Fausta’s Blog

The University of East Anglia scientists found the shortest distance between the facts and the results they were looking for: when the data didn’t fit, they dumped it.

Climate change data dumped

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

Why does this matter?

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

How come?

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

So much for the scientific method.

No science is possible, then:

So, basically we are being asked to restructure the entire economy of the planet on the say-so of a few “scientists” whose work cannot be verified or even reconstructed. Is there any intellectually honest person who thinks that is a good idea?

Well, Obama’s heading to Denmark.

My latest post, Honduras: Elections tomorrow, Zelaya talking of leaving is up at Real Clear World.

Haven’t read the books, haven’t seen the movies, but this is funny,

Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn From ‘Twilight’, with the stress on prepping up for abusive relationships:

1. If a boy is aloof, stand-offish, ignores you or is just plain rude, it is because he is secretly in love with you — and you are the point of his existence.
2. Secrets are good — especially life-threatening ones.
3. It’s OK for a potential romantic interest to be dimwitted, violent and vengeful — as long as he has great abs.
4. If a boy tells you to stay away from him because he is dangerous and may even kill you, he must be the love of your life. You should stay with him since he will keep you safe forever.

Go through enough of that and you’ll be ready for the Church of Oprah when you’re older and want to blame all that self-inflicted victimization on some guy.

Over at Big Hollywood Alicia Colon writes about Appreciating True Erotica in Cinema, as opposed to putting yourself through any sort of Twilight.

EM writes on the cult of Oprah hosting the Obama Christmas special:

Don’t get me wrong, I envy her a little. Who wouldn’t want to be the person millions of gullible people turn to for advice on all the wrong things?

Indeed, and Oprah ought to be credited for having made more marriages miserable than most anyone else in history.

Which reminds me of Peter Drucker’s phrase,

The only reason the word guru is so popular is because charlatan is so hard to spell.

When tribalism trumps truth:

Mark Steyn: Cooking the books on climate

The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the United Nations IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now-routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Barack Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.

But don’t worry, it’s all “peer-reviewed.”

Here’s what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review”. When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann “consensus,” Jones demanded that the journal “rid itself of this troublesome editor,” and Mann advised that “we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers.”

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the “consensus” reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley (”one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change”) suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Which, in essence, is what they did. The more frantically they talked up “peer review” as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: “How To Forge A Consensus.” Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That’s “peer review,” climate-style. The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the “peer-reviewed” “consensus.” And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line and tree-ring.

The e-mails of “Andy” (as his CRU chums fondly know him) are especially pitiful. Confronted by serious questions from Stephen McIntyre, the dogged Ontario retiree whose “Climate Audit” Web site exposed the fraud of Dr. Mann’s global-warming “hockey stick” graph, “Andy” writes to Dr. Mann to say not to worry, he’s going to “cover” the story from a more oblique angle:

“I’m going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.

“peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?”

And, amazingly, Dr. Mann does!

“Re, your point at the end – you’ve taken the words out of my mouth.”

And that’s what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the words out of Michael Mann’s mouth and served them up to impressionable readers of the New York Times and opportunist politicians around the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in the cause of “saving the planet” from an imaginary crisis concocted by a few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the revelations of the past week, you’re as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.

As Erik puts it, One is left to wonder why they felt the need to rig the game in the first place, if their science is as robust as they claim.

Why did this happen?

Scientific fraudsters are not, in general, people pushing theories they know to be false. Outright charlatanism is not actually common, because it’s relatively easy to detect. Humans are evolved for a social competitive environment and are rather good at spotting lies, except when they’re fooling themselves because they want to believe.

In general, scientific fraudsters are people who are overinvested in a theory that they believe. Because they know it must be true, they interpret predictive failures as “The data is surely wrong”. It is only a short step from “The data is surely wrong” to fixing the pesky data until it looks right

As it is, The Entire Climate Warming Movement Stands Discredited. The data was clearly cooked, but we’ll be paying for the poor policymaking:

If the historical temperature data were generally known to be garbage (which I was pretty sure was true even before the leak), it couldn’t be used to justify public policy that is both bad and expensive – like the U.S.’s “cap-and-trade” bill in progress, which has so many giveaways and exemptions that it subverts its own ostensible purposes.

Obama’s heading to the Climate Change conference next, and he’ll be dictating policy after the facts were made to fit the theory.

Hold on to your wallet.

Related reading
A few thoughts on Climategate, via James Joyner, who’ll be on C-Span tomorrow at 7:30-8:30AM Eastern.

Lyuda & Oleh Kovalchuke dancing to Adiós Buenos Aires

The Economist has a brief case study of automotive ineptitude

SELDOM, since the day Adolf Hitler gave the order to produce the Volkswagen, has a car been given such an explicitly ideological mission. But the vehicles that roll, occasionally, off the production line at Venirauto’s factory, west of Caracas, will free Venezuelans from the “yoke of capitalism,” declares President Hugo Chávez. The factory was opened with great fanfare by the president three years ago. It is a joint venture between Iran and Venezuela, which Mr Chávez predicts will turn his country into a car exporter. It is also intended to be an example of socialist production principles, although its workers see things a little differently.

In December they downed tools over the company’s refusal to negotiate a collective contract. Their wages, even at the grossly overvalued official exchange rate, are worth around $25 a day. They complained of poor safety conditions and exploitative work practices. Their supposedly socialist employer refuses to recognise trade unions and has ignored the labour ministry’s order to reinstate sacked union activists.

Venirauto’s cars are rehashes of clapped-out 1980s models from the imperialist West. The Turpial, a five-door hatchback, is based on the Ford Festiva, while the Centauro saloon is a clone of the Peugeot 405, though both are fitted with a conversion kit allowing them to run on natural gas. Their capitalist-busting claims are based on price: they undercut rival models by around 50%. If you can get one, that is.

This is what a Turpial looks like:

And a Centauro:

The Economist continues,

Perhaps it is just as well that the 30,000 customers the government says are waiting for an anti-capitalist car should learn to do without one.

Of course Chávez is ready to preach by example:

When not praising the Turpial and the Centauro, Mr Chávez has been known to rail against the whole concept of car ownership. “The urge to get a car,” he told students on one occasion, “is poison to the human soul”. With that, he got into his limousine and rode off.

• Senate Bill:  2,074 pages
• House Bill:  2,014 pages
• 118 new boards, commissions, and programs
• $1 trillion new entitlement of stupefying arbitrariness and inefficiency

Charles Krauthammer says Kill the Bill:

You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.

You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently, insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.

You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.

Krauthammer proposes that real healthcare reform should include tort reform, abolish the prohibition against buying health insurance across state lines, and tax employer-provided health insurance.

Of course, of these three actions the only thing the politicians might go along with is taxing employer-provided benefits. Why not? After all, they’re taxing everything else.

And so it goes in Shreveport has the organizational chart of the House’s Democrat Health Care Plan. It’s a doozy.

(h/t Instapundit.)

UPDATE
Paul Mirengoff asks, Is insuring the uninsured a moral imperative? Paul says it’s not, and I agree.

There very very few moral imperatives. Medical insurance is not one of them.

Yes, it’s the morning after Thanksgiving Day and there’s a list of things that need to be done, Dubay’s gone broke, the Latin Americans are a mess and rude people are crashing White House parties.

What better way, then, to procrastinate than to visit Wedinator, which will not only bring a (sometimes R-rated) chuckle, but will shine a new light on any wedding plans anyone you know may have?

Fred Astaire in the most perfect pas de deux:
Dancing in the Dark, with Cyd Charisse,