themselves to strong action before and after 2020, global emissions will remain on an unsustainable pathway that could lead to concentrations equal or above 550 parts per million, with the related temperature rise around 3C," it says. It does not specify a time when 3C would be reached but it is likely to be 2050.

Cry, cry, cry . . .

Greenpeace campaigner Joss Garman said: "This is an explosive document that shows the numbers on the table at the moment would lead to nothing less than climate breakdown and an extraordinarily dangerous situation for humanity.

Absolutely nuts.

Bill McKibben, founder of the campaign 350.org, said: "In one sense [sniffle] this is no secret – we've been saying it for months [badly stifled sob]. But it is powerful to have the UN confirming its own insincerity [wiping nose on sleeve]." He did not know why his name was written on the top of the document.

Huh? No other mention of that in the story. Call in CSI and do a DNA test of the tears on the document!

Amazingly, the piece gets even sillier.

Wart beats out serial killer

The Camera is counting down its top stories of 2009, and Ward's trial comes in at number 7. Whoo. Number 8 is "Boulder County's serial killer goes to prison." Kind of odd wording there, isn't it? In the "related stories" box it's "Boulder County's worst serial killer . . . ." which makes sense.

Hold me

Delingpole on the "litigation hold" on climate data issued by the DOE:

God bless America and – can I really be saying this? – God bless the legal profession! Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, most of the world’s other governments (save the plucky Canucks), the United Nations and the Mainstream Media (MSM) to sweep Climategate under the carpet, the lawyers are putting this shoddy scandal where it belongs: in the dock. (Hat tip: Platosays)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) – under pressure, most likely, from Senator Inhofe – has issued a “Litigation Hold Notice” to its various sub-departments asking them to retain any documents pertaining to the Climatic Research Unit at University of East Anglia. Below – reports Watts Up With That - is a copy of the notice sent to the DOE’s Savannah office in South Carolina . . . .

Noot graph:

What we see encapsulated here is the corruption at the heart not just of Climategate but the whole IPCC process. Here we have the former head of one of the world’s leading climate research bodies apparently brainstorming with a colleague implicated in a fraud scandal on how best to conceal that fraud from outside investigation. . . .

It is all falling apart.

Hi-Blairity

Blair:

Climate talks in Copenhagen still have several days to run, but I’m calling it early.

Australia wins. No other nation can possibly match the level of comedy that we’ve brought to this international save-the-planet chucklefest.

Chucklefest? He means, "chuckleheadfest." Pretty funny, tho.

Glassy eyed

So bummed. Tenants were moving crap out through one of the big windows of this jolly shithole and (inadvertently, of course) busted out the nearly 100-year-old glass. Goddamnit. I love that old stuff. You look at a window in this place and you can see how it gets thicker towards the bottom because even in the early 20th century they had no QC. Now I've got to replace it with an absolutely uniform window. Crap.

Would you be so kind as to pull this fork out of my eye?

Thank you. AP:

Dozens of Colorado businesses are turning off their lights from noon to 1 p.m. Friday as part of an initiative to conserve energy.

It’s called Lights Out Lunch. Residents who pledge to turn off their lights too can get discounts from participating restaurants and a chance to win prizes.

The initiative is by Xcel Energy, the Governor’s Energy Office and the city and county of Denver.

Colorado Restaurant Association President and CEO Pete Meersman says research shows restaurants use more than five times more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings. . . .

Update: A quite long (by internet standards) piece putting the case against AGW hysteria by Martin Cohen in, of all places, Times Higher Education. He's good.

Quote of the day!

Well, actually yesterday, from one "Mohan K" in response to this WSJ article on the bogosity of "climate change":

Of course, let us wait. Let us form a committee to look into the facts behind global warming and climate change. And another committee to investigate the intentions behind denying McIntyre information. And lets campaign for yet another committee to investigate the personal lives of the scientists - to verify their reliability... And let each of these committees be constituted of several sub-committees and sub-sub-committees, which function through international multilateral processes... Sounds good.. Sounds very good to the average self-blindfolded American, debating the conspiracies behind climate change, munching on a Mc Burger and sipping coke.

Lets do that... And lets keep talking, while the world changes. While the world falls into catastrophy. While people start dying in the so called 3rd worlds. While islands start disappearing. While hospitals start filling up. While wars start for food and water. While suddenly, one day, salt water floods your office... Yes, you will still be debating, discussing, analysing, as the water level rises, and slowly drowns you.

People, it takes not science or technology or statistics or advanced calculations to know that our world is being raped by humans, and its taking its toll. You just need to get out of your billion layers of superficiality and artificial life, love yourself, and the Earth, and listen to Her... Feel with her... Try to be one with her. And you can feel her diseased pulse. You can feel her wheezing.

Damn, I'm gettin' a little wood (certain people will know I'm lying there).

I have gas

Can't tell you how many times a tenant has called and screamed, "I smell gas!" One time, a tenant was having a party and shepherded all her guests out into the cold because of the danger of explosion and burning bodies and death and glavin!

Every time, it's been a pilot light on the gas stove.

This, in case you didn't know, is not dangerous. Anyway, it just happened again. I went over with my trustee (yes, it was just put on work-release) lighter, pulled the hood of the stove up, and relit a pilot light.

Reactions: Wow! That's all? Are you sure?

Well, I won't be absolutely sure unless I find you all dead in your beds, but yeah, I'm fairly sure.

Update: OTOH.

(via Insty)

They're back, and they're pissed off

Space aliens, that is. First, a piece in the Telegraph from July, 2008 on the "flood" of UFO sightings in Britain:

Plotted on a map of Britain, the sightings can be seen to stretch from Liverpool to Dover and from Llanelli to Derby. . . .

The founder member of Strange Phenomena Investigations, added: "There has been an unusual number of sightings recently.

"Some experts believe it could be linked to global warming and craft from outer space are appearing because they are concerned about what man is doing to this planet."

They must have figured out that it's too late to save the earth (sorry, "Earth") and started mutilating Colorado cows in disgust. Front page of the Post today:

Four calves, all killed overnight. Their innards gone. Tongues sliced out. Udders carefully removed. Facial skin sliced and gone. Eyes cored away. Not a single track surrounding the carcasses, which were found in pastures locked behind two gates and a mile from any road. Not a drop of blood on the ground or even on the remaining skin. . . .

Chuck Zukowski of Colorado Springs investigated three of the eight mutilated cows in southern Colorado this year. The amateur UFO investigator and reserve deputy in El Paso County documents each scene, testing for radiation and scanning carcasses with ultraviolet light.

Despite his extraterrestrial inclinations, Zukowski's studies — found on his ufonut.com website — fall short of concluding anything paranormal [sic]. He seems certain all the animals he studied were killed and drained before they were sliced, which explains the lack of blood found near the animals.

The way the tongues were sliced off in straight lines back behind the teeth indicates it is not a predator kill, he says.

"I'm looking for obvious things," Zukowski says. "I don't like to say aliens did it. There are just too many unknowns. I like to lean on human intervention until I actually see a UFO come down and take a cow."

Well, he's more of a scientist than many climatologists, anyway.

Update: Speaking of which: "The world has just ten years to bring greenhouse gas emissions under control before the damage they cause become [sic] irreversible, the Met Office has warned."

So cold

Nine degrees below zippo, according to one measure. But, as we all know, who knows. It's very cold. Billy Bob has decided to never go out again. And only ten days till winter. GWMA.

Update: "Typical" links to a blog with a screencap of 9News.com's weather report. That's cold.

More Dickie

Sick of Climategate? I am, for the moment, so just go to WUWT, which is full of AGW goodness. Instead, I'll post some Richard (and the first with Linda) Thompson. Way back again: "A Heart Needs a Home":

I still wear velour.

From 1981. "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight." If only the guy could play guitar:


Not live, "End of the Rainbow." Dickie at his most amusingly misanthropic:


And here's an Elvis C. cover of the same tune. Not as good, but nice backing vocals:


Dickie in his mid-80s incarnation, sans Linda. This is the tour I first saw him on, at the long-gone Blue Note in Boulder. Wall of Death (sound's not the greatest):

Start this tune about a minute in to the famous scene of the kid riding the Wall of Death in "400 Blows" and blow your mind, maaaan.

From the same tour. "When the Spell is Broken." This smokes. Bonnie Raitt covered it sometime or other and did a pretty good job.


"1952 Vincent Black Lightning":


And finally, since I couldn't find a good Dickie version, Bonnie Raitt covering "Dimming of the Day":

Mass delusion

Led by the Grauniad:

Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

This editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change is published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages

Many, including the Guardian, on the front page.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted. . . .

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based. . . .

The Miami Herald was the only American paper to sign on. Tim Blair (via whom, by the way) notes the response (quoted in this self-congratulatory Guardian piece) of one American editor: “This is an outrageous attempt to orchestrate media pressure. Go to hell.”

Sanity: such a rare commodity these days.

Update: Meanwhile, we've been in the deep-freeze in Colorado for several days. It's seven degrees now in Denver and we're supposed to get another seven or eight inches of snow on top of the seven or eight we got over the weekend. And winter is only two weeks away.

Update II: Ha-Ha! Antonia Senior at TimesOnline (which is going aardvark-shit crazy over Copenhagen): "Take climate seriously. Make a joke of it." Subhead: "For many of us global warming is worthy but dull. We need to find a new way of talking about it":

Climate change is a bit dull. A bit of a turn-off. Important? Yes. The biggest challenge mankind has faced? Possibly. But exciting? Admit it. How many times have your eyes glazed past the latest slice of gloom and doom, in search of something a bit more fruity? Tiger Woods’ apparent taste in plastic waitresses with weirdly plump lips; or bankers’ bonuses.

I know it’s not really funny that polar bears are drowning and sea levels rising; but death isn’t innately hilarious and neither is paedophilia, yet jokes on both abound. If a celebrity dies or is caught with dodgy images, the web resounds with comedy e-mails. When the latest statistics on melting ice sheets come out, the e-mail ping falls silent. We briefly feel the guilt, shrug and return to our messy, polluting lives. . . .

Well, that's kind of funny, isn't it? Concluding graf:

We [media and science types] get more pompous, you get more bored, the world keeps getting hotter and the climate change chat is dominated by what should be fringe movements. We need a new vocabulary; a new irreverence. We need leaders, yes, but also comics. Someone to lead the fight, with a jester to relieve the tension and unremitting gloom. Have you heard the one about the drowning polar bear? No, neither have I.

A polar bear, a baby seal and Phil Jones walk into a bar . . .

Nope, she's right: not funny.

Split personality

The Telegraph betrays its own with this ludicrous headline over a rather cynical live-blog (by Geoffrey Lean) of the first day of Copenhagen: "The world has just 11 days to save the planet from global warming. Read the latest updates from the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen here." From the post:

9am: Day one of the conference and already the rumours are flying. I have heard that Al Gore, the high priest of climate change, may not be coming to Copenhagen afterall. Perhaps he is leaving the limelight to President Barack Obama?

But don't worry. David Beckham could save the planet. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are in discussion with football teams coming to the World Cup about offsetting their carbon emissions. So, we could see a wind farm sponsored by Wayne Rooney or solar panels courtesy of Cristiano Ronaldo. We'll find out later today which teams are signing up and what kind of projects they will be paying for to make up for their business class flights.

11am: Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernnental Committee on Climate Change, delivers an impassioned defence of the science behind global warming following 'climategate'.

“The recent incident of stealing the emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC," he said. "But the panel has a record of transparent and objective assessment stretching over 21 years performed by tens of thousands of dedicated scientists from all corners of the globe."

Dr Pachauri said even a rise in temperatures of 2C (3.6) will lead to sea level rise that could make millions of people homeless. He called for “urgent action” and said those questioning the science were just unwilling to make the changes necessary to cut carbon emissions. . . .

1.45pm: Delegates are outraged. Not only are they in a souless conference centre miles from anywhere on the borders of Denmark and Sweden, not only were hundreds kept waiting in the rain on the first day because of a bomb scare but there is no goodie bag.

Lars Ramussen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, said it was all about saving the plaent. "Looking in your conference kit, you were perhaps disappointed – or perhaps relieved - not to find a figurine of the Little Mermaid or other conference souvenirs,” he said. “We have chosen to cut back on gifts and instead invest in 11 scholarships for students from around the world who are attending a fully financed two year MA programme in
Denmark.”. . .

Vote love!

The Gamera has a list of its nominees for the top ten local stories of the year. Among them:

Ward Churchill wins $1: After a protracted legal battle that spurred national headlines, former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill won a civil suit against CU. Churchill was awarded $1 from a jury in the suit, which alleged that CU wrongfully fired him in 2007. He did not get his job back.

Don't know that I'd vote for it for biggest story, but it sure was the most fun.

The title of this post refers, of course, to this post.

Billy bails on Barry

Another non-surprise. Ayers, almost a year ago:

And in that bright transcendent morning, the once unthinkable was, suddenly and inevitably, done. Who could resist the embracing magic of that moment?

The poet Elizabeth Alexander invoked the common people “repairing the things in need of repair.” In a bleeding world marked by so much unnecessary pain, a world so precariously out of balance, we must find ways to come together in vast missions of repair. “A teacher says, ‘Take out your pencils. Begin.”’

And so it begins.

Ayers, a couple of days ago:



(via Clarence "the" Page, who, rare among columnists, actually defends himself in the comments to his post. Of course he maintains, ridiculously, that Ayers and Obama hardly knew each other)

Update: Funny how Billy hasn't updated his bog since the inauguration.

Rats

Mail:

The scientist at the heart of the climate change email scandal was today interviewed by police about the scandal. . . .

Don't get your hopes up:

Sources said the interview concerned the theft of emails from the university and alleged death threats since the contents of the emails were released, adding he was being treated as a 'victim of crime' rather than a suspect in any criminal investigation.

So far, anyway.

More: More insanity, that is, from TimesOnline. Ted Hughes, prophet of climate change:

While some mocked him for accepting the poet laureateship, feminists attacked him over the suicide of Sylvia Plath and people with no interest in poetry picked lubriciously over the tragedies of his life, Hughes himself was firing off letters to the Thatcher Government, demanding that the country be put on a “war footing” to combat environmental degradation. . . .

Poetry makes nothing happen,” wrote W. H. Auden. He was wrong. Higher literature should be used not to preach or hector [bwahahahahahahahaha!], but to describe, alarm and warn. In 1936 the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova met a starving women outside a Russian jail. The woman, “her lips blue with cold”, whispered: “Could anyone ever describe this?” Akhmatova replied: “I can.” And she did, in Requiem, her masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her poem did not save the dying woman, nor did it stop Stalin, yet it changed the world.

Exactly analogous to AGW. Amazing.

As world leaders head to Copenhagen to confer on climate change, there has never been a greater need for poets — the “unacknowledged legislators of the world” — to put pressure on the acknowledged legislators by translating this crisis, and the moral imperative it demands, into words.

"Life is hard and life is earnest. If you're cold, turn up the furnace"--Herman Munster.

Update: Okay, I take it all back. I'm convinced:



(via a commenter at WUWT. Why don't they have permalinks on comments?)

Central Climategate figure Jones 'steps down'

To hell, one hopes. WUWT has the UEA press release. Classic:

Professor Phil Jones has today announced that he will stand aside as Director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent Review resulting from allegations following the hacking and publication of emails from the Unit.

Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible. After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the Director’s role during the course of the independent review and am grateful to the University for agreeing to this. The Review process will have my full support.”

No Doubt (to employ equally peculiar capitalization).

Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton said: “I have accepted Professor Jones’s offer to stand aside during this period. It is an important step to ensure that CRU can continue to operate normally and the independent review can conduct its work into the allegations.

Better and better.

More: Australian senate defeats ETS (via Tim Blair)

And more. An AFP piece in the SMH: "Cold comfort: The psychology of climate denial":

If the evidence is overwhelming that man-made climate change is already upon us and set to wreak planetary havoc, why do so many people refuse to believe it?

The UN's panel of climate scientists, in a landmark report, described the proof of global warming as "unequivocal".

That was two years ago, and since then hundreds of other studies have pointed to an ever-bleaker future, with a potential loss of life numbering in the tens of millions, if not more.

Yet survey after survey from around world reveals deep-seated doubt among the public. . . .

Read whole thing for the surprising (yuh-huh) explanations of this denialist mentality.

(via commenter "Puzzled" in the Tim Blair thread)

Update: William T. Sherman links to Lindzen in the WSJ. I saw it but forgot.

And Monckton writes a little book (pdf).