Whatever Happened To Copenhagen?

Rex Murphy asks in the National Post:

Q. How is the recently concluded Copenhagen climate conference like the Medieval Warm Period?
A. They both may be seen to disappear when it serves a noble purpose.

... global warming is a very earnest, if not positively sullen topic, and to mine even an atom of a joke from all of the frenzied evangelism of self-appointed environmentalist groups, the grim coven that ran the now celebrated labs in East Anglia, or from our modern day catastrophist Savonarola, Al Gore, is too much even for the most deep-mining humourist.

How To Report The News

British comic Charlie Brooker of the BBC's Newswipe does a Pythonesque take on how to make a TV news report. I love the people in the street's opinions of "streeters".

CNN Experimenting With 360-Degree Interactive Video

CNN is experimenting with 360-degree videos that you can pan, tilt and zoom yourself in real time. It's eerily lifelike. Imagine Google Street View as videos instead of stills. The camera can be mounted on a vehicle or can be hand held. The technology is being developed by Immersive Media.

These videos are from CNN's coverage in Haiti. More here.

And Speaking Of Profits - Look At Ford!

In the New York Times:

The no-bailout-required and never-bankrupt Ford Motor Company has declared a profit of $2.7 billion in 2009 and said today that it now expected to be profitable in 2010 as well.

FORD used to mean Found On Road Dead; or Fix Or Repair Daily; or Fireball On Rear Denting. Then it was Federal Oversight Respectfully Declined. Now it's a Functionally Obama Resistant Device.

Historical GM

45 years ago today General Motors reported the biggest profit of any US company in history. And no wonder when they were putting out product like this.

The Cataclysmic Melting - Of The IPCC.

On of the lead authors of the IPCC global warming reports, Canadian climatologist Andrew Weaver, has quit the IPCC with parting advice about replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform.

In today's National Post, Terence Corcoran details Weaver's qualms and waxes satirical about the probable demise of the IPCC:

In the language typical of an IPCC report, one might say that the radiative forcing created by Climategate and Glaciergate strongly suggest this is very likely to bring about cataclysmic melting of the organization within the next portion of the current decadal period. The words "very likely" in IPCC risk assessment terms mean a 90% or greater probability that something will happen. As it looks now, the IPCC is burnt toast and unless it is overhauled fast there's a 90% probability the climate-change political machine is going to come crashing down.

But It's Not About Him!

Over at Breitbart.TV, someone has stitched together a video of Barack Obama referring to himself 132 times. In one speech:

"I've got a very short commute;" "I can't always visit people directly;" "I break out;" "I saw;" "I knew it would be unpopular;" "I ran for this office;" "I had no illusions;" "I had a whole bunch of political advisors"...

And still he is using the teleprompter. And still he won't look into the camera lens.

Dinosaur Ballet

Betcha didn't see that coming! Oh what the heck.

Why All The Sub Crashes?

At Strategy Page, a story about submarine crashes:

Subs underwater are running blind, as most depend on passive sensors most of the time. Constant attention must be paid to charts and electronic location devices. Crews are intensively trained to stay sharp and be careful when travelling submerged.

So why are so many of them crashing into fixed objects - like rocks - and each other?

The IPCC And The WWF

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is mandated by the United Nations to investigate and report on climate change. The credibility of its work relies entirely on scientific peer review.

Now, the depths of the IPCC's entanglement with the non-peer reviewed activism of the World Wildlife Fund is being plumbed. Via Watts Up With That:

... it turns out that the WWF is cited all over the IPCC AR4 report, and as you know, WWF does not produce peer reviewed science, they produce opinion papers in line with their vision. Yet IPCC’s rules are such that they are supposed to rely on peer reviewed science only. It appears they’ve violated that rule dozens of times ...

A new posting authored by Canadian blogger Donna Laframboise, the creator of NOconsensus.org, shows what one can find in just one day of looking.

Did You Hear The One About The Blonde Warrior Princess...?

Yeah, everybody did last week. Only problem was, it wasn't true. Apparently The Times had a blonde moment of its own.

Last week was a fascinating example of how fast a false story can spread across the Internet and make its way onto television. Specifically, there were dozens of reports citing a study that blonde women are more “warlike” due to a phenomenon known as the “princess effect.” However, according to Dr. Aaron Sell, the lead researcher of the study, no such study exists and most of the quotes about him were fabricated. To make matters worse, pundits subsequently attacked Sell based on these fictitious quotes. How could this have happened?

No Kicking Penguins

It's an Internet meme started by 7-year old Colby Chipman right here in St. John's.

More from The Telegram.

T-shirts and more for autism at Colby's Dad's website.

Scientific Malpractise At The IPCC Continues

In today's Daily Mail:

[Dr Murari Lal] ... the scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

And the furious finger pointing continues. But the sad part of it all is that the totally unsubstantiated glacier prediction passed the review of well over 500 scientists, bureaucrats and, indeed, the IPCC.

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.