Daily Archives: December 9, 2009

Comrade Lysenko in Copenhagen

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More on the warmists, who now remind me of the scientologists: their beliefs would be amusing if they were not so serious about them and effective at libelling and destroying any opposition.

The 1950 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the arbiter and repository of all politically correct Communist knowledge, had the following entry under genetics: “Soviet scientists under the leadership of Academician Lysenko proved scientifically that genes do not exist in nature.” Having Mendelian genetics outlawed on the grounds that it was not a science was probably Lysenko’s crowning achievement.

A self-taught agronomist, Lysenko early on jumped aboard the Stalinist bandwagon and developed a number of agricultural ideas — ideas that rejected all established science as “bourgeois” and therefore “counter-revolutionary,” an approach similar to the Nazis’ assault on “Jewish mathematics.” Included were promises to dramatically raise grain yields through the practice of something called “vernalization,” change the climate of Siberia by planting trees, and make wheat plants produce rye, among others. To push these ideas, Lysenko called his opponents “wreckers” and the mere discussion of his theories “political sabotage.”

Invariably these “saboteurs” lost their jobs (if they were lucky) or landed in the Gulag. Today’s global-warming “deniers” would easily recognize all these tactics minus the Gulag. The U.K.’s energy and climate-change secretary, Ed Miliband, recently even referred to AGW skeptics as “saboteurs.” Some of our latter-day Lysenkos have called for legal prosecution of skeptics.

Despite a well-known record of bogus research, experiment falsification, and faked results, and with Stalin’s blessing, Lysenko and Lysenkoism ruled Soviet agricultural science for three decades with dismal consequences for agriculture and the country at large. While pre-Lysenko Russia was known as the granary of Europe, the Soviet Union was never able to feed its population and relied on huge grain imports until its demise.

Why was this charlatan tolerated for years even after Stalin’s death? The answer to that is simple. Lysenko may have been a fraud as a scientist, but he was a Communist scientist par excellence. Communist ideology, just like Nazi ideology, required strict obedience to partisanship in all realms, and science was not an exception.

And here Lysenko’s contribution was impressive. By denying genetics and propounding the idea that acquired characteristics are inheritable, he provided the “scientific” underpinning of Marx’s theory that after a few generations of Communist dictatorship, a new selfless and docile Communist man — a perfect ant in an anthill — would emerge.

It is here that Lysenkoism’s resemblance to AGW is most striking. Just as the former was only tangentially concerned with agriculture, the latter is only tangentially concerned with climate. Like many previous campaigns against imaginary evils (such as acid rain, overpopulation, urban sprawl, etc.), its real targets are capitalism and individual rights. Its solution is the unrestricted primacy of government over the citizen and of collectivism over individual rights.

via Comrade Lysenko in Copenhagen: How Stalin’s favorite scientist paved the way for today’s global….

Best kiwi comment for the week

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I don’t get comments here. But this is the best from the kiwi blogs I found this week. On the warmists….

I’ll believe there’s a crisis when the people telling us there’s a crisis start acting like there’s a crisis”.

I think this goes to the heart of why nothing will come out of Copenhagen, and is why I gave this post its title. If you’re still considering a private jet and a limo service absolute necessities, I’m not particularly interested in hearing how you need me to bung you wads of cash to reduce carbon emissions (through some obscure, magical process).

The science is another matter. It seems obvious enough that carbon emissions are going to cause us trouble, I just suspect a lot of what we're hearing right now is rank alarmism based on computer models that aren’t worth sh_t. Propose some useful mechanisms to reduce pollution and encourage moves to renewable resources and I’ll be all for it – but propose jacking up prices so money can be traded by financial scammers and handed over to corrupt Third World officials to no useful environmental effect, and strangely enough I’m not going to be enthusiastic.

via Blogger: No Minister – Post a Comment.

Let us leave Babylon (sorry, Carbonhagen)

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This is about what anyone reasonable would expect. The G10 are acting in their best interests — well sort of. They are still signed up the the warmist delusion. However, they have enough sense not to trust the UN, and not to allow the kleptocrats who run most of the undeveloped world to rake in their take of the UN graft.

Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.

“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: “This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting. On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed.”

Hill continued: “It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.”

The text was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week. It is particularly inflammatory because it sidelines the UN negotiating process and suggests that rich countries are desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week.

via Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Oh, and our PM should leave. I’m sure he could detour to Paris for a holiday, and he is honest enough to pay for that himself.

Outlook next year part 1.

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I appreciate that Kate Ross (who works here) has had a year where keeping going has been hard. However, the screening that she mentions is (for most businesses, who cannot afford to have a huge HR department) a good reason to use her service

An example of this – last week we advertised a middle management role. We had 9000 views, 750 applicants read the advertisement and over 300 applied statistics from Seek. 300! We have numerous positions to fill and this is incredibly time consuming when 90 per cent of the applicants do not even meet the brief. When clients have a few roles to recruit they will approach an agency and ask for the “best price.” Fair enough, we all need to be flexible.

via Kate Ross: What have recruitment agencies learned from 2009? – page 2 – Business – NZ Herald News.

In health the problem is getting enough quality staff. It takes at least 14    years to train a spccailist. It takes at least 7 -10 years to train a nurse or social worker (I know their degrees take three years, but they need a lot of supervision for at least some years). Good people are hard to find. Hiring bad people is very very expensive both emotionally, financially and often not acceptable from a risk management point of view.

So, we have been recruiting in health. For empty jobs. However, the ceiling on these jobs is shrinking, as we are being asked to make even more cuts.

Kate sees some hope for next  year, based on what she is seeing happening over the last few months. This timing fits with a typical recession. The risk, however, is that the recession elsewhere will be prolonged and worsened by US and EU policies. As we rely on exports, the recovery elsewhere is as important (or more so) than our domestic situation.