The Myth of Putin

Russia’s appearance of strength is eroding. George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures

The cover of the latest issue of the Economist features Russian President Vladimir Putin with a blackened face and glowing eyes. It is now official: Putin, and Putinism, are the work of the devil. That doesn’t simply mean that he is evil, but that, like the devil, Putin is powerful enough to face God and compete for souls. It also means that Russia, the country at the heart of the collapsed Soviet Union, has returned and is resuming its place as a global nightmare. From Aleppo to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Russians are stalking the earth, terrifying their neighbors and slapping around a feckless United States. If this sounds like 1980, it should. But then, remember that the demon that loomed over the world in 1980 collapsed a decade later. Russia is an enormously weak country that Putin is working desperately to make appear far more powerful than it is. He is doing extremely well at creating that illusion. There is a saying that perception is reality. That saying is rubbish. If it were true, reality would never have caught up with the perceptions surrounding the subprime crisis. Germany would have won the Battle of Britain, and – for that matter – the Soviet Union would still exist. Perception can buy time and time can, sometimes, change reality. But sometimes all that perception puts off is the inevitable, and in my view that is the case with Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev meet with workers as they visit the site of the under-construction bridge across the Kerch Strait, which will link Russia and the Crimean peninsula, in Kerch on Sept. 15, 2016. ALEXEI DRUZHININ/AFP/Getty Images

Russia’s fundamental problem is economic. Energy sales underwrite a significant part of the Russian national budget and the price of energy has fallen since 2014. In a society still shaped from the center, a budget crisis at the federal level poses a severe challenge. Russia has been in a deep recession for almost two years. According to the Russian finance minister, the government’s primary reserve fund, which was $91.7 billion in September 2014, will be exhausted by the end of 2017.

During the Soviet decline in the 1980s, and throughout the 1990s, the evidence of economic destabilization was subtler in Moscow and St. Petersburg than in the smaller cities and towns and the countryside that constitute the heart of Russia. It was here that life became disastrous. And this was the region that saw Putin as the solution to its problems. And Putin was, for about a decade, the solution. He did two things. First, he used oil revenues to create the foundations of a bearable, if not affluent, standard of living. Second, he restored the perception that Russia is a big player on the world stage. This was a region of deep patriotism. The poverty that came with Boris Yeltsin generated both a cynicism and a lack of faith in the system. Putin made life bearable and made it clear that Russia was back.

There is a belief that poverty in Russia poses less of a threat to the regime than it does in other countries. This is true, but with a strong caveat. If the Russians believe that their suffering is in the name of a state that stands with and for them, they will endure. This is why Josef Stalin could call on Russians to fight, starve and die. The Russians believed he was with and for them. It was why the Soviet Union collapsed and Yeltsin nearly plunged the country over the edge. No one believed that Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and least of all Mikhail Gorbachev cared about them. And certainly no one believed Yeltsin did. But Putin made them believe that he cared about them, and he made them feel that he would not only feed them, but that he would make all the suffering worthwhile. He convinced them that he was a winner.

The problem was in an economic failure so fundamental that it is frequently ignored. When Putin took power, wealth was in the hands of a dozen or so oligarchs, and the economy and Russian power depended on energy, which was the source of revenue and leverage over nations reliant on Russian supplies. In many ways, Russia was like Saudi Arabia in the 1970s. Putin’s task was to build a modern economy in Russia using the revenue from energy as investment capital. It was a daunting task and he failed at it. This strategy made Russia dependent on something it didn’t control – energy prices. And since energy prices have historically fluctuated, Putin’s primary strategy was to hope that prices would stay high – but that hope ran out in 2014.

Energy prices fell because there was worldwide economic stagnation and oversupply. A vague hope was that Russia and Saudi Arabia could force the price up by cutting production. But the Saudis were issuing bonds to raise money and the Russians had months to go before reserves were exhausted. Cutting production meant cutting income, but once production resumed to make up lost income, prices would quickly decline. The math didn’t work.

The situation in the regions grew harsher, and Putin was forced to focus on building patriotism to show that the privation was worth it, for it had made Russia great again. But Putin could not simply assert this, he had to show it. He had to demonstrate his power in the only way possible, by confronting the United States.

This became even more important after the pro-Russian government in Ukraine was deposed. Putin pointed to the seizure of something his forces effectively held – Crimea – and the rising in eastern Ukraine as evidence of his power. He gave Russians a sense of being under siege but, given that the rising only reached a stalemate at best, he did not give them a sense of ultimate victory. He therefore dueled with the United States rhetorically, using the apparent clumsiness of President Barack Obama to demonstrate his skill. But in the end, the Russian economy was in a tailspin and Ukraine was lost. The appearance of besting the United States was colliding with the reality of Russian weakness.

The Russian move into Syria was the response. The Russians have no strategic interests in Syria. There have been attempts to figure out why Russia intervened and what its end game is. Its intervention is limited and it is bogged down, just as the Americans are. Even if Aleppo falls, the war isn’t over. Yet they are there.

One theory is that Putin intervened in Syria because he believed Russia’s control over gas supplies to Europe was under threat. Perhaps, but any potential pipeline going through Iraq and war-torn Syria was unrealistic in the first place. Plus, a military operation to secure a pipeline (or to block one, whatever the case may be) makes little sense. Another theory is that Russia wants a naval base in Syria. That is possible, but it makes little military sense. Naval bases and operations depend on extensive logistical support for food, munitions and so on. These supplies are far too extensive to be flown in. And anything that would come to Syria from Russia by sea would come through the Bosporus. That is controlled by Turkey, and the U.S. Sixth Fleet could easily block exits. A naval base in Syria is more a liability than a warfighting asset.

But the Russians were not in Syria to save Bashar al-Assad, control pipelines, build naval facilities or intimidate the United States. They were there so Putin could appear to be more powerful than he was, and that was primarily for the benefit of his public. As the economy weakened and privations increased, he had to give it all a meaning, and Syria made him appear to be restoring Russia’s greatness. Convincing Western public opinion of his power was of secondary value, and in the course he made the cover of the Economist.

A range of impressive but ultimately meaningless actions accompanied all this. Hacking the into the emails of the DNC and John Podesta – assuming Russia was responsible – ultimately seems to have had no impact on the elections, nor did Putin’s praise of Donald Trump. Constant and intense military maneuvers along Russia’s borders alarmed those who wished to be alarmed, but did not cause massive buildups or concern that Putin could use domestically as proof of his power.

We are now at the point where reality diverges from perception. Russia is moving into a hard winter. The opportunity to appear to be a great power by influencing American elections is ending, and the Russians’ participation in the Syrian war is moving into a phase well known to the United States: wondering what they are doing there.

Don’t get me wrong. I was warning about the re-emergence of Russia before 2008. I was confident we were moving into a mini-cold war with Russia. But I was also warning at the time that Russia did not have the ability to win or even survive such a mild confrontation. The Soviet Union fell when it was forced into an arms race it couldn’t afford by Ronald Reagan and when oil prices fell in the 1980s. That has happened again, and Russia is much weaker than the Soviets were. A confrontation on its western front was in the cards and has occurred. And as is the Russian wont, they played a weak hand brilliantly. But now, as I said, the winter comes.

MY ADVICE TO THE PREMIER

I once had Colin Barnett’s confidence. It lasted about 10 minutes when he asked me to comment on the farming property he’d recently purchased near Toodyay and, with my background in landcare, I was able to point out various features on the aerial photograph he put in front of me.

At the time – about 2002 - Colin was the leader of the opposition and I was the shadow minister for the environment. I fell foul of Liberal Party preselection games and Troy Buswell took my seat at the 2005 election, in spite of my attempts to warn the Party and the electorate what to expect from him. Since then, I’ve been a keen observer of state politics but not an active participant. So what would I say to the Premier if I had his confidence again?

I’d make two main points. The first is that the Liberal Nationals government seems to be devoid of policy initiatives relevant to most West Australians. While I can understand the Premier’s desire to give the state economy an economic boost via major construction projects such as new hospitals and a new football stadium, the end of the mining boom has brought higher unemployment and lower incomes. At the same time, doing business with government has remained tied up with green, red and black tape, with no real desire by the current government to address these impediments to growth and jobs.

What the Premier and his government desperately need are new policy commitments – not promises - that will make genuine differences to the lives of ordinary West Australians. It’s not good enough for people such as Transport Minister Dean Nalder to publicise a 50 year transport plan for Perth that commits the government to no actions within the next decade. And the problems of the new Fiona Stanley Hospital are forcing the government’s most competent minister John Day to defend problems outside of the government’s control, giving free kicks to an opposition that knows what it’s opposed to but is generally silent on how it would do things differently.

So, Premier, tell your ministers and their public servants to come up with policy ideas that will benefit West Australians in both the short and long term and then you as Premier bring the best ideas to cabinet for a decision. Mega-projects like the new football stadium have their benefits, but most people want less congestion on our roads, reduced bushfire risks, the causes of juvenile crime to be addressed rather than their symptoms and better education for our children without throwing money at union-supported theories that are now shown to not benefit students’ learning.

Which leads on to my second point. Premier, you are the head of a team of people – your ministers. Accept that they and the people who work for them are generally trying to do the right thing by the state’s citizens. Involve them in the day-to-day media reporting of news. Voters want to know that they are electing or re-electing a competent team to govern them, not just a competent leader. Mark McGowan doesn’t hesitate to stand behind his shadow ministers when they have something important to say; you should learn to allow your team members to also be seen as the faces of the government that you and they want re-elected next March.

Your team also includes all of your backbenchers, who perform the critical task of informing you and the government what the electorate is concerned about. Listen to them and include them in your decision-making processes.

The Labor government of Geoff Gallop was elected in 2001 because the Richard Court government became embroiled in internal factional fights, with the post-election proposal to parachute Julie Bishop into the state parliament to lead the Liberal opposition as one example of how party power brokers were more focused on retaining their influence rather than retaining government. The media loves to report bad news and your current focus on big projects is supplying only bad news stories, so change your focus.

The recent private poll paid for by three prominent businessmen shows that the disunity lessons from 2001 have been forgotten. Electors don’t give a toss about polls and popularity ratings and internal power plays. They simply want good government and, with less than six months to the next state election, the ball is in your court, Premier. Encourage your team to work harder and allow them to be more in the public view so that the public can better understand you’re asking them to vote for the Liberal team in March, not just for a Liberal Premier.

And take the initiative back from the Labor Party. Tell us what your government will do for the rest of this term and what you will do for the next four years, should you be re-elected. If people believe that you have their interests at heart and are listening to their concerns, they’ll vote for you. If you continue to make vague policy statements and act as a one man band, expect Mark McGowan’s team to take office next year.

Bernie Masters

Member for Vasse 1996-2005

Shadow Minister for Science and Environment, 2001-2004.

The Zika Virus And Politicized Science

The Zika Virus And Politicized Science

Peter Schwartz, Distinguished Fellow, Ann Rand Institute.

Published by The Huffington Post.  August 22, 2016

Science today is regularly distorted to serve other ends. The religious right, for instance, claims that "creationism" should be taught in public schools as a scientific alternative to the theory of evolution. The environmentalist left, for instance, claims science reveals genetically modified foods to be harmful to one's health. Both groups subordinate the facts of science to other considerations, whether Biblical or logical.

The same dishonesty is shaping the response to the Zika.

The Zika threat is causing great concern at the Rio Olympics, with some athletes having chosen to avoid the Games altogether rather than risk infection. Florida recently reported the first locally contracted cases of Zika in the United States. And the Centers for Disease Control is advising pregnant women to travel to certain I areas of Miami—the first time the agency has ever issued such a warning for the I continental U.S.

But among the measures is notably absent the use of DOT.

Zika is carried by mosquitoes, and DOT has been highly effective in eliminating mosquito-borne diseases. India, for example, had 75 million malaria cases in 1953, but only 50,000 by 1961, after DOT had been introduced. In Sri Lanka close to 3 million cases of malaria occurred in 1948; 15 years later, owing to DOT, the number dropped to 17. The National Academy of Sciences stated in 1970: "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DOT... It is estimated J that in little more than two decades DOT has prevented 500 million deaths due to

But strong opposition to DOT arose, spurred by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Environmentalists got DOT banned in the U.S. and, eventually, in dozens of other countries. Western nations, which fund anti-malaria J campaigns throughout the world, largely refused to underwrite any efforts that I employed DOT As a result, DOT use shrank—and malaria surged.

In India the number of cases increased to 30 million in 1977. In Sri Lanka the number went to 2.5 million in 1969. More recently, other forms of malaria control—such as installing bed-netting and reducing the presence of standing water—have lowered the incidence of the disease worldwide. But they are generally less effective than DOT. In South Africa, for example, after DOT spraying was halted in 1996, malaria infections rose from under 5,000 in 1995 to over 60,000 in 2000. At which point DOT was reproduced—and six months later the number dropped by half.

This hostility to DOT was not based on science. For instance, DOT was said to be carcinogenic, because of studies in which mice developed liver tumors—but only after receiving doses of DOT 100,000 times higher than what a person would typically absorb (source.) Further, the opponents of DOT ignored many facts contradicting their views—such as the fact that during the period of highest DOT use (1944-1972), deaths from liver cancer fell by 30 percent (source)—or that workers who regularly handled DOT were found to have no higher rates of cancer than the general population (source)—or that people who voluntarily ingested DOT daily for up to two years suffered no ill effects (source)—or that the amount of DOT (per kilogram of body weight) required to kill mice is greater than that of aspirin.

What, then, was the motive behind the anti-DDT crusade? It was based on the premise that the man-made is inherently suspect—that the natural is good and the non-natural is bad, that human "intervention" in nature is deleterious and that we have to protect nature from man, not for man. The millions of lives saved by our "non-organic" use of DOT—and the millions lost when it was not used—were disregarded. Instead, the thinning of the eggshells of the bald eagle was presented as an intolerable effect of DOT.

As explained by David Graber, a biologist with the National Park Service, environmentalists:

.. value wilderness for its own sake, not for what value it confers upon mankind.. .. We are not interested in the utility of a particular species, o, free-flowing river or ecosystem to mankind. They have intrinsic value, mi value—to me—than another human body or a billion of them.

True, there is evidence that some mosquitoes are developing resistance to DOT. But even where DDT's toxicity has been diminished, its repellent properties still work. When house walls are sprayed with DOT, even resistant mosquitoes are repulsed and don't enter. More important, though, one's attitude should be: 'If DDT's effectiveness is lessening, let's find some way to make it work better." Instead, the operating premise seems to be: "Man-made chemicals interfere with nature, so let's find some way to prohibit them."

Man survives and prospers, not by living "in harmony" with nature, but by reshaping it—by creating houses and roads and factories out of the wilderness, by transforming nature into a tool that serves human purposes. The problem with environmentalists is not that they have an ideology, but that it is an ideology with an inverted standard of value. It is an ideology that regards the very means of human flourishing as destructive. In assessing DOT, therefore, if your overriding concern is to restructure nature in order to promote man's well-being, then you will focus on whether DOT does in fact save human lives. If, however, your overriding concern is to preserve nature against human encroachment, then you will focus on the "evil" of injecting chemicals into nature's domain. And you will be drawn to any arbitrary claim about adverse consequences of those chemicals.

My primary aim here is not to argue for the use of DOT, but to underscore the need

for objectivity is dealing with such issues. We should not uncritically accept the assertions of those who are hostile to technology and industrialization. We should not accept any allegations of some product's harmfulness—say, that DOT causes Alzheimer's, or that vaccines cause autism or that tracking causes earthquakes —without being certain they rest on genuine, unpoliticized science.

Follow Peter Schwartz on Twitter www.twitter.corn/PSchwartzlDS

Brian Cox confused on more than global temperatures

Brian Cox confused on more than global temperatures

Jennifer Marohasy
On Line Opinion 18th August, 2016

(NOTE: I don't consider myself to be a climate change skeptic: the evidence points to between 40% and 70% of the last 200 years of global warming to be anthropogenic, caused by the burning of fossil fuels which put more CO2 into the atmosphere. However, this article is thought-provoking and, if true (even if only partly true), deserves to influence your opinion on the issue of global climate change.)

Celebrity physicist Brian Cox misled the ABC TV Q&A audience on at least 3 points-of-fact on Monday night. This is typical of the direction that much of science is taking. Richard Horton, the current editor of the medical journal, The Lancet, recently stated that, "The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue."

Firstly, Cox displayed an out-of-date NASA chart of remodelled global temperatures as proof that we have catastrophic climate change caused by industrial pollution. Another panellist on the program, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, tried to raise the issue of cause and effect: querying whether there really was a link between rising temperature and carbon dioxide. This is generally accepted without question. But interestingly - beyond experiments undertaken by a chemist over 100 years ago - there is no real proof beyond unreliable computer simulation models.

Indeed, in 2006, John Nicol (a former Dean of Science at James Cook University) wrote to Penny Whetton (then meteorologist-in-charge of the climate science stream at CSIRO) asking if she could provide him with copies notes, internal reports, references ("peer reviewed" of course) which would provide details of the physics behind the hypothesis of global warming. She wrote back immediately promising to find some - which he thought was odd since he had assumed her office was stacked-to-the-ceiling with such literature.

Whetton even went to the trouble of contacting other colleagues - one of whom sent Nicol an inconsequential article in a Polish journal. After eighteen months of their exchanging letters and all of her promises to be helpful, all she could finally offer was the "scientific" section of "Climate Change in Australia 2007". There, to Nicol's amazement he found nothing apart from the oft quoted: "We believe that most of the increase in global temperatures during the second half of the 20th century was very likely due to increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide".

"Believe", "most", and "very likely" are jargon, perhaps meaning "we don't have a clue".

The chart Cox held up on Monday night - now all-over-the-internet as proof of global warming - essentially represents a remodelling of observed temperature measurements to confirm a belief, that we most likely have catastrophic global warming.

The accurate UAH satellite record shows a spike in temperatures in 1997-1998 associated with the El Nino back then, followed by a long pause of about 17 years, before the recent spike at the end of 2015-beginning of 2016. The recent spike was also caused by an El Nino event. Global-temperatures have been plummeting since March, and are now almost back to pause-levels. Indeed, Roberts was more correct than Cox, when he claimed there had been no warming for about 21 years - despite the rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.

The second misleading statement from Cox on Monday night concerned the nature of the modern sceptic - often harshly labelled a denier. Cox suggested that sceptics were the type of people that would even deny the moon-landing. In making this claim he was no doubt alluding to research, since discredited, funded by the Australian Research Council, that attempted to draw a link between scepticism of anthropogenic global warming and believing in conspiracies.

In fact, astronaut Harrison Schmitt - who actually stood on the moon, drilled holes, collected moon rocks, and has since returned to Earth - is a well-known sceptic of anthropogenic global warming. In short, Astronaut Harrison knows the moon-landing was real, but does not believe carbon dioxide plays a significant role in causing weather and climate change. In fact, Schmitt has expressed the view - a very similar view to Roberts - that the risks posed by climate change are overrated. Harrison has even suggested that climate change is a tool for people who are trying to increase the size of government - though he does not deny that he has been to the moon and back.

Thirdly, Cox has qualifications in particle physics, yet he incorrectly stated that Albert Einstein devised the four-dimensional-space-time continuum. Those with a particular interest in the history of relativity theory know that while Einstein reproduced the Lorenz equations using a different philosophical interpretation, he was not the first to put these equations into the context of the 4-dimensional continuum - that was done by Hermann Minkowski. Minkowski reformulated in four dimensions the then-recent theory of special relativity concluding that time and space should be treated equally. This subsequently gave rise to the concept of events taking place in a unified four-dimensional space-time continuum.

Then again, Cox may not care too much for facts. He is not only a celebrity scientist, but also a rock star. Just the other day I was watching a YouTube video of him playing keyboard as the lead-singer of the band screamed, "We don't need a reason".

There was once a clear distinction between science - that was about reason and evidence - and art that could venture into the make-believe including through the re-interpretation of facts. This line is increasingly blurred in climate science where data is now routinely remodeled to make it more consistent with global warming theory.

For example, I'm currently working on a 61-page expose of the situation at Rutherglen. Since November 1912, air temperatures have been measured at an agricultural research station near Rutherglen in northern Victoria, Australia. The data is of high quality, therefore, there is no scientific reason to apply adjustments in order to calculate temperature trends and extremes. Mean annual temperatures oscillate between 15.8°C and 13.4°C. The hottest years are 1914 and 2007; there is no overall warming-trend. The hottest summer was in 1938-1939 when Victoria experienced the Black Friday bushfire disaster. This 1938-39 summer was 3°C hotter than the average-maximum summer temperature at Rutherglen for the entire period: December 1912 to February 2016. Minimum annual temperatures also show significant inter-annual variability.

In short, this temperature data, like most of the temperature series from the 112 sites used to concoct the historical temperature record by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology does not accord with global warming theory.

So, adjustments are made by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to these temperature series before they are incorporated into the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network - Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT); and also the UK Met Office's HadCRUT dataset, which informs IPCC deliberations.

The temperature spike in 1938-1939 is erroneously identified as a statistical error, and all temperatures before 1938 adjusted down by 0.62°C. The most significant change is to the temperature minima with all temperatures before 1974, and 1966, adjusted-down by 0.61°C and 0.72°C, respectively. For the year 1913, there is a 1.3°C difference between the annual raw minimum value as measured at Rutherglen and the remodelled value.

The net effect of the remodelling is to create statistically significant warming of 0.7 °C in the ACORN-SAT mean temperature series for Rutherglen, in general agreement with anthropogenic global warming theory.

NASA applies a very similar technique to the thousands of stations used to reproduce the chart that Cox held-up on Monday night during the Q&A program. I discussed these change back in 2014 with Gavin Schmidt, who oversees the production of these charts at NASA. I was specifically complaining about how they remodel the data for Amberley, a military base near where I live in Queensland.

Back in 2014, the un-adjusted mean annual maximum temperatures for Amberley - since recordings were first made in 1941 - show temperatures trending up from a low of about 25.5°Cin 1950 to a peak of almost 28.5°Cin 2002. The minimum temperature series for Amberley showed cooling from about 1970. Of course this does not accord with anthropogenic global warming theory. To quote Karl Braganza from the Bureau as published by online magazine The Conversation, "Patterns of temperature change that are uniquely associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect, and which have been observed in the real world include... Greater warming in winter compared with summer... Greater warming of night time temperatures than daytime temperatures".

The Bureau has "corrected" this inconvenient truth at Amberley by jumping-up the minimum temperatures twice through the homogenization process: once around 1980 and then around 1996 to achieve a combined temperature increase of over 1.5°C.

This is obviously a very large step-change, remembering that the entire temperature increase associated with global warming over the 20th century is generally considered to be in the order of 0.9°C.

According to various peer-reviewed papers, and technical reports, homogenization as practiced in climate science is a technique that enables non-climatic factors to be eliminated from temperature series - by making various adjustments.

It is often done when there is a site change (for example from a post office to an airport), or equipment change (from a Glaisher Stand to a Stevenson screen). But at Amberley neither of these criteria can be applied. The temperatures have been recorded at the same well-maintained site within the perimeter of the air force base since 1941. Through the homogenization process the Bureau have changed what was a cooling trend in the minimum temperature of 1.0°Cper century, into a warming trend of 2.5°C per century.

Homogenization - the temperature adjusting done by the Bureau - has not resulted in some small change to the temperatures as measured at Amberley, but rather a change in the temperature trend from one of cooling to dramatic warming as was done to the series for Rutherglen.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) based in New York also applies a jump-up to the Amberley series in 1980, and makes other changes, so that the annual average temperature for Amberley increases from 1941 to 2012 by about 2°C.

The new Director of GISS, Gavin Schmidt, explained to me on Twitter back in 2014 that: "@jennmarohasy There is an inhomogenity detected (~1980) and based on continuity w/nearby stations it is corrected. #notrocketscience".

When I sought clarification regarding what was meant by "nearby" stations I was provided with a link to a list of 310 localities used by climate scientists at Berkeley when homogenizing the Amberley data.

The inclusion of Berkeley scientists was perhaps to make the point that all the key institutions working on temperature series (the Australian Bureau, NASA, and also scientists at Berkeley) appreciated the need to adjust-up the temperatures at Amberley. So, rock star scientists can claim an absolute consensus?

But these 310 "nearby" stations, they stretch to a radius of 974 kilometres and include Frederick Reef in the Coral Sea, Quilpie post office and even Bourke post office. Considering the un-adjusted data for the six nearest stations with long and continuous records (old Brisbane aero, Cape Moreton Lighthouse, Gayndah post office, Bundaberg post office, Miles post office and Yamba pilot station) the Bureau's jump-up for Amberley creates an increase for the official temperature trend of 0.75°C per century.

Temperatures at old Brisbane aero, the closest of these station, also shows a long-term cooling trend. Indeed perhaps the cooling at Amberley is real. Why not consider this, particularly in the absence of real physical evidence to the contrary? In the Twitter conversation with Schmidt I suggested it was nonsense to use temperature data from radically different climatic zones to homogenize Amberley, and repeated my original question asking why it was necessary to change the original temperature record in the first place. Schmidt replied, "@jennmarohasy Your question is ill-posed. No-one changed the trend directly. Instead procedures correct for a detected jump around ~1980."

If Twitter was around at the time George Orwell was writing the dystopian fiction Nineteen Eighty-Four, I wonder whether he might have borrowed some text from Schmidt's tweets, particularly when words like, "procedures correct" refer to mathematical algorithms reaching out to "nearby" locations that are across the Coral Sea and beyond the Great Dividing Range to change what was a mild cooling-trend, into dramatic warming, for an otherwise perfectly politically-incorrect temperature series.

Horton, the somewhat disillusioned editor of The Lancet, also stated recently that science is, "Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness." I would not go that far! I am not sure it has taken a turn for darkness - perhaps just a turn towards the make-believe. Much of climate science, in particular, is now underpinned with a postmodernist epistemology - it is simply suspicious of reason and has an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining particular power-structures including through the homogenisation of historical temperature data.

107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

What you need to know about GMOs

Joel Achenbach June 30, 2016

The Washington Post

While Greenpeace and other organizations oppose genetically engineered food, more than 100 Nobel laureates are taking a stand on the side of GMOs. Here's a look at each side's arguments. 

More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world.

"We urge Greenpeace and its supporters to re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and foods improved through biotechnology, recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies, and abandon their campaign against 'GMOs' in general and Golden Rice in particular," the letter states.

The letter campaign was organized by Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer of New England Biolabs and, with Phillip Sharp, the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of genetic sequences known as introns. The campaign has a website, supportprecisionagriculture.org, that includes a running list of the signatories, and the group plans to hold a news conference Thursday morning at the National Press Club in Washington.

“We’re scientists. We understand the logic of science. It's easy to see what Greenpeace is doing is damaging and is anti-science," Roberts told The Washington Post. “Greenpeace initially, and then some of their allies, deliberately went out of their way to scare people. It was a way for them to raise money for their cause."

Roberts said he endorses many other activities of Greenpeace, and said he hopes the group, after reading the letter, would "admit that this is an issue that they got wrong and focus on the stuff that they do well."

Greenpeace has not yet responded to requests for comment on the letter. [Update: Greenpeace responded early Thursday -- see statement below.]  It is hardly the only group that opposes GMOs, but it has a robust global presence, and the laureates in their letter contend that Greenpeace has led the effort to block Golden Rice.

The list of signatories had risen to 107 names by Wednesday morning. Roberts said that, by his count, there are 296 living laureates.

Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, a cell biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post, “I find it surprising that groups that are very supportive of science when it comes to global climate change, or even, for the most part, in the appreciation of the value of vaccination in preventing human disease, yet can be so dismissive of the general views of scientists when it comes to something as important as the world’s agricultural future.”

The letter states:

Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.

Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people, suffer from VAD, including 40 percent of the children under five in the developing world.  Based on UNICEF statistics, a total of one to two million preventable deaths occur annually as a result of VAD, because it compromises the immune system, putting babies and children at great risk.  VAD itself is the leading cause of childhood blindness globally affecting 250,000 - 500,000 children each year. Half die within 12 months of losing their eyesight.

The scientific consensus is that that gene editing in a laboratory is not more hazardous than modifications through traditional breeding, and that engineered plants potentially have environmental or health benefits, such as cutting down on the need for pesticides. A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released in May, said there is no substantiated evidence that GMO crops have sickened people or harmed the environment, but also cautioned that such crops are relatively new and that it is premature to make broad generalizations, positive or negative, about their safety.

Opponents of GMOs have said these crops may not be safe for human or animal consumption, have not been shown to improve crop yields, have led to excessive use of herbicides and can potentially spread engineered genes beyond the boundaries of farms.

Greenpeace International's website states that the release of GMOs into the natural world is a form of "genetic pollution." The site states: "Genetic engineering enables scientists to create plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not occur naturally. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can spread through nature and interbreed with natural organisms, thereby contaminating non 'GE' environments and future generations in an unforeseeable and uncontrollable way."

Virtually all crops and livestock have been genetically engineered in the broadest sense; there are no wild cows, and the cornfields of the United States reflect many centuries of plant modification through traditional breeding. Genetically modified crops started to become common in the mid-1990s; today, most of the corn, soybeans and cotton in the country have been modified to be resistant to insects or tolerant of herbicide, according to government statistics.

Opponents of GMOs have focused a great deal on the economic and social repercussions of the introduction of lab-modified crops. Greenpeace has warned of the corporate domination of the food supply, saying that small farmers will suffer. A Greenpeace spokesman Wednesday referred a reporter to a Greenpeace publication titled "Twenty Years of Failure: Why GM crops have failed to deliver on their promises."

This debate between mainstream scientists and environmental activists isn't new, and there is little reason to suspect that the letter signed by the Nobel laureates will persuade GMO opponents to stand down.

But Columbia University's Martin Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel in chemistry for research on green fluorescent protein, said he thinks laureates can be influential on the GMO issue. "Is there something special about Nobel laureates? I’m not so sure we’re any more special than other scientists who have looked at the evidence involved, but we have considerably more visibility because of the prize. I think that this behooves us, that when we feel that science is not being listened to, that we speak out."

Roberts said he has worked on previous campaigns that sought to leverage the influence of Nobel laureates. In 2012, for example, he organized a campaign to persuade Chinese authorities to release from house arrest the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Roberts said he decided to take on the GMO issue after hearing from scientific colleagues their research was being impeded by anti-GMO activism from Greenpeace and other organizations. He said he has no financial interest in GMO research.

Update: Here is Greenpeace's response, datelined Manila, June 30, from Wilhelmina Pelegrina, Campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia:

“Accusations that anyone is blocking genetically engineered ‘Golden’ rice are false. ‘Golden’ rice has failed as a solution and isn’t currently available for sale, even after more than 20 years of research. As admitted by the International Rice Research Institute, it has not been proven to actually address Vitamin A Deficiency. So to be clear, we are talking about something that doesn’t even exist.

“Corporations are overhyping ‘Golden’ Rice to pave the way for global approval of other more profitable genetically engineered crops. This costly experiment has failed to produce results for the last 20 years and diverted attention from methods that already work. Rather than invest in this overpriced public relations exercise, we need to address malnutrition through a more diverse diet, equitable access to food and eco-agriculture.”

On alternative solutions:

“The only guaranteed solution to fix malnutrition is a diverse healthy diet. Providing people with real food based on ecological agriculture not only addresses malnutrition, but is also a scaleable solution to adapt to climate change. We’ve documented communities across the Philippines that continue to express concerns about using GE golden rice as a solution. It is irresponsible to impose GE golden rice as a quick remedy to people on the front lines and who do not welcome it, particularly when there are safe and effective options already available.

“Greenpeace Philippines is already working with NGO partners and farmers in the Philippines to boost climate resiliency (4). There’s a real chance here for governments and the philanthropic community to support these endeavours by investing in climate-resilient ecological agriculture and empowering farmers to access a balanced and nutritious diet, rather than pouring money down the drain for GE ‘Golden’ rice.”