Boris to remove hundreds of police officers
Tory Troll blogger Adam Bienkov reports:
Boris Johnson today denied that he will reduce the number of police officers in London, despite proposing to do just that last week.
The Mayor’s budget consultation unequivocally states that:
Over the three years to 2012-13, the number of Police Officers is forecast to decrease by 455, while PCSOs remain the same and Special Constables increase by 2,690.
Yet when Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Dee Doocey, put this to him today he told her that she was “completely wrong.”
The London and national press has yet to pick up on the story – perhaps unwilling to believe a Mayor who promised to increase the number of police officers would do the exact opposite.
Adam ends by saying:
When Gordon Brown suggested that Boris would cut the police budget and police numbers, Boris accused him of misleading the house.
In reality Boris has now done both.
Sounds like the flip-flopping Mayor is carrying on as normal.
Watch: Tony Blair ‘war criminal’; ‘betrayed us’
Reg Keys, the man who ran against Tony Blair as an independent candidate, and runs ‘Military Families Against the War’, slams Tony Blair in an interview with BBC News.
His son Tom was killed in the Iraq war.
[via Leninology]
New polls show Britain becoming more liberal
January 2010 sees the publication of the result of the National Centre for Social Research’s 26th British Social Attitudes study.
As a bit of teaser for the main report, NatCen has released a snapshot of this year’s findings which makes for very interesting reading – or should that be depressing reading, if you happen to be a social conservative.
As a confirmed secularist one of the more cheering aspects of the study’s findings is that religious belief is declining rapidly. In 1983, only 34% said that they did not belong to any religion. In the new study that’s risen to 46% and the study appears to support the view that the decline in the prevalence of religious belief is primarily a function of generational changes in attitudes:
These changes reflect deep-rooted differences between the generations, with older generations (who are the most religious) dying out and being replaced by younger (less religious) ones.
This doesn’t appear to indicate a corresponding rise in number of people who identify themselves as atheists, although it appear that membership of no-god squad now exceeds the number of people who are certain that god exists, although the figures given by Andrew Brown seem to be a bit garbled.
Having given the figures for non-believers and people who have no doubts about the existence of their favourite sky-fairy as being 18% and 17% respectively, Brown goes on to note that:
If you ask whether people believe in God, identify with a religion and attend services, the figure in Britain is only 25%, as opposed to the 31% who do none of these things…
Which seems to indicate that 31% of people do not believe in god, in addition to not identifying with a religion and not attending services.
continue reading… »
BBC debate asks: should homosexuals be executed?
A BBC Have Your Say Debate asks: ‘Should homosexuals face execution?‘
It starts by saying:
Yes, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question. But this is the reality behind an Anti-Homosexuality Bill being debated on Friday by the Ugandan parliament which would see some homosexual offences punishable by death.
After describing the contents of the Ugandan bill it ends by saying:
Has Uganda gone too far? Should there be any level of legislation against homosexuality? Should homosexuals be protected by legislation as they are in South Africa? What would be the consequences of this bill to you? How will homosexual ‘offences’ be monitored? Send us your views.
Unbelievable.
Blogger Soho Politico has already complained to the BBC, saying:
To the non-psychotic, it will be only too clear just how objectionable it is for the BBC to give house room to this ‘debate’. I have submitted a complaint on the BBC’s Complaint Homepage, and encourage you to do the same, here. Should you find it useful, in drafting your own response, copied below is what I said. Feel free to use some or all of it if you find it helpful.
See his model letter, and complain if you can.
Update: The BBC Editors offer a pathetic response:
The editors of the BBC Africa Have Your Say programme thought long and hard about using this question which prompted a lot of internal debate.
We agree that it is a stark and challenging question, but think that it accurately focuses on and illustrates the real issue at stake.
If Uganda’s democratically elected MPs vote to proceed with the Anti-Homosexuality Bill this week they will bring onto the statute book legislation that could condemn people to death for some homosexual activities.
We published it alongside clear explanatory text which gave the context of the bill itself (see above). And as we said at the top of our debate page, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question. But this is the reality behind the bill.
But they recognise it was a stupidly worded question because it has now been quietly changed to: ‘Should Uganda debate gay execution?’
Labour’s choice: pact or reinvention
The old socialist slogan that the worst imaginable Labour government is still preferable to the best imaginable Conservative government has been sorely tested over the last 12 years.
Not only did we not get the New Jerusalem, what we have lived through barely qualifies as a Barratt estate hastily flung up on the outskirts of the greater Tel Aviv conurbation.
But anybody who was politically aware in the 1980s knows full well what a Tory administration means for the poor, the sick, children in the state education system, patients in NHS hospitals, organised workers and benefit claimants. Surely any other government – any other government whatsoever – has to be better than that?
With the polls now pointing to a distinct possibility of a hung parliament, this question will be widely debated in the months ahead. If a Lib-Lab pact is the sole alternative to Cameron, there will be tremendous pressure on the left to grasp at such a straw, and gratefully at that.
Tatchell stands down as Green candidate
Sad news this, Peter Tatchell has announced that he is stepping down as the Green Party’s candidate for Oxford East on medical advice, because of injuries from beatings he suffered from a clash with minders of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe in Brussels in 2001 and during a demonstration in Moscow in 2007 supporting gay rights.
Mr Tatchell said: “It is with great regret and reluctance that I am standing down as the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East. My brain injuries from the Mugabe and Moscow bashings mean that I would not be able to campaign effectively in the general election or do the duties required of an MP, if I was elected. The brain damage caused by Mugabe’s thugs in Brussels in 2001 and by neo-Nazis in Moscow in 2007 has been compounded by head injuries in an accident while I was campaigning in Devon in July. A bus on which I was travelling swerved and braked sharply. I was thrown forward, hitting my head on a metal handrail.
The injuries don’t stop me from campaigning but I am slower, make more mistakes, get tired easily and take longer to do things. My memory, concentration, balance and coordination have been adversley affected. I can’t campaign at the pace I used to. I was selected as the Green Party candidate for Oxford East in April 2007. A month later, I was badly beaten around the head by neo-Nazis during an attempted Gay Pride parade in Moscow. This exacerbated the brain damage caused when I was bashed unconscious by President Mugabe’s bodyguards in Brussels in 2001, after attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of the Zimbabwean leader on charges of torture.
Following the Moscow assault, I never rested and recuperated. I carried on campaigning, with a very heavy schedule of commitments in Oxford East. After several months, I was severely exhausted. This stress and exhaustion probably intensified the damage and thwarted my recovery. I have postponed making this announcement for several months, in the hope that I might get better and be able to carry on as the Green candidate. Unfortunately, my condition has not improved. If anything, it is worse.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope for the future. The medical advice is that if I slow down and reduce my workload my condition may improve in a year or so. On the downside, I am unlikely to ever recover fully. Some of the damage is probably permanent.”
Best wishes to Peter from all of us at Liberal Conspiracy, and hope to see him recover and be able to continue his campaigning for human rights.
Libertarian Party surges in Canada
The province of Alberta in Canada has for many years been a Conservative stronghold. In last year’s elections, the governing Progressive Conservatives got 53% of the vote.
But at the end of 2009, the Conservatives are trailing a new party called the Wildrose Alliance. The Alliance includes both libertarian and socially conservative factions, and is led by libertarian Danielle Smith, the former Director of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Recent polls in the province put the Alliance on 39%, ahead of the Conservatives and Liberals on 25% and the New Democratic Party on 9%.
continue reading… »
Poll: Most voters reject global warming denialism
Three in four British voters believe Gordon Brown and world leaders are on an important mission at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, according to a new Guardian/ICM poll.
When ICM asked voters to say which of three statements most closely represented their view, 45% agreed that “world leaders are trying to tackle an important problem but they must not lose sight of the need to maintain human prosperity”.
And 30% agreed that “world leaders are trying to tackle the most serious threat facing mankind”.
Just 17% of respondents believed “the world’s leaders are panicking about an exaggerated threat”.
The poll confirms that outright denial of climate change is now the preserve of a minority in Britain; a mere 5% insist that the planet is not getting warmer at all.
Supporting the striking BA workers
BA Cabin Crews have voted to go on strike over the Christmas period against the threat of reducing staffing levels through imposed redundancies and changes to staff contracts. 90% of the crews, on an 80% turnout, voted for the action.
There was some fantastic rhetoric flying about yesterday morning on Radio 4. BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh was reported to have said that the union shouldn’t bother going on strike, it should concentrate on helping the company reduce costs.
Of course the union might well have been in the mood to do that, but it wasn’t asked to help out. It was simply bypassed.
And now, though Walsh claims to be available for talks at any time, he has said that the central issue is not up for negotiation. So the union is absolutely correct to go on strike; this is not a case of simple costs it is now an attempt to de-recognize the whole union.
continue reading… »
Con Home’s Climate Crock Rundown (70-87)
Time for part 2 of our countdown of ‘100-ish Reasons why Conservative Home and Jim McConalogue are full of shit‘, and this time around we’ll be covering numbers 70-87.
In honour of Paul Evans’ tweet on the first part of this series, we’re calling this next part ‘Creatures from the Tory ID’.
As per last time out, our comments are in italics…
——————
70. It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything by changing a great number of input parameters or any of a multitude of negative and positive feedbacks in the program used. In this context, the IPCC predictions do not “prove” anything.
Is anyone actually suggesting that climate models do anything other than extrapolate likely future trends based on a combination of historical data, statistical analysis and the use of defined scenarios? Modelling is common place in science, not just climatology but cosmology, particle physics and other branches of the natural sciences, particularly those that rely heavily on the use of statistical physics. Models are not used in isolation, they have to be tested and validated both methodologically and observationally, i.e. they’re used to model past events and trends and their output is then compared to the observed evidence to ascertain whether and how closely they match up (hindcasting). When used to extrapolate future trends, models are monitored against real world data to evaluate how closely the model’s predictions coincide with what’s actually going on in the real world.
None of this has anything to do with providing proof of anything. In science proof has a very specific meaning, and it one that Jim evidently doesn’t understand or he wouldn’t be advancing such an asinine and boneheaded argument.
71. It is entirely inconsistent that the United Nations claimed to prove that man-made CO2 causes global warming while in a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft stating that “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases” and “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”.
Hey Jim… its 2009 not 1996 and science has moved on and accumulated a mass of evidence which supports AGW theory.
72. It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.
There are ways in which CO2 does act as pollutant in the colloquial sense of the term, i.e. acidification of the ocean. However, references to CO2 as a pollutant are usually made in the context of role as one of a number of greenhouse gases which cause warming. Too much warming has severe negative effects on agriculture, health and the environment.
Water is, of course, essential to life but that doesn’t mean you can’t drown in it and if you consume too much in a short space of time you’ll die of hyper-hydration (i.e. water-poisoning).
73. It is simply not true to claim that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes because, while regional variations may occur, there is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports these claims.
Hurricane? What Hurricane? – Michael Fish.
Fuck me, this is basic fucking science. Sea/Oceanic warming in the tropics pushes as increased amount of water vapour into the atmosphere and what goes up much eventually come down, typically after its worked it way up to us, and across the Atlantic, from the Caribbean.
It’s the water cycle you twat, just about the single most basic and readily understandable/verifiable scientific concept in fucking climatology.
BTW, I am working through these in reverse order as I write this up, so expect the level of frustration and abuse to rise as the series continues.
74. It is myth that receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming given that glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries.
Ist not the fact that glaciers are receding and ice shelves are breaking off that provide the evidence for global warming. The accelerating rate at which this is occurring is where the evidence lies. This is gibber.
75. It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising, because that is natural variation and whilst the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The main Antarctic continent is actually cooling.
These are local temperature variations that have no overall impact on global temperatures. Both Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice mass, overall, at an accelerating rate. More gibber.
76. The IPCC claims “new evidence suggests that climate-driven extinctions and range retractions are already widespread” and the “projected impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance, since global losses in biodiversity are irreversible (very high confidence)” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research.
Ecosystem studies and biodiversity modelling are relatively new research fields and there is much that is still to be understood, particular in terms of the impact of microclimate buffering and assessing the full acclimation capacity of plants and animals It is, however, untrue to suggest that the IPCC’s assessment is not supported by scientific research. This is a rapidly expanding research field and one that appears, to date, to be remarkably free of fucknut deniers. The overwhelming mass of current evidence indicates a clear link between climate change and the loss of biodiversity, what is uncertain is the full extent to which such losses may be realised if warming continues along the trends evident over the last 100 years or so.
77. The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as they have proven to be remarkably resilient to climate change. Most wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles involving temperature changes similar to or greater than those experienced in the twentieth century.
Jeez, is this guy a moron or what? Evolutionary adaptation is, in very simple terms, a race between the incidence of genetic variations that give rise of characteristics favourable to survival in a changing climate and the rate at which the climate changes. It not just the scale of climate change that matters but the rate at which that change occurs – if it happens to fast, many species, particularly large mammals, will likely not be able to adapt fast enough to avoid extinction. That’s why the fucking polar bears are endangered – the impact of climate change on polar sea ice is shortening their hunting season, preventing the bears for find the food they need (seals) to lay down the fat reserves necessary to survive hibernation.
78. Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but the real state of sea levels is not what they have stated. Climate scientists have sought to measure the tide gauge. Tide gauging gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. Certain members in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), chose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they chose the record of one, which gives a 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. It is known that this is a subsiding area. It is well known in geological terms that this is the only record which you should not use, but the IPCC has done so.
Global mean sea levels are calculated using a variety of methods – sediment cores, tidal gauges, satellite measurements – all of which show close agreement, i.e. that the rise in sea levels has been accelerating for the last century. The allegation that the IPCC based in measurements on a single tidal gauge in Hong Kong comes from only one source, Dr Nils-Axel Morner, a former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University and president of the INQUA Commission on Neotectonics from 1981-1989. Morner is now widely regarded as a crank. In 1995 he was awarded the ‘Deceiver of the Year award’ by the Swedish Skeptics Association for arranging university courses about dowsing, for which he claims to have provided theoretical support. In 1997, he was asked by James Randi to claim the one million dollar paranormal challenge by making a controlled experiment that proved that dowsing worked. Morner bottled out of the challenge.
There is no credible evidence to support Morner‘s allegations.
79. The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. This eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. How can CO2 rises bring about global warming?
The planet has continued to accumulate heat since 1998 but surface temperatures can and do show a considerable degree of internal variability due to heat exchange between the oceans and the atmosphere. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have occurred from 1998 onwards and 1998 was unusually warm due to a very strong El Nino effect.
How can CO2 rises bring about global warming? Take a course in atmospheric physics, asshole.
80. If one factors in for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent). How can CO2 rises bring about global warming?
Tropospheric satellite measurements match current warming models other than in the tropics, where the discrepancies are thought to stem from data errors arising from corrections made for satellite drift.
81. There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.
See #83. The planet has been off the solar trend for the last 30 years, the main period of modern warning.
82. Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. In the case of Antarctica, the research actually suggests the opposite: that CO2-induced global warming would tend to buffer the world against such an outcome.
The Greenland interior is in mass balance but the rate of ice loss in coastal regions doubled between 2002 and 2009. While East Antarctica is gaining land ice, Antarctica as a whole is losing ice mass at an accelerating rate.
83. The IPCC claims the climate variation due to changes in the solar output since 1750 is smaller than its estimated net anthropogenic contribution. A large body of scientific research suggests the opposite: that it is the sun that is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.
Solar activity has shown little or no long-term trend since the 1950’s, the net effect of which is that any statistical correlation between warming trends and solar activity ceased in 1975. This particular fact comes from a 2005 study by Usoskin, which is one of studies most commonly cited by sceptics and deniers in support of the solar activity hypothesis. It, however, states that “during these last 30 years (1975-2005) the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source.”
84. The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” and will “increase malnutrition and consequent disorders.” In fact, the overwhelming weight of evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels have played an indispensible role in making it possible to feed a growing global population.
See response to #86, which explains why McConalogue is talking out his arse.
85. The historical increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and into the future it will likely provide more of the same benefit.
The two most important factors in increasing human lifespans since the industrial revolution are improved nutrition, which is what McConalogue is alluding to, and modern sanitation, which has fuck all to do with CO2.Yes, there’s a statistical correlation between post-industrial CO2 levels and increases in lifespan, but if McConalogue actually understood anything about science he’d know that correlations do not imply causation so ‘probably’ doesn’t cut it as an argument.
86. The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years on the order of 70 percent for wheat, 28 percent for cereals, 33 percent for fruits and melons, 62 percent for legumes, 67 percent for root and tuber crops, and 51 percent for vegetables.
The most recent projections for the impact of global warming on crop yields indicates that CO2 fertilisation may, at best, compensate for around 50% of the decline in yields project to happen as a result of a number of factors, including higher average temperatures and the impact of warming on soil moisture content. Current evidence also indicates that raising atmospheric CO2 levels above 450 ppm will have a significant adverse impact not only on yields, but on nutritional quality and plant toxicity. Not only is there no guarantee that any additional plant growth due to CO fertilisation will go in to those parts of the plant that are eaten (e.g. grain) but excess CO2 inhibits Nitrogen uptake, which reduces the nutritional content of edible plants.
Guess we can put McConalogue down for ‘knows fuck all about agriculture’ as well.
87. The total man-made CO2 emission throughout human history constitutes less than 0.00022 percent of the total CO2 amount naturally degassed from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
The Earth’s been around for 4.5 billion years, although maybe we should skip the first half billion years or so to be fair. Humans? About 200,000 years all-in from the first true Homo Sapiens and about 10,000 years if you want to go by the first evidence of settlement and agriculture. So we’ve been around for between 0.0005% and 0.0000000125% of geological history and we’re already up to 0.00022% of the level CO2 emission of natural emissions from the mantle. Almost all of the man-made contribution to CO2 emissions stems from the last 200-250 years.
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