Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Climate Change?

"My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the 'climate change' racket was Stuart Varney's interview on Fox News with actor Ed Begley Jr., star of the 1980s medical drama 'St Elsewhere' but latterly known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an 'activist.' He's currently in a competiton with Bill Nye ('the Science Guy') to see who can have the lowest 'carbon footprint.' Pistols at dawn would seem to be the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn't get a reality series out of it. ... Nothing to worry about, folks. 'We'll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies,' says Ed airly. 'Those are the key words here, Stuart, "Peer-reviewed studies".' ... He wore an open-necked shirt, and although I don't have a 76-inch HDTV, I wouldn't have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. 'If these scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their peers will determine it,' insisted Ed. 'Don't get your information from me folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with PhD after their names. "Peer-reviewed studies" is the key words. And if it comes out in peer-reviewed studies.' ... You stand on the pier, and you notice the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you wonder if it's something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the polar bears? Is that how it works? No, no, peer-reviewed studies. 'Peer-reviewed studies. Go to Science magazine, folks. Go to Nature,' babbled Ed. 'Read peer-reviewed studies. That's all you need to do. Don't get it from you or me.' ... The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it's that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the 'peer-review' process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is thee nerve-center of the operation. ... When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann 'consensus,' Jones demanded that the journal 'rid itself of this troublesome editor,' and Mann adnived that 'we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage your colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite paper.' ... The more frantically they talked up 'peer review' as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduosly they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international scinece. ... 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' wondered Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is that you never need to ask 'Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?'," my emphasis, Mark Steyn at the Orange County Register, 27 November 2009, link: http://www.ocregister.com/common/printer/view.php?db=ocregister&id=221438.

Sound familiar? The Big 87654 peer reviewed each other for decades. Now the Big 87654 controlled PCAOB "inspects" CPA firms. If you expect anything substantive to come from the PCAOB, you are at best naive. At worst, insane. "Internal control", whatever that is, has become a "talismanic ... amulet".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Transparency... yup...

Some enterprising type will start tracking who audited all the firms that blow up...

In fact if I ran the Chinese sovereign wealth fund I would... before I put in a few hundred billions..