Recent 4 Months U.S. Temperature trend/decade: – 5.4 F COOLER in 100 years

And the cooling continues. Sorry – I mean that Global Warming is an imminent treat to humankind.

Very late again, the official April temperature figures are out. Last year the temperature anomaly was 3.66 F and this year it is – 1.35 F.

As a complement to my previous post Recent 3 Months U.S. Temperature trend/decade: – 4.1 F COOLER in 100 years, I thought it also would be interesting to look at the recent 4 months (year to date, January- April) US temperature from a “historic” perspective. To see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 113 years.

Especially to see how the decade trends have evolved during the last 43 years. The period that according to the Global Warming Hysterics and computer models they worship should show a steady and accelerated increase in temperature.

I don’t know about you, but I consider a 4 month, a year by year consecutive trend 113 years long to be a “quit good” indicator.

And as I always point out:

Remember, these are the official figures. With the poor placement of stations (91 % of the stations are CRN 3 to 5 = bad to very poor); where they have purposely taken away the urban heat island effect, use huge smoothing radius, the historical “adjustment and tweaking” to cool the past etc.

Not to mention the great slaughter of GHCN stations 1990-1993 – roughly 63 % of all stations were “dropped”. Oddly enough many of them in cold places – Hmmm? Now the number of GHCN stations is back at the same numbers as in 1890.

Also remember that the US stations are now nearly a third of the all GHCN world stations.

So here are the trends:

US temperature recent 4 months (Jan- Apr) 1900-2013

The trend for 1900 to 2013 is 0.17 F / Decade

US temperature recent 4 months (Jan- Apr) 1970-2013

The trend for 1970 to 2013 is 0.63 F / Decade

US temperature recent 4 months (Jan- Apr) 1980-2013

The trend for 1980 to 2013 is 0.38 F / Decade

US temperature recent 4 months (Jan- Apr) 1990-2013

The trend for 1990 to 2013 is - 0.07 F / Decade

US temperature recent 4 months (Jan- Apr) 2000-2013

The trend for 2000 to 2013 is - 0.54 F / Decade

Do you notice the “accelerated warming” trend from 1970-2013 to 2000-2013??

And as I said in the beginning – always remember that these figures are based on the official data that has been tweaked, “adjusted” and manipulated to fit their agenda (cool the past, ignore UHI and land use change factors, huge smoothing radius – 1200km etc.)..

So the “warming trend” 2000-2013 for Jan- Apr is exactly - 0.54 F degrees a decade.  That is - 5.4 F COOLER in 100 years. That’s what I call “warming”!

And to REALLY show you this “accelerated warming” trend lets recapitulate the 3 month January-March trend /decade (see my previous post):

US temperature recent 3 months (Jan- Mar) 2000-2013

The trend for 2000 to 2013 is - 0.41 F / Decade

You REALLY, REALLY can see the accelerating trend can you not?

Take cover – The sweat is really breaking out.

And this is also the decade that the Global Warming Hysterics have been screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to scare us to death, about the catastrophic treat that the “extreme increase” in temperature is to mankind and earth.

This is a perfect example of what I have been saying all along, it has always been a political agenda – anti human, anti freedom, anti development and anti capitalism. And this Global Warming Hysteria is part of that agenda. It has nothing to do with science, facts or saving the environment or the Earth.

All of this, as always, paid by us, the common people, in the form of taxes, high energy costs and reducing our living standard back to the Stone Age.

And all of this to “save” the Earth from a “catastrophic warming” when it is actually cooling.

And the most absurd thing is that all the things that the “intelligent” politicians and the so called “scientists”, with the willing help of mainstream media, have forced through at EXTREME cost to us, are actually helping to accelerate the cooling.

Talking about an eminent treat to humankind!

According to the computer models that the Global Warming Hysterics love so much, worship and blindly follows (especially our intelligent politicians), it should be EXACTLY the opposite.

And we are supposed to be very worried about a predicted rise of 3-4 F?

But not this ACTUAL trend?

And for this predicted trend the politicians want to take our societies back to the Stone Age. But, as usual, they DO NOTHING about the actual trend.

So to summarize this evidence of this “accelerated warming” trend:

The recent 4 months trend 1970-2013 is exactly 0.63 F degrees a decade.

The recent 4 months trend 1980-2013 is exactly 0.38 F degrees a decade.

The recent 4 months trend 1990-2013 is exactly- 0.07 F degrees a decade.

The recent 4 months trend 2000-2013 is exactly - 0.54 F degrees a decade.

So the “warming” trend is really accelerating wouldn’t you say.

Some more “rapid warming” like this and the freezer looks really warm.

Another brilliant and glorious example of RAPID WARMING and an eminent treat to humankind! Especially during the last 43 years.

That is truly “Global Warming” US style.

An interesting ”science” wouldn’t you say.

This is the “stuff” that “Global Warming” is made of.

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Climate Gate – All the manipulations and lies revealed 314

More on NASA:s refusal to comply with FOI requests. And their active and willingly participation in the Global Warming Hysteria.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-2-0-%e2%80%94-the-nasa-files-u-s-climate-science-as-corrupt-as-cru-pjm-exclusive-%e2%80%94-part-one/?singlepage=true

Climategate 2.0 — The NASA Files: U.S. Climate Science as Corrupt as CRU (PJM Exclusive — Part One)

Chris Horner filed the FOIA request that NASA didn’t comply with for two years. Now we know what took so long. (This is Part One of a four-part series.)

February 17, 2010 – by Christopher Horner

In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder).

I did this because Canadian businessman Steve McIntyre — a man with professional experience investigating suspect statistical claims in the mining industry and elsewhere, including his exposure of the now-infamous “hockey stick” graph — noticed something unusual with NASA’s claims of an ever-warming first decade of this century. NASA appeared to have inflated its U.S. temperatures beginning in the year 2000. My FOIA request asked NASA about their internal discussions regarding whether and how to correct the temperature error caught by McIntyre.

NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately.

On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with the documents I requested in August 2007.

The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise. The emails show NASA making off with enormous sums of taxpayer funding doing precisely what they claim only a “skeptic” would do. The emails show NASA attempting to scrub their website of their own documents, and indeed they quietly pulled down numerous press releases grounded in the proven-wrong data. The emails show NASA claiming that their own temperature errors (which they have been caught making and in uncorrected form aggressively promoting) are merely trivial, after years of hysterically trumpeting much smaller warming anomalies.

As you examine the email excerpts below, as well as those which I will discuss in the upcoming three parts of this series, bear in mind that the contents of these emails were intended to prop up the argument for the biggest regulatory intervention in history: the restricting of carbon emissions from all human activity. NASA’s activist scientists leave no doubt in their emails that this was indeed their objective. Also, please note that these documents were responsive to a specific FOIA request from two years ago. Recent developments — combined with admissions contained in these documents — beg further requests, which have both been already filed and with more forthcoming.

Furthermore, on January 29, 2010, CEI filed our appeal of NASA continuing to improperly withhold other documents responsive to our FOIA requests. In this appeal we informed NASA that if they do not comply by the twentieth day, as required by law, we shall exercise our appellate rights in court immediately.

________________________________

Under Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NASA shepherds a continuing public campaign claiming clear evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) — climate change induced by human beings. The documents released via the FOIA request, however, contain admissions of data unreliability that are staggering, particularly in light of NASA’s claims to know temperatures and anomalies within hundredths of a degree, and the alarm they helped raise over a mere one degree of claimed warming over more than an entire century.

Dr. Reto Ruedy, a Hansen colleague at GISS, complains in his August 3, 2007, email to his co-worker at GISS and RealClimate blogger Gavin Schmidt:

[The United States Historical Climate Network] data are not routinely kept up-to-date (at this point the (sic) seem to end in 2002).

This lapse led to wild differences in data claimed to be from the same ground stations by USHCN and the Global Climate Network (GHCN). NASA later trumpeted the “adjustments” they made to this data (upward only, of course) in extremely minor amounts — adjustments they are now seen admitting are well within any uncertainty, a fact that received significantly less emphasis in their public media campaign claiming anomalous, man-made warming.

GISS’s Ruedy then wrote:

[NASA’s] assumption that the adjustments made the older data consistent with future data … may not have been correct. … Indeed, in 490 of the 1057 stations the USHCN data were up to 1C colder than the corresponding GHCN data, in 77 stations the data were the same, and in the remaining 490 stations the USHCN data were warmer than the GHCN data.

Ruedy claimed this introduced an estimated warming into the record of 0.1 deg C. Ruedy then described an alternate way of manipulating the temperature data, “a more careful method” they might consider using, instead.

———————————————-

Although in public he often used his high-profile perch for global warming cheerleading, former New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin privately wrote that he was worried about the integrity of the ground stations.  When still at the Times he wrote to Hansen on August 23, 2007:

i never, till today, visited http://www.surfacestations.org and found it quite amazing. if our stations are that shoddy, what’s it like in Mongolia?

Sadly, although Andy wrote many pieces touting as significant what we now know NASA admits as statistically meaningless temperature claims, he did not find time to write about data so “shoddy” as to reach the point of “amazing.” That is what advocacy often entails: providing only one side, and even a far less compelling side, of a story.

———————————————

In an August 14, 2007, email from GISS’s Makiko Sato to Hansen, Sato wrote that his analysis of a one degree warming between 1934 and 1998 might in reality be half that amount:

I am sure I had 1998 warmer than 1934 at least once because on my own temperature web page (which most people never look at), I have [image/information not visible in document]. … I didn’t keep all the data, but some of them are (some data are then listed, with 1934 0.5 deg C warmer than 1998)

As AGW proponents only claim a one degree warming over the past century, the magnitude of a .5 degree Celsius problem in their calculations is tremendous.

Sato continues:

I am sorry, I should have kept more data, but I was not interested in US data after 2001 paper.

Sato is referencing the paper by Hansen, et al., in which Hansen’s colleagues remind him 1934 was indeed listed as being a full half-degree warmer than 1998 — which is shown in their emails as being what the data said as of July 1999 (their paper described 1934 as only “slightly” warmer than 1998, p. 8). Still, throughout these emails Hansen later insists 1934 and 1998 are in a statistical tie with just a 0.02 Celsius difference and even that their relationship has not changed. For example, Hansen claims in an email to a journalist with Bloomberg: “As you will see in our 2001 paper we found 1934 slightly warmer, by an insignificant hair over 1998. We still find that result.” The implication is that things had not changed when in fact NASA had gone from claiming a statistically significant if politically inconvenient warmer 1934 over 1998, to a tie.

Regarding U.S. temperatures, Ruedy confessed to Hansen on August 23, 2007 to say:

I got a copy from a journalist in Brazil, we don’t save the data.

——————————————–

The Ruedy relationship with a Brazilian journalist raises the matter of the incestuous relationship between NASA’s GISS and like-minded environmental reporters. One can’t help but recall how, recently, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claim of glacier shrinkage in the Himalayas was discredited  when found to be the work of a single speculative journalist at a popular magazine, and not strict peer-reviewed scientific data. The emails we obtained include several instances of very close ties and sympathetic relationships with journalists covering them.

The same can be said of NASA’s relationship vis-a-vis the IPCC, whose alarmism NASA enabled. One NASA email implicitly if privately admits that IPCC claims of accelerating warming — such as those by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri or UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon — are specious. Yet NASA has never publicly challenged such alarmism. Instead, it sat by and benefited from it, with massive taxpayer funding of its rather odd if growing focus on “climate.”

In an August 15, 2007, email from Ruedy to Brazilian journalist Leticia Francisco Sorg, responding to Sorg’s request for Ruedy to say if warming is accelerating, Ruedy replied:

“To observe that the warming accelerates would take even longer observation times” than the past 25 years. In fact, it would take “another 50-100 years.”

This is a damning admission that NASA has been complicit in UN alarmism. This is not science. It is debunked advocacy. The impropriety of such policy advocacy, let alone allowing unsubstantial scientific claims to become part of a media campaign, is self-evident.

Christopher Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

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Gott Nytt ÅR! – Happy New Year!

God Jul – Merry Christmas

Vill ta tillfället i akt att önska all mina läsare en riktigt God Jul.

De närmaste två veckorna  kommer jag bara sporadiskt att publicera inlägg.

Så här skrev jag för exakt ett år sedan:

”Jag ser med förtröstan fram mot 2009. Det år då den största politiska och vetenskapliga skandalen i modern tid kommer att spricka – Global Warming Hysterin.”

Nå, det blev ju så eller hur.

Så år 2010 ser jag med förtröstan fram emot att den största politiska och vetenskapliga skandalen i modern tid– Global Warming Hysterin – kommer att falla ihop som det korthus det är.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas!

The next two weeks I am only going to publish posts sporadically.

 In my post exactly a year ago I wrote:

“I am looking forward to 2009, the year when the biggest political and scientific scandal in modern time is going to implode – The Global Warming Hysteria.”

Well, it did happen.

So for 2010 I am looking forward to that the biggest political and scientific scandal in modern time – The Global Warming Hysteria – is not only going to implode, it is going to vanish into thin air.

 

Climate Gate – All the manipulations and lies revealed 23

Warwick Hughes has made an interesting graph of the CRU emails showing exactly who was emailing who in Climate gate.

Blog post here

http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=324

                   Click on the graph to get larger

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The EU Auditors have, for the 15th year in a row, refused to sign off the EU’s accounts owing to Fraud and Mismanagement in the budget

And here we go again! 15 years in a row – must be a world record of a sort.

And remember – This is our money they are misspending.

http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/here-we-go-again.html

Here we go again

The European Court of Auditors has, for the 15th year in a row, today refused to sign off the EU’s accounts.

EU anti-fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas anticipated this predicatable development in a piece on EUobserver yesterday in which he attempted to pin the blame for the mismanagement of EU funds on national governments and regional authorities.

(In classic Commission style, he also tried to ward off all critcism and shut down debate by getting in there first with the trademark ‘anti-EU’ jibe: ”some quarters will yet again use the report to promote their own anti-EU agendas, which have little or nothing to do with the report’s findings.”)

But, as we argue today in a new briefing, the problem is with the EU budget itself. It is dominated by two failing policies which even the current UK Government is essentially opposed to: the Common Agricultural Policy, and the so-called Structural Funds. The sheer size and complexity of these two top-down spending programmes means the EU’s budget is wide open to waste and mismanagement, regardless of whether the blame lays with the Commission or the member states. The budget therefore represents extremely bad value for taxpayers’ money.

Also, while mismanagement of the accounts continues to be problematic, arguably the most important issue is the fact that the EU budget is hugely wasteful and irrational in terms of what the money is actually spent on, and where the money is spent.

To illustrate this, we have today published a light-hearted list of 50 new examples of EU waste, which may make you smile and despair in equal measure.

50 new examples of EU waste

http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/top50waste.pdf

http://www.openeurope.org.uk/media-centre/pressrelease.aspx?pressreleaseid=126

Open Europe publishes 50 new examples of EU waste

10 November 2009

Today, the EU’s accountants – the European Court of Auditors (ECA) – have published their annual report on the EU’s budget. The ECA has refused to give the EU’s accounts a clean bill of health for the 15th year in a row, owing to fraud and mismanagement in the budget. Like last year, the auditors did sign off the Commission’s own accounts, saying that they accurately represented how much money was raised and spent.

Although the ECA’s report is about the management of the accounts, the occasion represents an opportunity to take stock of the EU budget as a whole. Because while mismanagement of the accounts continues to be problematic, arguably the most important issue is the fact that the EU budget is hugely wasteful and irrational in terms of what the money is actually spent on, and where the money is spent.

The budget is dominated by two failing policies which even the current UK Government is essentially opposed to: the Common Agricultural Policy, and the so-called Structural Funds. The sheer size and complexity of these two top-down spending programmes means the EU’s budget is wide open to waste and mismanagement, regardless of whether the blame lays with the Commission or the member states. The budget therefore represents extremely bad value for taxpayers’ money.

To illustrate this, Open Europe has produced a list of 50 new examples of EU waste. The list is by no means comprehensive, but designed to show the types of peculiar projects on which EU money has been wasted in the past. They give a light-hearted illustration of what is wrong with the EU budget, and the need for fundamental reform.

Open Europe Research Director Mats Persson said:

”The Commission tries to put the blame for fraud and waste on the member states, but the real problem is the EU budget itself. The EU’s spending programmes are overly complex, irrational and hopelessly out of date. Until they are subject to root-and-branch reforms, or scrapped altogether, waste and fraud will continue.”

”Too often, EU money is wasted on inefficient projects which are based on unrealistic expectations or for which there is no real demand. Because of the way the EU’s spending schemes are set up, bizarre or wasteful projects can receive funding which never would have received money if subject only to national spending priorities. Unfortunately, the focus of the EU budget is to get the money out of the door, not to spend the money wisely.”

“Surely, in a recession, we can think of better ways to spend £100 billon a year?”

To read Open Europe’s 50 new examples of EU waste see here:

www.openeurope.org.uk/research/top50waste.pdf

To read some background on the EU budget, please see below.

TOP 10 EXAMPLES OF EU WASTE

€173,000 for a luxury golf resort

€173,274 in EU funds were given to the luxury golf resort, Monte da Quinta Club, in the Algarve, Portugal,[1] where guests can choose between “the comfort of a villa with garden and private pool, or be dazzled by deluxe suites”.[2] There is also a luxury spa, health club, several restaurants and bars, shops and a hairdresser.

€2,500 for Chairman of Porsche’s hunting retreat

Wolfgang Porsche, supervisory board Chairman of Porsche, received €2,500 in EU rural development funds for a small estate in Bavaria, Germany, where he goes hunting in his free time.[3]

€100,000 for a luxury Spanish hotel chain

€99,877 in EU funds for 2009 alone were granted to Tils Curt, a chain of luxury restaurants and hotels across Spain, established in 1880. The funds were given as part of the Regional Development Fund.[4]

‘Donkeypedia’: the blogging donkey

As part of the EU’s €7 million ‘Year of Intercultural Dialogue’ initiative, the European Commission ran an art education project called “Donkeypedia”, in which a donkey travels through the Netherlands, and primary school children meet and greet the donkey. The aim of the project was “creating a reflection of all European identities. What are the similarities, what are the differences? What is it that makes Europe as unique as it is? Donkeypedia will try to make this feeling tangible by interacting and in dialogue with its surroundings while walking a European route through several countries and collecting data to support this image.” The donkey, named Asino, also maintained a blog throughout the walk. One entry reads: “We started really early today, Cristian slept in a bed in a house. It was a crazy morning waking up. I was under a chestnut tree sleeping in sand, when I opened my eyes there were animals all looking at me. I was embarrassed! Now I understand a little how people from different cultures may feel in the Netherlands.”[5]

€80,000 for a Swedish ‘virtual city’ in Second Life

In early 2008, Sweden’s third largest city, Malmo, was given an EU grant worth 800,000 Swedish kronor (€80,000), to create a virtual version of itself in “Second Life” ­- a virtual fantasy world inhabited by computer-generated residents. The project was an attempt to reach out to young people and envisioned some of Malmo’s most famous buildings – such as its library and university – to be mirrored in Second Life. In addition, the project included plans for a virtual “citizens’ office”, in which City officials could do their work and meet with those inhabitants of Malmö who were active in Second Life (the number of Malmo residents active on Second Life is thought to be very small).

In May 2009, Malmo was launched as a ‘virtual city’. By then, the budget had been busted – and the project had been subject to massive criticism, as Second Life was no longer regarded as the future of social media – particularly not amongst young people. One of the politicians involved in the project said: “Malmö wants to be at the forefront of IT, but we’re aware that Second Life is probably not at the absolute forefront anymore.” Joakim Jardenberg, of Swedish IT company Mindpark, added that he thought the project was a “bizarre joke” at first. “Second Life has never been particularly popular in Sweden. Facebook would have been a better tool”, he said. In March 2010 the project will be evaluated. If virtual Malmo does not have enough visitors by then, the project will be shut down.[6]

€850,000 for a ‘gender equal’ wood design centre

Local politicians in Orsa, a village of 5,000 inhabitants in Sweden, wanted a new wood ‘design centre’, describing the idea as “a catalyst and meeting place for all creative activities”. The project description stressed that “the building would clearly display a gender equality design.” The project won co-financing from the EU’s structural funds, which provided €850,000 of the €1.7 million that was budgeted for the project. However, when the funds ran out, the politicians decided to combine the wood design centre with the village’s other EU project, a wildlife centre, which had cost €3.2 million up to that point. The wildlife centre was in need of a spectacular new entrance hall – which became the wood centre. In their final report on the project the politicians confessed that the building had not necessarily promoted cultural events, but proudly emphasised that all parts of the building were “equally accessible regardless of gender.”[7]

€400,000 on a Marathon for a United Europe

In September 2008 the EU spent €400,000[8] on a “Marathon for a United Europe” for young people from across the EU. Among the aims for the three-day event in Greece was to “promote and support European citizen ideals.”[9] On the official website the Marathon is described as “a completely European event supporting in every way the harmonious and prosperous coexistence of young people under the EU umbrella.”[10]

The Swedish cannabis farmer

A Swedish farmer received around 2,000 kronor (€200) in subsides from the EU for land on which he grew cannabis plants. Selling the drug is illegal in Sweden, but growing the plant is allowed if it is used for “industrial” purposes – for example to produce robust nets – provided that the so-called THC dose in the plant is below 0.3%. The subsidy to the Swedish farmer was paid from the EU’s Single Farm Payment scheme, and the farmer had filled in all forms correctly. However, since farmers receive subsidies from this scheme irrespective of what they have grown on their land, there’s no obligation on the Swedish farmer to inform the authorities about what he actually intends to use the cannabis plants for.[11]

€400,000 to get children drawing portraits of each other in the name of European citizenship

“Alter Ego” is an art competition running in at least 22 EU countries. The aim of the project, which used €400,000 of EU funds[12], is to encourage young people aged 14 to 18 to “explore different and varied identities, by creating a double portrait” – a portrait of themselves and someone from a different cultural background[13]. The competition is intended to “Raise the awareness of all those living in the EU, in particular young people, of the importance of developing an active European citizenship.”[14]

€198,500 for EU puppet theatre network in the Baltics

In 2008, the Estonian State Puppet theatre received €198,500 in EU funds for a project with the Latvian State Puppet theatre and Vilnius puppet theatre, which aimed to “develop the cooperation between the puppetry masters and museology specialists with the EU in order to find new and innovative ways on how to archive the puppet performances and present the exhibits in the puppetry art museums; encourage the Baltic countries to take more actively part in the intercultural dialogue; encourage the creation of puppetry art museums in other European puppet theatres.”[15] This is not to be confused with the €105,996 EU grant the Estonian State Puppet Theatre received in 2006 “to explore the similarities and diversities within a range of European cultures and cultural expressions”, as reported in last year’s list of examples of EU waste.[16]

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1) For more information, please contact Mats Persson on 0044 207 197 2333 or 0044 779 94 606 91.

2) Open Europe is an independent think-tank calling for reform of the European Union. Its supporters include: Sir Stuart Rose, Executive Chairman, Marks and Spencer plc; Sir Crispin Davis, Former Chief Executive, Reed Elsevier Group plc; Sir David Lees, Chairman, Tate and Lyle plc; Sir Henry Keswick, Chairman, Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd; Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover KG, Life President, J Sainsbury plc; Sir John Egan, Chairman, Severn Trent plc and Lord Kalms of Edgware, President, DSG International plc; Hugh Sloane, Founder, Sloane Robinson.

For a full list, please click here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/about-us/supporters.aspx

BACKGROUND

WHAT DID THE AUDITORS SAY IN THEIR REPORT ON THE 2008 EU BUDGET?

In its report on the 2008 EU budget, the ECA refused to sign off on how the money from the EU’s 2008 budget had been spent. While saying that the overall situation is improving, the Court noted that a number of spending areas in the budget are still “materially affected by errors”. These include the EU’s policies on cohesion; research, energy and transport; external aid and enlargement; and part of the agricultural programme.

However, the ECA gave an unqualified or clean opinion on the reliability of the 2008 EU accounts. This means that the Court considers the EU Commission’s accounts to present a fair and accurate picture of how much money was spent out of the EU budget.

The Court concluded that cohesion policy, or the Structural funds, which is the second largest spending area in the budget (representing almost a third of the budget), “remains problematic and is the area most affected by errors.” The Court estimated that at least 11 % of the total amount paid out in grants from the Structural Funds should not have been paid out in the first place.

Crucially, the auditors noted that “In many situations the errors are a consequence of too complex rules and regulations. Simplification, therefore, remains a priority.”

“Agriculture and natural resources” – part of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – was given a clean bill of health for the first time.

To read the ECA’s report, click here: http://eca.europa.eu/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/3258349.PDF

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE EU BUDGET

The EU budget is worth about €975 billion (£875 billion) between 2007-2013. According to the Treasury, the UK pays in almost £10 billion a year into the EU’s budget, on average (after the rebate), and gets back about £5.2 billion on average. Crucially, the UK’s net contribution will go from £3 billion in 2009-10 (gross contribution £7.6 billion) to £6.4 billion in 2011-12 (gross contribution £12 billion), according to the Treasury’s projection.[17]The UK is also the EU country that receives the least back from the budget per head.

Ultimate responsibility lies with the Commission

The EU Commission has consistently argued that responsibility for the mismanagement of the EU budget lies at the national level, not with itself, as 78 per cent of EU funds are distributed by member states in agricultural payments and structural funds. However, as the ECA made clear in this year’s report, “Responsibility for the legality and regularity of spending on Cohesion Policies starts in the Member States, but the Commission bears the ultimate responsibility for the correct implementation of the budget.” And in previous reports, the ECA has noted, ”Regardless of the method of implementation applied, the Commission bears the ultimate responsibility for the legality and regularity of the transactions underlying the accounts of the European Communities (Article 274 of the Treaty).”

No link between spending and need

Crucially, the link between spending and need in the EU budget is weak. Per head, the top three recipients of EU funds continue to be old member states – Luxembourg, Belgium and Greece. France continues to be the largest recipient of EU funds of any member state in absolute terms. France receives €89 billion from the EU between 2007-2013, compared to €46 billion for the UK.

The CAP is particularly bad in this respect. The CAP currently transfers money from the poorest member states to countries like France and Spain. For example, in 2004, the 10 new member states paid nearly €1 billion more into the CAP than they got out of it (€835 million).

KEY AREAS OF EU WASTE

Agriculture

· The EU spends some €54 billion a year on various types of farm subsidies (compared to €42 billion in 2001). In its opinion on the 2008 EU budget, the ECA signed off parts of the agricultural budget but stated that the “rural development” spending is still subject to errors. The ECA noted that 32 % of the transactions involving EU rural development funds were affected by error.

Even without the fraud and mismanagement, the CAP is a wasteful and distorting policy:

· According to an OECD estimate for 2006, the ”real” cost of the CAP is 125 bn euros a year, paid through higher prices and added taxes. The report also estimated that food in the EU is on average 20% above the world price, due to EU subsidies and tariffs.

· This hits the poor hardest because the bottom fifth of households in the UK spend 16% of their income on food – double the proportion spent by the richest fifth (7.5%)

· According to a 2005 report by Oxford Economic Forecasting, scrapping the CAP and reforming tariffs could make the bottom 10% of earners £437 a year per person better off.

· Since the introduction of the so-called Single Farm Payment a large part of CAP subsidies are now based on ”area” and have nothing to do with actual farming and production. As a consequence, a large number of non-farmers are now receiving subsidies. In recent years there has been a rash of stories about payments to golf clubs, various royalties, pony clubs and a number of large multinationals such as Coca-Cola.

· The real winners from the system are landowners, as subsidies allow owners of land and suppliers of inputs to put their prices up by an equivalent amount and so ”capture” the money spent on subsidies.

Structural Funds

· In its report, the ECA found that for the Structural Funds – which are worth around €45 billion a year – 43% of the funded projects contained ”errors”. In terms of ”financial impact” the Court concluded that around 11%, of the total amount reimbursed to member states in 2008 should not have been reimbursed – the same share as last year.

Like the CAP, even without the notorious problems with fraud, the Structural Funds remain largely wasteful:

· The Structural Funds are aimed at creating jobs and boosting Europe’s competitiveness. In particular, the objective is to help poorer regions catch up with richer ones. However, there is no conclusive evidence that the Funds have had any positive economic impact. In fact, as the OECD has argued, the rate of ”convergence” in the EU is very slow – at the current rate of convergence it would take 170 years to halve divergence across the regions in the EU. (OECD 2007)

· The EU will spend close to 310 bn euros in 2007-2013 on the Structural Funds. Of this, only slightly more than 50% will go the new member states – the rest will be spent in the EU-15. (DG Regio 2006)

· Bizarrely, each region, no matter how rich, receives some sort of EU funding. For example, one of the richest regions in Germany, Lüneburg, was granted a staggering 900 million euros from the EU for the 2000-2006 financial period.

· Even within the regions, the funds are poorly targeted. Research by Open Europe found that as little as 10-30% of funds given to South East England were spent in the poorest one-fifth of areas.

· As the ECA has pointed out separately, the EU’s so-called N+2 rule (allocated funds must be paid out within two years or the money will be cancelled), encourages fast rather than wise spending. This has exacerbated problems with poor project selection.

· Even though regions now have significant autonomy in deciding which projects to select (they must select projects, or the funds will be cancelled), there are still restrictions on what they can spend the money on. For instance, national authorities are not allowed to spend funds on social housing.

Culture and citizenship projects

· The EU has a robust budget for promoting European culture and citizenship, particularly among young people. While this may on the face of it sound like a worthwhile way to spend money, it is clear from the EU’s many policy documents and project briefs that the underlying aim of culture and citizenship initiatives is to promote the idea of European integration and ‘ever closer union’.

· The EU makes millions of euros a year available in EU grants to all manner of projects intended to promote the EU and its policies in everything from schools to concert halls to cinemas, and even directly funds NGOs and organisations promoting European integration. This is an unacceptable use of taxpayers’ money, since it unfairly favours those who wish to see a more integrated EU at the expense of those who do not. Worse, it does not allow for a balanced debate about the future of Europe, and this is especially worrying when school children and young people are the targeted audience.

· In 2008 alone, the EU spent more than €2.4 billion promoting European integration and ‘ever closer union’ through a myriad of funding streams and through the various Commission departments – DG Culture, DG Education and Citizenship, and DG Communication. [18]

· For example, more than €34m was dedicated to “Fostering European Citizenship”, and a further €62m was spent on “Developing cultural cooperation in Europe.” The very candidly stated aim of this is to generate support and justification for European integration. As the 2006 decision on the “Europe for Citizens” policy notes: “The Treaty establishes citizenship of the Union… It is an important element in strengthening and safeguarding the process of European integration.”

· Likewise, the EU’s €400 million Culture Programme states that: “For citizens to give their full support to, and participate fully in, European integration, greater emphasis should be placed on their common cultural values and roots as a key element of their identity.”

· Many of the examples of this nature are included in our 50 top examples since they are simply bizarre, and it is very difficult to imagine how they could possibly represent value for taxpayers’ money.

· There is also the wider question about whether or not the EU should even have a budget for culture, citizenship, education and communication in the first place, since it has no democratic mandate to legislate in these areas. ——————————————————————————–

[1] Algarve regional development agency; http://www.ccdr-alg.pt/ccdr/parameters/ccdr-alg/files/File/upload//PO_Algarve_21/Projectos_Aprovados/Quadro_aprovacoes_webpage_emp_rev.pdf p.2

[2] See the club’s website here; http://www.mqclub.com/MQ.aspx?tabId=13&code=en

[3] TAZ, ‘Bayerische Promis streichen Agrarhilfen ein’, 4/8/2009; http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/print-archiv/printressorts/digi-artikel/?ressort=wu&dig=2009/08/04/a0076&cHash=0f03d0b936

[4] Andalucian Regional Government, Account of Operations by Beneficiary: Andalucian Operative Programme FEDER, September 2009; http://www.dgfc.sgpg.meh.es/aplweb/pdf/DescargasFondosComunitarios/(2104)AN1.pdf p.182; see also; http://www.tilscurt.com/

[5] http://www.donkeypedia.org/

[6] Tillväxtverket (Swedish managing authority for the structural funds), see ”Projektbanken”, http://projektbanken.tillvaxtverket.se/sb/d/1335/a/8133; Sydsvenskan, “Nu finns Malmö stad i Second life”, 10 May 2009, http://sydsvenskan.se/malmo/article430331/Nu-finns-Malmo-stad-i-Second-life.html : Sydsvenskan, “ Experterna gör tummen ner för Malmö stads satsning”, 6 May 2009, see http://sydsvenskan.se/malmo/article430333/Experterna-gor-tummen-ner-for-Malmo-stads-satsning.html

[7] Näringsliv och utvecklingskontoret, Orsa Kommun ”Slutrapport Designtorg Trä (W3041-991-02) 1 Januari 2003-30 september 2007, see http://www.projektbanken.z.lst.se/rapporter/Fil-200810311193.pdf ; Expressen, ” Björnkramar för miljoner”, 3 August 2009, see http://www.expressen.se/Nyheter/1.1659350/bjornkramar-for-miljoner

[8] http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/calls/docs/grants08dira.pdf

[9] http://www.britishcouncil.org/greece-sport-marathon-for-a-united-europe.htm

[10] http://marathonforaunitedeurope.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=92

[11] Aftonbladet, “Odlar cannabis med EU-bidrag”, 19 August 2009, see http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article3128434.ab

[12] http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/calls/docs/grants08dira.pdf

[13] http://www.eunic-europe.eu/EUNIC-website/fileadmin/user_upload/Press_info/Alter_Ego.pdf

[14] http://www.pact-online.ro/aedi-en.php

[15]http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/culture/funding/2008/selection/documents/selection_strand_1_2_1_2008/selectionresults_strand1.2.12009.pdf

[16] See: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/top100waste.pdf

[17] See, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/european_community_finances_2009.pdf)

[18] For more see here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/hardsell.pdf

Gott Nytt År

God Jul och ett Gott Nytt År!

Vill ta tillfället i akt att önska all mina läsare en riktigt God Jul och ett Gott Nytt År.

De närmaste två veckorna som kommer jag bara sporadiskt att publicera inlägg.

Jag ser med förtröstan fram mot 2009. Det år då den största politiska och vetenskapliga skandalen i modern tid kommer att spricka – Global Warming hysterin.

  

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The next two weeks I am only going to publish post sporadically.

I am looking forward to 2009, the year when the biggest political and scientific scandal in modern time is going to implode – The Global Warming Hysteria.

Självgodhetens rike

Som ett komplement till mitt inlägg Sverige talar om för Världen hur den borde styras kommer här ett citat från ett inlägg Hax gör på sin blogg idag:

”Sverige är som att se en trafikolycka i extrem slow motion. Man ser vad som går åt helvete. Man kan inte göra något åt det. Och man kan inte låta bli att titta.”

http://henrikalexandersson.blogspot.com/2008/11/sjlvgodhetens-rike.html

Mycket träffande!

Paul Krugman and The Nobel Prize in economics – We’d like all of them back EXCEPT FOR Paul Krugman.

Min kommentar till att Paul Krugman får ”Nobels” ekonomipris (en utnämning så PK fast inte av lika ”hög” klass som Al Gores fredspris):

Tidskriften Slaters chefredaktör Cyrus Krohn (som var med från starten 1996 och blev chefredaktör i juli 2002) skrev ett memo till chefsjuristen på Microsoft (tidskriften ägdes av Microsoft vid tillfället) för att klaga på att New York Times ”snodde” deras bästa reportrar. Och att detta var ett brott mot den ”non-compete clause” som journalisterna undertecknat.

Och här kommer den obetalbara slutklämmen (som jag till fullo delar) – ”But just in case, we’d like all of them back except for Paul Krugman”.

Paul Krugman jobbade där mellan1996 och1999 då han gick till NYT,

”Slate is a daily magazine on the Web. Founded in 1996, we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, and culture.”

http://www.poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=5589

Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko

Date/Time: 9/5/2003 1:06:35 PM

Title: Slate publisher’s memo re losing staff to NYT

Posted By: Jim Romenesko

TO: Brad Smith

Sr. Vice President, Microsoft Legal & Corporate Affairs

FROM: Cyrus Krohn

Publisher, Slate Magazine

RE: Non-Compete Clause & Contractual Interference

 

Dear Brad:

As per my voicemail earlier today, I would like to bring to your attention an ongoing problem we’re experiencing at Slate.

A prominent East Coast newspaper, The New York Times, has been poaching from Slate, taking key writers and editors invaluable to our evolving franchise. Several years ago I viewed these departures as testament to Slate’s reputation within our industry. Being recognized by the media establishment as a breeding ground of top journalists was rewarding. But no longer do I hold these egress offenders in such high regard.

Granted the New York Times has been experiencing talent problems of their own lately, but that’s no excuse to ”brain drain” us. In my seven years with Slate, I’ve seen the Times make off with no fewer than five Slatesters. And just last week, they tried to hire away our esteemed editor-in-chief, Jacob Weisberg, according to this item in the New York Post. While the opportunity offered Weisberg was beneath his abilities, I’m thankful he didn’t follow his former colleagues.

Our mantra at Slate is to support budding journalists growing in their profession. Should a better opportunity present itself, by all means go forward. But this trend must cease. Our staff are bound by the non-compete clause they signed upon employment, and I was wondering if you could spare some time for Slate now that the DOJ case is behind us? This tortuous contractual interference is beginning to have adverse effects on us.

It’s improbable we’ll be able to recoup our losses. But just in case, we’d like all of them back except for Paul Krugman.

I appreciate your help and look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Cyrus

Food shortages, questionable benefits downplayed as Dr. McGuinty hits the gas pedal on ethanol

Ett utmärkt artikel av Lorrie Goldstein om etanolvansinnet och alla de problem som denna satsning medför. I det här fallet så handlar det om politikern Dalton McGuinty (Premier of Ontario sedan 23/10-03).

Han påminner INTE SÅ LITE om våra inhemska varianter som med full fart fortsätter med dessa gigantiska satsningar på etanol oavsett ALLA larmrapporter och problem som finns med etanolen (se bl.a. mitt tidigare inlägg: Avgasutsläppen från etanol är STÖRRE och VÄRRE än från bensinbilar!)

Som det enkla faktum att om man tar med hela produktionskedjan vid tillverkning av etanol så är CO2 utsläppen större än för bensin. Det går åt 35-40% mer etanol än med bensin för att köra samma sträcka, Den TOTALA energimängden som går åt för att framställa 1 l etanol är MYCKET större än för 1 l bensin. Etc. Etc.

Men som sagt inget a detta bekymrar vår käcka och intälägänta politiker  som tutar och kör för fullt som vanligt i enkelspår!

Artikln finns här:

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/

2008/04/20/5337211-sun.php

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Giant Global Warming Tax Hikes Headed Your Way

Här kommer en utmärkt artikel av Paul Driessen om de gigantiska ekonomiska kostnaderna för vanligt folk om USA skulle inför en handel med utsläppsrätter och begränsningar i CO2

Se även mina inlägg: Europe finds that cutting carbon emissions is far easier said than done.  An Organization Diagram from Hell – Welcome to carbon trading!,  Geschäftet och fusket med handeln av utsläppsrätter!,  Clearing out the environmental fogA CO2 graph that says it all!,  A Carbon fantasy that will bankrupt us!,  We were forced to swallow disadvantageous conditions for diplomatic reasons!,   EU:s CO2 policy – The hot air of hypocrisy!,  Self-Interest: Inconvenient Truth of Climate Change!,  The Price Tag – Kostnaderna för Global Warming för VANLIGT FOLK -2!,  The Price Tag – Kostnaderna för Global Warming för VANLIGT FOLK!,  $ 2,9 Biljoner i sänkt BNP för en sänkning av CO2 på 25 ppm!,  De ekonomiska realiteterna av Global Warming Hysterin,  Realpolitik i klimat dimmorna,  Snabb helomvändning i Australien!

Citat:

”Our planet has experienced numerous climate shifts, they point out, including prolonged ice ages, a 400-year Medieval Warm Period and a 500-year Little Ice Age. Climate scientists still don’t understand what caused these events – or the temperature roller coaster of the last century, as carbon dioxide levels rose steadily: temperatures climbed from 1910 to 1945, fell between 1945 and 1975, and increased again from 1975 to 1998, notes Syun-Ichi Akasofu, founding director of the International Arctic Research Center.”

”Climate models do help scientists evaluate possible consequences of changing economic growth, emission, cloud cover and other variables. But they can’t reproduce the actual climate of the past century. They cannot make accurate predictions, even one year in the future, much less fifty. They do not represent reality, and should not be relied on to guide public policy.

Models reflect the assumptions and hypotheses that go into them – and our still limited understanding of complex, turbulent climate processes that involve the sun, oceans, land masses and atmosphere. They do a poor job of dealing with the effects of water vapor, precipitation and high cirrus clouds on temperatures and climate, because the underlying physics aren’t well understood, notes MIT meteorology professor Richard Lindzen.

Like the UN’s politicized climate control panel, the IPCC, models also place too much emphasis on carbon dioxide. They pay insufficient attention to extraterrestrial factors like changes in the Earth’s irregular orbit around the sun, solar energy levels, and solar winds that appear to influence the level of cosmic rays reaching Earth, and thus the formation of cloud cover and penetration of infrared radiation from the sun. They likewise fail to incorporate the profound effects that periodic shifts in Pacific Ocean currents have on temperatures and sea ice in the Arctic.

When the US National Assessment compared the results of two top-tier computer models for various regions of the United States, the models frequently generated precisely opposite rainfall scenarios, University of Alabama at Huntsville climatologist John Christy points out. Depending on which model was used, the Dakotas and Rio Grande valley would supposedly become complete deserts or huge swamps; the Southeastern US would become a jungle or semi-arid grassland.2″

”The ultimate goal of energy-killer activists is to slash US carbon dioxide emissions some 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, to stabilize global CO2 levels, even as China, India and other developing countries continue their economic and emissions boom. The last time the United States emitted such low amounts of CO2 was 1905! Where and how will your family and business achieve 80% emission reductions?

Welcome to the good old days – to Eco-Camelot, where ”the climate must be perfect all year.” Poor minority and blue-collar families will be in for some serious belt-tightening, millions of jobs will head overseas, and demand for unemployment benefits, mortgage bailouts and energy welfare will soar, as state and federal coffers run dry.”

So hold onto your wallets, and hope you can hold onto your homes, cars and jobs. You’re about to be put on a wild political roller coaster. And don’t expect much honesty, transparency or accountability from climate Armageddonites.

Artikeln finns här:

rhttp://www.townhall.com/Columnists/PaulDriessen/2008/04/19/

global_warming_tax_hikes_headed_your_way?page=full&comments=true

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ROBUSTNESS AND UNCERTAINTIES OF CLIMATE CHANGE PREDICTIONS

William Briggs, professor i statistik, M.S., Atmospheric Science, B.S., Summa Cum Laude, Meteorology and Math, kommer här med en intressant analys ”on  quantifying the uncertainty of effects due to global warming” som han kommer att framföra vid en konferens i Spanien den 2-3 april (CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE PREDICTIONS FROM A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE http://www.fundacionareces.es/cambio_climatico_2008.htm). Konferens anordnas bl.a. i samarbete med The Royal Academy of Sciences of Spain.

Analysen är väldigt teknisk/matematisk och är en genomgång av den statistiska osäkerheten av effekterna av Global Warming.

Abstract och sammanfattning finns nedan

Analysen finns här:

http://wmbriggs.com/public/briggs_talk.pdf

Astract:

”A month does not go by without some new study appearing in a peer-reviewed journal which purports to demonstrate some ill effect that will be caused by global warming. The effects are conditional on global warming being true, which is itself not certain, and which must be categorized and bounded. Evidence for global warming is in two parts: observations and explanations of those observations, both of which must be faithful, accurate, and useful in predicting new observations. To be such, the observations have to be of the right kind, the locations and timing where and when they were taken should be ideal, and the measurement error should be negligible. The physics of our explanations, both of motion and e.g. heat, must be accurate, the algorithms used to solve and approximate the physics inside software must be good, chaos on the time scale of predictions must be unimportant, and there must be no experimenter effect. None of these categories is certain. As an exercise, bounds are estimated for their certainty and for the unconditional certainty in ill effects. Doing so shows that we are more certain than we should be.”

________________________________________________________

”It is important to examine these kinds of findings because global warming

is not important by itself: it becomes significant only when its effects are consequential to humans. The distinction between questions like \Will it warm?” and \What will happen if it warms” is under-appreciated or conated. For example, when asking how likely are the results of Bi and Parton’s study, we are apt to confuse the likelihood of global warming as a phenomenon with \more kidney disease etc.” happening because of global warming. When of course the two kinds of questions and likelihoods are entirely separate.

Because of the frequency of confusion, I want to follow the path to Bi and Patron’s conclusions starting from first principles, and untangle and carefully focus on the chain of causation leading up their central claims, and to quantify the uncertainty of the steps along the way. In doing this, I will point out how it is easy to muddle what is being claimed and the uncertainties in those claims.”

My conclusions (which will make more sense, obviously, after you have read the paper) are:

”Attempting to quantify, to the level of precision given, the uncertainties in effects caused by global warming, particularly through the use of mathematical equations that imply a level of certainty which is not felt, can lead to charges that I have done nothing more than build an AGW version of the infamous Drake equation (Drake and Sobel 1992). I would not dispute that argument. I will claim that the estimates I arrived at are at least within an order of magnitude of the actual uncertainties. For example, the probability that AGW is true might not be 0.8, but it is certainly higher than 0.08.

The equations given, then, are not meant to be authoritative or complete. Their purpose is to concentrate attention of what exactly is being asked. It is too easy to conflate questions of what will happen if AGW is true with questions of is AGW true. And it is just as simple to confuse questions of the veracity and accuracy of observations and with the accuracy of the models or their components. People who work on a particular component are often aware of its boundaries and restrictions, and so are more willing to reduce the probability that this component is an adequate description of the physical world, but they are usually likely to assume that the areas on which they do not have daily familiarity are more certain than they are. Ideally, experts in each of the areas I have listed should supply a measure of uncertainty for that area alone. I would welcome a debate and discussion on this topic.

I also would not make the claim that I have accurately listed all the avenues where uncertainty arises (for example, I did not even touch on the uncertainty inherent in classical statistical models). But the ones I did list are relevant, though not necessarily of equal importance. We do have uncertainty in the observations we make and we do have uncertainty in the models of these observations. At the very least, we know empirically that we cannot predict the future perfectly. Further, the claims made about global warming’s effects are also uncertain. Taken together, then, it is indisputable that we are less certain that both global warming and its claimed effects are true than in either AGW or its effects alone.”

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