CRU boss Phil Jones is standing down while the university investigation reviews the Climategate emails.  He should be a scientific pariah for this one email alone “I can’t see either … being in the next [IPCC] report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Science is all about conjectures and refutations, if climate scientists try to close down debate* it undermines public confidence.  The public might not understand the calculus of thermodynamics, but it understands snake oil salesmanship when it sees it…

The CRU is a taxpayer funded body which is now exposed as not fit for purpose, compromised by global warming advocates rather than staffed by truth pursuing scientists. It has funding largely from the British taxpayer and the EU. Until there is a clear out of the compromised personnel, not just CRU boss Phil Jones, funding should be halted. Taxpayers should be confident that their money is being used for scientific research, not to fund a cabal of global cooling deniers intent on creating a scientifically unfounded basis for a political project.

There is similar issue developing at Queens University Belfast (QUB), where once again global warming alarmist scientists are blocking Freedom of Information requests.  QUB is one of the world’s leading centers for tree-ring work, the tree-ring data that QUB has gathered is valuable for studying the global climate during the past 7000 years. For 2 years mathematician Douglas J. Keenan has been battling to get them to release the data unsuccessfully.  QUB is throwing up chaff to prevent him having access to the data.  Why do they feel so threatened by external review of their data?

*Guido is looking forward to tomorrow’s George Monbiot v James Delingpole debate* being organised by Index on Censorship : “Saying the unsayable: is climate scepticism the new Holocaust denial?” Thursday, 3 December, 6.30 – 8pm, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road.  RSVP to: bookings@freewordonline.com, more details here.

Tax ducking, bed hopping Zac Goldsmith is in hot water. Guido  promotes and pursues the minimisation of taxes, but it is a bit risky for a PPC seeking public office.   Zac says he hasn’t profited from non-domicile, that he volunteers more tax than he needs to and he gives oodles of cash to charidee.  Nevertheless the reason Goldsmith shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this is his rank and blatant hypocrisy.

If he had been a long term advocate for lower taxes, then his stance would be understandable.  Zac has done quite the opposite, he wants more taxes, ridiculous and unpopular green taxes that would cripple car drivers and frequent flyers.  How can someone who keeps his fortune sewn up in offshore trusts credibly in all conscience author a report calling for taxes to increase?  How green is the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) from which his farm receives thousands of pounds in subsidies from the taxpayer?  Without a hint of irony he will tonight give a speech in Piccadilly on the subject of how to share our collective wealth.  Will that include sticking it in the Caymans?   Clearly taxes are for non-environmentally-conscious people.

The perversion of science that has been exposed by the release of the CRU emails has shocked even that high priest of the Greens, George Monbiot:

… there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

What is clear is that the proponents of the man-made global warming hypothesis have not sought to test their theories in the normal scientific way, they have sought to first of all marginalise and defund researchers who put forward a different view.  They have hidden information, faked up data, used in their own words trickery, in an effort to hide the decline in global temperatures which is one of the inconvenient facts contradicting the predictions derived from their theories.  These are not new developments.

The so-called Medieval Warm Period (AD 800–1300), when polar ice melted to such a degree that the Vikings settled in Northern Greenland in areas now covered by ice, has been a huge problem for global cooling deniers – after all the Vikings didn’t drive north in 4×4 SUVs.  A massive disinformation effort has been put in to rubbishing what is a well evidenced historic fact.

The CRU is a taxpayer funded body which is now exposed as not fit for purpose, compromised by global warming advocates rather than staffed by truth pursuing scientists. It has funding largely from the British taxpayer and the EU. Until there is a clear out of the compromised personnel, not just CRU boss Phil Jones, funding should be halted. Taxpayers should be confident that their money is being used for scientific research, not to fund a cabal of global cooling deniers intent on creating a scientifically unfounded basis for a political project.

The left likes to think their prejudices are based on science rather than mere opinions derived from political goals.  The power of Marxist ideas from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries within the intelligensia was because of the internal logic that claimed it was “scientific socialism” based on immutable laws of society.  Twenty-first century anti-capitalism is trying the same trick, claiming an anti-capitalist mandate from climate science that just does not exist.  It is no coincidence that the collapse of the worldwide communist project and ideals in the early 1990s coincided with the rise of the global green movement.  Many of the enemies of capitalism have merely changed their flag from red to green.

Guido has selected for voting some of your Green tax cut proposals that seemed workable:

1. Big Jock Knew: Weight based transport tax – skinny people pay less for train and aircraft fares as they burn less CO2 transporting them.

2. AntiCitizenOne said… The ultimate green tax-cut would be a No-children tax credit. No people, no anthropomorphic. Go on, it’s for the children!
3. Anonymous said… Give tax cuts to people who fart into emissions capture devices.
4. Barry said… Human Excrement tax credits for those who donate their human waste to facilities that turn it into energy. See here and here.

Winning proposal gets a copy of the Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze.