During times of Communism indeed whatever dogma when societies seem to have a strong belief, like Roman catholism, Nazism people could always scientific evidence or proof that that dogma was best even though leter it appears ridiculous. When people want to believe, they can each lie a little bit to come up with a proof. I think that Climate Catastrophe Theory could be like this.

We already know journalists lie, that they write en masse for fear of sticking out from the crowd. Once they become believers they automatically become earnest preachers. In their quest to convert the public they leave out inconvenient facts and just touch up a few facts or figures to give them a little more weight. But what if that's happening all the way down the chain ?

- The field researcher out collecting plankton really want's to help the professor prove that there's less plankton in the rock pools than before, because of global warming. And global warming is terrible thing the "stupid public have to be aware of it and we must stop it". Right how many samples did we get here 5 years ago ? 20 "ah we have almost got as much this time, but this patch here and that one over there they are really right on the edge so I'll put it down as 18." Repeat that 50 times.

Then the professor desperate to keep his research grant receives the date ah as I expected in 45 of the areas plankton patches have dropped from 20 to 18. Now what's happened in those other 5 areas 23,25, 28, 26, 23 hmm they are a bit near the fish farm I guess they have been effected, I'd better drop thefrom the sample. So it seems we have a 8% drop in plankton here in 4 years. Well come to think of it we did sample In september 2003 and again in February 2007 so that's not really 4 years it's 3.5 years isn't it. Publish Meeting with the politician and press conference... professor here says the plankton numbers have dropped 10% in 3 years", Well actually there is a margin of error there of 2%", "Wow that's 12% in, if that carries on I suppose that means they'll be none left in 24 years time .

What do you think our earnest hacks might write ? -Plankton finished in 20 years time already in less than 3 years numbers have dropped by 12%. And this is without using their favourite statistical add on "upto".

The team at the other university check their results they seem to getting numbers about the same as before, and are thinking "maybe we are overcounting these patches.

Meanwhile in the rock pools there are 20 patches of plankton floating around in each sector just like there always will be.

When we lived in Ghana we couldn't understand why the figures for AIDS we heard on the BBC world service. Then we met someone who had met someone in the Italian embassy who had helped collect the statistics. He explained that the original numbers had been lower, but the higher the count the higher the aid money the EU would send, and since numbers were certain to rise anyway then the stats had been tweaked before being presented to the EU.

Fact creep

People, believe England will win The World Cup Football even though that means 29 teams must lose
- grow like fisherman's tales

- Yes I was listening a "science reporter" on the radio talk about the huge huge London array ..then he ended by saying it's 1000 MW

- and I'm like .."uh, but 1000MW isn't huge it's not even the size of a normal power plant ?"- Don't these media types have any grasp of real world maths ? Once again a Climate story has grown huge huge legs.

- Then it's even worse when you realise that you can't just rack of the peak power of wind as it has a optimistic load factor of 30% as against 80-90% for conventional.That makes it an average of 300MW

- So anyone saying that it's huge is lying or naive.

- Seems to me there is a huge influence of "let me sell you a solution" in the debate. People get convinced, that all they need to do is to SHOP to change something - They'll be a magic green solution and everything will be OK.

- And of course these salemen's figures are hopelessly over optimistic and spun like : quoting the number of houses as if there were no use in industry or losses. (UK use averages 46GW consumption so 1GW wind means 0.3GW usable = 0.65%). But for the media questioning "pseudo-green" buzz is like criticising Communism when you were a Pravda reporter.

- My own maths shows wind is pretty much a scam- it won't break even unless energy prices rocket. - And blase claims like "of course it's carbon neutral as regards construction after 4 months", don't seem to stand up as that seems to say only about 2.5% of construction cost was spent on energy.

- I have an idea to open a website where people can buy a green solutions from me. They can pay me money and I will tell them to wear jumpers, use birth control and go to bed when it's dark etc.

- BBC Radio 4 Costing The earth has an archived programme quite negative about wind. At times it overstates, but also misses out on other negatives.the BWEA site says 1.4GW wind, supplies 0.7m homes (0.45GW effective & total UK demand is 45GW & 24m UK homes) So they are saying the 1% of UK power that wind produces supplies 3 % of homes. So what they are saying is 2/3 of electricity is used outside the home.

- Thanks, whether one is left wing or right wing one needs real facts and real numbers to make good decisions.- I feel like I did when Princess Diana died, the media are banging on and on, they're all one one track and they say everyone else is. They come up with so many pseudo-facts. Yet when I go on the internet I find there are many places like the Newsnight blog discussion where normal turnip head like me ARE DOING THE MATHS .. and saying whooa hang on a moment. (Sometimes we are wrong, but at least we are tackling them)

- Climate catastrophe stories keep arising which I feel obliged to pick apart cos they are sometimes such howlers. Yet when it comes to actions I would be even more extreme than Monbiot as I believe every time you consume something the enviroment is harmed without even thinking about CO2. - The people who bark the loudest seem to the ones who take the least effective actions like buying even more stuff to make themselves green. - Keep it simple just like the message from Walden 150 years ago.

- I suppose that media is after all now Infotainment spoon fed by people who want free advertising for their product/agenda not a free source of reliable education.

- quote Shock doctrine "All of this is described in great detail by Canadian writer and journalist Naomi Klein in the most important book of the past year: The Shock Doctrine. Its thesis is so simple, it reads like a Japanese haiku: 'people who are traumatized will stop resisting change'. There, not even seventeen syllables."