'Overall, however, I'm disappointed by the tinkery. Osborne is wasting the opportunity presented by today's crisis. Now would be a great moment to massively simplify and rebalance our tax system. To rip up Britain's disastrous climate change policies. We should be privatising our motorways as Mark Field proposed. We should be throwing every spanner into the EU works until they agree to stop imposing measures on us like the Agency Workers' Directive and regulation of the City. And where by the way was the rumoured embrace of Boris Island airport?

I have much sympathy with what Paul Goodman wrote earlier. A great economic storm is coming but that does not mean Britain shouldn't be doing everything to maximise its chances of surviving that storm. What we had today was an ordinary budget in extraordinary times.'

Tim Montgomerie on the Chancellor's Statement

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2011/11/we-needed-osborne-to-be-thatcher-today-but-he-was-brown.html

James Hansen says Obama missed the boat on climate:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15564242,00.html

@TheBigYinJames
I agree. I have wondered if we should sign off with qualifications and a brief job title.

munroad MB ChB FRCP AFOM
Retired Physician. (Respiratory Medicine.)

John Shade,

just great great great!

The secret trials have already started.
I don’t know when the trial was, who acted for the prosecution, who acted for the defence or what the evidence presented was but apparently 5 scientists have been tried and convicted.

From Mike Hulme (email 2973.txt)

The Soon/Baliunas/Idso/Idso/Legates paper is another contrived piece of hubris from convicted sceptics.

Crude Versification Brought on by CG2

The eco-schemers thrive on our fears
Of doom and Armageddon
Their backroom boys in such as CRU
Have been quick to do their biddin’

They cook the books and lose the data
Their statistical fails are legion
But they can push and pressurise
The weaker of their brethren

For the truth as such they give no hoot
For them it is invention
Policy-first evidence-last is their delight
To sustain their core intention

Their high disdain is really plain
In downgrading observation
In preference to the model’s spew
Of fuel for consternation

Their own words seen through CG2
Justify damnation
For the harm they have caused their fellow man
By ruthless machination

But the eco-memes both far and wide
Attacking civilisation
Are well-entrenched in establishments
Once-thought beyond corruption

They have the teachers in the schools
Teaching desperation
Scaring the kids to hate their world
And call for its destruction

They have the bankers from their vaults
Urging decarbonisation
A mighty source of funds they thought
But it brings ruination

The media fops and luvvies too
Enjoy their captivation
With heroic cause and heartfelt lament
To call for intervention

But this tale of sound and fury
Of wanton simplification
Has brought us nought but grief and woe
From avoidable distraction

The great challenges are out there still
Beyond all this confusion
So let the eco-schemers be exposed
As a source of sick illusion

dio,

It's not strange at all. Believers are convinced (because they are scientifically illiterate) that nobody who isn't a professor of atmospheric physics can understand the issues. It's a special case of the "all deniers are creationist grunts" meme. I would even go so far to say (from personal straw poll) that the more science or engineering people do as part of their job, the less they believe CAGW. Which also explains the other tail of the Bell curve - that arts grads believe it implicitly.

I'm coming to the conclusion that this misrepresentation of the sceptic viewpoint is deliberate. It's easier for them to believe us fools than to admit we may understand it better than they. That is why they never interview a McIntyre or a McKitrick or even a Delingpole or a Lawson. They prefer (as Richard Black did recently in his 'dominant use of Hide The Decline' lie) to finger the actual group of gruntish low lifes who happen to occupy the same position as us on CAGW, though they arrive at theirs through blind prejudice rather than evidentially.

Perhaps it's because believers arrive at their belief through blind prejudice that they see them as the true foe.

another strange misconception about AGW scepticism
http://pb204.blogspot.com/2011/11/anthropogenic-global-warming-and.html#comment-form

Bishop,

For your tip jar, you may want to try Dwolla. They charge $0.25 a transaction no matter the amount vs. paypal which charges a percent.

https://www.dwolla.com/default.aspx