The BBC is coming out of its shell again, on Breakfast news a piece on a new enclosure for Penguins saying some Penguin species are endangered by AGW and we must help by reducing carbon emmissions.

Aren't Penguins from the South where sea ice has increased.

Bob Ward chips in:

Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics said the intention of many of those making freedom of information requests was to trawl through scientists' work with the intention of trying to find problems and errors. "It's also quite true that these people do not care about the fact that it is causing a serious inconvenience," he said. "It is being used in an aggressive and organised way. When freedom of information legislation was first contemplated, it was not being considered that universities would be landed with this additional burden."

Evidence of the aggression first began to emerge when personal emails and documents were stolen from the University of East Anglia's (UEA) servers in November 2009 and leaked on to the internet. Climate sceptics seized on the contents as evidence that apparently showed scientists were colluding to keep errors in their research hidden and prevent rivals' research from being published at all.

(From the Nurse Guardian article)

Freedom of information laws are used to harass scientists, says Nobel laureate
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/freedom-information-laws-harass-scientists

Interested in the proximate origins of climate alarmism as a political weapon to achieve totalitarian ends?

I have just stumbled across this post: http://dradge.com/2010/07/where-the-global-warming-hoax-was-born/

Some of the useful idiots/malevolent schemers/irresponsible clowns involved include Margaret Mead, John Holdren, Stephen Schneider, James Lovelock and, a new one for me, a George Woodwell - introduced in the post as 'a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, is a global warming fanatic whose stated beliefs indicate that he abhors human beings in general, and whose zealousness in this cause leads him to bend the truth.' It sounds like he would have aroused the interest of any headhunter acting for the Royal Society.

The piece ends on a curious note, citing the younger generation as a possible hope:

'Thirty-two years after this 1975 conference, the world’s population, its science and technology, and its industry are dangerously in the grasp of Margaret Mead’s minions, including those on the IPCC. A good part of the population is scared, as planned, by the potential effects of human-caused global warming. They are ready to react, as Mead demanded, to “warnings which will parallel the instincts of animals who flee before the hurricane,” and in the process tear down the very institutions and technologies that can obviate the perceived “limits to growth.”

In the intervening 32 years, most of our scientific institutions have been taken over by an anti-science ideology, typified by the views of a Stephen Schneider or a John Holdren. How can there be a science when the mind and its capacity for creativity is denied, when man is put equal to beast, and when man’s advancements are perceived as ruining the pristine confines of a limited world? Such pessimism is a formula for a “no future” world.

The question remains, will the reservoir of sanity, in particular in today’s youth, who did not live through the greenwashing of the 1970s and 1980s, be able to force reality—climate reality and financial reality—on the rest of the population? Will the Noösphere, man’s creative ability to change the Biosphere, prevail?'

Since the greenwashing has continued a fortiori in our schools and colleges in the 90s and 00s, I rather fancy that much of our hope for a 'reservoir of sanity' must mostly lie with far older people.

I remember having the clean the windscreen on the car last year a few times due to volcanic dust, hasn't happened at all this time. For all the moaning about Ryanair's ripoff attitude to customers which are justified, their safety record is amongst the best.

Whoops - final para and missing apostrophe all mine.

From the Telegraph article posted by BoFA:

A Department for Transport spokesman sought to play down the importance of the inspection aircraft.

“The UK is taking detailed readings to monitor the ash cloud from a number of different instruments including radar and lidar sites, improved satellite data and weather balloons. Test aircraft only provide a snapshot in a localised area, whilst the Met Office model looks at the bigger picture, and the accuracy of this model is considered to be high.

“However, as part of our ongoing efforts to reduce the impact of the ash cloud, we are looking to make a specialised test aircraft in the future.”

Proof that model outputs (and where did the original data come from without "specialised test aircraft"?) trump empirical observation. And still commentators refer to the dust cloud as if its something tangible. Despite being told it isn't.

Seems a red mist is descending...

"The red zone is not indicating that every square inch of air within that zone … contains a high density of ash. This is a modelled zone in which concentrations of ash at dangerous levels may exist. So it will be perfectly compatible with that model that an aircraft could fly through that zone and not encounter ash, but another aircraft could fly through on a different track and encounter high levels of ash."

Hammond backtracking, first it was Ryanair did not fly through a red zone now its

Speaking on BBC Breakfast News, Hammond said the Met Office models could not be 100% accurate and the BA flight did not necessarily contradict the regime. He added: "The red zone is not indicating that every square inch of air within that zone … contains a high density of ash. This is a modelled zone in which concentrations of ash at dangerous levels may exist. So it will be perfectly compatible with that model that an aircraft could fly through that zone and not encounter ash, but another aircraft could fly through on a different track and encounter high levels of ash."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/volcanic-ash-cloud-flight-disruption