New Model Democracy

2008 - and still the dominant issue is Energy and how to get it. One of the reasons this debate drags on is due to the ignorance (or mendacity) of the people promoting Green technology. This is because the physics behind the principles of Work and Energy is disguised or misrepresented for political reasons. A basic understanding of the relationship between work and energy would certainly help the general public to make their own judgement concerning the use of fossil fuels and the politics behind the control of energy sources.

The first step in understanding Energy is that Heat is the elemental form of energy so all energy can be expressed in terms of Heat. Heat energy which we most easily understand is the heat we can feel through our sense of touch. Being warm-blooded creatures, anything which gives off heat energy more than we do, feels warm or hot to our touch and anything less than our body temperature, feels cool or cold. In reality, we should be called hot-bloodied creatures because our body temperature is actually very hot compared to most other things on this Earth. If a fence-post or a door handle was our temperature at nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, we would snatch our hand away thinking it was on fire. Energy in this form, being elemental, is Entopic, that is to say, unavailable for useful work. Heat dissipated in this way is very wasteful but this is the downside of mammals having a high work rate compared to reptiles. This means most of a mammals energy is used in keeping its temperature at a very high level.

This should help us realise that most of the World's energy is simply used, one way or another, to keep ourselves warm. Maybe this is why the epoch of the Dinosaur lasted so long - there was very little wasted energy.

The most significant thing about this phenomena is that we tend to overlook just how much energy exists when heat isn't dissapated but instead, converted into useful work.

But how is heat made to work? Until comparatively recently, no one knew. If mankind has been on this Earth for a million years, we didn't discover how to convert heat into work for over 998,000 years.

When it was discovered, the power released by harnessing heat energy was found to be absolutely incredible. The men and the countries who discovered this technology, (Watt and Co) eventually became all- conquering demi-Gods. The discovery was of the same magnitude as splitting the atom. It gave those who had it, immense power.

It must be remembered that before the discovery of what is now known generically as the 'Heat Engine' the only supplement to Man's work output was the horse or ox. It was generally recognised that one big horse, like the Clydesdale or Shire horse, could do the pulling work of twenty men over a sustained period. Without the horse or ox, it took a lot of people to achieve quite simple tasks.

If the men had a horse, it would do twice the work these guys are doing.

It is incredible to realise, therefore, just what a Heat Engine actually achieves. For instance, a small 100 horsepower car engine, the type of engine which bowls you along the Motorway at seventy-miles-an-hour, is producing the same sustained work as 100 horses or 2000 men. This extraordinary feat is made even more remarkable once it is realised just what has produced this amount of power. A mere three gallons of oil or petrol holds enough stored energy, when burnt, to put the equivalent of 2000 men for an hour on that same field shown above. Judging by the size of the field, more than enough to finish the job. In a modern context, paying 2000 men $5 each for an hour's work to dig that field, would cost $10,000 whereas harnessing the stored heat energy in fossil fuel, would only cost $7 for three gallons.

With this in mind, it should not be too difficult to see that by turning fossil fuel into useful work is a fair exchange. The soot and smoke is a very small price to pay for producing such an enormous amount of work. The same can't be said for using fossil fuel just for warmth.

To illustrate the discrepancy between useful work produced from the burning of fossil fuels and the unrecoverable energy lost when the same fuel is used to produce energy for heating. Take an average house using a central heating boiler with an output of 90,000 btu. To produce the same sort of heat with electricity generated by a simple treadmill would require a treadmill capable of accommodating 700 men.

The worst aspect of using fossil fuel for heating is that being entropic, the need for heat is continuous. When heat is turned into work, the work stays done and does not need repeating, (a field stays ploughed) but energy created just to keep us warm requires costant topping up.

The point of this dissertation is to make it clear that it is not the Heat Engine in its various forms which is causing the rise in fuel prices or the ice caps on Mars to melt but the burning of fossil fuels to keep us warm. Where politics plays its dirty part in all this is the way it deceives the public into accepting that Heat Engine fuel, ie, automotive fuel, is the cause of the energy problem not heating fuel because Governments the World over can more readily levy tax on road vehicles than on heating fuel. The fact is, the rise in oil prices would stop dead if the Government promoted the use of vegetable oil or renewable carbon fuels for central heating systems. Remember, any old bio-fuel will do for heating purposes. They won’t, of course, because VAT on fuel ensures that rising oil prices means rising tax revenue from VAT.

Millions of people all around the world are now asking for the conclusion to the Part One Blog regarding the Smoking Ban. Just to re-cap on the argument then:

Several major Governments around the world have banned smoking in public places. They have done so on the advice of experts and not on the experience of the General Public. In other words, the General Public were not in any way responsible for, or the driving force behind, this legislation.

In a nut-shell, New Model Democracy (NMD) maintains that, when governments acts unilaterally without support from the majority of the citizenry, they act unwisely and to the disadvantage of society as a whole. Although a public smoking ban is not widely favoured by the majority of people in this country, proponents of the Ban cannot see how a ban could possibly be anything but beneficial to the public at large.

It was stated in the previous NMD entry that smoking, from the very beginning, was regarded as a beneficial herbal remedy for a series of human conditions, in particular, anxiety and dementia. The same herb, as claimed by the ‘Red Indian’ who introduced the world to tobacco smoking, also helped relaxation and mental concentration. It is remarkable that over the last 400 years, the reason why people smoke has remained exactly the same, namely, to overcome anxiety, to relax and tohelp concentration. It has never ever bee n regarded or used as a narcotic.

The main NMD argument as to why the ‘experts’ must be wrong about the harmful effects of smoking is that the point in human history characterised by the heaviest tobacco smoking by the largest majority of people over the longest time, also coincides exactly with the same people now having the healthiest and longest lives in history. This contradiction cannot be explained away by improved medical facilities because the smokers over the past 100 years are the ones experiencing a HEALTHY old age without medical intervention.

So is it possible that a prohibition which leads to a sharp decline in smoking could lead to a decline in the health of the nation? Yes, it is. A decline in the custom of smoking will inevitably lead to a decline in the health of the nation. Why? Because tobacco smoking, for the most part, delays the onset of the World’s most widespread, destructive and costly disease, namely Alzheimer’s disease.

Although you may chose to ignore as ‘pure coincidence’ the great longevity of people today and the birth of widespread heavy smoking 80 years ago, it’s not so easy to ignore the ‘coincidence’ of the sudden decline of smoking and the sudden increase in Alzheimer’s disease in exactly the same proportion and exactly the same period. It can’t be coincidence that the lowest incidence of Alzheimer’s in the US in amongst the Native American – the very people who introduced the bloody idea of smoking tobacco in the first place. It also can’t be coincidence that the peoples who still smoke quite heavily, namely India and China, have a far lower incidence of Alzheimer’s than elsewhere in the West.

There is a final twist to this story; the greatest threat to the health of the nation isn’t smoking – it’s obesity. Because the Smoking Ban is so contrary to true democracy, not only will it produce it’s own consequences regarding Alzheimer’s but will help to accelerate the instance of obesity, There are millions of very old people throughout the world who smoke, many of them over a hundred years old but of all the billions of people on Earth, there is not one obese centenarian and possibly not one person who is even over 80. Smoking tempers the lust for eating and on this fact alone, should be encouraged.

By banning smoking in public places, Western Governments hope to improve Public Health. This means they believe that Tobacco smoke lingering in the air is lethal.  This is very weird.  Tobacco smoke is not lethal.  No-one has ever died through inhaling tobacco smoke.  Tobacco is not a proscribed substance.  Nor is its possession  illegal.  Reputable High-street shops buy and sell it and all over the world, hundreds of millions of normal people smoke tobacco as a matter of course.  

And yet several national Governments have enforced a ban on smoking based on  the firm conviction that tobacco smoke in the air is lethal to living tissue.   They actually tell the General Public that smoking kills; that it is deadly; that it leads to a slow and painful death….  Is this not extraordinary? 

Cyanide is lethal and if it was in the air we breath, we would die.  We also know it’s a deadly a poison and tightly control its possession all over the world. This because it’s incredibly dangerous.  You can’t buy it from shops and if you need it to kill vermin,  you have to get a special licence and be of good character and live miles away from the nearest habitation.  Because it is so dangerous and because it can kill animals so quickly, Cyanide tins have written on them, “WARNING! POTASSIUM CYANIDE KILLS!”    We know all this even though no-one ever taught us this at school.  People know about Cyanide quite instinctively.  That’s how true democracy works.   So what are we to make of politicians who put tobacco in the same class as Potassium Cyanide?  Why do they put the same health and safety warnings on a tin of tobacco as they do on a tin of Cyanide?  Why do they lie to us like this?  The answer should be obvious.

People in responsible positions lie when they don’t understand  what they are doing.  They overstate the difficulties; they make up stories; they blather; they blame other people; they invent excuses and some even cheat and steal to conceal their incompetence. We have all seen it in action when watching ‘The Apprentice’.  Stupid and incompetent people always resort to shifting the blame, exaggeration and lying when they are confronted with their own shortcomings. 

Politicians, generally speaking, are stupid and incompetent so they too, exaggerate and blame the public to cover up their own inadequacies.  Of course smoking isn’t lethal.  It may be an irritation to some people; it always has been, but for 400 years the general public knew it wasn’t a threat to public health and since the general public has enjoyed smoking tobacco for hundreds of years, you can be certain that they were right.  Remember the ‘Ox in the Marketplace’….   

The ban on smoking will fail because the conclusions our present Government reached concerning smoking, ignored the collective experience of the great mass of the people.  The consequence of acting in this way is never neutral and therefore the eventual outcome will be bad.  Under a false democracy, Governments assume the public know nothing and think nothing. As a result, government ministers never bother to consider the Common Sense imbedded in a free society or that most people can’t be wrong most of the time. 

Tobacco is a herb and was smoked by the Native Americans for reasons other than hallucinatory or narcotic pleasures.  The American ‘Indian’ had free access to all sorts of narcotic drugs so why did they hit on smoking tobacco in such a big way?   Well, we can only go by what they told us when Europeans first colonised the New World. They told us it was medicinal.   Medicinal?  What the hell was medicinal about smoking tobacco?  Can anyone guess?  

No guess-work needed.  The Native American said smoking tobacco gave them wisdom and prevented the evils of early senility.  In other words, it was a herbal cure to help concentration and prevent memory loss.  Strangely enough, that’s exactly what the White settler found it useful for as well. Even more strange, once introduced to the rest of the world, everyone else found tobacco useful for the same reasons. After hundreds of years, the hundreds of millions of people who, by then, smoked tobacco, also said it helped them relax and concentrate.  So the evil Red Indian wasn't lying.   However, to support the belief that a free society never acts against its own interests, we must find clear evidence to prove that neither the Native American nor the general public in the rest of the World were wrong in believing smoking to be benign.  Here it is:

The first massive increase in cigarette smoking occurred during the First World.  When the war ended, huge numbers of men and women alike, began smoking, so that by the beginning of the Second War just about everyone smoked.  Not only did the great majority of ordinary citizens smoke but they smoked quite heavily and without restraint.  Cigarettes were cheap and were even given out free to the millions of men and women serving in the armed forces.  Never in the history of the World have so many smoked so much for so long. 

                        
In order to recognise  the implications of this phenomenon, imagine the 50-year period between 1914 and 1964, where every packet of cigarettes carried the motto, “Smoking Kills” or “Smoking shortens your life and the life of those around you” .  It's important to imagine this because if you can,  you are left with a most intreging conundrum.  How could this world-wide generation of heavy smokers be the same people who are now living longer than at any time in history?  Yes, the old people of today are more healthy than ever before.  Nor does this healthy old age owe anything to medical intervention or better hospital treatment because these old crones are still HEALTHY and don’t rely on medical intervention. 

Yet we are told that smoking seriously damages our health and shortens our lives.  If this were true, then the millions and millions of people who smoked heavily during that 50 year period, should be dead now or at least seriously ill.  They're not,  and whatever the explanation, had those imaginary health warnings really been stamped on cigarette packets all those years ago, we would have to accept the warnings were completely wrong.
   

Unless someone can come up with a good reason why the billions of heavy smokers from the past are still alive and well,  we have to assume today’s anti-smoking health warnings are also complete gibberish. 

Its a tricky question. Are we going to live less long and have a less healthy old age? Yes, we're not.

Even with the knowledge that Governments the world over always mess things up when it comes to issues of Public Health, it is difficult to see what could go wrong, following the recent, permanent ban on smoking in public buildings all over the UK. Besides the issues of freedom and political power, most people would say they hadn't a clue as to the outcome of this ban. Here is a perfect example of why a false democracy eventually fails as a system of government.

How many cigarettes does that bastard smoke?

The ban was implemented following a belief by a whole raft of government advisors, experts and media people, that banning the public from smoking in enclosed public spaces, would improve public health. Under a false democracy, this is all a Government needs to exercise its power and legislate. In short, this was a ban brought about by a social minority namely, politicians acting unilaterally under the guidance of experts who themselves, are usually wrong. The point to note, is that the ban would not have been implemented had it been left to the ordinary citizen to approach the Government to take action.

A very definite conclusion can be reached from this observation: When Governments act more or less unilaterally without a prior need to satisfy public clamour, they act wrongly and their actions always turn out badly. Historically, there are no exceptions to this rule. Conversely, when a Government acts in unison with its citizenry, it never acts wrongly nor does badly.

With this in mind, what can we expect as a result of this Government unilaterally banning smoking? The answer must be; problems. And not the usual problems of law enforcement and public-order but big problems concerning health. It is the nature of the beast; governments which act unilaterally always cause more problems that they solve. In this instance it may be difficult to see how this ban could turn out badly but it must.

Why isn't this man dead?

It must, because the people who instigated the smoking ban were not motivated by good-will towards the general public and so never considered the general public. They just followed the advice of the same people who told them that Cannabis should be down-graded from a Class B drug to a Class C drug and told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The General Public never supported either of these two stupid mistakes.

For its part, the General Public had already expressed its view of Tobacco smoking by simply smoking Tobacco for the last 400 years without kicking up a fuss. If there was a problem then the millions of people over hundreds of years would have done something about. They didn’t; and that should tell any sensible person in Government to be a little circumspect about rushing into banning tobacco smoking.

Smoking healthily for 300 years

The next article will present irrefutable evidence that the banning of tobacco smoking will harm the nations health.

It should be remembered that the English Middle-Class created the biggest empire the world has ever seen. This was not achieved with kindness and sympathy. It was achieved with ruthless disinterest, that is to say, without any self-doubt or pity. It is just not possible to conquer and subjugate nearly a third of the world's population with compassion and humanity. Like all great conquering nations, victory is achieved through an implacable sense of righteousness which brooks no sentimentality, squeamishness or natural justice.

To be a great colonial power, a nation has to be indifferent to death and destruction, pain and injustice, both for themselves and of the vanquished. The British were particularly good at this because they cared not a jot for the suffering they encountered as a result of their adventures, particularly if it involved large numbers of their own people. Above all however, the unique driving force behind this amazing predatory instinct was not booty and riches; the baser motive for those lesser plundering nations, but the gaining of power for its own sake. Personal power was the pearl of greatest price. Altogether, this made the English ruling class, (by this time, the Middle-Class) absolutely custom made to become the World's greatest colonial power; belligerent, amoral, ruthless and completely blind to the freedoms of others.

The problem is, the English Middle-Class were never defeated. They are still here, alive and well. It must be remembered that genetically, this species was never displaced, overrun or diluted. The people who ransacked the coffers of foreign potentates or over-ran the humble dwellings of some hapless minor kingdom, are still alive and well. They are unchanged both genetically and materially. Their lust for personal power is undiminished and their indifference to natural law and justice is the same. The only change that has taken place is the balance of power. Whereas before their unwelcome gaze was focussed upon the backward nations of the world, seeing them as fair game, their attentions are now focussed on the weak and powerless peoples of their own country.

Of course they are no longer regarded as colonials, especially by themselves but they behave in much the same way. They no longer wear the steel breast-plate of yore or the Pith helmet of more recent times but they do occupy the same positions of power, politics, Union Leaders and most notably as moguls within the modern power-base, the media.

And still they carry with them their poisonous hatred of the innocent, the pious, the weak and the ordinary members of their society. To them, Higher education is a Feudal Right over the life and death of the proletariat and because his poor Subject may rebel against this injustice, they become devoured by a continuous and bestial rage against their tribe and if the consequence of this corrupt view is not actually fatal, it is not on account of any good intention on their part but merely because, in order to do Christian to death with artistry, a veneer of science is necessary. The use of one discipline rather than another is a matter of indifference to them; wisdom they neither feel nor cares to feel regarding it simply as a weapon for defending their position.

This is not a silly matter of class war but a war between the predator and its prey.

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg. A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new government report is set to redefine the current climate debate.

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007. Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” )

The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it's 'completely immoral' to doubt global warming fears )

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!" “Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,” Allegre explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L'EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution.” Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers” mocks "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.”

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.” A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his “Kyoto house”: “Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.” Wiskel now says “the truth has to start somewhere.” Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, “If this happened once and we were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions of years." Wiskel also said that global warming has gone "from a science to a religion” and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy. "If you funnel money into things that can't be changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed,” he said.

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only “incriminating circumstantial evidence.” "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist,” Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature." “Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant,” Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large effect on climate” so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.” Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. “I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don't add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views,” he wrote.

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote. “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet! But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote. “The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added. “Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded. (Evans bio link )

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. “I switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy “won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.”

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. “I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,” he added. “One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,” de Freitas concluded. de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.”

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said. “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” he added. “We cannot say what part of that warming was due to mankind's addition of ‘greenhouse gases’ until we consider the other possible factors, such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that the question of anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question -- too important to ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,” Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” “After that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,” with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise.’”

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote. “As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion “probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.” Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting sometime,” Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. “I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. “The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled “CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time.” “We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,” Jaworowski wrote. “For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by climatologists—and not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time,” Jaworowski wrote. “The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that emissions of industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a conceited anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of that time. The same fate awaits the present,” he added. Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the Earth’s climate. Jaworowski was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part: "It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases."

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,” Clark said in a 2005 documentary "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.” “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed my views on the Kyoto protocol,” Clark explained. “Actually, many other leading climate researchers also have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] Protocol,” he added.

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” Veizer wrote. “It was the results of my work on past records, on geological time scales, that led me to realize the discrepancies with empirical observations. Trying to understand the background issues of modeling led to realization of the assumptions and uncertainties involved,” Veizer explained. “The past record strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate driver,” he added. Veizer acknowledgez the Earth has been warming and he believes in the scientific value of climate modeling. “The major point where I diverge from the IPCC scenario is my belief that it underestimates the role of natural variability by proclaiming CO2 to be the only reasonable source of additional energy in the planetary balance. Such additional energy is needed to drive the climate. The point is that most of the temperature, in both nature and models, arises from the greenhouse of water vapor (model language ‘positive water vapor feedback’,) Veizer wrote. “Thus to get more temperature, more water vapor is needed. This is achieved by speeding up the water cycle by inputting more energy into the system,” he continued. “Note that it is not CO2 that is in the models but its presumed energy equivalent (model language ‘prescribed CO2’). Yet, the models (and climate) would generate a more or less similar outcome regardless where this additional energy is coming from. This is why the solar/cosmic connection is so strongly opposed, because it can influence the global energy budget which, in turn, diminishes the need for an energy input from the CO2 greenhouse,” he wrote.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus when he appeared before the American Congressional committee on energy and commerce.

This is part of what he said:

"The – so called – climate change and especially man-made climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world.

My ambition is not to bring additional arguments to the scientific climatological debate about this phenomenon. I am convinced, however, that up to now this scientific debate has not been deep and serious enough and has not provided sufficient basis for the policymakers’ reaction. What I am really concerned about is the way the environmental topics have been misused by certain political pressure groups to attack fundamental principles underlying free society. It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom.

As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism. This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning of the whole world.

The environmentalists consider their ideas and arguments to be an undisputable truth and use sophisticated methods of media manipulation and PR campaigns to exert pressure on policymakers to achieve their goals. Their argumentation is based on the spreading of fear and panic by declaring the future of the world to be under serious threat. In such an atmosphere they continue pushing policymakers to adopt illiberal measures, impose arbitrary limits, regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions on everyday human activities and make people subject to omnipotent bureaucratic decision-making. To use the words of Friedrich Hayek, they try to stop free, spontaneous human action and replace it by their own, very doubtful human design.

The environmentalist paradigm of thinking is absolutely static. They neglect the fact that both nature and human society are in a process of permanent change, that there is and has been no ideal state of the world as regards natural conditions, climate, distribution of species on earth, etc. They neglect the fact that the climate has been changing fundamentally throughout the existence of our planet and that there are proofs of substantial climate fluctuations even in known and documented history. Their reasoning is based on historically short and incomplete observations and data series which cannot justify the catastrophic conclusions they draw. They neglect the complexity of factors that determine the evolution of the climate and blame contemporary mankind and the whole industrial civilization for being the decisive factors responsible for climate change and other environmental risks.

By concentrating on the human contribution to the climate change the environmentalists ask for immediate political action based on limiting economic growth, consumption, or human behavior they consider hazardous. They do not believe in the future economic expansion of the society, they ignore the technological progress the future generations will enjoy, and they ignore the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society is, the higher is the quality of the environment.

The policymakers are pushed to follow this media-driven hysteria based on speculative and hard-evidence lacking theories, and to adopt enormously costly programs which would waste scarce resources in order to stop the probably unstoppable climate changes, caused not by human behavior but by various exogenous and endogenous natural processes (such as fluctuating solar activity).

Before the London Congestion Charge came into force, Londoners had to make a choice to vote on who would become Mayor of London. Ken Livingston won the majority of votes and so set about introducing the London Congestion Charge. The question is whether Londoners, as a whole, would have requested the introduction of the Congestion Charge without a new Mayor.

Since only a minority voted in the Mayoral election (about 30% of those eligible to vote) and of those, less than half voted for Livingston, it can be deduced that only about 15% of Londoners definitely wanted a Charge for driving around the centre of London. We will never know what the other 85% wanted but it is fairly certain that they wouldn't have voted in the Congestion Charge.

This is the problem with our modern false Democracy. It only acknowledges certainties; yes or no. A true democracy, on the other hand, would have to acknowledge the existence of the 'I don't knows' as a legitimate voting position.

When an individual says' I don't know' he doesn't mean, 'I don't care' he just means that he is not prepared to give his support to any of the propositions presented. Paradoxically, the Law common to us all in Great Briton, is that silence is assumed to be assent. Whereas remaining silent in a court of law is fairly deemed to be assent, it cannot be deemed to be assent in a ballot, the difference being, silence in a court of law is in a response to a question whereas in a ballot, it is in response to a choice.

In a court of law, silence in the face of a question such as, "Are you a Marxist" can be fairly interpreted as a 'Yes'. No such assumption can be made if the question was phrased. "Would you be a Marxist or Conservative?" In this instance, silence cannot be assumed to be a 'yes' since this interpretation would be contradictory.

With this in mind, it is fair to assume that since silence is assent to a direct question, it must be fair to assume that silence with regard to a choice, must be a negative since 'No' to a choice would not be contradictory.

This is where our modern false democracy has served us so badly. In most circumstances, political decisions are made on the assumption that silence on the part of the ordinary citizen is assent. Due to this massive defect, governments all over the world make lousy decisions on the basis that the silence of all those who choose not to vote for any the choices put before them, are in fact agreeing with the winning policy.

This is a travesty of a true democratic system. In reality, all non-votes should be regarded as a 'no' vote and as such, a refusal to mandate any of the choices presented.

It goes without saying, political Parties presenting candidates for election must also assume that a non-vote is a no vote. Mind you, that might result in no-one getting into Parliament at all.

"If the conference gets off the ground, much of the credit will belong to its prospective chairman, British Foreign Secretary David Owen, 38. Last week the neurologist-turned-diplomat returned to London from an eight-day fact-finding trip to Africa. He impressed both white and black leaders with his candor, youthful idealism and realistic understanding of the Rhodesian impasse. Rhodesian diplomats, who were angered by the cold aloofness of a team led in January by Britain's U.N. Ambassador, Ivor Richard, described Owen as "tough" and "refreshing." He is hopeful that the heads of the front-line states—Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia—can persuade Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe of the anti-Smith Patriotic Front to attend the new conference."

In 1977 there was a choice as to who should run what was then, Rhodesia. Unfortunately, the decisions were made by British and American Politicians. The consequence of those decisions are all too clear today. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and Dr David Owen Brokered a deal which put Mugabe in charge of the Country.

The point to learn about this piece of history is that Rhodesia was the only African colony which British Politicians were involved in forming the ex-colony's new government; lucky for them, the other ex-colonies sorted themselves out after we left. What out politicians gave the newly formed Zimbabwe was the worst administration in the history of Africa.

"Only fools rush in" takes on a new dimension with regards Zimbabwe. Only politicians from our own political administration could have got it so wrong. It must have taken real incompetence, ignorance and stupidity to have helped the Zimbabweans select the most wicked, violent, despotic mob of crackpots that has ruled an African nation in modern history.

Only a politician could manage this:

To this:

To this:

Too this:

To this:

The most important thing to remember, is that the incompetent fools who engineered the independence of Zimbabwe are the same people who continue to run our own country and most other democracies in the Western World. They don't know what they are doing and if it wasn't for the common sense of the general public in most Western Democracies, they would make the same sort of cock-ups here.

As the old axiom goes: "Fools never give up!"

Here is a question for all those who accept the authority of those who run our society: If you owned a large and successful private business, like Virgin Airlines for example, do you think that anyone in public office could to run it as well as or as profitably as the people who are already running it? Putting it more bluntly, can you think of any named individual in public office who would be a benefit to your successful company? I can't.

It is a strange and mysterious thing that in our society at present, only those who are the least competent to run a successful business, present themselves to the general public as being the only ones clever enough to run a whole country.

Throughout history, well before the concept of democracy had taken root, the fortunes of the country as a whole were entirely dependant on the competence and good-will of those in charge. A bad or useless ruler meant bad times for the general public. A good ruler meant, insofar as the limitations of science and technology would permit, good times for the general public.

Why then, in a period when the country as a whole is not subject to the vagaries of War Lords or hereditary potentates, should we still suffer the consequences of stupid and incompetent rulers? As stated before in this blog, a free society will always act in its own interests so the answer must be that our current form of democracy does not allow for government by consent or government by approval. What we have in fact, is government by the least able; much the same as we did before the dawn of democracy.

It is significant that in the distant past, before democratic rule, virtually all the social difficulties encountered by the ordinary citizen were as a result of forces that were beyond the ability of anyone, even the most learned, to control. Sickness and disease, pestilence and plagues, natural disasters, ignorance and illiteracy, food shortages and malnutrition and most of all, the shear hard work of life without harnessed mechanical power.

By contrast, all the social difficuties we endure today are as a result of forces created entirely by our own ruling elite. Apart from death itself, there are no examples of problems which are the result of things beyond our control, all our existing social problems being self inflicted. Thus we are forced to live under a paradox; a system of false democracy which simultaneously causes most of our problems and claims to solve them.

In reality, the administration which so often causes the major socio-political difficulties we, the general public have to endure, cannot possibly find a solution. They have not the competence to do it. There are so many examples of this damaging contradiction that it is impossible to decide where to begin. Education is probably the most easily identified. Dismantling the Secondary and Grammar School system was brought about entirely by government dictate. It was not a policy favoured by the majority of the public but the public had to endure the consequences of this blunder. Having caused a massive educational problem, our administrators insist that they alone have the expertise to solve it. They clearly don't.

Examples like this are common-place. The reorganization of the Health Service; our rail network, dismantled in the 60's now bitterly regretted; the tampering with pensions by government causing long-term financial difficulties; the crippling cost of housing caused by unrestrained and irresponsible human migration; the Third-world shortage of skilled labour caused by political neo-colonialism; the destitution of third-world farmers while our political masters tighten the food cartel created in Europe; the over-priced farmland caused by mis-conceived subsidies; the causing of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland; the gigantic losses following the Foot & Mouth outbreak; ill-conceived wars in the Middle East. The list goes on and on, yet the culprits causing all these problems just keep going, making more mistake as each day passes while all the while, assuring us that they are the only people who can solve these problems.

These not a Party political issues; all Parties make the same type of mistakes. They won't stop. Nothing will stop them because they have the power to override, dismiss and ignore the Will of the people. This is not democracy. Absolutely none of these problems would exist if the General public had had anything to do with it.

Is there a solution? Yes, in this technological age, there is.