Copenhagen and climate change conspiracy theories

Iain Dale has brought to a slightly wider audience the story doing the rounds on some blogs about leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (known as the CRU emails). It is not entirely clear whether these emails have been leaked or hacked, but the result has been a bit of a storm either way.

The central accusation is that these emails reveal that scientific evidence central to the climate change consensus has either been faked, or that it is weak and has been presented as fact when there are holes in the data. Devil's Kitchen gives the emails a pretty thorough exam.

This couldn't come at a more important time, as increasing numbers of world leaders agree to attend in person for the UN Conference on Climate Change at Copenhagen. It is hoped that world leaders will reach an agreement at Copenhagen as a successor to the Kyoto protocol which will, in effect, become a solution to climate change. The stakes are enormous.

Mouse's view is that these emails prove nothing. They are so complex that only a handful of scientists could actually attempt to explain them. And they have already done so, by publishing papers setting out their views on climate change. The discussion around these emails that they are a smoking gun remind Mouse of moon landing conspiracy theories which have numerous 'smoking guns'. They point to flaws in the photos from the moon, which are simply the misunderstandings of amateur scientists, for example.

Just like moon landing conspiracy theories, for climate change science to be bogus would require scientific fraud on a gargantuan scale. If it were all bogus, these hacked emails would not be the only available evidence. It is simply not conceivable that it is all a great big conspiracy, not least because there is absolutely no-one who benefits from this. The climate change sceptics argue that the scientific community benefits from increased funding. All Mouse can say is what absolute rot. They would be much better paid if they worked for polluting companies who pay their scientists well to produce contrary evidence.

So, Mouse's view is that we don't take guff about these emails any more seriously than we take those loonies who think the US government organised 9/11.

On the other hand, the looming catastrophe which will destroy the lives of millions of people, according to the consensus view of the scientific community and almost all governments world-wide, really should be taken seriously.

Mouse argued some time ago that a single common platform would be the best way to apply pressure on world leaders to reach a credible deal in Copenhagen. It now seems that The Wave is becoming that focal point, so please check it out. Mouse will blog on The Wave a little nearer the time.

Thierry Henry and the ethics of our times

Those of you who do not follow football may just need a word of explanation on this one before Mouse gets going. Last week Ireland were playing France in a play-off to decide which of the teams would go to the next world cup. The match was all square when, deep into extra time, Thierry Henry handled the ball to control it and set up the winning goal.

Naturally there was pretty universal outrage.

Henry immediately admitted that he handled the ball, but did not quite seem to go as far as to admit that he actually did anything wrong. His defence seems to have been that although he did not handle the ball, it is up to the referee to decide whether to blow the whistle or not, and so it is not cheating if he continues playing on. His reaction when asked whether he considered stopping and telling the referee that he handled the ball was, 'You're very funny'.

Mouse will leave it up to you to decide whether you think Henry should have stopped and explained to the referee that he handled the ball, or whether he is justified in celebrating France's victory with a clear conscience.

For Mouse's part, he's rather sad that Henry's approach seems to be the dominant approach in the world today. Matt Dawson, a world cup winner with England's rugby team, said that Henry had done “what any professional sportsperson would have done in his position”. Mouse's view is that the morality that says 'winning is everything' and accepts whatever you can get away with to get whatever you want is ultimately very destructive.

Should we have an affordable Christmas or a generous one?

Mouse notes a slightly contradictory message going out from Christians this year. The good old CofE is obviously worried about people feeling the pressure for lavish celebrations and getting themselves into financial difficulties. In response, it is urging an 'affordable Christmas', along with a Christmas present budget planner. Probably right, but rather dull.

Greenbelt, however, are encouraging a generous Christmas. Sounds much more fun. They provide podcasts and links to lots of places where your generosity would be most joyfully received.

Mouse suspects a bit of both is sensible this year.

You know the Archbishop of Canterbury has played a blinder when ...

Mouse was impressed by Rowan Williams' speech in Rome earlier in the week. Yes, it was done in Rowan's own way, couched in academic terms and with complex and subtle trains of thought. However, the central thrust was direct and hard hitting. For a full account of what he said, Mouse recommends Ruth Gledhill.

Mouse will only add the following to the analysis already out there:

1) Riazat Butt in the Guardian notes that Rowan appeared nervous, biting his finger awkwardly whilst listening to other speakers. This shows that he had no intention of ducking away from saying it how it is

2) Praise for the speech has been almost universal, and includes some from people who do not regularly offer that to Rowan - Archbishop Cranmer and The Ugley Vicar are notable examples.

Mouse has been praising Rowan in increasing measure recently, and we may well look back and remember Rowan Williams as the Archbishop who led the Anglican Communion through one of the most difficult times in its history, and lived to tell the tale.

Parents of 'Humanist Billboard' children are Pentecostals

Ruth Gledhill has the rather delicious scoop. The posters erected by the British Humanist Association as part of a campaign ostensibly against labelling children, show two rather happy looking children. Presumably the imagery is intended to show how joyful children can be when they are free of labels and from the pernicious intervention of Christians who brainwash children and don't let them make their own decisions.

The parents of Charlotte and Ollie Mason, however, may beg to differ. As members of New Frontiers church, Mouse is sure they have every intention of bringing up their children to know and love God.

It means nothing, of course, that these children's parents are Christians. The humanists would be the first to should 'I told you so' if anyone was to write that they were 'Christian' children. That would rather prove their point. They, like everyone else, must make up their own minds what to believe.

However it is rather funny. Ruth Gledhill offers up the rather lovely image of Richard Dawkins trawling the internet for picture of children who look happy enough that they couldn't possibly be churchgoers.

Update: The BHA has responded to the criticism of the billboards. They must be rattled.

Friday round up

Here's my round up from the blogosphere. Ten of the best from the blogs this week.

1. Phil Groom on the future of Christian bookshops in the UK

2. Bishop David Thomson on Copenhagen and climate change

3. Anna Drew wonders whether she's failed the feminist test

4. Dizzy reckons Twitter is only used by Guardian reading liberals (surely Mouse's readers wouldn't fall into that category)

5. Cranmer on the most wanted Twitterers from history (Churchill in first place, Jesus in second)

6. Mike Peat on world toilet day

7. The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley provide some advice to Anglican's who have difficult decisions to make

8. The Ugley Vicar on Anglicans, Anglican'ts and Anglicuckoos

9. Thinking Anglicans on Rowan Williams in Rome

10. Bishop Nick Baines on Thought For Today and the Humanist Billboards

Update on the blog police story

The story that the new chairman of the Press Complaints Commission was considering extending the organisation's remit to include the regulation of blogs caused quite a stir.

Pretty much every blogger who posted it was outraged at the idea, and added in a fair amount of mockery that the remit would need to include discussion boards and comments threads as well to have any meaning whatsoever. Liberal Conspiracy took it seriously enough to draft up a letter of complaint ready for circulation around the blogosphere and distribution to the government.

However, Guido took a different approach. He checked the story. What followed was a denial, claims of a misquote, and much gloating from Guido that he saw through the guff when everyone else bought it.

Mouse is not so sure, however. It looks to Mouse like a classic politician backtracking, rather than a straightforward misquote. At no point is Baroness Buscombe claiming she was mis-quoted. Instead she is claiming that her comments were taken out of context. At no point has she denied that she would like to extend the PCC's remit to cover blogs, which was the central point which everyone was objecting to. Instead she is claiming that she was talking about a voluntary code. Lets not forget that she was speaking privately to Ian Burrell at the time, so we'll never know precisely what was said.

Mouse wonders whether this is a classic case of a politician (and Baroness Buscombe is primarily just that) testing out a policy, then backtracking when its unpopular. It would hardly be the first time, would it.

After the atheist bus its now the humanist billboard

Doesn't quite have the same ring, does it. The people behind the atheist bus campaign have used the spare cash left over from their dramatically better than expected fund-raising to put new billboards up around Britain.

This campaign, now bearing the banner of the British Humanist Association, carries a picture of two children, with various faiths and belief systems in light text in the background. The caption reads, 'Please don't label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.'

The BHA proudly trumpet the billboards, timed to coincide with Universal Children's Day on 20 November and appear in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. Richard Dawkins, not surprisingly, had something to say in support of the campaign. "We urgently need to raise consciousnesses on this issue. Nobody would seriously describe a tiny child as a 'Marxist child' or an 'Anarchist child' or a 'Post-modernist child'. Yet children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents. We need to encourage people to think carefully before labelling any child too young to know their own opinions and our adverts will help to do that.'

Well if he really believes that these posters will make the slightest difference to anyone, Dawkins really is deluded. Not least because they will be up for just two weeks.

How interesting, however, that the BHA has launched a fundraising campaign off the back of the billboard campaign using the same image and text style. The campaign is to raise £30k to oppose faith schools.

Mouse thinks this is pretty shocking use of other people's money. The cash was originally given to pay for cheeky adverts on buses to stick one in the eye to Christians who put adverts on buses. It is now being used as a front for a BHA fundraising campaign.

Mouse's suggestion to anyone who donated expecting their money to go an an atheist bus campaign is to phone up the BHA and demand a refund.

Incidentally, Mouse thought the figure of £30,000 was familiar, so checked where it had come from. Sure enough, at this time last year the BHA raised £30k via Just Giving to raise funds for their campaign against faith schools. This was to fund a dedicated campaigner against faith schools. Looks like they're trying to keep paying this person's wages.

Finally, Mouse just has a plea for Christian organisations not to try opposing these posters. We really don't want an arms race of billboards.

Serbian Orthodox Patriarch to be chosen by lottery

Mouse is intrigued by a report in FaithWorld about the system of election for the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch. This has come into play following the death of Patriarch Pavle at the age of 95, and incorporates a random lottery into the system.

The system was introduced, in part, to reduce the influence of communist authorities on the appointment of Patriarchs. In essence the system involves an election using a system under which the Bishops each have three votes, and keep voting until three candidates each achieve 50% of the vote. They then put the top three candidates, who can each claim a credible mandate, into a random lottery.

Mouse is reminded of a couple of things with this. Firstly the ancient Athenian system of democracy was the first in the world. It involved elections by lottery from all male free citizens of Athens. This was considered the purest form of democracy. Secondly, Mouse is reminded of the system used to select Matthias as the twelfth apostle to replace Judas Iscariot, where a random ballot was used to discern the will of God.

Perhaps these Serbians are on to something.

Thought for Today to remain religious

The BBC Trust yesterday rejected an appeal by humanists and secularists to introduce regular non-religious voices into the Radio 4 Today Program's 'Thought for Today' slot.

The basis of the decision by the BBC Trust seems to have been that it does not need to reflect non-religious views on grounds of impartiality because it is religious output.

Mouse thinks this is a victory for common sense and pragmatism. Why on earth the secularists and humanists care about this slot really is beyond Mouse. It simply seems to be a matter of principle that in their eyes nothing in the public sphere should be wholly religious in nature. As a result they object and cry discrimination on principle, rather than because they think it would actually make any difference to anyone if once a month a non-religious person made it onto the Today Program for a 2 minute slot during the rush hour.

The whole purpose of the 'Thought for the Day' slot is to bring a religious perspective, and the whole affair seems to have taken up far too much of far too many people's time.

Look out - the blog police are coming

Well, they're probably not actually, but apparently they'd really like to. Iain Dale has a post pointing to comments to Baroness Buscombe, the new chairman of the Press Complaints Commission. Apparently she'd like to look at whether the PCC's remit should be extended to cover blogs.

The source is, of course, another blog, that of Ian Burrell, who edits The Independent's Media Pages. According to Burrell,

Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated," Baroness Buscombe told me. "Is the reader of those blogs assuming that it's news, and is [the blogosphere] the new newspapers? It's a very interesting area and quite challenging."

She said that after a review of the governance structures of the PCC, she would want the organisation to "consider" whether it should seek to extend its remit to the blogosphere, a process that would involve discussion with the press industry, the public and bloggers (who would presumably have to volunteer to come beneath the PCC's umbrella).

Mouse is happy to reiterate Dale's response to this, that the day they try to regulate blogs is the day Mouse will give up blogging. There is absolutely no comparison between blogs and newspapers. A better comparison would be someone who runs off a newsletter at home with his own printer and hands it out on street corners. It is true that a few of the most popular blogs have large readerships, but that is hardly reason to start regulating the entire internet. When Baroness Buscombe does 'consider' this issue, she will quickly find that it is completely impractical, anyhow.

Update: Guido reckons this is all a load of mischievous selective quoting. If so, the irony has more layers than a lasagne.

Farewell Wesley Owen?

Oh dear. It seems the game is finally up for IBS-STL, the company behind the Wesley Owen bookstores. They are putting the blame on a failed IT system project, which seems to be a rather sad self inflicted death for a company.

Like many organisations during a recession they have learned the lesson that 'cash is king' and that it doesn't matter what the P&L looks like for the year if you don't have the cash to pay the rent and wages this month.

Mouse has had a quick look at their last filed accounts from February 2008 and they're not pretty. Whilst that is really out-of-date information, we can assume things didn't improve from there. It seems that around £4.5m of borrowing is what has really done them in. In better trading conditions this probably wouldn't have been a problem, but when times are tough servicing debt just sucks cash out of an organisation. On top of that, the asset they were carrying on their balance sheet for the IT system being built was £1.7m. If this had to be written off, that would rather blow a hole in the accounts - but largely because of the debt position.

The big question now is, 'what next'? Phil Groom, who has been following the Christian publishing scene for some time, reckons a buy-out is possible. Mouse reckons a hard look at the books will be required. From the numbers Phil is talking about, he's a long way from tackling the debt problem. However, it would be a terrible shame if STL did disappear. It would also be a disaster for many who depend on the organisation for their livelihoods.

Here's the statement from STL UK.

LEADING CHRISTIAN CHARITY IBS-STL UK ANNOUNCES PLANS TO
SELL OPERATIONS DUE TO FINANCIAL CHALLENGES

Leading Christian book and Bible charity IBS-STL UK today announced that it has appointed Baker Tilly Corporate Finance LLP to pursue the sale of its operations.

The move has come after a succession of financial problems, in particular the failed implementation of a new SAP computer system in October 2008, the effects of which were exacerbated by the economic downturn. These have caused significant cash flow pressures, excess stock, and supply chain and service difficulties in its distribution and retail units. They have culminated in the decision to exit the business.

IBS-STL UK convened an emergency task force led by Global President of Biblica and former CEO of STL, Keith Danby, which has been in constant dialogue with its suppliers and bankers. It had also engaged restructuring and business process consultants in an attempt to resolve the systems and financial challenges.

Danby said: “Given the severe financial and operational strains we have experienced, the Board of Trustees and management team believe a sale or exit from all or parts of certain operations is a prudent and necessary step. Whilst a difficult decision, we are focused on finding a solution to continue the important work of IBS-STL UK, to secure the jobs of the 490 people employed in our ministry, and to fulfill our financial obligations to our suppliers and creditors. We are working diligently and praying vigilantly for a successful outcome.”

The corporate finance division of Baker Tilly is actively marketing the operations of the charity to a number of interested parties and is hopeful it will complete negotiations for the sales or potential closures within the next few weeks. IBS-STL UK was founded in 1962 and has grown to become a major UK charity.

IBS-STL UK has three trading divisions; Authentic Media, a book and music publisher; STL Distribution, a distributor of Christian resources and Wesley Owen Books and Music, a retailer with 40 shops in the UK. IBS-STL UK is part of Biblica, a global Bible translation, publishing, distribution and outreach ministry serving more than 100 countries with books, Bibles and other Christian resources. Biblica said the planned sale of the UK operations will not impact its other global operations and donor funds supporting Biblica’s worldwide outreach ministries will not be affected.

Michael Fitch, Chairman of the IBS-STL UK Board of Trustees, concluded: “We continue to believe strongly in the power of God’s Word and Christian resources to change peoples’ lives. We are praying that we can pass the torch on to other likeminded organisations so that our UK staff, suppliers and ministry partners can carry our work forward.”