Friday, November 26, 2010
Corporation Nation
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Codex Alimentarius
Monday, September 6, 2010
Pachauri admits the IPCC just guesses the numbers
Here is the latest on the IPCC from
Jo Nova
Monday, September 6, 2010
Such is the pressure finally beginning to bear on the IPCC that Pachauri has been forced into the ridiculous position of trying to rescue credibility by contradicting most of their past PR campaign. He’s taken the extraordinary step of admitting they don’t have hard numbers, hey, but it’s all OK because the IPCC is really a government agency to make policy, not to write scientific reports “that don’t see the light of day”.
So he’s admitting that the IPCC was all about policy prescriptions all along? And the science was just fudged-up window dressing to provide an excuse? Well, who would have guessed.
Hidden beside Pachauri’s declaration that he’s happy about the IAC report, he let slip a corker of a line:
Times of India asks: Anything in the UN probe report you completely or partly disagree with?
They have talked about quantifying uncertainties. To some extent, we are doing that, though not perfectly. But the issue is that in some cases, you really don’t have a quantitative base by which you can attach a probability or a level of uncertainty that defines things in quantitative terms. And there, let’s not take away the importance of expert judgment. And that is something the report has missed or at least not pointed out.
So if you can’t quantify uncertainties (like is climate sensitivity say 0.5 degrees or 6.5 degrees, and with what probabilities) just go with your best guess, call it expert opinion (especially if you only pick and pay the “right” experts) and say that there is a 90% certainty, even if there are no numbers you can add up to get that.
Then after all these years of saying the IPCC is a scientific body, now that they’re exposed as being unscientific, suddenly the excuse is that really they’re policy driven. Watch how far away from science Pachauri is trying to position the IPCC:
Times of India: Stifling politics out of science, does that make it devoid of its real social purpose?
Let’s face it, we are an intergovernmental body and our strength and acceptability of what we produce is largely because we are owned by governments.
If that was not the case, then we would be like any other scientific body that maybe producing first-rate reports but don’t see the light of the day because they don’t matter in policy-making. Now clearly, if it’s an inter-governmental body and we want governments’ ownership of what we produce, obviously they will give us guidance of what direction to follow, what are the questions they want answered. Unfortunately, people have completely missed the original resolution by which IPCC was set up. It clearly says that our assessment should include realistic response strategies. If that is not an assessment of policies, then what does it represent? And I am afraid, we have been, in my view, defensive in coming out with a whole range of policies and I am not saying we prescribe policy A or B or C but on the basis of science, we are looking at realistic response strategies.
But that is exactly what this committee has recommended that we get out of — policy prescriptions. It is for this reason that I brought out that this what is written in the IPCC mandate. This is a misperception on the part of some people in the scientific community. And I hope I can correct it.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Bob Chapman On Alex Jones Show
Bob Chapman is 72 years old. He was born in Boston, MA and attended Northeastern University majoring in business management. He spent three years in the U. S. Army Counterintelligence, mostly in Europe. He speaks German and French and is conversant in Spanish. He lived in Europe for six years, off and on, three years in Africa, a year in Canada and a year in the Bahamas.
Mr. Chapman became a stockbroker in 1960 and retired in 1988. For 18 of those years he owned his own brokerage firm. He was probably the largest gold and silver stockbroker in the world during that period. When he retired he had over 6,000 clients.
From 1962 through 1976 he specialized in South African gold shares. He and his family lived in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) and Johannesburg, South Africa from 1970 to 1973. During that time he did a great deal of further study into the South African mining industry.
Mr. Chapman belonged to The Traders Association for 25 years. He did all his own trading. During his South African years some was done directly through Johannesburg, but 95% was done through London brokerage firms. Hence, he has extensive contacts, both in London and on the Continent.
Starting in 1967 Mr. Chapman began writing articles on business, finance, economics and politics having been printed and reprinted over the years in over 200 publications. He owned and wrote the Gary Allen Report, which had 30,000 subscribers. He currently is owner and editor of The International Forecaster, a compendium of information on business, finance, economics and social and political issues worldwide, which reaches 10,000 investors and brokers monthly directly, and parts of his publication are picked up by 60 different websites weekly exposing his ideas to over 10 million investors a week.
In 1976, after the Soweto riots, Mr. Chapman began buying North American shares exclusively for his clients. Up to that point only a handful of American and Canadian issues interested him, due to the high dividends the South African shares had paid out over the years. Between 1976 and 1988 his business surged from 1,000 to 6,000 clients, so the bulk of his business ended up being Vancouver Stock Exchange issues. For this reason he is very conversant with the quality of management, geologists, properties and traders on today’s North American scene. He is well known.
From 1976 to present he has spoke and given workshops at over 200 business conferences worldwide, and has been on radio and TV hundreds of times. Until his retirement he was always judged by the attendees to be one of the top three speakers and never once was lower than first in workshops due to his vast knowledge of the mining business and his grasp of worldwide financial markets and political scenes.
In June of 1991, at the request of business associates, and due to retirement boredom, he began writing the International Forecaster.