“I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.” - Harold Kushner

In 2009, I made a commitment to read 100 books and keep track of them in LibraryThing.* As my last post of 2009 and my first post in 2010, I’d like to share 10 books that I think were worth the time and money.

While not all of the books are project management specific, their ideas will help you be a better project manager. I’ve grouped the books into two categories.  Books that can help:

• Improve your Personal Effectiveness
• Shift your attitude

This week I’ll share the books that can help Improve your Personal Effectiveness. Next week, the books on Attitude. Up first…

Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-making

Over the course of a year, a project manager is dropped into hundreds of situations where they are expected to facilitate. If you’re like me, no one ever explained what a good facilitator does or how they get groups to respond positively. The following book is an excellent place to learn how and why a project manager needs to be a good facilitator.

Key Quote:
“The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements.”

Advantages to Owning this Book:
Great reference to use to refresh your memory or prepare for meetings and workshops.  It leans hard on the “how-to” steps and building blocks to hold meetings and facilitate teams of all sizes.

Why is this a good buy for a PM?
Because PM’s live in meetings where we need people to do their best thinking and develop solutions.

Good in a Room

I checked this book out of the library based on a recommendation and within 17 pages knew that I needed to buy the book. The advice on how to put together a pitch and sell yourself before and during an interview were very helpful.

Key Quote:
“It happens all the time. The ideas, products and services that are pitched more effectively win. That’s jut how the game is played. No sense getting upset over it. Instead, let’s accept the challenge and learn the strategies and tactics that will allow us and our ideas to succeed.”

Advantages to Owning this Book:
Owning the book makes it easier to walk through the steps of developing a pitch whenever you have to prepare for an interview or a presentation.

Why is this a good buy for a PM?
Because PM’s need to be able to pitch their ideas to others and get their buy-in.

Making Sense of Leadership

This book opened my eyes to see potential areas of growth and gave tips on how to improve.  This book explains that leaders can have very different styles and still be effective.

Key Quote:
“Leaders don’t all have to be highly dominant people; they don’t all have to be interpersonal wizards. It’s not essential for all leaders to be electrifying speakers and leading-edge thinkers.  Neither is it essential for every single leader to be superbly organized…but it does help to be at least some of these things. And leaders have to learn to develop the right mix of role to match their personality, the organizational situation and the people around them.”

Advantages to Owning this Book:
The authors provide detailed descriptions of each leadership style and advice on how to incorporate aspects of each style into your daily behavior. A good book to reference.

Why is this a good buy for a PM?
Because PMs should understand their primary leadership style and how to use aspects of other styles to be effective.

The Randori Principles

I love books that claim to align eastern philosophy with leadership principles.   At a minimum, I’ll pick them up and look at the first few pages. The Randori Principles takes the principles of aikido and provides solid advice on how to be a better leader.

Key Quote:
“A leader must also develop an ability to choose the right approach, with the right timing, and the appropriate use of power.  Leadership should not rely on using a cookie-cutter approach to this fast-changing global business situation. Good judgment, part of which we call randori, is as valuable as core leadership skills.”

Advantage to Owning this Book:
This is not a book to be read once and put down. This has made it to my list of books that need to be reread, to learn what I missed before and to refresh my memory. It’s like having a mentor on a shelf.

Why is this a good buy for a PM?
Because learning how to be a better leader should be a constant aspect of your growth plan.

Th!nkTweet!

My biggest surprise when reading this book was how many of the tweets within it could provoke serious thought and change to move you out of your comfort zone.

Key Quote:
There are so many good quotes. Here’s #36:
“Who is ONE person that can change who you are for the
better? How can you be an OPPORTUNITY for him/her?

Advantage to Owning this Book:
As you might have noticed, I like to have books around that I can reread to refresh my memory or provoke new thinking. This book is another resource to keep you motivated toward change.

Why is this a good buy for a PM?
Because the brief tweets are short and quick to read, but are useful in reminding you to add value to your team and your network.

Next week I’ll recommend books from 2009 that helped me stay positive throughout the year. Leave a comment, send me a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

* P.S. As of this post, I have two books left to read, which shouldn’t be a problem with vacation days next week.

New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday sought to put the issue of separate statehood for Telangana on the backburner, with Home Minister P Chidambaram saying there was no consensus on the issue.

Chidambaram said that the situation in Andhra Pradesh has “altered” since the government’s in-principle announcement on creation of a separate state.

Wide-ranging consultations would now be held with all political parties and groups in the state, the minister said in a statement, adding that the Centre will take “steps to involve all concerned in the process”.

Recalling his December 9 statement in which he had announced that the process of forming Telangana would be initiated, he said that since then the situation in Andhra Pradesh has altered and that “a large number of political parties are divided on the issue”.

Capping a fortnight of intense campaign by MPs of Telangana and non-Telangana regions, Chidambaram called a press conference at short notice and read out a four paragraph statement but took no questions.

He said the Centre made the statement on December 9 on receipt of minutes of a meeting of all political parties convened by Chief Minister K Rosaiah in which a “consensus” emerged on the formation of a separate state of Telangana.

Chidambaram said, meanwhile, it is necessary that peace and harmony are restored in Andhra Pradesh and the state government is allowed to focus on governance and development.

“The Central government appeals to the people of the different regions of Andhra Pradesh and to all political parties and students to withdraw their agitations and maintain peace, harmony and brotherhood,” he said.

Reacting to Chidambaram’s statement, TRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao said his party “will not relent, will not go back” on the issue.

The government should start the process for the formation of Telangana now, he added.

The indication of Chidambaram’s statement came after a meeting of Union Ministers Pranab Mukherjee, Chidambaram, A K Antony, M Veerappa Moily and political secretary to Congress president Ahmed Patel.

A statement was prepared and the draft was taken to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Later, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave final touches and Chidambaram made it public.

Telangana news, hyderabad flash news, hyderabad today, KCR news, chidambaram statement, telanglana bandh, telangana issue, united andhra, andhra pradesh, seperate telangana

This being the last day of COP15, and the final hours of the final day, you would have thought it would be the simply the finishing touches that they are putting on a final deal.

But of course not! This is the UNFCCC!

I am sitting in plenary at 5 in the morning

and that’s as far as I got! Soon after, the Lawyer from Kiribati who always visits our ‘office’ at the sofas, came to the back of plenary where Alex and I were propping ourselves up on the back wall, he looked much worse than us; his bloodshot and red-rimmed eyes betrayed the trials and tribulations of the last 2 days which meant he hadn’t slept for over 48 hours, except the odd nap- somewhere in the salubrious Bella Centre.

He wasn’t his usual cheery self.

After the initial comment of ‘we don’t usually expect our negotiators to stay this long-aimed at Alex and I- he sat himself down on the floor of plenary to have a break. He said he wished he could be rejoicing with us at this hour, rather than commiserating on what is a poignantly sad day….

We know for sure exactly what he refers to because we had experienced it only a few hours previously. Before spending the night at the Bella Centre we were invited to dine with the President of Kiribati at a traditional Indian restaurant in the middle of the city. 25 of us crowded in to one half of the restaurant, a hotch potch of Ozzies, New Zealanders, I-Kiribas and us Welsh! As instructed our team from UN fair play surrounded the President, and the space where his Wife would have sat if she were not still at the hotel unable to cope with the cold weather and snow. We soon learnt what was causing the permanently furrowed brow of the President; he was profoundly and unalterably angry and sad at the outcome of the negotiations. He had already given up on anything happening - even though the talks went on for another 12 hours-because although Copenhagen was the largest summit of world leaders ever, it was over. Presidents, Prime Ministers, dictators and excellencies had almost all left the Bella Centre at least 6 hours previous, meaning no snap and ambitious decisions that weren’t already on the table could have been made. We were back to civil servants and the remits they have been given.

To him it was crystal clear what this summit had meant. It had meant an opportunity for him to never have to break the reality of climate change to his people ( a truth he shades them from so as not cloud their culture of living in the moment and never planning more than a week ahead). He describes the arduousness of daily life as survival from day-to-day in itself, let alone with the added burden of catastrophic climate change on top. In fact, a particularly high tide on the night before he left for Copenhagen had washed away houses on the beach, as if he needed any more reminding.

The arrogance of world leaders who control rich and developed countries, thinking they can act solely on economy based arguments of gross domestic product  (GDP) and good press, rather than for example, Gross National Happiness (GNH) had created an anger in the President that was evidently disturbing to himself. Disturbing because its an emotion so foreign to the I-Kiribati, they don’t do anger. As he said, it’s offensive to the countries who need help and support on the front line, for Developed countries to suggest they accept the money for adaptation otherwise they won’t agree to anything. It is quite literally putting a price on their future. No compromise on the targets of 350 and 1.5= no money tomorrow. Simple as that.

Never, not in Poznan, not in Bonn, have I ever seen the real life manifestation of what political power means. If I had my way, the person I was having dinner with would be the peak of political power thanks to his respect, dignity and hard work. However, as it stands Obama wielded his influence in the form of the fatal ‘accord’; Rudd of Australia bent nearby Island States to his crappy will because they need his blessing to migrate there; and countries like Africa and AOSIS members agreed to whatever got the adaptation funds flowing fastest. The idea of consensus is that it operates on a numbers basis-there is no hierarchy-anyone and everyone can contribute equally, and all should expect to be heard. The UNFCCC uses consensus to make decisions, nothing can be adopted by COP if it is not agreed on by every party to the convention. So why is it that this process has fallen victim to measuring how hard the hand can slap rather than just counting the hands?

Much as I love him there is a perfect example in the form of President Nasheed of the Maldives. He has committed his country to go carbon neutral by 2020, and he convened the first summit of vulnerable island nations. He shouts loud and clear at every opportunity for 350 and well below 1.5…..do they listen to him? No! He is seen as brazen and naive, even by fellow islanders. He is mocked for his enthusiasm, and like a child he cries out for simplicity and action on the truth. I love him. But he has zero political clout.

Despite the indescribable chasm of disappointment that COP15 opens up, the beautifully fragile tunes that they wove at the back of the Indian restaurant call out to me, and the eyes of the President frame my fight for the future because I know this injustice cannot go on, and the lives of these special and loyal people surely cannot be lost to the waves.

Keb\’Mo\’ \’Victims of Comfort\’

Consensus is not a necessary indicator of the truth. If your heart leads you to one place and the minds of others leads them to another place, do not doubt yourself. Do not doubt your place in this world, nor where your heart has taken you. Instead, pray for yourself and for others that the truth may be revealed to you all. For in knowing the truth and living the truth, you are set free.

Mind not those who would seek to turn over every rock and look in every hole, for what they seek they do not know. They claim they are looking for themselves, but they look everywhere and to everyone but themselves. They try new beliefs as if they were new suits, but they do not know the consequences of their actions. They say they seek and that there is no harm, but they do not look beyond themselves. Do not judge them for in time they too shall know.

Freedom of Information: “FOIA said…”

It was not incidental that the hacker (sounds more like a whistleblower) went by the user name FOIA. The most disturbing revelation that emerged from the CRU emails was the deliberate effort, notably by chief Phil Jones, to obstruct the disclosure of scientific information–to the extent of deleting data–that form the basis of their peer reviewed publications.

• If FOIA does ever get used by anyone, there is also IPR [intellectual property rights] to consider as well. Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them. (from email 1106338806.txt)
• The two MMs [McIntyre and McKitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. (from email 1107454306.txt)
• PS I’m getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don’t any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act ! (from email 1109021312.txt)
• Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4 [IPCC 4th Assessment Report]? Keith will do likewise. (from email 1212063122.txt)
• When the FOI requests began here, the FOI person said we had to abide by the requests. It took a couple of half hour sessions – one at a screen, to convince them otherwise showing them what CA [Climate Audit] was all about. (from email 1228330629.txt)

The story behind these emails is given context by Willis Eschenbach, an amateur scientist, who originally requested climate data from CRU under the Freedom of Information Act. He pieces together quotes from the leaked emails with relevant official correspondences portraying Jones’ determination to stonewall the release of information. Steve McIntyre, a retired Canadian businessman who runs the Climate Audit blog, has campaigned tenaciously for transparency of data, code, and statistical methods that produced the emblematic “hockey stick” temperature reconstructions widely disseminated by IPCC. Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, who co-authored the paper with McIntyre that raised questions about the “hockey stick” graph, has narrated their frustration with Mann and Nature regarding access to original data and methods. (Nature, in its recent editorial, clearly states which side of the Climategate issue they’re on. Would it still be possible to publish papers skeptical of the current “consensus” view in this journal?)

• Willis Eschenbach’s “Willis vs. The CRU: A History of (FOI) Evasion”
• Ross McKitrick’s “Our Dealings with Nature“
• Bishop Hill’s “Yamal Implosion” relates Steve McIntyre’s efforts to get hold of Keith Briffa’s data from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B regarding the Yamal data set used in temperature reconstructions.
• Bishop Hill’s “Caspar and the Jesus paper” relates how Caspar Amman (contributor to RealClimate) refused to provide data and code for a Climate Change paper that would be included in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in support of the reproducibility of Mann’s “hockey stick” graph.

A US Congressional hearing on the “hockey stick” graph, conducted by Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, noted in its report the resistance of Mann to divulge data and code that would allow the examination of his statistical procedures (bold emphasis mine).

• Because of the lack of full documentation of their data and computer code, we have not been able to reproduce their research. (p. 4)
• The papers of Mann et al. in themselves are written in a confusing manner, making it difficult for the reader to discern the actual methodology and what uncertainty is actually associated with these reconstructions. Vague terms such as “moderate certainty” (Mann et al. 1999) give no guidance to the reader as to how such conclusions should be weighed. While the works do have supplementary websites, they rely heavily on the reader’s ability to piece together the work and methodology from raw data. This is especially unsettling when the findings of these works are said to have global impact, yet only a small population could truly understand them. Thus, it is no surprise that Mann et al. claim a misunderstanding of their work by McIntyre and McKitrick. (p. 26)
• The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of temperature graphic dramatically illustrated the global warming issue and was adopted by the IPCC and many governments as the poster graphic. The graphics’ prominence together with the fact that it is based on incorrect use of PCA [Principal Component Analysis] puts Dr. Mann and his co-authors in a difficult face-saving position. We have been to Michael Mann’s University of Virginia website and downloaded the materials there. Unfortunately, we did not find adequate material to reproduce the MBH98 [graph] materials. (p. 28)

Peer Review By Social Networking

What emerges from the leaked emails in Eschenbach’s chronological account is a picture of a close-knit scientific community that feels it has come under siege. Indeed, McIntyre noted in his blog that in earlier dealings with Jones, he was surprised by the promptness of the response and the extra effort… put into the response (Climate Audit, A 2002 Request to CRU). Jones became more hostile when he realized what they were up to (i.e., checking his pronouncements), and famously wrote in 2005 to Warwick Hughes, a free lance earth scientist from Australia: Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it. Even the Wegman Report remarked that Mann’s responses [to investigators' questions and requests for information] had something of a confrontational tone (p. 7).

Thus, what we hear in the leaked emails are shrill voices of the beleaguered like that of Stanford’s Stephen Schneider:

This continuing pattern of harassment, as Ben [Santer] rightly puts it in my opinion, in the name of due diligence is in my view an attempt to create a fishing expedition to find minor glitches or unexplained bits of code–which exist in nearly all our kinds of complex work–and then assert that the entire result is thus suspect. Our best way to deal with this issue of replication is to have multiple independent author teams, with their own codes and data sets, publishing independent work on the same topics–like has been done on the “hockey stick”. That is how credible scientific replication should proceed… PS Please do not copy or forward this email. (from email 1231257056.txt)

It must indeed be vexing for these experts–and beneath them–to have to answer to the members of the congregation who question their findings outside the formal scientific channels of peer review. This is reflected in the vicious tone at RealClimate, where it is not beneath the authors to personally attack such critics with insinuations of lack of expertise, academic pedigree, or institutional affiliations.

• A number of spurious criticisms regarding the Mann et al (1998) proxy-based temperature reconstruction have been made by two individuals McIntyre and McKitrick (McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist [i.e., not climatologists working in dendrochronology]). (in False Claims by McIntyre and McKitrick regarding the Mann et al. (1998) reconstruction)
• … Another journal which (quite oddly) also published the Soon et al study, “Energy and Environment”, is not actually a scientific journal at all but a social science journal. (in Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition)
• Who should we believe? Al Gore with his “facts” and “peer reviewed science” or the practioners of “Blog Science“? Surely, the choice is clear…. So along comes Steve McIntyre, self-styled slayer of hockey sticks… (in Hey Ya! (mal))
• …Dr. Michael Mann. He has a Ph.D in Geology and Geophysics. He is no advocate, but an actual scientist with a proven track record. What is [Michael] Crichton? An author. A bit more informed than an ordinary person, maybe, but no scientist, that’s for sure! (a reader comment in Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion II: Return of the Science)

The subtle message in these insinuations is that the academic provenance of experts guarantee the reliability of their truth-statements. Their authority is reinforced by virtue of implied access to institutional influence, research funding, powerful observational tools, and journal publishing, i.e., the “legitimate” forms scientific discourse–all unavailable to the ordinary non-expert. None of this, however, deters Steve McIntyre, who applies mathematical rigor to his persnickety “auditing” of the numbers the experts put out. He has managed to frazzle not just a few goliaths in the field by his persistence to get to the bottom of things. He did it to verify for himself the case for action on climate change, to which he discoverd that, [at] the beginning [he] innocently assumed there would be due diligence for all this stuff… [so] often [his] mouth would drop, when [he] realized no one had really looked into it. (from Revenge of the Climate Laymen, Wall Street Journal)

The condescension towards McIntyre and his Climate Audit blog, and the in-over-his-head scoffing at his efforts to contest published results, only serves to demonstrate the insularity and parochialism (to borrow Camille Paglia’s favorite derision of academics at Yale) within the climate change advocates.

James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, has dismissed him as a “court jester.” Mr. Mann replied to an emailed query about Mr. McIntyre by decrying “every specious contrarian claim and innuendo against me, my colleagues, and the science of climate change itself.”

Others are more thick-skinned: “You mention his name in my community, people just smile. It’s a one-liner to get a laugh out of a group of climate scientists,” affirms Stanford University’s Stephen Schneider. (from Revenge of the Climate Laymen, Wall Street Journal)

His due diligence, however, resulted in a US Congressional review of the “hockey stick” graph, culminating in the Wegman Report. To me, what is actually revealing in that report is the statistical analysis of Michael Mann’s social network that indicates possible cross-contamination of influence in peer review.

Figure 5.3 of the Wegman Report (p. 41): The classic social network view of the Mann co-authors… Michael Mann [upper left] is his own group since he is a co-author with each of the other 42. [Blogger's note: CRU's Jones and Briffa are in the lower left (yellow).]

In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface…

It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent. (p. 4)

Consensus or Silencing of Dissent?

The bile at RealClimate, however, is not only reserved for the laymen. Scientists who hold contrarian views are held suspect to sinister (e.g., oil-industry-greased) motivations–an approach I find distasteful in a blog by scientists who purport to discuss the science of climate change in a rational and open forum. Why the need to smear your opponents if the science is indeed settled and the evidence is on your side?

• At first sight this may look like a scientific conference – especially to those who are not familiar with the activities of the Heartland Institute, a front group for the fossil fuel industry that is sponsoring the conference. (in What if you held a conference, and no (real) scientists came?)
• A casual reader would be led to infer that [Richard] Lindzen [of MIT] has received no industry money for his services. But that would be wrong. He has in fact received a pretty penny from industry. But this isn’t for research. Rather it is for his faithful advocacy of a fossil fuel industry-friendly point of view. (in Lindzen in Newsweek)
• …S. Fred Singer [emeritus at UVa] and his merry band of contrarian luminaries (financed by the notorious “Heartland Institute” we’ve commented on previously) served up a similarly dishonest ‘assessment’ of the science of climate change… (in Not the IPCC (“NIPCC”) Report)

To me, the most bizarre defense of accelerated global warming and its anthropogenic cause is the appeal to scientific “consensus”. The sky-is-falling scenario crystallized in the IPCC reports is sold to the public gift-wrapped in the dazzling reputations of its stellar experts and its oodles of evidence in peer reviewed publications. How can a puny member of the public not help but relinquish assent at such oracular certainty without feeling ashamed of being held preposterous, intellectually unsophisticated, or, worse, callous to the moral imperative to save the planet? “Consensus” has thus become the official party-line of climate change rabble rousers.

Richard Lindzen of MIT, one of the most outspoken global warming deniers in academia, who participated in the IPCC’s First Assessment Report, examined the nature of the “consensus” that congealed around human-induced global warming and used to push it as a forefront political agenda.

The notion of “scientific unanimity” is currently intimately tied to the Working Group I report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued in September 1990… Working Group I nominally deals with climate science. Approximately 150 scientists contributed to the report… Many governments have agreed to use that report as the authoritative basis for climate policy… Methodologically, the report is deeply committed to reliance on large models, and within the report models are largely verified by comparison with other models… [The] body of the report is extremely ambiguous, and the caveats are numerous… [but the] summary [for policy makers] largely ignores the uncertainty in the report and attempts to present the expectation of substantial warming as firmly based science. The summary was published as a separate document, and, it is safe to say that policymakers are unlikely to read anything further. On the basis of the summary, one frequently hears that “hundreds of the world’s greatest climate scientists from dozens of countries all agreed that.|.|.|.” It hardly matters what the agreement refers to, since whoever refers to the summary insists that it agrees with the most extreme scenarios (which, in all fairness, it does not). I should add that the climatology community, until the past few years, was quite small and heavily concentrated in the United States and Europe. (from Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus, CATO Institute, Vol.15, No. 2, Spring 1992)

Something in me resists the epistemological dogmatism and ethical puritanism that underlies the appeal to scientific consensus, and the scare tactics used to talk down to the public (e.g., Al Gore’s travelling slideshow) in order to arm-twist us into political action. Michael Crichton, author of popular science fiction, a non-expert in climatology (but who is a medical doctor), is skeptical about this (or any) scientific consensus.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

And furthermore, the consensus of scientists has frequently been wrong. As they were wrong when they believed, earlier in my lifetime, that the continents did not move. So we must remember the immortal words of Mark Twain, who said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” (from The Case for Skepticism on Global Warming)

Time Magazine cover stories on the global cooling alarm in the 1970’s.

Crichton’s remark reflects a pure vision of science that is untainted with politics. It has been demonstrated in the science of climate change that it is in fact not the case in practice. Jean-François Lyotard in the 1970’s described the messy relationship between science, politics, and economics.

The game of science becomes the game of the rich, in which whoever is wealthiest has the best chance of being right. It is thus that an equation between wealth, efficiency and truth is established… Scientists, technicians and instruments are bought not to find truth, but to augment power. Since performativity increases the ability to produce proof, it also increases the ability to be right; the technical criterion cannot fail to influence the truth criterion. (from Madan Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism)

With so much money funneled into modern scientific research, it is now, more than ever, necessary for the non-experts, i.e., the public, to be skeptical of pronouncements coming from scientists, especially if these prop up arguments used in coercive policy-making. We should keep the feet of these global warming scientists close to the fire.

To Lord Doom, Al Gore: “It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”—Mark Twain.

Unless, you’re making millions off the suckers. Oh, and when the jig is up, just ignore them.

WSJ: JOHN STOSSEL, HOST: I wish that Al Gore were here to debate him (Jerry Taylor, Energy Analyst for the Cato Institute) and me. We asked Vice President Gore, and his office sent this e-mail saying: “It’s very difficult to decline invitations such as yours, but it’s an unfortunate inevitability of the growing influence of the climate crisis message and the demand on Mr. Gore’s time. (Boos from audience) We do apologize, but thank you for your interest.” (Via email 11/23/09).

Come on, Mr. Gore. The idea that you don’t have time is pretty silly. You have time to go on programs like “Saturday Night Live.” It’s not a time issue. (Applause) Truth is, you won’t debate anyone. You’ve been asked lots of times, but you always say no. But if you do ever want to debate, we’d love to offer you the air time. We will give it to you. I’ll give you a special phone number that goes to this phone. Glenn Beck has that red phone that goes to the President. For you Mr. Gore, the green phone. I await your call.

Of course, Stossel was quite right: despite claiming to be an expert on this subject, Al Gore refuses to debate anyone. And, he only goes on television programs where he knows he can say whatever he wants, regardless of accuracy, and never get challenged.

Such is what happened when he appeared with CNN’s John Roberts and Kiran Chetry Wednesday morning, and with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Wednesday afternoon.

That media not only comply with Gore’s ability to present unchallenged falsehoods to the nation, but also let him get away with never being on the air with anyone that disagrees with his views, is nothing less than appalling.

That said, Stossel shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for this charlatan’s call.

Gore’s got the media in his back pocket, and he’ll never voluntarily relinquish control.

And he is still at it with incredibly stupid comments. On the Conan O’Brien show of 11/12/09, he said the temperature in the mantle, the deep layer immediately below the crust, is several million degrees just two kilometers down. This is many times hotter than the Sun.

This is blatantly wrong. But don’t expect the “consensus’ media to care.  After all, according to them, they aren’t bias. We are.

In Gore’s and his lemmings world, facts are facts when they are spoken by them, not when they are proved.

As reported by Not Evil Just Wrong Monday:

In several recent interviews the former vice president said that the Climategate emails were “sound and fury signifying nothing…the most recent one is more than 10 years old.”

However the reality is that the most recent email from Climategate is less than two months old. The emails undermine the science of Climate Alarmism and that is why the alarmists are so reluctant to address them or like Mr Gore they make factually incorrect statements about how relevant they are.

On CNN: Host John Roberts, to his credit, was quick to correct Gore when he was interviewing him on the same subject saying that, “many are far more recent than that.” Gore did not respond.

Mr. Gore says he cares a lot about science and scientific accuracy. His whole theory of Climate Alarmism depends on it but today at the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Conference he refused several opportunities to correct the record when asked about his errors by journalist and film maker Phelim McAleer. Instead his Press Secretary grabbed McAleer’s microphone to stop questions being put to the vice-president.

Have U.N. security officials been instructed to prevent journalists from asking climate realists uncomfortable questions?

Best to just ignore the annoying people who actually want to debate you.

Especially when you continue to tell whoppers:  Examiner.com

Now he has been caught in stating in a speech at the climate talks, that there is a 75 percent chance that Arctic ice cap could become “ice free” during the summer months in as little as the next five to seven years.

Only problem is, the scientist who Gore cited as the source for his whopper, Dr Wieslaw Maslowski, was quoted AFTER Gore’s speech as saying his research revealed ‘nothing of the sort’.

‘It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,’ Dr Maslowski said. ‘I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.’

And Dr Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said:  ‘This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from skeptics,’.

Two years ago, a High Court judge (in the UK)  ruled his Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth was ‘alarmist’ and contained nine scientific errors.

It’s the latest embarrassment for Gore, an outspoken environmental campaigner who has earned millions of pounds from green investments and faced repeated criticism for scaremongering.

The court said copies of the film sent to secondary schools should be accompanied with notes to balance Gore’s views.

Examiner: Rather than recognizing that the best science is skeptical science, any skepticism is now treated with the “ostrich in the sand” syndrome and ridiculed off the stage.  Irony being it is actually the “consensus” clucks who are putting their heads in the sand.  Dutifully following the dogma of their leaders, (Gore, Soros, Obama) they shout down heretics in the best traditions of the Spanish Inquisition.  Galileo and Newton would be most uncomfortable at this convention.

Yes indeed, these citizens are most dutiful to the dogma.  In fact, these “citizens of the world” are so dutiful to their cause that when one Professor Stephen Schneider (IPCC contributor extraordinaire) was being “pressured” by independent film maker Phelim McAleer regarding said professor’s views on the climategate conundrum and it’s effect upon the “science” of climate change, an assistant to the professor felt it necessary to summon armed UN security guards.

Why bother with facts when you can just call a security guard instead?  The irony is that the questioning was at a press conference called by Professor Schneider to launch his new book!

Speaking of Books, Lord Doom has a new tome out: “Our Choice” which depicts a global warming ravaged earth on part of the cover. Problem is:

The retouched image depicting our planet at some point in the future, contains images of five hurricanes. One storm off the coast of Florida is turning in a clockwise motion, an impossibility in the northern hemisphere. Another hurricane is shown near Peru and the equator, a place where hurricanes cannot form. It is also a bit ironic that so many storms are depicted when hurricane activity is currently at a 30 year low.

In the modified image, Cuba appears to be completely submerged. That would require a sea level rise of more than 6580 feet as that is the height of Pico Turquino on the island. Much of Florida as well is now under water as is a great deal of Central America.

The problem is that if there were indeed a rise of that level, Florida would be entirely gone as its highest point only reaches an altitude of 345 feet. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia and virtually every single other state that borders an ocean (and many landlocked states) would be submerged. Even Denver, the Mile High City, would be under water although presumably its residents could escape to the Rocky Mountains.

In fact, only 17 of the 50 states in the union would have part of their land above sea level, only two of which are east of the Rockies. Globally, that sea rise would be devastating as well sending many nations under the surface of the ocean including South Korea, the United Kingdom, Jordan, the Czech Republic and dozens more. (examiner)

D’oh!

But it looks good!

The Forthcoming Movie Poster?

I guess the truth was inconvenient for a good cover shot.

But don’t judge a book by it’s cover.

Lumumba Di Aping of Sudan, who chairs the G77 group of developing nations deriding the U.S. Congress: “You approve billions of dollars in defence budgets: why can’t you approve $200 billion to save the world?” or the Algerian chairman of the African group, Kemal Djemouai, lamenting: “The developed countries found $1.4 trillion to combat the financial crisis. Now they are offering just $10 billion to fight climate change.”

For if it truly IS just about the money, that would mean the entire Copenhagen summit (complete with 140 private jets and hundreds of limousines mind you) is nothing but a global socialistic shakedown of the western democracies.

Shocking!

Pay particular attention to the paragraph:

An official in the Nigerian delegation which was part of the walkout, said Europe’s lowball offers of financial support were “pathetic. He added: “There will be no commitments from the G77 [bloc of developing countries] until we get better assurances about financial and technology transfers,” reports our colleague Alessandro Torello from Copenhagen.

Low-ball offers?  Financial and technology transfers?

Show me the money baby, show me the money.

That seems to be the real “consensus”, especially in Copenhagen where the only people being arrested are the ones who think the conferencees are not doing enough to cram it down everyone’s throat.

Much like Health Care Reform.

A CNN poll shows 36% of the public in favor of what the Democratic Senate is trying to do to health care, 61% opposed. It is clear what the public wants Congress to do: Take a mulligan and start over.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of U.S. voters now oppose the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the highest level of opposition found – reached three times before – in six months of polling.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 40% of voters favor the health care plan.

Perhaps more significantly, 46% now Strongly Oppose the plan, compared to 19% who Strongly Favor it.

“The most significant detail in the data is that 63% of senior citizens oppose the plan, including 52% who strongly oppose it,” says Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports. “Seniors are significant in this debate both because they use the health care system more than anyone else and because they vote more than younger voters.”

USA Today/Gallup poll finds public support for such efforts still below the majority level. Forty-six percent of Americans say they would advise their member of Congress to vote for healthcare legislation.

In a recent NBC poll, just 32 percent of respondents said they believe the president’s health care plan is a “good idea”; 47 percent said it’s a “bad idea,” the highest that number has been. According to a recent ABC News poll, majorities now for the first time disapprove of Obama’s work on health care (53 percent) and oppose the health care reform package making its way through Congress (51 percent).

In the ABC/Washington Post poll, more than half of those polled, 53 percent, see higher costs for themselves if the proposed changes go into effect than if the current system remains intact.

NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that those believing President Obama’s health-reform plan is a good idea has sunk to its lowest level.

Just 32 percent say it’s a good idea, versus 47 percent who say it’s a bad idea.

In addition, for the first time in the survey, a plurality prefers the status quo to reform. By a 44-41 percent margin, respondents say it would be better to keep the current system than to pass Obama’s health plan.

American voters, by a 55 – 35 percent margin, are more worried that Congress will spend too much money and add to the deficit than it will not act to overhaul the health care system, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. By a similar 57 – 37 percent margin, voters say health care reform should be dropped if it adds “significantly” to the deficit.

By a 72 – 21 percent margin, voters do not believe that President Barack Obama will keep his promise to overhaul the health care system without adding to the deficit, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University national poll finds.

American voters disapprove 52 – 39 percent of the way President Obama is handling health care, down from 46 – 42 percent approval July 1, with 60 – 34 percent disapproval from independent voters. Voters say 59 – 36 percent that Congress should not pass health care reform if only Democratic members support it.

Voters oppose 68 – 26 percent requiring people to have health insurance or pay a fine and oppose 68 – 27 percent taxing employees for health care benefits from employers.

But yet, they continue on. because the Agenda is the Agenda. Damn the facts and the people, full speed ahead.

After emerging from a closed-door Democrats-only White House meeting with Senate Democrats Tuesday, President Obama said: “We are on the precipice of an achievement that’s eluded Congresses and presidents for generations, an achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American.”

Reach out and touch everyone, comrade.

Neville Chamberlain in 1938 disembarked from his plane and told the crowd, “This morning, I had another talk with the German chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it, as well as mine.” Forever, he will be remembered for waving his worthless “piece of paper.”

President Bill Clinton a decade ago told the grand jury investigating whether he committed perjury that “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Forever, he will be remembered for twisting language into pretzels to avoid the truth.

President Jimmy Carter in his infamous 1979 “Malaise Speech” blamed Americans for a national “crisis of confidence” and “loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” Carter’s solution: Carpool and “set your thermostats to save fuel. … I tell you it is an act of patriotism.”

Much of what the president said in his Tuesday statement was patently false. With its heavy regulations, the Senate bill, even stripped of its destructive “public option,” won’t mean that “families will save on their premiums.” Independent studies make it clear that premiums will go up by thousands of dollars.

It also isn’t true that “this will be the largest deficit-reduction plan in over a decade” — and to hear such a promise from the biggest-spending president in his first year in office in history is hard to take.

The president claims “the CBO has said that this is a deficit reduction.” But as Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who sits on both the appropriations and banking committees, recently told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, the definition of “deficit-neutral” that Democrats have been using “means it’s going to cost you over $1 trillion, and we are going to find $1 trillion either in Medicare cuts or increased taxes, so that we end up with the same number at the bottom line.”

Speaking of the Congressional Budget Office, after candidate Obama last year promised a $2,500 annual reduction in health premiums annually for average families, the CBO has warned of premium increases of about $5,000 a year.

“Precipice” is right, Mr. President. But with public support at 41% according to IBD/TIPP and 35% according to Gallup — not to mention two-thirds of doctors opposed to Congress’ plan, as IBD/TIPP also found — most Americans clearly don’t want to take a plunge like this.(IBD)

And if they challenge you, just ignore them, call security, have them removed, just go to people who will kiss your ass and not challenge you, or simply just ignore them all together.

After all, they don’t matter.

You’re way more important and so is your Agenda.

That's a Big Bird.

Sleep tight, don’t let the tax bugs bite…

I was flipping through channels today and heard a preacher man explaining to the devoted that faith “is certainty in what you cannot see” or something to that effect. I don’t argue with that literal statement, but do worry that we have come to revere this idea of faith too greatly. The person who believes in something against all odds and who turns out to be right is  glorified. The person who believes in something unseen, but turns out to be wrong is vilified. Of course what is “right” today might be “wrong” tomorrow, meaning that our faith is something of a crap shoot at best.

Wouldn’t it be easier to worry less about being right about what we cannot perceive and focus instead on achieving a consensus around the world we can? Does it really matter whether my god can beat yours? (She can, but that’s beside the point). In this era of nukes and climate change, I think we’d do better to direct our efforts elsewhere.

Consensus: general agreement or majority view.

Below is a list of scientific organizations around the world that acknowledge the global impact of rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations from human activities.

While many more organizations could likely be added, the list is limited to organizations that have either issued a singular statement of their own or signed in agreement to a collective statement regarding the anthropogenic impact of rising emissions on global climate and the global biosphere.

All statements have been issued since 2001.

At present, there are 108 organizations on the list that span all continents outside of Antarctica.

Alphabetical | By Continent and Country | By Date and Statement

Alphabetical

• Academia Brasiliera de Ciências, Brazil
• Academia Chilena de Ciencias
• Academia das Ciencias de Lisboa
• Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana
• Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales de Venezuela
• Academia de Ciencias Medicas, Fisicas y Naturales de Guatemala
• Academia Mexicana de Ciencias,Mexico
• Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Peru
• Academia Sinica, Taiwan, China
• Academy of Athens
• Academy of Science of South Africa, South Africa
• Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
• Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt
• Academy of the Royal Society of New Zealand
• Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
• Académie des Sciences, France
• Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
• Africa Centre for Climate and Earth Systems Science
• African Academy of Sciences
• Akademi Sains Malaysia
• Albanian Academy of Sciences
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)
• American Chemical Society
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Biological Sciences
• American Meteorological Society
• American Society of Agronomy
• American Society of Plant Biologists
• American Statistical Association
• Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
• Australian Academy of Science
• Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS)
• Bangladesh Academy of Sciences
• Botanical Society of America
• Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
• Cameroon Academy of Sciences
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
• Caribbean Academy of Sciences
• Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
• Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences
• Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) (Australia)
• Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Crop Science Society of America
• Cuban Academy of Sciences
• Delegation of the Finnish Academies of Science and Letters
• Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Leopoldina, Germany
• Ecological Society of America
• European Geosciences Union
• European Science Foundation – Marine Board
• Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
• Geological Society of America
• Geological Society of Australia
• Georgian Academy of Sciences
• Indian National Science Academy, India
• Indonesian Academy of Sciences
• Islamic World Academy of Sciences
• Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
• International Council for Science
• International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
• International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
• Kenya National Academy of Sciences
• Korean Academy of Science and Technology
• Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Mauritius Academy of Science and Technology
• Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts
• National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, Argentina
• National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic
• National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka
• National Academy of Sciences, United States of America
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• National Council of Engineers Australia
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Natural Science Collections Alliance
• Nigerian Academy of Sciences
• Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters
• Organization of Biological Field Stations
• Pakistan Academy of Sciences
• Palestine Academy for Science and Technology
• Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
• Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain
• Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
• Royal Irish Academy
• Royal Meteorological Society
• Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Royal Scientific Society of Jordan
• Royal Society of Canada, Canada
• Royal Society, United Kingdom
• Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
• Science Council of Japan, Japan
• Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
• Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• Society of Systematic Biologists
• Soil Science Society of America
• Sudanese National Academy of Science
• Tanzania Academy of Sciences
• Turkish Academy of Sciences
• TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world
• Uganda National Academy of Sciences
• Union der Deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften
• University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
• World Forestry Congress
• Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences

By Continent and Country

North America | South America | Europe | Asia | Africa | Oceania | International

North America

• Canada
  • Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
  • Royal Society of Canada, Canada
• Cuba
  • Cuban Academy of Sciences
• Dominican Republic
  • Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana
• Guatemala
  • Academia de Ciencias Medicas, Fisicas y Naturales de Guatemala
• Mexico
  • Academia Mexicana de Ciencias,Mexico
• United States of America
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)
  • American Chemical Society
  • American Geophysical Union
  • American Institute of Biological Sciences
  • American Meteorological Society
  • American Society of Agronomy
  • American Society of Plant Biologists
  • American Statistical Association
  • Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
  • Botanical Society of America
  • Crop Science Society of America
  • Ecological Society of America
  • Geological Society of America
  • National Academy of Sciences, United States of America
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  • Natural Science Collections Alliance
  • Organization of Biological Field Stations
  • Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
  • Society of Systematic Biologists
  • Soil Science Society of America
  • University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
• Miscellaneous
  • Caribbean Academy of Sciences

South America

• Argentina
  • National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, Argentina
• Brazil
  • Academia Brasiliera de Ciências, Brazil
• Chile
  • Academia Chilena de Ciencias
• Colombia
  • Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences
• Peru
  • Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Peru
• Venezuela
  • Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales de Venezuela

Europe

• Albania
  • Albanian Academy of Sciences
• Belgium
  • Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
• Bulgaria
  • Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
• Croatia
  • Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Czech Republic
  • Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
• Denmark
  • Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
• Finland
  • Delegation of the Finnish Academies of Science and Letters
• France
  • Académie des Sciences, France
• Georgia
  • Georgian Academy of Sciences
• Germany
  • Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Leopoldina, Germany
  • Union der Deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften
• Greece
  • Academy of Athens
• Ireland
  • Royal Irish Academy
• Italy
  • Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
• Kosovo
  • Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Montenegro
  • Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Netherlands
  • Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Norway
  • Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters
• Serbia
  • Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Slovenia
  • Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
• Slovakia
  • Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Spain
  • Academia das Ciencias de Lisboa
  • Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain
• Sweden
  • Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• United Kingdom
  • Royal Meteorological Society
  • Royal Society, United Kingdom
• Miscellaneous
  • European Geosciences Union
  • European Science Foundation – Marine Board

Asia

• Bangladesh
  • Bangladesh Academy of Sciences
• China
  • Academia Sinica, Taiwan, China
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
• India
  • Indian National Science Academy, India
• Indonesia
  • Indonesian Academy of Sciences
• Iran
  • Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Israel
  • Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
• Japan
  • Science Council of Japan, Japan
• Jordan
  • Royal Scientific Society of Jordan
• Korea
  • Korean Academy of Science and Technology
• Kyrgyzstan
  • National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic
• Malaysia
  • Akademi Sains Malaysia
• Pakistan
  • Pakistan Academy of Sciences
• Russia
  • Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
• Sri Lanka
  • National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka
• Turkey
  • Turkish Academy of Sciences
• Miscellaneous
  • Islamic World Academy of Sciences
  • Palestine Academy for Science and Technology

Africa

• Cameroon
  • Cameroon Academy of Sciences
• Egypt
  • Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt
• Kenya
  • Kenya National Academy of Sciences
• Mauritius
  • Mauritius Academy of Science and Technology
• Nigeria
  • Nigerian Academy of Sciences
• Senegal
  • Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
• South Africa
  • Academy of Science of South Africa, South Africa
• Sudan
  • Sudanese National Academy of Science
• Tanzania
  • Tanzania Academy of Sciences
• Uganda
  • Uganda National Academy of Sciences
• Zimbabwe
  • Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences
• Miscellaneous
  • Africa Centre for Climate and Earth Systems Science
  • African Academy of Sciences

Oceania

• Australia
  • Australian Academy of Science
  • Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS)
  • Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) (Australia)
  • Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
  • Geological Society of Australia
  • National Council of Engineers Australia
• New Zealand
  • Academy of the Royal Society of New Zealand

International

• International Council for Science
• International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
• International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
• Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
• TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world
• World Forestry Congress

By Date and Statement

General

• NOAA: Global Climate Change Indicators
  • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

2009

• Can the warming of the 20th century be explained by natural processes?
  • Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) (Australia)

2009, December

• SCAR: Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment
  • Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research

• ACCESS: POSITION STATEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND RELATED ISSUES
  • Africa Centre for Climate and Earth Systems Science

2009, November

• Climate science statement
  • The Royal Society, UK

2009, October

• Message from the XIII World Forestry Congress to the COP 15 of the UNFCCC
  • World Forestry Congress

• Joint Letter to U.S. Senate
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • American Chemical Society
  • American Geophysical Union
  • American Institute of Biological Sciences
  • American Meteorological Society
  • American Society of Agronomy
  • American Society of Plant Biologists
  • American Statistical Association
  • Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
  • Botanical Society of America
  • Crop Science Society of America
  • Ecological Society of America
  • Natural Science Collections Alliance
  • Organization of Biological Field Stations
  • Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
  • Society of Systematic Biologists
  • Soil Science Society of America
  • University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

2009, September

• ICSU: Environment
  • International Council for Science

2009, July

• GSA: Position Statement and Recommendations – Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change
  • Geological Society of Australia

2009, June

• IAP STATEMENT ON OCEAN ACIDIFICATION
  • TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world
  • Albanian Academy of Sciences
  • National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, Argentina
  • Australian Academy of Science
  • Bangladesh Academy of Sciences
  • The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
  • Brazilian Academy of Sciences
  • Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
  • Cameroon Academy of Sciences
  • RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada
  • Academia Chilena de Ciencias
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences
  • Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Cuban Academy of Sciences
  • Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
  • Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
  • Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana
  • Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt
  • The Delegation of the Finnish Academies of Science and Letters
  • Académie des Sciences, France
  • Georgian Academy of Sciences
  • Union der Deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften
  • Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
  • The Academy of Athens
  • Academia de Ciencias Medicas, Fisicas y Naturales de Guatemala
  • Indian National Science Academy
  • Indonesian Academy of Sciences
  • Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran
  • Royal Irish Academy
  • Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
  • Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
  • Science Council of Japan
  • Royal Scientific Society of Jordan
  • Islamic World Academy of Sciences
  • African Academy of Sciences
  • Kenya National Academy of Sciences
  • The Korean Academy of Science and Technology
  • Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts
  • National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic
  • Akademi Sains Malaysia
  • Mauritius Academy of Science and Technology
  • Academia Mexicana de Ciencias
  • Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts
  • The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Academy of the Royal Society of New Zealand
  • Nigerian Academy of Sciences
  • Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters
  • Pakistan Academy of Sciences
  • Palestine Academy for Science and Technology
  • Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Peru
  • Academia das Ciencias de Lisboa
  • Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
  • Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
  • Slovak Academy of Sciences
  • Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
  • Academy of Science of South Africa
  • Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain
  • National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka
  • Sudanese National Academy of Science
  • Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
  • Academia Sinica, Taiwan, China
  • Tanzania Academy of Sciences
  • The Caribbean Academy of Sciences
  • Turkish Academy of Sciences
  • The Uganda National Academy of Sciences
  • The Royal Society, UK
  • US National Academy of Sciences
  • Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales de Venezuela
  • Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences

• SCOSTEP-CAWSES: What is the solar influence on climate?
  • SCOSTEP (Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics) – Climate And Weather of the Sun-Earth System (CAWSES)

2009, May

• G8+5 Academies’ joint statement: Climate change and the transformation of energy technologies for a low carbon future
  • Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias, Brazil
  • Royal Society of Canada, Canada
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
  • Académie des Sciences, France
  • Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Leopoldina, Germany
  • Indian National Science Academy, India
  • Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
  • Science Council of Japan, Japan
  • Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, Mexico
  • Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
  • Academy of Science of South Africa, South Africa
  • Royal Society, United Kingdom
  • National Academy of Sciences, United States of America

2008, December

• EGU Position Statement on Ocean Acidification
  • European Geosciences Union

2008, September

• FASTS Statement on Climate Change
  • Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies

2008, July

• Climate change statement from the Royal Society of New Zealand
  • Royal Society of New Zealand

2008, February

• Engineers Australia: Policy Statement Climate Change and Energy
  • National Council of Engineers Australia

2007

• ACS Position Statement: Global Climate Change
  • The American Chemical Society

2007, December

• AGU Position Statement: Human Impacts on Climate
  • American Geophysical Union

2007, November

• ASA Statement on Climate Change
  • American Statistical Association

2007, July

• IUGG: The Urgency of Addressing Climate Change
  • International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics

2007, May

• Joint science academies’ statement on growth and responsibility: sustainability, energy efficiency and climate protection
  • Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias,Brazil
  • Académie des Sciences,France
  • Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei,Italy
  • Russian Academy of Sciences,Russia
  • National Academy of Sciences,United States of America
  • Royal Society of Canada,Canada
  • Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Leopoldina, Germany
  • Science Council of Japan,Japan
  • Academy of Science of South Africa,South Africa
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences,China
  • Indian National Science Academy,India
  • Academia Mexicana de Ciencias,Mexico
  • Royal Society,United Kingdom

2007, March

• CMOS: Comprehensive Position Statement on Climate Change
  • The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

• Impacts of Climate Change on the European Marine and Coastal Environment – Ecosystems Approach
  • European Science Foundation – Marine Board

2007, February

• AMS Information Statement on Climate Change
  • American Meteorological Society

• The Royal Meteorological Society’s statement on the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report
  • Royal Meteorological Society

• Engineers Australia: Policy Statement Climate Change and Energy
  • National Council of Engineers Australia

2006

• The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Statement on Climate Change
  • Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS)

2006, December

• AAAS Board Statement on Climate Change
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science

2006, October

• GSA: Position Statement on Global Climate Change
  • The Geological Society of America

2005

• IUP AP Statements and Recommendations on the Energy Problems
  • International Union of Pure and Applied Physics

2005, July

• The American Meteorological Society endorses the "Joint Academies’ Statement: Global Response to Climate Change"
  • American Meteorological Society

2005, June

• Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change
  • Academia Brasiliera de Ciências, Brazil
  • Royal Society of Canada, Canada
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
  • Academié des Sciences, France
  • Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, Leopoldina, Germany
  • Indian National Science Academy, India
  • Accademia dei Lincei, Italy
  • Science Council of Japan, Japan
  • Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
  • Royal Society, United Kingdom
  • National Academy of Sciences, United States of America

2003, December

• AGU Position Statement: Human Impacts on Climate
  • American Geophysical Union

2002, February

• CMOS: Position Statement on Climate Change
  • The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

2001, November

• AASC: Policy Statement on Climate Variability and Change
  • American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)

This story at the UK Daily Mail has all the details in plain English, with graphs. (H/T Ace of Spades via ECM)

First, they got rid of the Medieval Warming Period by cherry-picking data:

Some tree-ring data eliminates the medieval warmth altogether, while others reflect it. In September 1999, Jones’s IPCC colleague Michael Mann of Penn State University in America – who is now also the subject of an official investigation –was working with Jones on the hockey stick. As they debated which data to use, they discussed a long tree-ring analysis carried out by Keith Briffa.

Briffa knew exactly why they wanted it, writing in an email on September 22: ‘I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards “apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more”.’ But his conscience was troubled. ‘In reality the situation is not quite so simple – I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.’

[...]Finally, Briffa changed the way he computed his data and submitted a revised version. This brought his work into line for earlier centuries, and ‘cooled’ them significantly.

Then, they hid the decline in temperature after 1960:

According to his tree rings, the period since 1960 had not seen a steep rise in temperature, as actual temperature readings showed – but a large and steady decline, so calling into question the accuracy of the earlier data derived from tree rings.

This is the context in which, seven weeks later, Jones presented his ‘trick’ – as simple as it was deceptive.

All he had to do was cut off Briffa’s inconvenient data at the point where the decline started, in 1961, and replace it with actual temperature readings, which showed an increase.

On the hockey stick graph, his line is abruptly terminated – but the end of the line is obscured by the other lines.

Ace is calling this a must-read. I agree. Drop everything you are doing and go read it. If you have a blog, blog about it. Submit the Daily Mail post to Stumble Upon, Digg and Reddit.

“Do you think you are smarter than everyone, Jacques?” asked the young intelligent liberal man with whom I have occasional conversations. He was referring to my deep skepticism regarding global warming, its consequences, its remedies, its very existence, when it comes down to it. He was also implicitly referring to an alleged “consensus” about global warming, of course.

Good question. Let me answer in two steps. First, I don’t think I am smarter than everyone and I don’t have to. Fortunately, the question does not arise. (See Part Two below.) Rather, I think I am smarter than most. It’s not much of a claim. It does not involves much conceit. “Most” means the same as “a majority.” That’s half, or 50%, plus one person. If you divided the human race in two equal halves based on intelligence, I think I would be standing somewhere to the right of the divide. So?

Part One

Here is my second answer to the question (That’s Part One – 2): I am much smarter than most in two important respects. I don’t have a religious fiber in my body and I don’t care if I belong to the club or not. In fact, I would rather not join. Many intelligent people, many much smarter than I, have a religious streak and they crave belonging. (The whole history of Communism in the West tells us that this is true.) Religiosity and wanting to belong have a great deal to do with belief in the global warming syndrome, I am sure.

The global warming syndrome is first and foremost a successful contemporary cult: It has its dogma (the world is ending because of our sins) and its priesthood (climate scientists with no scientific conscience, and other scientists who have no training regarding climate issues, a large majority of signatories of climate change manifestos, by the way.) It has its promised Armageddon, the Death of Life on Earth through global warming. But it’s a religion of redemption, like Christianity. We can still avoid the End, collectively, if we repent, give half of our money to the poor and accept future poverty for ourselves and for the poor themselves in the form of much diminished economic activity. The originality of this cult is that its Holy Places are nomadic. Its Rome used to be Kyoto, then it was Rio; today it’s Copenhagen. It will be somewhere else tomorrow (unless the End catches up with us first, of course. )

The cult also allows for individual salvation but only through rigorous methods: Sinners must reduce their individual carbon footprint, whatever it takes. As in some other religious groups, high-ranking members are exempted, however. The manager of the biggest limousine service in Copenhagen says she had to bring (gasoline and diesel) cars from Sweden and Germany because there aren’t enough in all of Denmark to satisfy the demand from delegates to the climate conference. It has now exceeded 1,200 vehicles of which five (5) are electric. (Confirmed by the Wall Street Journal on 12/14/09.)  I am not that smart actually so, I wonder why militant environmentalists seeking to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint can’t use the city’s vaunted public transportation.

Last but absolutely not least (see below), the global warming cult has its Grand Poopah. Like the Pope in Rome the Grand Poopah is infallible when speaking on matters of faith. No amount of evidence, and certainly, no misdeeds by his clergy, can persuade him to alter the intrinsically truthful dogma.

So, finally to answer the question: Yes, I think I am smarter than most because I am an atheist, Thanks God! None of the trappings of the global warming cult makes any impression on me. Zero! And, no, I have no desire to follow to the cult. As I have said, I have no wish to belong in general. In fact, I take a small and discreet but nevertheless real perverse pleasure in not going to church.

Part Two

The global warming cult uses the idea of science the way the Catholic Church used the arts, graphic, statuary and musical, for centuries, as an attractive wrapping for ideas that are basically unsound and unpalatable. The cult betrays itself when its spokesmen claim that there is a “scientific consensus” about climate change. There isn’t and if there were, it would not matter. The way a scientific theory comes to dominate any part of reality is through elimination of competing theories. That’s what happened with evolutionary theory for example. It was never “proven.” Rather other ways of explaining the same observations fell by the wayside and lost almost all their advocates. The global warming cult tries to pass for “scientific” precisely as it combats as forcefully as it can the consideration, and even the production, of competing explanations.

The public allows this to happen because of an excess of generosity, paradoxically. There is widespread confusion about what the holder of any intellectual position owes the public. The confusion is about the important distinction between “expert” and “advocate.” The American public generously allows the latter to operate with the rules intended for the former.

Experts are your doctor, your dentist, your car mechanic, your “chef de cuisine.” It’s generally accepted that experts’ performance should be assessed as a ratio of good decisions to bad decisions. People don’t withdraw their confidence from an expert because of the occasional misdiagnostic, because of a slip of the drill, or because of the rare extra nut on the car floor. It hurts me to say this but even a boring dish coming from a great chef allows him to remain a great chef. In this country, the courts even admit this kind of assessment. “Negligence” won’t get you much; it takes “gross negligence” to cash out.

An advocate is someone who is trying to make you change your ways and therefore, trying to make you change who you are. Because of the seriousness of their endeavor, and,often, its irreversibility, advocates must be held to a higher standard of truthfulness than are experts. Like this:

“If you don’t know what you are talking about, why should I change my life to make it conform to what you preach?”

And,

“If you have to lie for your cause, it’s a bad cause and I am not for it.”

The global warming cult had some of its clergymen in good standing caught telling untruths recently. The so-called “scientists” at the University of East Anglia both showed that they didn’t know what they were talking about and they lied. To make matters worse, the cult did not immediately spew them out but it tried to defend them and to minimize their crimes against truth. End of story. It’s absolutely fair and intellectually appropriate to stop believing any of the cult’s pronouncements.

And I haven’t even touched on he cult’s heartlessness. The best example is turning food crops into unnecessary and expensive fuel, which was sure to raise the price of food for the poorest of the poor in the world.

By the way, I could have saved you all this tedious reasoning. You just have to look at the cult’s Grand Poopah: Al Gore is an ignoramus who believes the inside of the earth is “millions of degrees” hot (I heard this with my own ears); he is a liar on multiple counts; he is a hypocrite who uses private jets and lives in a house 25 times larger than mine, with a corresponding carbon footprint. He is a moron who could not even carry his own state when he was running for President. That’s the same state of Tennessee where is daddy was a beloved Congressman for nearly thirty years. Of course, he, little Al, invented the Internet, but still!

Reminder: My fellow rationalists, there is not much reason to despair. Whatever, if anything, comes out of Copenhagen, will be an international agreement. Contrary to rumors in some right-wing circles, the President does not have the constitutional authority to enter into such agreements. They must be ratified by the Senate. And whatever has been ratified can be un-ratified after the next election.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

-Thomas Sowell

Meetings.  Hate them or Tolerate them.
I haven’t met anyone who loves to attend meetings.

Unfortunately, they are a necessary evil in the daily life of a project manager.

For three of the Project Management Processes: Integrated Change Control, Monitor and Control Risks and Plan Risk Management, they are considered a Tool in our PMBOK Toolbox. So for better or worse, we are stuck with them. And so in my maddening quest for self-improvement, I’m always on the lookout for ways to make them better.

Recently, I came across a rather geeky idea that only a project manager would love. In The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-making, Sam Kaner categorizes and defines the 7 types of meetings.

Most people don’t care enough about meetings to categorize and explore the purpose behind so many of our meetings.  But fortunately for the rest of us, Kaner does. He suggests that much of our problems with meetings stem from the fact that we are not clear about the purpose of our meetings and so muddy the water with side conversations and odd tangents.

The ways we wander off track can easily be seen once you understand the 7 types of meetings.  They are:

1. To Obtain Input
   This type of meeting is scheduled when someone (usually a boss) is seeking feedback or suggestions, but does not need the group to make decisions. Meetings to  solicit input for finalizing a budget or identify project needs fall into this category.
   
2. To Build Capacity
   To Build Capacity? What does that mean? According to Kaner, this meeting is scheduled to help team members develop skills. Now in most cases, Project Managers would not be involved in holding meetings like this. The only example in my experience that I can think of was a Training session that allowed Customer Support teams to learn about the features on our release.
   
3. To Build Community
   This kind of meeting is usually held to strengthen the bonds of people who work together and boost morale. These are your PMO Christmas parties and post-release celebrations. Most people don’t usually see Community Building as a legitimate meeting goal, but used in this fashion can be effective.
   
4. To Improve Communication
   A project manager schedules this kind of meeting to strengthen working relationships by sharing feelings or reducing interpersonal tension. I have seen this done with small groups, but Kaner seems to feel that it can be facilitated in larger groups. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give much advice on how to ensure that people feel safe enough to speak up.

5. To Share Information
   We are all familiar with this kind of meeting: it is a meeting where we learn about surprise organizational announcements or about what our business accomplished that quarter. To bring it down to where we live, it is our status or stand-up meeting.

6. To Advance the Thinking
   Project Managers are most familiar with this kind of meeting: this type of meeting is scheduled to make progress on a topic. Every week we run meetings that:
   * Analyze a Problem
   * Identify root causes
   * Rearrange a list of items by Priority
   * Conduct a risk assessment
   * Evaluate options – and so on…

7. To Make Decisions
   Project Managers are also familiar with this type of meeting: where the group needs to address an issue and bring it to closure. Depending on the type of decision – simple or complex – you might need to break the discussion into parts: the first to advance the thinking around a problem and then a second meeting to make a decision.
   

Kaner allows room for aspects of each of the meeting types to serve as agenda items in other meetings. The problem with this approach is that you dilute the purpose of the original meeting and increase the risk of getting off-track. My preference is toward shorter meetings – and when you have a distinct purpose for your meeting, you are far more likely to end on time.

Kaner’s meeting categorization seem to cover the range of meetings that we see in an organization. Can you think of another type of meeting that doesn’t fall into these categories? Leave a comment or send me a tweet, my id is jgodfrey.

there are two words that are incredibly important to building and maintaining a healthy marriage.

compromise and consensus.

in our culture, the concept of compromise has taken a shot.  for many, compromise is what people without conviction do.  compromise is seen as the abandoning of a goal…and taking the easy way out.  to compromise is to fall short.

on the other hand, good relationships…good marriages…are built on a steady foundation of compromise.  compromise is when one person willingly lets go of something important…an idea, a goal, a plan, a desire, a belonging, a job, a hobby, an interest, a priority, a relationship, a value, a possession, a dream, an expectation, pretty much anything…out of love and commitment to the other.

it is done with the best interests of the other person in mind.  compromise is sacrifice.  compromise is generosity.  compromise is done with the belief that god will take care of what is lost in the compromising.  compromise is based on trust…not in the other person, but in god.

for compromise to work, though, it must be done in the right way.  once you have made the compromise, you can’t go back.  whatever you let go of is gone.  you don’t ever bring it up.  there are no regrets. it is never held over the other person’s head.  it’s never used for extortion.  you can’t ever expect repayment.  you don’t compromise and then make the assumption that the favor will be returned.   otherwise it’s not compromise.   it’s simply manipulation.

in a healthy marriage, there are (or should be) big compromises…as well as the little, daily ones that show love in practical and tangible ways.

if you really love your spouse the way you are loved by god, then you will constantly look for compromises you can make…willingly, completely, and with no strings attached.

the other tool of a great marriage is consensus.

consensus is different.  consensus is what is done when compromise can’t, or shouldn’t, be done.

consensus means working towards an alternative decision that both of you will own completely.  consensus says that our two positions are too important to let go of.   consensus says there is a better decision to be found…one that affirms both sides of the discussion.

consensus requires waiting.  consensus is slow and doesn’t work well under a deadline.  that’s why you always have to start to move towards consensus early in the process.  moving to consensus means you take the time to wait, pray, talk, wait, pray, seek counsel, wait, pray, talk…and then decide.  and when there is not consensus, you start the process again.  consensus always values the person over the decision…the process more than the outcome.

compromise is often about making a decision.  consensus is always about making a relationship.  work towards consensus whenever and wherever you can.

even though compromise is an act of love,  real love would never demand a compromise.  think about it.

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed “the coming ice age.”

Random House dutifully printed “THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age.” This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported “many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age.”

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: “During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age.”

Science’s prediction of “A full-blown, 10,000 year ice age,” came from its March 1, 1975 issue. The Christian Science Monitor observed that armadillos were retreating south from Nebraska to escape the “global cooling” in its Aug. 27, 1974 issue.

Now we have Polar Bear on “diminishing” ice flows in the Artic.

Ahhh….

Does this all look vaguely like, well it global warming has dropped but in the future it will be an apocalypse!

UK Telegraph 4/30/2008:  Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.

Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: “The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that.”

And as all Global warming Religionist know the IPCC is never EVER wrong.

So as it snows on Houston, the earliest on record, just remember Global Warming is going to Kill us all!

The Conference of Doom starts today in Copenhagen.

Will this day also, live in infamy!

There is truly something rotten in Denmark.

UK Telegraph: Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. “We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand,” she says. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.”

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? “Five,” says Ms Jorgensen. “The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don’t have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it’s very Danish.”

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants’ travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of “carbon dioxide equivalent”, equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.

But nothing but the best for those concerned with the Doom of all mankind and want to shut down the Industrial Revolution as really bad for the planet!

I suppose Al Gore’s “Carbon credits” business will be busy with guilty Doomsayers for the next 11 days.

NY Post: Some 40,000 tons of carbon will be spewed getting this crowd together and keeping them in comfort.That is the amount of carbon dioxide produced by more than 60 of the world’s smaller countries in an entire year — combined.

Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon – say, two per cent a year, starting next year – for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.

But damn! It will sound good! It’ll sound like they care.

Can some on pass me the Wagyu beef with white truffles, darling…

“If we fail, one reason could be our overconfidence,” said Simron Jit Singh, of the Institute of Social Ecology. “Because we are here, talking in a group of people who probably agree with each other, we can be blinded to the challenges of the other side. We feel that we are the good guys, the selfless saviours, and they are the bad guys.“

Bingo! That wins the man a Booby prize, which in Copenhagen is probably just a few doors down.:)

As Mr Singh suggests, the interesting question is perhaps not whether the climate changers have got the science right – they probably have – but whether they have got the pitch right. Some campaigners’ apocalyptic predictions and religious righteousness – funeral ceremonies for economic growth and the like – can be alienating, and may help explain why the wider public does not seem to share the urgency felt by those in Copenhagen this week.

Anyone seen Lord Doom?  He canceled? Really. A chance to be a media whore in front of adoring fans and hock is new Doomsday Book??  Coming to a Theatre near you

And the Great Savior of Mankind, Barack Obama is not jetting in until is nearly over. Something about a Peace Prize (just after he escalated Obama’s War in Afghanistan).

In a rather perceptive recent comment, Mr Miliband (who called those who disagree with him and his ilk saboteurs just days ago) said it was vital to give people a positive vision of a low-carbon future. “If Martin Luther King had come along and said ‘I have a nightmare,’ people would not have followed him,” he said.

Let’s all have a PR pitty party form the Doomsayers.

But do you think they’ve really learned anything.

No.

That would be a break with their faith.

So they have 11 days to work on a new spin.

That’s all.

And the Danes are happy to participate.

NY Post: That’s because the last great world climate treaty, Kyoto, does not make them include their nasty shipping business in the calculation. No wonder the Danes liked that so much.

AP: “I think a lot of people are skeptical about this issue in any case,” Yvo de Boer (The U.N.’s top climate official) said. “And then when they have the feeling … that scientists are manipulating information in a certain direction then of course it causes concern in a number of people to say ‘you see I told you so, this is not a real issue.’”

Ya Think?

Because there’s a “consensus” that says debate is over. So how can anyone possibly be skeptical?

“This correspondence looks very bad,” de Boer said. “But I think both the university is looking into this (and) I believe there is a police investigation going on whether the e-mails were leaked or stolen.“

Not whether they are true or not or what they actually say, mind you.

U.S. climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing (Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change) called the science on global warming “very robust, very substantial.” He told the AP that the controversy surrounding the leaked e-mails came at an “unfortunate” time, just before the long-awaited U.N. talks, “but has no fundamental bearing on the outcome.“

His faith in Man-Made Doom is Strong, young Barack!

UK Telepgraph 4/30/2008: Writing in Nature, the scientists said: “Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming.”

The study shows a more pronounced weakening effect than the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, which last year predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998.

Commenting on the new study, Richard Wood of the Hadley Centre said the model suggested the weakening of the MOC would have a cooling effect around the North Atlantic.

“Such a cooling could temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“That emphasizes once again the need to consider climate variability and climate change together when making predictions over timescales of decades.”

But that would question the faith.

Our Friend Ed Millibrand, UK Environment  Secretary on the BBC less than 24 hours ago:

“The people who believe that this is happening, that climate change is happening and man-made, have nothing to fear from transparency.”

Obama: “Information will not be withheld just because I say so; it will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well-grounded in the Constitution. Let me say it as simply as I can: transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,“

So how’s that working out?

Global Cooling. (1975)

Global Warming. (also coined in 1975)

Global Climate Change? (created because it kept  embarrassingly snowing on Global Warming Conferences)

Anthropogenic climate change (2000)

What Orwellian term will the Conference of Doom come up with?

Stay Tuned.

(originally published on Dec 3 in my climate blog)

An eye-opening “global cooling consensus” CIA document dated 1974 has just been re-discovered in the British Library by Yours Truly and is extensively mentioned today in the (printed) pages of The Spectator (UK) and Il Foglio (Italy).

(the (suitably degraded) scan of the Spectator article is at the bottom of this blog)

(the PDF of the CIA document is now available online thanks to Guido Guidi and Climate Monitor)

“A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems” will make quite an embarrassing reading, especially for:

• the most obdurate catastro-warmists (when they will notice that almost all AGW scares are a search-and-replace job from “cooling” to “warming”), and
• the history deniers fixated on ‘demonstrating’ that a scientific consensus about Global Cooling in the 1970’s were a ‘myth’(*)

And there is more (much more), from ever-improving climate models promising to become good in a few years’ time to the unsettling apparent ease with which Government agencies then (as now) could get scientists to agree on whatever they needed them to agree on.

Nobody aware of the CIA document’s contents should be able to avoid a good chuckle after reading any of the current AGW reports on famine, starvation, refugee crises, floods, droughts, crop and monsoon failures, and all sorts of extreme weather phenomena; on climate-related major economic problems around the world; on Africans getting in climate troubles first; and so on and so forth.

Why? Because it is all too clear that those scares cannot be real, since they have already been mentioned verbatim in all their dramatic effect, but about Global Cooling.

The whole lot of them, they are just empty threats, instruments of doom-and-gloom policy manipulation with no relation to reality.

It is deeply ironic that it takes a 35-year-old document, available on the web so far only in title, to show the absolute vacuity of the vast majority of pre-COP15 reports and studies. It is time to ditch everything we hear about collapsing ice sheets, disappearing glaciers, species extinctions, and each and every “it’s worse than we thought” report by “scientists”.

It is time to become climate adults.

As I wrote for The Spectator:

This might be the most important lesson of the 1974 report on global cooling: that we need to grow up, separate climatology from fear, and recognise – much as it pains politicians and scientists – that our understanding of how climate changes remains in its infancy.

(stay tuned for the full text of the Spectator article, and the PDF of the PDF of the CIA document)

(*) Anybody thinking about Thomas C. Peterson, William M. Connolley, and John Fleck’s largely mistitled “The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus” (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Volume 89, Issue 9, September 2008, pp 1325-1337)? Well, think again after reading this little gem of theirs:

By the early 1970s, when Mitchell updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the notion of a global cooling trend was widely accepted, albeit poorly understood

As I wrote a little more than a year ago: “Widely accepted”: check. “Global cooling”: check.. There was a global cooling consensus among scientists, at least up to 1974. And it went on to appear in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times and many more media outlets around the world, at least up to 1976.

CASE CLOSED.

=========

This is the scanned Spectator article

The CIA's 'global cooling' files (title)

The CIA's 'global cooling' files (text)

Dear Reader,
Thank you for tuning in to lilcarbon! There is a lot of news on climate change being created & flung far and wide around the world. We appreciate the opportunity to be part of your mental mix. It is an exciting time to be alive, and part of an ongoing revolution – in both the fight to halt climate change, and in the way we communicate. If you like us, please do follow us on Twitter and add us to your RSS reader or sign up for email updates.

With COP15 starting two hours from now in Copenhagen, Denmark, we’re sending out a big wish that the conference is safe, productive and effective at getting us as darn far down the path to solutions as possible. The UNFCCC is an international body that runs on consensus. All signatories to any document coming out of Copenhagen must agree on the principles of the document. This is why it’s so important for ALL countries to come to the table with a spirit of cooperation and openness to compromise.

When you think about it, the process is a macrocosm of our own lives, and a microcosm of human interaction on earth. Those shiny threads of interconnectedness show through the fabric of climate change as well. Our own actions bundle into national circumstances, towards global outcomes.

Here’s wishing negotiators the courage for action, media the insight & integrity to get it right and humanity the inspiration to pick up the fight.

Yours truly,

lilcarbon

In my opinion, the most important thing to come out of the e-mail scandal is the source code for the graph generation program.

What does the CRU source code really say?

Here’s the source code for the file “briffa_sep98_e.pro“.

It contains this section of the code which defines an array of adjustments that will be applied to the raw data. The purpose of the adjustments according the programmers own comments (lines that start with ; are comments) is to hide the decline in temperatures, so that the graph will look like a hockey stick. In the words of the programmer, the adjustment is called a “fudge factor” and is “very artificial”.

Here’s the adjustment, called a fudge factor by the programmer:

;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor

Line 3 creates the 20 subsets from the raw tree ring data, with each subset spanning 5 years. The subsets start in 1904. Line 4 (which wraps to the line 5) creates an array of 20 adjustments that will be applied to the raw data to change the original values. The data is stored in a variable called yrloc and the adjustments are stored in a variable called valadj.

The data is left alone from 1904-1928, adjusted downward from 1929-1943, lowered for 1949-1953 and then raised at the end.

And then the adjustment is actually applied to the data here, and stored in a variable called yearlyadj (line 3).

; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj

The true believers respond

I notice that on Science Blogs, they are claiming that the adjument is never applied because the line that applies it is commented out. But they are using the briffa_sep98_d.pro file, not the briffa_sep98_e.pro file. Someone actually pointed that out to them in the comments, but they haven’t printed a correction.

Here’s a sample comment from the post showing how the global warmists respond:

Apparently similar code appears in another snippet the results of which weren’t commented out, but still, it doesn’t matter.

Well, it certainly doesn’t matter to the mainstream media since they didn’t report the story for two weeks.

Other comments in the source code explain that data is omitted

You should also know about comments in the source code like this:

(Click for larger version)

When the missing data is added, the decline appears

Here’s the graph of temperatures with the full data set used.

There’s the decline they’re trying to hide in red.

Re-considering the hockey stick graph

Take a look at this post from JoNova which re-caps the work of Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre.

Michael Mann’s hockey-stick graph needed to be corrected:

Jo writes:

In 1995 everyone agreed the world was warmer in medieval times, but CO2 was low then and that didn’t fit with climate models. In 1998, suddenly Michael Mann ignored the other studies and produced a graph that scared the world — tree rings show the “1990’s was the hottest decade for a thousand years”. Now temperatures exactly “fit” the rise in carbon! The IPCC used the graph all over their 2001 report. Government departments copied it. The media told everyone.

But Steven McIntyre was suspicious. He wanted to verify it, yet Mann repeatedly refused to provide his data or methods — normally a basic requirement of any scientific paper. It took legal action to get the information that should have been freely available. Within days McIntyre showed that the statistics were so flawed that you could feed in random data, and still make the same hockey stick shape nine times out of ten. Mann had left out some tree rings he said he’d included.

[...]Astonishingly, Nature refused to publish the correction. It was published elsewhere, and backed up by the Wegman Report, an independent committee of statistical experts.

And Keith Briffa’s hockey-stick graph that used cherry-picked data also needed to be corrected:

Jo writes:

In 2009 McIntyre did it again with Briffa’s Hockey Stick. After asking and waiting three years for the data, it took just three days to expose it too as baseless. For nine years Briffa had concealed that he only had 12 trees in the sample from 1990 onwards, and that one freakish tree virtually transformed the graph. When McIntyre graphed another 34 trees from the same region of Russia, there was no Hockey Stick.

The sharp upward swing of the graph was due to one single tree in Yamal.

Skeptical scientists have literally hundreds of samples. Unskeptical scientists have one tree in Yamal, and a few flawed bristlecones…

The CRU e-mails also reveal that CRU “scientists” sought to marginalize and persecute (Expelled?) individuals and scientific journals that disagreed with them. Is that science? Hiding your data and methods, and threatening people who disagree with you. Is that science?

So what does the graph of temperatures really look like?

Here’s what global temperatures have really done over time:

Does this graph show that global warming is man made? Do medieval knights drive around in SUVs too much? Well, if you are getting billions of dollars of taxpayer funding, then maybe they do. Maybe the data that shows that knights don’t drive SUVs is wrong. Maybe the data needs to be adjusted to show that knights DO drive SUVs. Maybe the sample needs to be tailored to prove that global warming is man-made.

Consider Melanie Phillips writing in the UK Spectator.

Melanie cites this e-mail about the Medieval Warming Period from Phil Jones, the director of the now disgraced Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.The Medieval Warming Period is a period during the Middle Ages when the Earth’s temperature was higher than it is today.

Phil Jones writes:

Bottom line – their is no way the MWP (whenever it was) was as warm globally as the last 20 years. There is also no way a whole decade in the LIA period was more than 1 deg C on a global basis cooler than the 1961-90 mean. This is all gut feeling, no science, but years of experience of dealing with global scales and varaibility.

This is the director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. This lab forms the backbone of the the case for global warming alarmism. Is this science? Is this how a scientist is supposed to treat the data?

Follow the money

Billions of dollars in funding are at stake.

Excerpt:

Consider the case of Phil Jones, the director of the CRU and the man at the heart of climategate. According to one of the documents hacked from his center, between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he’d been awarded in the 1990s.

Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums. And who better to ring it than people like Mr. Jones, one of its likeliest beneficiaries?

Thus, the European Commission’s most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that’s not counting funds from the EU’s member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA’s climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA’s, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls “green stimulus”—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

Supply, as we know, creates its own demand. So for every additional billion in government-funded grants (or the tens of millions supplied by foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts), universities, research institutes, advocacy groups and their various spin-offs and dependents have emerged from the woodwork to receive them.

Popularizers like Al Gore would also benefit if the majority of non-scientists can be convinced that there is global warming, that global warming is man-made, and that government control of individuals and corporations is needed to fix the problem.

Here’s a simple explanation of how it works:

And the media covers up for them – they are lazy, ignorant of science, and they are overwhelmingly biased in favor of socialism.

Problems in the United States and New Zealand

Note: Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is suing NASA in order to get them to release their data. And in New Zealand, climate “researchers” have been caught modifying the raw data to show global warming that isn’t there. Take a look at this UK Telegraph article that tells the story so far.

Related posts

• Climate Research Unit servers hacked, e-mails made public
• Comparison of hockey stick graph data to a larger data set in the same area
• Government-funded research unit destroyed original climate data
• The state of the debate about catastrophic man-made global warming
• Peer-reviewed article in journal Science says solar activity impacts climate
• Famous UN IPCC hockey stick graph is based on cherry-picked data
• Princeton physics professor testifies to Senate about global warming
• Global warming advocates refuse to give their data to skeptics
• Peer-reviewed article in journal Science says prior ice melting caused by solar variation
• Oceans are not warming now
• Polar ice caps are not melting now
• Polar bear populations are not decreasing now
• Global warming is not caused by humans

In the first three parts of this essay, I discussed the nature of social organization in Paleolithic hunter-gatherer groups and how environmental changes and the increase in group size affected social structure and governance in the Neolithic Age and beyond.    As social groups increased in size, social regulation changed from egalitarian, participatory ”governance,” which kept the power of leaders in check, to situations in which ”leveling down mechanisms” could no longer prevent power from being concentrated in the hands of an elite leader or leaders.

In modern times, as Shultziner points out:

Democratic mass elections are modern forms of a leveling-down mechanism by which unsatisfied rank and file can replace their leaders. Elections also reflect a social mechanism of reaching a consensus similar to the ones in foraging bands. And, elections are an acknowledgment in the importance of legitimacy. Almost all regimes in the world today employ elections or referendums in order to exhibit popular consent to their rule. Authoritarian and non-liberal regimes are no exception. Iran, for instance, is far from being a liberal democracy for ultimate political power is vested with an unelected religious clique; yet, elections are being held in Iran and real competition between parties and ideas exists. Interestingly, 120 out of 192 countries held democratic elections in 2000. This implies that the heritage of ancient egalitarianism is very strong and it shapes social practices and institutions not in liberal democracies alone.

Thus, we may legitimately ask: If egalitarianism has been bred into humankind, then what is the future of “participatory democracy?” What form will it take as the 21st century proceeds at literally breakneck speed to a political destiny only dimly perceived?  The exponential development of technology, with its potential for connecting every member of the human race, is arguably the key factor that will determine the future of governance in a global society.  We may ask with some degree of trepidation:  Will democracy devolve into a “One World Government” run by a small oligarchy?  Or will it evolve into a new synergistic form of governance, quite unlike the old, grammar school type of majority-rule democracy, i.e., a “World Governance” that is not under the control of a few, but operates within a nexus of a multiplicity of interdependent groups or organizations all linked for a common purpose.  To decide between these alternative scenarios, we need first to examine the difference between “government” and “governance.”  Then, perhaps, we can see more clearly in what direction the planetary society appears to be hurtling.

The Difference Between Government and Governance

 I shall use the term, “governance” essentially in the sense described by Elizabeth Meehan in a paper (2003) entitled, “From Government to Governance, Civic Participation and ‘New Politics’: The Context of Potential Opportunities for the Better Representation of Women.”  Meehan, an Irish writer from Belfast,  asks rhetorically, “What is governance?”  and, then, and attempts to answer this question.

The notion is hard to pin down, but it does seem accepted that a number of forces have converged so as to change the nature of what it means to govern: forces such as globalization…Europeanization…pressures on the traditional welfare state, and new political cultures in which traditional methods of delivering the services of the welfare state are no longer regarded as ‘empowering’. It is also accepted that there is a discernible difference between government and governance. This is not to say that governance is displacing government; merely that the two forms of activity coexist [Emphasis added].

Analysts of governance focus on a range of new arrangements and practices. These include the fragmentation or sharing of public power amongst different tiers of regulation such as the European Union (EU), state governments and sub-state governments. Secondly, they point to other arrangements encouraging policies to be formulated and implemented away from the centre; the ‘hollowing out’ of the state through the ‘agentization’ of government and the privatization of the provision of utilities and services [citation in original]. Thirdly, analysts note an increasing reliance on partnerships, networks and novel forms of consultation or dialogue that are at the heart of ‘Third Way’ thinking about policy design and delivery.

Governance is usually defined by contrasting it with what is thought of as the traditional pattern of public power in which authority is centralized and exercised hierarchically [or, pyramidally (Editor)]–often called the ‘command and control’ model [Emphasis added].  Here, Prime Ministers dominate other ministers, ministers dominate civil servants, and central government dominates local government [citation in original].

Conversely, analysts of governance [see]…power as dispersed and relational and argue that governance arises from a lack of capacity on the part of governments, acting alone, to effect desired changes. Instead, public power manifests itself through increasingly blurred boundaries between different tiers of government, the public and private, and between the state and civil society….[According to this view] it cannot now be taken for granted that the loci of effective political power are national governments.  Instead, ‘effective power is shared, bartered and struggled over by diverse forces and agencies at national, regional and global levels’. It is being ‘repositioned’ and, to some extent, ‘transformed by the growing importance of other less territorially based power systems’.

Meehan goes on to make a very important point.

…it should be noted that one classical view of civil society is that it is epitomized by self-organizing networks that are independent of government–sometimes even a countervailing force (McLaverty, 2002: 304). Other analysts of civil society see it and the state as interactive, with disputed implications for democracy [Emphasis added].

Thus, according to Meehan, the idea of “governing” changes from…

…acting through vertical chains of command and accountability in a hierarchy of institutions to becom[ing] a facilitator or regulator of what goes on in [society]… in order to try to solve problems [Emphasis added]. Governance means ‘collective problem solving in the public realm’ [citations in original].

In my view, the distinction between “government” and “governance” boils down to the fact that “government” typically is used to refer to a “State,” i.e., a “what.”  In contrast, “governance” refers to a process of social organization and control, i.e., a “how.”  Thus, it should be rather obvious that one can have governance in a social group without the necessity for there being a State (government).  Thus “governance” refers to a general process, whereas “government” refers to the implementation of a specific kind of process by a State.  In this sense, to govern, then, is to organize and control social activities, be they within the jurisdiction of a State or within the purview of a company or other non-governmental organization.

Meehan cites several authors in explicating how the terms “governance” and “government” differ.   To make her points clear in the context of the foregoing definitions which I offered, I shall refer to the specific process of a State as “governing” and the process of non-state organizations as “governance.” 

What, then, characterizes the role of the State in governing?  The State is construed to be the ultimate “Authority” within a geographical region.  Stefan Molyneux defines a government (State) as “a group of individuals within a geographical area who retain the monopolistic, moral and legal right to initiate force.”  Alternatively, what characterizes the role of non-State organizations in governance?  Non-governmental organizations tend more likely than not to be concerned with activation, regulation, or facilitation of social activities.

With regard to dominant mode of functioning, “governing” is characterized by the pursuit of a common, state-defined, ”national interest.”  In contrast, “governance” is concerned with coordinating and harmonizing the varied interests of group members.

What are the primary patterns of interaction under the governing mode and the governance mode?  The former is characterized by a “command and control,” and in most States today, it is based on majority rule.  The latter depends on multilateral negotiations to develop policies.

 Individuality and its Relationship to the Whole

We may justifiably ask: If egalitarianism is wired-in at birth as a result of evolutionary processes operating over millions of years, why then did we as a species develop into societies that so frequently have gone to war and have been governed by strong, dominant leaders who often dictate policy for members of their social or national groups?  I suggest that an answer may lie in the apparent parallelism between the development of the psychological organization of the individual  (individuation) and the development of the social organization of groups of individuals.  In addition to egalitarian tendencies within groups, there appears to be a strong evolutionary push toward individuality that competes with the purposes of social groups.

The human newborn is, ostensibly, without any sense of individuality.  For quite a long time after birth, the infant remains connected with the mother by “a psychological umbilical cord,” immersed in what psychologists call “psychological symbiosis.” Erich Fromm has written brilliantly about the individuation process that occurs as the child eventually begins to sense, as her brain develops, that she is separate from her mother.  This is a world shaking realization, which we see routinely manifested in what has come to be known as the “terrible twos” when the child says, “No” to everything.  She has learned that this little word has enormous power in manipulating her world.  She can get all kinds of interesting reactions from adults around her when she voices her “No.”  

However, as Fromm astutely observes, this burgeoning sense of separateness can also be very terrifying to some children and there is a desire to return to that symbiotic oneness with the mother.  Fromm says there is an urge to “Escape from Freedom,” which is the title of his marvelous and most famous book written in 1941.  The child can pursue a number of avenues or “mechanisms of escape,” including automaton conformity and sado-masochism.  Both of these two mechanisms can lead to the development of a tendency to submit to the dictates of an authoritarian leader. 

However, I would suggest that separateness and individuality are only frightening because Fromm is talking about a child growing up in a society in which the extended family of early humankind has almost disappeared in favor of the modern, nuclear family with all of its inherent social isolation and lack of support. 

It would seem that a child born into an early, egalitarian, hunter-gatherer group of 25 members, or so, probably did not go through such individuation, that is to say, if Julian Jaynes is correct.  Jaynes argues that the capacity for individual self consciousness did not exist at that time.   Individuality was, ostensibly, unnecessary, in fact, it was counterproductive to the group purpose of insuring survival.  Yet, as we observe the development of early humankind, we see an inexorable march toward individuality and all of the resulting conflicts between strong individuals competing for dominance. 

We see the same development in societies as we do in individuals.  The individual starts out submerged in a larger whole, then develops individuality, and if he reconnects with the larger whole in a positive way instead of escaping from his freedom, then individuality becomes integrated as part of the larger whole of society.  Likewise, groups started out with all members participating in the social order with more or less equal access.  Later, with the development of strong leadership in tribes and then nation states, the individual escaped from the freedom of individuality into submission to authority.  Now, in the 21st century, we are seeing a process developing on a global scale which appears to be quite similar to the positive reconnection of the individual with the larger whole of his society.  All over the world, we see groups of people attempting to integrate themselves within a global whole.  Some fear this as a potential return to the autocratic horrors of the past.  Others see an entire new and promising vista.  How we resolve the pessimistic and the optimistic views will be crucial in determining the future.  But, it appears to me that Life is impelling us in the direction of a new cooperativeness and interconnection, not to a development of the mega-authoritarianism of Orwell’s “Big Brother.”  However, the question remains whether the evolution of humankind will get shunted off the main path into an evolutionary cul-de-sac.

There is another perspective to consider which may shed some light on the development of individuality and its exaggerated perversion in the 20th century domination of the masses that occurred on a grander scale than in all of recorded history.  This different slant is to be found in the role of the human need for “recognition” as discussed by Shultziner. 

A Human Need for Recognition?

Shultziner points out that it is import to look beyond exogenous (environmental) factors in order to understand how democratic forms of government came into being.  He calls attention to the endogenous (psychobiological) factors which are involved in the development of democratic governance.

Transitions to democracy, modern and ancient, are not a result of environmental factors alone. A change in environmental conditions would not lead to the replacement of regimes, and leveling-down mechanisms would not lead to more egalitarian social structures, if human beings were not predisposed to react to environments in certain ways.

He goes on to say:

It is clear, then, that we must examine human nature (or endogenous factors) to seek a candidate for a psychological adaptive predisposition which can illuminate the generic historical course toward democracy. Democracies did not “just happen” in different places and at different times; something brought them into being. To my understanding, the proximate underlying factor which gives history its generic (sic) course is the psychological predisposition of the pursuit of recognition [Emphasis added].

Is there a human need for recognition that is just as strongly wired-in at birth as the egalitarian tendency that characterizes groups?  If so, then this would seem to be a outgrowth of the tendency toward individuation and a convenient measure of the tendency toward self assertion.  What do social psychological and genetic research have to say on this issue?

Democracy and the Striving for Recognition

To provide a foundation for his theory of the development of democracy, Shultziner links the striving for “recognition” to the social psychological research on self esteem.

Pursuit of positive self-esteem is a psychological motivation to achieve, maintain or defend one’s positive evaluation of oneself, a motivation not to lose a sense of positive self-worth. The motivation to achieve positive self-esteem is crystallized through acts that are meant to attain and maintain recognition from others. This main characteristic of the self-esteem phenomenon can be referred to as a search, a quest, or a pursuit of recognition [Emphasis added]….The level of self-esteem is defined by the contingencies [rewarding events] one subjectively deems as important to one’s life and not by objective criteria [citations in original].  In that sense, contingencies of self-esteem are not constant: they can, and usually do, change or alternate in their importance in the course of one’s life.

Some people’s contingencies [rewarding events]  for positive self-esteem are in individualistic terms such as successes in academic competence, athletics, physical appearance, god’s love, power and self-reliance [citation in original]; others’ self-esteem may depend on political and communitarian aspects such as adhering to community values for reasons of social acceptance, fulfilling and promulgating personal moral convictions, or pursuing public apology for recognition in perceived historical wrongs. People’s contingencies of self-esteem [rewarding events]  may vary but the psychological phenomenon itself is universal [citation in original]. The implications of these characteristics of self-esteem to politics are significant. People may define the way their regime treats them as a contingency[rewarding event]  of self-esteem. People may admire their royalties, kingships or religious sages (as people still do in many parts of the world) and regard their existence as important to their positive self-esteem; or, people may come to perceive certain regimes as despotic and detrimental to their positive self-esteem like they have in the past. Despotic regimes, however, cannot easily convince their populace that they are not despotic. And, once a regime is perceived as despotic (regardless of how enlightened it intends to be) it will be regarded as an obstacle to one’s positive self-esteem or even as an outright humiliation to one’s worth and dignity. This psychological predisposition to regain and defend positive self-esteem will motivate people to limit or dethrone the despotic regime by employing leveling-down mechanisms such as protests, elections or violent revolutions [citation in original].

Regimes around the world, democratic and non-democratic, are aware of the salience of being perceived as recognizing and respecting their citizens, and hence most regimes make an effort to be seen as speaking in the ‘name of the people’, as elected by the people, or at least as not disrespecting the worth and dignity of their populace. Citizens, on the other hand, can be quite sensitive to the way their regime treats them or to the policies their regime implements. Certain policies may be seen as lacking recognition or as misrecognizing people’s worth.

Shultziner proceeds to “present evidence to support the claim that the pursuit of recognition is a universal and central characteristic of human nature” and that “that perceptions of recognition or non-recognition shape politics.”

Self-esteem and pursuit of recognition are the most studied phenomena in social psychology. Although disagreements among contemporary theorists who specialize in the self-esteem phenomenon exist, one agreed fact does seem salient: almost all scholars agree that the pursuit of recognition is a pervasive characteristic of human behavior. Even those who content [sic - contest] the idea that pursuit of positive self-esteem is a psychological need and those who object that the pursuit of recognition is positive and healthy admit that in actual fact people do constantly pursue positive self-esteem in various ways, to various degrees and in healthy and unhealthy ways [citations in original].  Moreover, there is an agreement among social psychologists that positive self-esteem is a useful buffer against anxiety and that it brings about many other psychological benefits to the individual, and that the pursuit of recognition is a concept with useful explanatory power [citations in original].

What is undecided among students of self-esteem, though, is not if people pursue recognition, but rather why people do and whether the pursuit of positive self esteem is a universal human need, and whether it is a healthy pursuit or not [citation in original].

Shultziner goes on to say, regarding the human pursuit of recognition:

The universality of this phenomenon and its unique manifestations in different cultures have already been documented in a number of studies [citations in original].  Peculiarly then, social psychologists debate the theoretical origins of this phenomenon and not whether the pursuit of recognition is empirically a central behavioral characteristic of human beings.

In Part V of this essay, I shall discuss Shultziner’s review of evidence from genetic research and self-esteem and how these data illuminate “the innateness of the pursuit of recognition in an even more decisive way.”  Then, in the final installment (Part VI), I shall sum up the argument for an evolutionary perspective of the development of modern forms of democracy, including representative democracy as institutionalized in the U.S. Constitution.

Si è tenuto a Trevi e Foligno il 3,4 e 5 Novembre l’evento preparatorio al meeting della prossimo COnsensus Conference GCLA del Nov 2010 (Salsomaggiore terme). Il tema focalizza l’attenzione sulla fase riabilitativa acuta della persona con grave cerebrolesioni acquisita. Questa fase focalizza la presa in carico precoce nei reparti per acuti e nei reparti ospedalieri di riabilitazione intensiva che ricoverano pazienti ancora non stabilizzati clinicamente.