And the Blubberman spouts again...

The blubberman has an on-going lovehate relationship with Auckland's Mayor Len Brown.

His latest series of expostulations centres on "dishonesty" surrounding the use of a trust to keep the identity of donors to Browns "war-chest" secret. It is a technique used by virtually every prospective politician in this country.

So to illustrate we have the Blubberman quoting at length from the Dom Post and Herald.

Included in the Herald article was this -

Former Auckland City Mayor John Banks, who came second with 171,542 votes (behind Mr Brown's 237,487), declared $948,937 in donations and $554,958 spending in the last three months of his marathon campaign.

There is no mention of this in the Blubberman rant.

Then again today, with the news that the Casino made donations to the Brown campaign the following from the Herald article has been ommitted -

Mr Brown's financial returns include a contribution of $15,000 from the company among total donations to his cause of $581,900.

SkyCity said yesterday it made an identical campaign contribution to former Auckland City Mayor John Banks - who lost the Super City leadership race despite having $948,937 at his disposal - although it did not show up as a donor in his returns.

Now if the Blubberman were so honestly in pursuit of political dishonesty as he makes out, why does this latter fact not make a far greater raruraru than the former? At least Brown is honest about where his money came from to the extent that the casino donation is acknowledged. Banksie on the other hand...?

Too selective, blubberman, too selective by half.

UPDATE -

It seems, from a comment made by the man himself, that because Banks lost the election there is no point in chasing what the blubberman sees as a dead horse. I very much beg to differ on that.

He also makes the point that if Banks were Mayor, and was "as dishonest as Brown" the he (the blubberman) would be on his case.

That to me is a cop-out.

Climategate - the science is not settled...

The blubberman (well, he calls himself "Whaleoil" so...), and a great range of other right whingers (by my count the first 60 at least of the sites picked up by Google on the topic if you put 'NASA Bounoua "Forrest Hill"' as the search) have picked up on a recent paper from NASA. You can find the NASA summary of the article here.

In the Blubberman's case, he has lighted his confirmation bias on an article from The Register. So, nothing original there, I guess.

But not only is the Blubberman selective in what he has clipped from The Register article, The Register itself has been equally selective in its extract from the NASA synopsis of the Bounoua and Hill paper.

As a direct instance, the following paras have been omitted completely, with the last para quoted below pointing out the limitations of the research to date.

The cooling effect would be -0.3 degrees Celsius (C) (-0.5 Fahrenheit (F)) globally and -0.6 degrees C (-1.1 F) over land, compared to simulations where the feedback was not included, said Lahouari Bounoua, of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bounoua is lead author on a paper detailing the results that will be published Dec. 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Without the negative feedback included, the model found a warming of 1.94 degrees C globally when carbon dioxide was doubled.

Bounoua stressed that while the model's results showed a negative feedback, it is not a strong enough response to alter the global warming trend that is expected. In fact, the present work is an example of how, over time, scientists will create more sophisticated models that will chip away at the uncertainty range of climate change and allow more accurate projections of future climate

So, Blubberman, your usual half truths and truthiness huh!