Government agencies are not alone in seeking to defend their hard-earned data against prying eyes. The hacked CRU emails reveal years of correspondence between a handful of climate scientists on how to respond to a growing number of FOI requests (see “Declare or defend?”). Many came from Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre.

[Declare or defend?

A telling email episode in April 2007 shows how interactions between scientists and their critics spun out of control because the scientists mistook their critics for wreckers with no rights to data, while the critics took an aversion to scrutiny as a sign of fraud.

In the exchanges, Michael Mann of Penn State University in University Park, Phil Jones, the director of the UK's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, discuss freedom of information requests from Douglas Keenan, a financial statistician turned independent scientist, for the location of Chinese temperature readings used in a paper co-authored by Jones 17 years before. Mann advised: "This crowd of charlatans... look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalize that the science is entirely compromised... Best thing is to ignore them completely." Trenberth disagreed: "I don't think you can ignore it. The response should try to somehow label these guys [as] lazy and incompetent.”

Keenan won his FOI request and said it showed the data was flawed, because some of the stations had been moved by the Chinese scientists who ran them. He said Jones’s reluctance to share the data was evidence of fraud. Tom Wigley, director of the CRU when the original paper was published, emailed Jones saying it would have been easier to admit the data’s shortcomings. “Why, why, why did you not simply say this right at the start?”]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427393.600-battle-for-climate-data-approaches-tipping-point.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20427393.600

Luc, the tenor of my remark is that effective conservation depends on respecting local communities in conservation work, as they typically bear the brunt of the costs and risks of such campaigns.

It isn’t about letting people take precedence. It’s about who gets to bear the costs of conservation policies. A lot of conservation policy is pushed onto poor brown or black communities, who are then seen as “the problem” by green NGOs. That is an unfortunate and somewhat unpalatable aspect of many green NGOs.

So true. Witness this just in:

Qinlao village has been given the unenviable task of making it through the winter, when temperatures can descend to -40C, without burning any coal. Instead, the villagers have been told they should burn the corn stalks left over from their harvest to keep warm.

Xinhua, the propaganda arm of the government, has declared Qinlao as the “first coal-free zone” in China’s northernmost province and a model of how the country can survive without coal. “Within three years, the whole of north China will be burning plant stalks like us,” boasts Mr Zhao.

Absolutely. This is something that I have been arguing for over the last 2 years. Any trading related to carbon emission or anything to do with global warming, then it has to be tied to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere. In this way, proponents of global warming will lose big time. There are already trading instruments and derivatives related to climate/weather available today, but they’re not tied to the AGW causes or anything like that. If supposed causes of AGW such as CO2 emission is tied to the the earth’s atmospheric temperature, then skeptics like me will make a killing in trading derivatives against those pro-AGW who believe that temperature should be up-trending, but then again, I doubt that pro-AGW will put their money in where their mouth is.

A colleague of mine had just returned from New York from a conference for “Finance Tech Companies” and he had a chat with a physicist from Wall St, top Hedge-Fund company Renaissance Technology and he told him that they’re watching closely the talks on AGW & carbon emission trading and all that, because they themselves think they will make a killing in any instruments or derivatives that tie to global temperature, because of its stochastic nature. The long term trend is irrelevant in derivative markets. Our startup software application had a wide range of derivative models and we will be looking at developing proprietary models for evaluation of weather or climate related derivative instruments.

He already has, billy, by granting you life in our world today. Your comments indicate a man full of hate toward the on-balance, greatest force for good the world has ever seen. That is a truth self-evident, to an objective observer, when you weigh it up.

Sure, you can take isolated historical or contemporary counter-instances or even religious trends the stellar version being the inquisition, but on-balance, over history, religion is, overall a good, peaceful, kind, benevolent and beneficial influence.

You’re a good man, I have discerned, so I’m puzzled. Why do you hate it so?

P.S. Worshipping and professing G-d doesn’t take away human rights, freedoms, individual thought, expression, art, science, music, education, et al. Sometimes people who profess to practice claim in its name to do those things. That doesn’t make it so and it doesn’t mean that G-d approves.

The fact He doesn’t step in is simply a dynamic of the way He operates in the world.

One thing that it doesn’t make clear is how the study looked at de facto relationships or whether they were simply classed as not married.

Pete – I was interested in an answer to that question… so I emailed Kate: Here’s her response -

“Hello [getstaffed],

We just used the usual definition of married, so de facto got counted as unmarried, or as “previously married” if they had once been married and had divorced prior to the current de facto relationship. I expect our findings extend to long-term de facto relationships, but I don’t know for sure.”

How odd of god
to choose the Jews
and not to spot
the purer fuehrer

A good read on the history of our flags.

And Joe90, just for the record I am NOT an anti Semite – one might even go as far as calling me a Zionist and certainly a supporter of Israel; God’s chosen people.

Isn’t favouring one race over another kind of the definition of racism?

the ushering in of the one the Bible identifies as the Antichrist.

If the Bible identifies him, could you tell us more about who he or she is?

Here’s an item about the global cooling scare of the ’70’s.

But because the gravy train is now running at breakneck speed, even if it was shown that we were in fact entering a cooling phase, or perhaps moving toward an ice age, the high priests of Climate Change would still blame CO2 and greenhouse gases so that ETSs and Carbon Taxation remained in place to facilitate their One World aims. They are committed to this, and Climate Change is their vehicle to bring it about.

As per my quote of Nick Griffin above in my 12:20 pm comment:

The anti-Western intellectual cranks of the left suffered a collective breakdown when Communism collapsed. Climate change is their new theology; a secular religious hysteria, complete with pope Al Gore, carbon credit indulgences, and the persecution of heretics. But the heretics will have a voice in Copenhagen and the truth will out climate change is being used to impose an anti-human utopia as deadly as anything conceived by Stalin on Mao.

Climate Change is the new ‘Communism’; the vehicle for Global Governance, the New World Order, and, in my opinion, the ushering in of the one the Bible identifies as the Antichrist.

Getting married is good for you, according a New Zealand-led international study of nearly 35,000 people across 15 countries.

Tying the knot was positive for the mental health of both men and women, reducing the risks of the likelihood of most mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, the study found.

The world-first study, led by clinical psychologist Kate Scott from the University of Otago, Wellington, was published in the UK journal Psychological Medicine.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/3161839/Marriage-is-good-for-you

One thing that it doesn’t make clear is how the study looked at de facto relationships or whether they were simply classed as not married.

Kris K at 12.20 quoted at length Nick Griffin on global warming.

Griffin is chairman of the British National Party whose antecedents go back to the British fascists who had to be locked up as actual or potential enemy collaborators in World War 2. I think Griffin has also been a defender of far-right historian Irving.
If Griffin is right about global warming, it no more means he is right about anything else than Adolf Hitler’s anti-smoking laws meant he was right about anything else.
Don’t stuff up Kiwiblog by making Griffin an authority on anything.

joe90 1:22 pm,

Nick Griffin is an anti-semitic racist and the resident xtian extremist quoting him shows that philu had a point in yesterdays GD.

One doesn’t have to agree with the man’s politics to acknowledge that his views on AGW and the aims of some to establish Global Governance are spot on.
There are many commentators here that I don’t necessarily agree with on many issues, but when I do agree with them on something then I will say so. Heck, I may even quote them.
While I may disagree with Helen Clark on her politics, if she had made the above comment that Nick Griffin did then I would applaude her also.
Geez you two, credit where credit’s due.

And Joe90, just for the record I am NOT an anti Semite – one might even go as far as calling me a Zionist and certainly a supporter of Israel; God’s chosen people.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/printable/7817/

The disciple (Key) will go to Copenhagen to receive instructions from his master (Clark) on what to do next, how to stiffle NZ development, how to pass more and more useless legislation, how to delay taxation and welfare reforms.

The neo-socialist Key is rapidly learning from the socialist master.

If I knew how to link to transcripts I would, but I’m sure the technorati will find it.

BLACK represents Te Korekore (the realm of potential being). It thus symbolises the long darkness from which the earth emerged, as well as signifying Rangi – the heavens, a male, formless, floating, passive force.
RED represents Te Whei Ao (coming into being). It symbolises Papatuanuku, the earth-mother, the sustainer of all living things, and thus both the land and active forces.
WHITE represents Te Ao Marama (the realm of being and light). It symbolises the physical world, purity, harmony, enlightenment and balance.
The spiral-like KORU, symbolic of a curling fern frond, represents the unfolding of new life, hope for the future and the process of renewal.

As a whole, the design represents the balance of the forces of nature, masculine and feminine, active and passive, potential and physical, air and earth. It can also be interpreted as symbolising the white cloud rolling across the face of the land, as in the Maori name for New Zealand, Aotearoa (“Land of the long white cloud”)

http://flagspot.net/flags/nz_mao.html