Brainwashing in schools

While doing a Google search, I chanced upon this site, which belongs to the Geography department at Bishop Challoner School. The school is independent, so it's up to them what they teach, but my goodness, if this is the standard of thinking they develop in their children, they wouldn't get a penny of my money.

Homework for 29/1/07 ...Produce a powerpoint presentation on what Bromley Council is doing to try and be sustainable. [...]

What must be included:

The reason why sustainability is required in Bromley.

Why we should recycle.

[...]

Not if we should recycle, or when we should recycle, but why we should recycle. The person who wrote this is clearly intellectually challenged. Do they really believe that it is always best to recycle? No matter what level of resources is required? Who would want their children taught by someone who believed such nonsense?

If you scroll down a little more you come to this:

Create a poster on Global Warming based on the movie inconvenient truth. 

(Dodgy capitalisation in original)

Or how about this:

The greatest wonder of the sea is that it's still alive.

(That's from a Greenpeace poster which is being used as a teaching aid, it seems)

I remember James Bartholemew saying that he was taking his daughter out of school because the independents were becoming infected with the shoddy standards of the state sector. It looks to me as if he was right - if I were a Bishop Challoner parent, I'd be asking for a refund.

Basher for Liberty news 13

The debate

The Libertarian Party blog tells us that the EU is shortly to start passing our details on to the authorities in the USA, including credit card transactions, internet browsing habits and travel histories. I wasn't aware that the authorities had access to these details in the first place.

An interview between an American lefty called Jane Hamsher and US Libertarian party presidential candidate Bob Barr. Some discussion of the parallels between the UK situation and the US from about ten minutes in.

Clampdowns on peaceful dissent continue apace. Three members of NO2ID were arrested "on suspicion of breaching the peace" as the protested outside the alleged consultation on the ID card scheme in Edinburgh.

Anthony Barnett writes about DD and freedom at Comment is Free.  Meanwhile Martin Kettle says the state has interests which are not necessarily compatible with freedom, but that it's still "a necessary good".  This is what is known as "woolly liberalism", IMHO.

Tittle tattle

Sky have apparently cancelled a planned debate between DD and a member of the government because of fears that broadcasting rules would mean that equal time would have to be given to the 24 other candidates standing in H&H. This sounds like an opportunity for some enterprising person to do a webcast. In the same article it is reported that Gordon Brown says that David Cameron has ample opportunity to discuss civil liberties at PMQs. David Davis has shot back though.

Basher for Liberty news 12

 Plenty of interesting comment on the civil liberties front over the weekend. Here's some of the best.

The debate

Liberal England tells the story of how we came to be under nearly constant surveillance.

Brian Micklethwait takes David Davis to task over demand for better CCTV cameras. 

Marina Hyde wonders why we were never asked for our opinions on becoming a surveillance state.

The Adam Smith Institute has pertinent quote from Woodrow Wilson.

Tony Benn covers ID cards and 42 days in an article for the Telegraph. He also rolls in the Lisbon Treaty, which, while I agree with his stance, risks conflating two separate issues.

Henry Porter looks to the Conservative party for support for Davis.

Helienne Lindvall describes how the Swedish ID card has been used to harass people with inconvenient political views.

The Devil's Kitchen thinks that a UK ID card will make it much harder for young women to flee arranged marriages.

Tittle tattle

The Independent reports that the PR firm Davis is using also work for security companies involved in ID cards. So?

Climate cuttings 16

Well, the enthusiasm has lasted through another week, so here it is: the latest installment of Climate Cuttings, in which I round up recent developments on the climate science front.

First up is The Englishman, who wonders why UEA's Climate Research Unit hasn't published any of its indicators of climate change since 2000. Perhaps because the temperature's not going up?

Lucia Liljegren has been comparing the temperature records to the last IPCC forecast of temperatures rising at 2^oC per century. She has been able to reject the 2^oC/century hypothesis with a high degree of confidence, but points out that this doesn't mean temperatures aren't going to start rising again.

Sir Nicholas Stern, of Stern Report fame, turns out to be coining it on the back of his climate scaremongering, launching a carbon credits rating agency. Of course, if it were Exxon doing this they'd be accused on being unreliable. Stern will just laugh all the way to the bank.

Climate Audit's work on discovering whether NASA's shambolic computer code does what it is supposed to continues. Steve McIntyre has discovered that NASA are monitoring the work, despite the fact that they refuse to mention or even discuss Climate Audit. Perhaps they want to learn how code is written these days.

Like the first swallow of summer, the annual "ice-free North Pole" story arrived. This time it's the Independent doing the honours, with Science Editor, Steve Connor blissfully unaware that the New York Times was forced to retract an identical story in 2000 when it was pointed out to them that it isn't even unusual for there to be no ice at the Pole. Real Climate weighed in too and said that this time there were going to be "large expanses" of open water. Still no mention of the growing sea ice in the Antarctic.

Volcanoes were discovered under the Arctic ice (shouldn't they be able to see them now all the ice is gone?). Sceptics wondered if this might explain some of the ice melt.

 The Surface Stations project, to survey all 1221 stations used as input to the global temperature figure, has now reached over 40% of the network. One preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the best sited stations show a much lower rise in temperature than the worst.

Anthony Watts, the man behind SurfaceStations, has also been keeping an eye on the sun. There has been a complete absence of sunspots since April 13th. In the past, this sort of sunspot pause has presaged a 1-2^oC drop in global temperatures.

Professor Aynsley Kellow writes about the great failures of environmental science - how green scientists treat mathematical models as scientific truth and manipulate real world data to fit the models. Anyone who has followed the climate debate will recognise this pattern. There's also an amusing potshot at Nature for editorialising in support of some "scientists" who faked evidence. 

(Updated to fix the Kellow link)

A proud moment

I think I've just had a comment deleted for the first time!

I have a policy of always being polite when visiting other people's blogs, particularly if I'm disagreeing with somebody. Todays deletions were not one of those occasions though. What is odd is that I didn't even think that I was being particularly probing or contrary.

The culprit was (and it will probably surprise few of my readers to learn this) Real Climate, a site with a certain reputation for deleting inconvenient comments. My comments were in response to a posting by Gavin Schmidt about ice (or lack of it) at the North Pole in which he said that the situation being observed at present was different to previous instances.

What is being discussed here is large expanses of almost completely ice-free water. That would indeed be unprecedented since we've been tracking it.

My comment merely asked what he meant by "large". The comment sat in moderation for twelve hours or so, and is now gone completely. I can only assume that it has been deleted.

Another commenter posted a comment about "denialists" arguing that volcanic activity might have contributed to Arctic ice melt. He said:

The mean global sunlight absorbed by the climate system is about 237 watts per square meter.
The mean global geothermal flux is about 0.087 watts per square meter.
Divide A by B. Discuss.

To which I pointed out that the mean geothermal flux couldn't be a relevant measure.  That comment has gone too though.

It's a strange feeling of pride one gets when a scientific bigwig reckons that your arguments are probing enough to warrant summary deletion. A feather in my cap, I would say.

Update: I'm wrong. It has now appeared. Why it should appear to be in moderation and then disappear completely before reappearing again is beyond me.

The illiberality of the liberals

David Bernstein has an interesting article up at Cato about how American liberals (that's lefties to you and me) are consistently illiberal.

Basher for Liberty news 11

The campaign

Basher launched his manifesto which includes a list of ten civil liberties we need to restore.

The debate

Nicholas Watt interviews DD in the Guardian. Davis reveals that he was on an IRA hit list, which makes his demands for civil liberties despite the treat of terrorism all the more convincing.

David Pannick QC points out that Jack Straw is talking nonsense when he says that there is a balance to be struck between the right to confront one's accusers and witness protection.

Spy Blog wonders if the arrest of journalist Tony Gosling was a "fishing trip" by police.

Has a Belfast blogger been arrested for criticising public figures?

The English Democrats, campaigning in Henley, were told to remove their St George's cross flags.

Sparring partners

The libertarian right looks to be putting a candidate up.  Former Tory MP and Freedom Association member Walter Sweeney is being tipped to put his name forward.

Criminals in the EU parliament building

A German film crew, with permission to work inside the EU parliament, films MEPs signing on to get their attendance allowance, before waltzing off for the weekend. Permission or not, the crew are bundled away by security men. There seems to be an unwritten rule that you can film, but you mustn't film the criminal classes clambering aboard the gravy train.

Basher for Liberty news 10

A somewhat curtailed roundup today, as I've been away from my desk for most of the day. Having said that, it also looks to me as if there is less being written about civil liberties today. Is this issue going off the boil?

The debate

Lots of updates to the Davis blog. Of note is Davis's position on CCTV where he says he wants less, but better CCTV. Me, I don't want any at all.

Sparring partners

Jill Saward, a rape victim, may stand against DD on a platform of support for DNA databases and CCTV. Commenters seem to view this as a good thing in that it should start a sensible debate on the balance between liberty and security - see for example here, and here.

The BBC reports that there are now 25 people challenging Davis.

The campaign

Tory MPs will be politely asked to support DD in the by-election. 

Alligator shoes

Lucia Liljegren has been discussing the comments made by NASA's James Hansen about "lobbyists in alligator shoes" corrupting the public perception of climate science. 

Google, by means of their nifty contextual ads, have helpfully provided a picture of the aforementioned footwear alongside.

Lobbyists - they're cute and fluffy really.

Basher for Liberty news 9

The debate

Jan Morris says that Britain is losing its will to be free. A must-read. 

A commenter on the same thread says this of people who are denigrating Davis because he supports the death penalty:

David Davis supports the death penalty so its ok to give away whats left of our civil liberties and ignore his message.Shrewd

Conor Ryan, who is apparently a former Blair adviser, makes the case for CCTV cameras. One of his commenters puts him right.

The ASI looks at retrospective legislation.

When the government is found to have breached a fundamental liberty, it rushes to make the practice legal. Tim Worstall discusses.

Alice Miles chooses freedom, even though she's standing in dog poo.

Curly's Corner discusses restrictions on photographers.

DD answers readers questions in the Coffee House.

Sparring partners

The English Democrats are going to put up a candidate in Haltemprice & Howden, as are the Socialist Equality Party.

The campaign

DD says he's raised £40,000 from small donors. Nick Anstead wonders just how small these donors actually are.

Lee Griffin makes a call to action.

The case against recycling

The author, Susan Hill, has a blog which I visit from time to time. She has just written a piece which touches on the subject of recycling.

I was in the process of launching into a major lecture on the evils of recycling in the comments, when I thought the better of it - it was becoming rather too long and possibly a bit of a rant. I've therefore put down my thoughts, such as they are, here.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, recycling is rubbish.

Firstly, there is no shortage of landfill space. We are quarrying a larger volume of stone each year than we produce of landfill. The reason we seem to have a shortage is that the EU has decreed that we should close most of our landfill down. Why they have done this is anyone's guess, but I imagine corruption has something to do with it. (I'm cynical like that.)

Secondly, packaging has very little to do with landfill anyway. According to Friends of the Earth, if you analyse landfill by type, packaging isn't even in the top ten. The biggest culprit is building waste.

Thirdly, packaging is your friend. If I recall correctly 40% of American rubbish is packaging. 40% of Mexican rubbish is food that's gone off because it wasn't adequately packaged - similar conclusions are reached here. The real waste of precious resources is throwing away food, not packaging, most of which is plastic - a by-product of the oil refining industry that would have to be burnt if it wasn't used. Put it another way: why do the rapacious capitalists who run the supermarkets spend all that money wrapping up cucumbers (which annoys their customers) if there isn't some benefit to them? The answer turns out to be very simple: it keeps fungal spores off the cucumber and so doubles the shelf-life. That's saving resources, that is.

Fourthly, recycling is a tremendous waste of resources, on the whole. We know this, because it requires subsidies to get anyone to recycle most materials. Commercial businesses will not produce, say, recycled paper without subsidy, because all the resources required to bleach and reprocess it outweigh the value of the end product. There are exceptions, like aluminium and some other waste metals. We have a long-standing, subsidy-free recycling industry (called scrapyards) for these things. 

Lastly, a modern landfill is a rather marvellous thing. It is lined with clay and plastic liners so there is no leaching of pollution into the water table. Any leachate is collected and metals can be extracted from it. The methane given off is collected too and can be used as a fuel. (Source).This is real, commercially viable recycling, as opposed to the woolly tree-hugging, spend-and-be-damned type that ruins the environment and impoverishes us all.

If you have a dull afternoon, try looking on the internet for scientific evidence to support the concept of recycling. There is nearly nothing, and what little there is appears to be outdated and conceptually flawed.

/rant

Basher for Liberty news 8

The debate

The Register reports on how the police are confiscating film from innocent photographers. In unrelated news, the police say that they are disappointed that David Davis thinks they are against civil liberties. Whatever can have given him that idea, eh officer?

DD was on You and Yours discussing detention without charge with the public and someone from the Royal United Services Institute. Finally, someone in favour of 42 days is willing to put their heads above the parapet. Audio here.

Dan Vevers, writing at The UK Libertarian Party blog, discusses attempts to prevent demonstrations and a possible use of agents provocateur.

Sparring partners

David Icke is to stand. As activity on the civil liberties debate gears up, I'm increasingly concluding that the quality of the opponents in H&H don't matter.

The campaign

Unlock Democracy are going to campaign for civil liberties in H&H. They need cash to do so and you can donate here.

LibDem Voice says its readers support Nick Clegg's decision not to oppose Davis.

Basher's been updating his website again, blasting Tony McNulty for attempting to rebut some of DD's criticisms now that DD is no longer in the House of Commons to answer him, having failed to do so in the parliamentary debates. He also responds to comments by the Association of Chief Police Officers about CCTV.

Yorkshire Guidon says that DD always refuses to debate with the LibDems.

Why did he do it?

Benedict Brogan reckons DD wants to be the next speaker of the House of Commons. Iain Dale isn't convinced.

Adam Smith in bronze

The long-awaited statue of Adam Smith is due to be unveiled in Edinburgh next month at a ceremony on the Royal Mile. To mark the occasion the ASI has organised a debate on the motion that "This house would prefer to be led by the invisible hand". For the motion will be Michael Forsyth, Madsen Pirie and a former world debating champion. Against are MPs Brian Wilson (Lab) and Alex Neil (SNP) together with a former Observer Mace champion.

Who knows, I might even drag myself away from my rural idyll for one of these.

For anyone interested, the details are:

RECEPTION AND DEBATE Thursday 3 July 2008 In The Caves, 8-12 Niddry Street South, Edinburgh EH1 1NS (off Cowgate) 6.30pm for 7pm

UNVEILING OF THE ADAM SMITH STATUE Friday 4 July 2008 High Street, Edinburgh, near Parliament Square and the Mercat Cross 12.00 noon for 12.15pm.

Climate cuttings 15

A reader on one of the Basher for Liberty posts said that he missed the Climate Cuttings roundups I used to do. By strange coincidence, there have been a couple of interesting developments recently, so here I am going to revive it, at least for one night. Who knows, maybe I'll get all enthusiastic again.

Here goes:

Today is the twentieth anniversary of James Hansen's famous speech to congress in which, foaming ever so slightly at the mouth, he told the assembled eminences that we were all going to burn. To mark the occasion, (and now slavering wildly), Hansen has called for oil company executives to be tried. Rumours that he screamed "Burn them! Burn them!" are, as yet, unsubstantiated. In an article at the Graun, he said (again) that we have to act now. Commenters were rude to him.

Readers at Climate Audit have been paying lots of attention to Dr Hansen's work. Having finally forced him to release his code, experienced programmers have been astonished at the sheer amateurishness of the way he has written the programs to create a global temperature record. "Like descending into the hell described in a Steven King novel" was one opinion on the experience of trying to make head or tail of Dr Hansen's work.

David Holland has been trying to get hold of IPCC review editors' working papers. The review editors are the guys who are supposed to go through the IPCC draft report to make sure that it reflects different opinions fairly. Having got hold of the comments of the review editors, he found that they pretty much all just sent in a form sign-off saying that everything was fine and dandy. Given the importance of their job, Holland took the view that there must be more, and asked to see the working papers of the Met Office's John Mitchell who was a review editor on a key chapter.  This opened up a can of worms. The Met Office has given Holland a disgraceful runaround, first of all claiming that all the working papers were destroyed, and when it was pointed out to them that this would contravene both IPCC and Met Office data retention policies, they changed their tune and said that Mitchell was performing this work on his own time.

Meanwhile Holland has been pursuing a completely separate Freedom of Information request to get similar information from Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. This time the excuse has been that the information is confidential. This is pretty extraordinary, because the IPCC reviews are all meant to be entirely transparent. It's hard to see how a reviewer can have expected his comments to be confidential. In a classic piece of bureaucrat-speak the CRU opined that

The public interest in withholding this information outweighs that of releasing it due to the need to protect the openness and confidentiality of academic intercourse prior to publication which, in turn, assures that such cooperation & openness can continue and inform scientific research and debate.

Academic openness requires confidentiality it seems.

Pollsters discovered that the British public doesn't believe the global warming hype. It's not surprising really - they've kept the story too black and white. It doesn't "feel" like the truth.