Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. –Harry S. Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, 8 August 1950
The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law. –Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), Article XI
A popular weatherman announced Saturday evening that he has been sacked by leading French news channel France T√©l√©visions for publishing a book which accused top climate change experts of misleading the world about the threat of global warming. The announcement comes four days after France T√©l√©visions chief Delphine Ernotte told French MPs that Verdier had been summoned to a formal interview that could lead to his dismissal. —France 24, 1 November 2015
Greenland is blowing away all records for ice gain this year. They have gained almost 200 billion tons of snow and ice over the past two months, which is more than 50% above normal. The surface of the ice gained more than 200 billion tons during the previous 12 months. Meanwhile, the New York Times is running a huge spread claiming that Greenland is melting down. —Real Science, 30 October 2015
A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers. The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice. —NASA News, 31 October 2015
At the end of this month 40,000 politicians, officials, green activists, lobbyists and journalists from 195 nations will converge outside Paris ‚Äì at Europe’s largest airport reserved only for private jets ‚Äì for a conference that they hope will change the world. The chief obstacle to a binding climate agreement is exactly the same as it was at Kyoto in 1997 and at that last mammoth conference which so signally failed to get Kyoto renewed at Copenhagen in 2009. The only real question that will remain after the failure of this bid for a binding treaty in Paris is how much longer it can be before the most expensive and foolish scare story in history finally falls apart. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 1 November 2015
