EXPLOSIVE: A.K Deku Speaks on 1966 Coup

Lt. Gen Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, a coupist

By Ekow Mensah.

The overthrow of the Nkrumah government on February 24, 1966 continues to generate controversy and sometimes indignation.

Mr. A.K. Deku, one of the architects of the coup says that he was forced to join the plot against the Government of Ghana’s first president.

“I was forced to join because by time I became aware of the conspiracy nothing could be done to stop it.

 “Kotoka had already recruited many people in the army. The soliders were with him and the situation could not be changed” he said.

He was speaking in a pre-recorded interview on TV3’s “Hot Issues” which is to be broadcast at a date to be announced soon.

Mr Deku who served as head of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and the Special Branch of the Ghana Police Service described Nkrumah as “a very good man”

Now 94 years old, Mr Deku said the master minds of the coup were Harley, Kotoka and a Major Quarshie who was then working at the 37 military hospital.

He said the plotters met regularly in Major Quarshie house.

According to Mr Deku, General A.A. Afrifa who later became chairman of the National Liberation Council (NLC) was more or less the direct representative of Sir Edward Akufo Addo and Dr K.A Busia in the Government.

He said General Afrifa reported everything which happened at meetings of the NLC to Busia and Akufo-Addo.

 Mr Deku claimed that General Ankrah, the first chairman of the NLC was removed as a result of a conspiracy involving two brothers Michael and Eric Otoo.

He also claimed that Mr Tawiah Adamafio, General Secretary of the Convention Peoples Party at the time was not involved in the Kukungugu bomb attack on Nkrumah.

He said the real plotters were Obetsebi-Lamptey who was operating in Accra and Dr Busia who had set up base at Lome, Togo.

Mr Deku said Dr Nkrumah and Mr Kufour were the best president presidents Ghana has had.

He refused to answer several questions.

Please look out for this explosive interview.

Editorial

THE LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Lawyers working for persons who were detained in connection with investigations into the GYEEDA affair by the Economic and Organized Crime Organization (EOCO) are crying fowl.

They say that the detention of their clients is a violation of their constitutional and democratic rights.

It is difficult for us to understand them.

Are we being told that all of a sudden, the security services have been disabled from detaining suspects?

The EOCO was established by an Act of Parliament in conformity with the provisions and principles of the 1992 constitution.

The law establishing EOCO also gave the organization powers of arrest and detention.

Are the lawyers saying that those suspected of serious crime should not be detained under the law?

These noises about human and democratic rights can sometimes be really cacophonous and lawyers should know better.

 On 29 August, Ghana's Supreme Court dismissed a petition brought before it by the losing presidential candidate in last December's election, Nana Akufo-Addo, and ruled that President John Mahama was duly elected. But Cameron Duodu is not too pleased about the way the court conducted itself. 

THOUGHT OF A MYSTERIOUS MAN

MR RAWLINGS CRIES

Jerry John Rawlings

Mr Jerry John Rawlings is at it again. He is seeing evil all around President John Dramani Mahama and the indications are that sooner than later he is going to boom and boom again.

Indeed, what he says about the Mahama administration is not very different from what he has said about all other administrations except his own.

Mr Rawlings started his fight against Professor John Evans Atta Mills by claiming that the same evil forces had surrounded him.

These evil forces later took on many different names but they remained evil to the core.

They became greedy bastards, children with sharp teeth, evil dwarfs, mischievous monsters and many more.

Mr Rawlings chased Professor Mills to his grave with all kinds of unproven allegations, pure innuendos, fabrications and sometimes outright lies.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Mr Rawlings decided to spit on the grave of the Professor who was once his deputy.

 He told a gathering in the Volta Region that God killed Professor Mills because he had failed to imprison corrupt officials in the Kufour administration.

For him, God removed Professor Mills from the face of the earth to create favorable conditions for dealing with corruption and maladministration in Ghana.

This is obviously an attempt to tarnish the reputation of God himself.  First, all who knew Professor Mill well claimed that he was incorruptible.

Those who have given this testimony have included priests, politicians of all types, academics, students, working people and even the Professor’s opponents.

Only Jerry John Rawlings saw the Professor in bad light and managed to attribute his own apparent hatred to God.

If President John Mahama is tempted to think that Mr Rawlings was not messing him up and was only castigating those around him, he should perhaps hold on for a moment and reflect.

He would soon realize that how Rawlings has began with him is the same way he began with Professor Mills.

Former President Kufour suffered the same fate with Rawlings. He began by claiming that Mr Kufour had been surrounded by crooks and ended up giving him and new name –Ataa Ayi.

Now, Mr Kufuor has become the butt of the vituperations of Mr Rawlings Mr Rawlings continues to ridicule   Mr Kufour at the least opportunity.

Former President Hilla Liman suffered a similar fate. Mr Rawlings began by alleging that he too had been surrounded by crooks. In the end, Rawlings overthrew the Limann administration and ended up staying in absolute power for well over 18 years.

Even Nkrumah, the founder of the Republic of Ghana has not been spared by Mr Rawlings.

 According to Rawlings all that Nkrumah managed to do was to achieve only “a flag and anthem” independence. What he meant was that Ghana did not gain much under Nkrumah.

 Mr Rawlings has started all over again and it can be safely predicted that President John Dramani Mahama is his next victim.

The question is, given what history teaches us about this man called Rawlings, would President Mahama be naïve enough to ignore a major lesson of history and fall prey to the machinations of a former President called Jerry John Rawlings?

Banditry Cote d'Ivoire

Cote d'Ivoire Presidential Claimant Alhassan Quattara

By IRIN
In the three months since June, Cote d'Ivoire has seen twice as many armed highway attacks as in the whole of 2012. Observers say that a slow pace of security sector reforms is prompting ex-fighters to take to banditry.

Twenty-two people were killed in at least 18 attacks between June and early September, according to the Ministry of Defence statistics. More than half of the victims were soldiers, gendarmes or police.

Initially, the bandits, commonly known in Cote d'Ivoire as 'coupeurs de route', laid logs on the highway to halt vehicles before attacking occupants, but witnesses say they are increasingly using AK-47 rifles, grenades and rocket launchers.

"Before, they used tree trunks to stop vehicles, and so lives were spared. But now they shoot to stop vehicles before robbing passengers," said Moussa Doumbia, a bus driver who travels between the central town of Bouake and Korhogo in the north.

"It is the yam-harvesting season now, and the bulk buyers are finding it difficult to travel on the northern roads to supply markets in the south. They [highway robbers] operate during the day and at night," said Doumbia, who has survived two attacks. He explained that it is unsafe to travel after four o'clock in the afternoon.

Political conflicts that erupted with the 1999 ouster of Henri Konan Bedie, a decade of rebellion and the months of fighting that following the disputed 2010 elections have left Cote d'Ivoire awash in weapons. It is unclear, however, how many weapons are held illegally.

The country's National Commission against the Proliferation of Light Weapons said that 5,105 weapons were surrendered between February and June. Around 9,000 of the 65,000 ex-combatants have been reintegrated into the customs, forestry and prisons departments. The government needs US$17 million for the reintegration programme.

"We know that the majority of the highway attackers are former fighters. Their impatience and the difficulties faced by the DDR [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] to take them on board are the reasons for this situation," said Pierre Kouame Adjoumani, the interim head of the Ivoirian Human Rights League (LIDHO).

Adjoumani also explained that military reforms have not been comprehensive. "Up to now, there are soldiers with battle weapons who are doing police and gendarmes duties."

"There is also the issue of the 'dozos' [armed traditional hunters] who are arrogating themselves the duties of the regular forces. This has yet to be resolved under the security sector reforms plan," he added, citing financial difficulties in finalizing the DDR.

Ambushes

Three attacks have occurred so far this month, all in one week. One person was killed outside Odienne town in the north, and two others were killed in a separate attack when gunmen sprayed two passenger buses with bullets in Odienne region. In a third attack, a soldier was seriously wounded by armed men who targeted three buses and an oil tanker.

September saw the highest number of casualties. Five bus passengers were killed in an attack in the west of the country, and in the administrative capital, Yamoussoukro, a security patrol came under attack, and two gendarmes and a policeman were killed. In the same month, one soldier was killed when gunmen attacked a vehicle transporting money. The attackers stole 20 million CFA francs ($40,000).

In one of the most spectacular ambushes, armed men in July attacked the entourage of Fidèle Sarassoro, the head of the DRR Authority (ADDR), in Kong, the home village of President Alassane Ouattara. One of Sarassoro's guards was killed.

"We have raised the alarm over this worrying phenomenon," said Christophe Kouame, coordinator of the Ivoirian Civil Society Convention (CSCI). "This is due to the impunity by those who illegally hold arms and the inadequate implementation of the security sector reforms. These contribute to the persistent insecurity."

But Karnan Soro, the head of the disarmament programme at ADDR, said highway banditry has existed for long in the country, and not necessarily because of the former fighters. "I don't think it is because one is an ex-combatant that he becomes a highway robber," he told IRIN.

"If the government can raise the needed resources, there is no reason we can't integrate the majority of the ex-combatants before the end of the year. The aim is to reintegrate 30,000 former fighters, and the process is under way," Soro told IRIN, but he could not say how much of the needed $17 million had been raised.

"Terrible Fear"

Still, residents blame the highway robberies on the ex-fighters.

"These are our young brothers who were part of the rebellion," said Yacouba Bamba, a teacher in Ferké, a locality in the north. "It's because of them that we can't travel to withdraw our salaries in Korhogo. They have attacked many of us every end of the month. It is a terrible fear when we travel."

"There is a 90 percent chance that travellers will come across the attackers. They operate on village roads and, at times, storm the town, firing in the air and then robbing shops and other small traders," said Roland Kouadio, who lives in Sakassou in central Côte d'Ivoire.

The government has set up a special force to fight the banditry in the commercial capital, Abidjan. The force has also begun operating in country's central and northern regions. The military and gendarmes have also been deployed on key roads.

"The results of the fight against these bandits are encouraging. Around 10 of them have been killed. The government is progressively deploying forces across the country," Paul Koffi Koffi, the defence minister, told reporters recently.

Ghana: The court case that left the nation dazed

Nana Akufo Addo

After 50 days of court sittings spread over five months, the Ghana Supreme Court has rejected the election petition filed by the losing presidential candidate in the December 2012 elections, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo. Two other members of Akufo Addo's New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamadu Bawumia (the vice-presidential candidate) and Mr Jake Obersebi-Larnptey (chairman of the NPP) joined Nana Addo in filing the petition.

The "judgment", as announced publicly on 29 August 2013, by the president of the nine-member panel of Supreme Court judges, Justice William Atuguba, can best be described as "the judgment that - on the  day – wasn’t what was expected” by NPP supporters.

Nana Akufo Addo, leader of the New Patriotic Party

The Court had been fully packed long before the usual opening time of 10:00am by many people anxious to hear what the final verdict was going to be. There were also crowds waiting for the judgment at the headquarters of the two main parties, the NPP and the NDC.

Public interest in the case had been built up to fever point over a period of five months by live telecasting of the proceedings. So most people had an opinion about whether the December 2012 presidential election had been free and fair (as the Election Commission had proclaimed), or a farcical exercise permeated with lapses of both an administrative and legal nature (as the NPP was alleging).

According to the petition, irregularities by the Electoral Commission had robbed the people of Ghana of their right to choose the President who should rule them. The petition claimed that John Dramani Mahama had been wrongly declared as the winner by an incompetent Electoral Commission.

A most weighty issue. But the packed court and the media audience not only in Ghana but around the world (the live TV coverage of "The Verdict" was streamed on-line and could be picked up on the Internet anywhere in the world) had to sit and wait for three solid hours before the judges made their appearance on the bench.

As this vast audience fidgeted all over the place, the suspense in the air - wherever Ghanaians were gathered - was palpable. What was holding up the judges? They had had several weeks, after the hearings had ended, to write their judgments. Yet here they were, unable to face the world with what they had decided.

It was during the waiting that Ghana became awash with rumours. I make so bold as to say that never since 1948 (when the British arrested "The Big Six" politicians fighting for Ghana's independence) had speculation about the direction of Ghana's ship of state reached the heights it climbed to on 29 August 2013, the day of the judgment.

Some Ghanaians claimed that the judges had "found" [that is, decided] in favour of the petitioners but could not bring them- selves to order what would necessarily be an "earth-shattering" measure, namely, to turn the status quo on its head and declare the sitting president, John Mahama, "unelected", and either hand the presidency to his opponent, Akufo Addo, or order a rerun of the election. .

"There is connie-connie [things that are not straight-forward] going on, even as we speak!" was the refrain most often heard in bars and street corners. For Radio Trottoir ["Pavement Radio" or Street Talk] was at its analytical best, vividly describing "eye- witness events" allegedly captured, not by the speaker, but by people who had related these events to him: someone else who could not be named but who was much "closer to events".

"It is true one judge has left for America with 7 million dollars!" I personally heard someone say. When I expressed disbelief, he dismissed me as someone who lived abroad and was therefore not privy to "the real news in town".

I insisted: "You can't even carry more than 10,000 dollars to America. How much more easily $7 million? Even if you fly in your own executive jet, the Feds or US Customs have the right to search your air- craft, and if you've got $7 million on it, they will not only take the money away and confiscate it, but also charge you with money-laundering!"

But such arguments were cutting no ice on this day. People believed what they wanted to believe and in the absence of any news from the Supreme Court regarding what was happening, speculation became accepted as potential fact! Why are our courts so pompous? Couldn't the Supreme Court have asked its Registrar - or its Public Relations Officer - to make an announcement that there had been "a slight delay" and that things would go on as expected, soon?

But it was more mystery that was to come. It was whispered that only one judge was causing the delay: he was "flip- flopping"! He had allegedly told some "insiders" close to him that he knew what the decision was going to be - four in favour of the petitioners and four against them - and that he would be the one to vote to "neutralize" matters with a "casting" vote of "solid gold"!

"Ok, so where will his casting vote push the verdict?" "Our side, of course," was the reply.

"Otherwise, how would we know what he had said? You wait and see!"

It was, however, not until about 5 minutes to 1 O'clock in the afternoon or thereabouts - that the judges entered the court room at last. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. But the tension, instead of easing, mounted.

The counsel could have been murdered for engaging in such "frivolities" as presenting their team members individually once again to the panel of judges - as if the many past months of the hearings had not existed.

After these formalities had been dispensed with, the president of the panel, Justice Atuguba, started reading.

He delivered a damp squib that made the normal dawn of day on the predicted "Armageddon Day" favoured by "prophets" of nut-churches, appear like a pre-ordained anti-climax of the minor kind.

It was not so much the verdict itself that shocked a lot of people (after all, we all knew that it would go in one direction or another) as the unbelievable terseness of it: Justice Atuguba's halting declamation lasted all of five and a half minutes, give or take 30/40 seconds!

It almost reminded one of James Alexander Gordon (without the specially modulated intonation) delivering the English Premier League football results on a Saturday afternoon: Biometric Voting: For Against Over-voting: For Against Invalidation through Unsigned "Pink Sheets" (the forms on which voting results are recorded): For a; Against b; and so on you get the picture.

Speaking for myself, Justice Atuguba's diction left me completely in no-man's land, until he finally said, "We therefore dismiss the petition". There could not have been more much-ado-about-not-very much anywhere else in the world! The judges rose. They gave no reasons for, nor elaborations of, the verdict ["result") they had announced. Goodbye, James Alexander Gordon. Bring on the football pundits.

Worse, even though Justice Atuguba said the full written judgments would be at the court registry, it took five whole days before the judgments actually appeared there.

So, for 5 days, the most important event in Ghana's judicial/political calendar was open to interpretation by all and sundry. Most of what actually occurred was an enthronement of legal illiteracy.

I urge the judiciary to review its processes and adopt a method of dealing with the public that will not be so disastrous in future. What if each judge had read his or her judgment in summary? Say four or five pages, summing up his or her reasons for coming to the conclusion they had arrived at? And saying, "the full judgment will be made available later?" I believe that is what happens in some of the countries whose constitutional governance we are trying to emulate.

Our judges get all spruced up in their colourful robes and wigs. Fine. But they should also adopt some of the new methods by which courts elsewhere are making themselves more relevant to the people they are supposed to serve.

I remember that when the Judicial Committee of the British House of Lords was giving judgment in the famous Pinochet extradition case in March 1999, special arrangements were made by that "stuffy" institution to make the judgment immediately accessible to the public, both in the UK and elsewhere. The British judiciary covered itself in glory at that time. Ours in Ghana, I am sorry to say, showed a particular lack of imagination on 29 August 2013.

Once again, I refer the Ghana chief justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Wood to how the Kenyan judiciary handled its own election petition case not so long ago. The judges delivered their judgment suitably trimmed for public consumption in a few hours and the country breathed a sigh of relief.

Ours was, with the greatest respect, a complete letdown, and yet our chief justice is one of the influential figures from outside Kenya who helped to make the Kenyan judiciary what it is today.

Anyway, it would probably have been better, as far as journalists are concerned, if the full judgment had stayed under wraps! For not many people have had access to the judges' opinions, despite their having been made public. For the opinions amount to 588 pages! And on the crucial issues, the differences between them - judge versus judge - were sometimes as vast as that between the Atlantic and the Indian oceans.

What does one report and what does one not report? Some of the local Ghanaian media are trying to serialize segments of the judgment, but the process is unsatisfactory.

Everyone wants to see those segments that they think make their case, so whatever is published causes annoyance!

I must add that whatever one is able to read, contains, in the time-honoured tradition, a great deal of verbosity. Many of the judgments are liberally sprinkled with quotations from judgments elsewhere - ranging from Australia, Canada, Lesotho and of course, the UK.

Some of these citations (I am reliably informed by a learned lawyer) have no immediate relevance to, or even relationship with, the issues canvassed in the election petition.

Why didn't Putin receive Nobel Peace Prize?

Russian President Vladimir Putin

A strange situation we have with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. This year, it was awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

As the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, said the organization received the Peace Prize "for considerable contribution to the widespread elimination of chemical weapons."

In Russia, reactions to the news were, shall we say, quite emotional, as President Putin was nominated for the prize.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee explained why the prize was awarded to the OPCW. The organization "performing inspections and eliminating stockpiles of chemical weapons, as well as acting in other ways, makes every effort to implement the provisions of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons."

According to Jagland, the OPCW has been among the candidates for the prize for several years, but the committee has no right to say who nominated the organization and who else was included on the list of most likely contenders. According to tradition, this information will be kept secret for 50 years from the date when the prize has been awarded, Itar -Tass reports.

In Russia, reactions to the news depended on people's political views because Russian President Vladimir Putin was nominated too.

According to State Duma deputy Iosif Kobzon, the Nobel Committee made an unfair decision. "This is absolutely unfair that the OPCW was given this title. Who forced Syria to destroy chemical weapons, if not Putin? Who made Assad sign all agreements of the UN Security Council for the destruction of chemical weapons? They should have given the prize to two nominees then. This is unfair, because Putin is making every effort," he said in an answer to the Russian news service.

But this year, the Russian president could not get on the list of candidates. He can be included in the short list for next year. According to regulations, the nomination of candidates takes place before February 1. That is for the prize of the year - until February 1, 2013, for the prize in 2014 - until February 1, 2014, etc.

Earlier, the initiator of Putin's nomination, the head of the All-Russia Foundation "Education," Sergei Komkov, told Pravda.Ru: "What Vladimir Putin does today, in a very difficult situation on the international arena, is a huge plus for him. There is a question that the world faces today - who can stop the looming, not just a regional conflict? Some say that it will be a regional war, but no, it will not be a regional war, but a global conflict, that will involve much of the developed world, just as it was in the late 1930s."

Sergei Komkov emphasized that his appeal to the Nobel Committee had been officially registered. We can just wait till October 2014.

Anton Kulikov

Global warming controversies 

By Gary Novak 

According to the most noted "deniers" (critics of global warming) within science (Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen and others), they all agree with climatologists that greenhouse gases create global warming; they only disagree on how much.

The primary effect of carbon dioxide is called sensitivity, secondary effects, forcing. Climatologists say that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere will result in a primary effect (sensitivity) of about 1°C temperature increase, and the only dispute is the secondary effects.

The primary effect is the science; the secondary effect is the witchcraft. Therefore, the science of climatology is reduced to a number (1°C), and only the witchcraft is studied or disputed.

The basis for sensitivity cannot be located. The closest thing to a source is Hansen's fudge factor (http://nov79.com/gbwm/equations.html), which in itself does not have an identifiable source. The fudge factor says: Heat increase = 5.35 ln C/C0. Temperature increase = 0.75 times heat increase. 

How can all scientists agree upon something which cannot be located with a source? What is in their minds which fixes sensitivity in place? Why can't they tell us what it is?

I think what happened is that the result of Hansen's fake equation was repeated over and over in the scientific literature causing scientists to assume it must have a valid basis. Maybe they saw the fudge factor and assumed it must be unquestionable fact. If so, they are not real scientists. Scientists could not miss the absurdity of the fudge factor.

And now that the graph for the average global temperature stopped showing an increase, some say the sensitivity number should be reduced. If the amount was wrong, how can sensitivity be so unquestionable?

In fact, the original fudge factor yields 2.8°C increase with doubling CO2, but it has been whittled down to 1°C at this time, which requires the original constant to be reduced from 5.35 to 1.92. In other words, climatologists keep changing constant (5.35) in response to criticisms and increased complexities which they have to consider.

The fudge factor undoubtedly was constructed by extending the past into the future, as sugested by Norm Kalmanovitch. One of the frauds inherent in the fudge factor is the assumption that no other influences in the past but CO2 determined temperature increase of so-called global warming. Yet "deniers" in science say numerous factors influence global temperature. Do they not know that the fudge factor includes everything which influenced global temperature? They don't seem to know that. A real scientists could not have missed it. When real scientists see a fudge factor, alarm bells go off, and they find out where it came from. The source of sensitivity cannot be located, yet it gets used and repeated, and no explanation exists of where it came from.

There is no scientifically valid basis for assuming a certain amount of CO2 will produce a defined temperature increase.

Where is the Mechanism?

Scientists used to try to explain how greenhouse gases create global warming, but they totally failed. They produced dozens of explanations for the public, and none of them were consistent with each other. So they sort of stopped trying to explain it and are now simply saying, we can observe the temperature increase, and our models show it, regardless of how it is happening. But over the past 18 years, the graphs stopped showing an increase in temperature. What then is there left to the subject? Are they now going to go back to the scientific details? What is the science which shows it?

Before they gave up trying to rationalize the science, climatologists were arguing a mechanism based upon the shoulders of absorption peaks. Saturation forced them onto the shoulders of the peaks. Saturation means a small amount of greenhouse gases absorbed all radiation available to them, so more of the gases cannot absorb more. But the gases only saturate at the center of each peak. Supposedly, the shoulder frequencies are not saturated.

This depends upon how saturation is defined. At the center of the main peak for CO2 (15 micro meters), all radiation is absorbed within 10 meters (http://nov79.com/gbwm/hnzh.html#ten) in the atmosphere. In other words, at 11 meters, no more radiation at that frequency can be found. But change the frequency a little, and less absorption occurs.

At about 14.7 µm, absorption is one tenth, and radiation goes 100 meters to be completely absorbed. More distance is required, because fewer CO2 molecules have the stretched shape which absorbs at that wavelength.

At about 14.1 µm, radiation goes 1,000 meters, which means still saturated. At about 14.0 µm, radiation goes 10 kilometers. Is that saturation? Upon doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the distance is half (5 km). Is reducing the distance from 10 km to 5 km increasing the near-surface temperature? Not really. This is a miniscule amount of heat spread over 5 km of height.

Why Shoulder Effects are Miniscule.

The assumption that shoulder effects are where global warming occurs is greatly in error. The real quantities involved are ridiculously small for the following reasons: Using the example of about 14.1 µm, where there are 1/100 as many CO2 molecules, the distance increases from 10 meters to 1,000 meters for complete absorption of available radiation (ignoring atmosphere getting thinner to make simple points). Doubling the CO2 reduces this distance to 500 meters.

The total amount of heat increase for CO2 is said to be 1°C upon doubling. So this 1°C must be divided by 100 due to one hundredth of the CO2 molecules at 14.1 µm, and divided again by 50 due to the molecules being spread over 500 meters of height instead of 10 meters. Spreading the molecules over more distance reduces their density and results in less temperature increase upon doubling.

So 1°C ÷ 100 = 0.01, and this divided by 50 = 0.0002°C.

The shoulder effects are miniscule, because very few CO2 molecules are involved, and they are spread over a lot of height in the atmosphere.

The Hansen fudge factor has a rudimentary logic, which says doubling the amount of CO2 doubles the temperature of the air at the surface of the earth. This logic would be correct, if there were no other factors involved. Even with saturation, more molecules absorbing at a particular location will produce more heat at that location. But consider these absurdities: Air rapidly mixes near the surface due to convection, and therefore, the total heat within the convecting volume determines the result, and it does not change with increases in CO2 due to saturation. Then the starting point is determined by the constant, 5.35, and it cannot be determined except through past observations, which include a hodge podge of factors.

Crunching the Numbers.

Climatologist may have acquired a concept of CO2 sensitivity by combining the NASA energy chart (http://nov79.com/gbwm/rad.html) with an application of the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (http://nov79.com/gbwm/sbc.html) (SBC) to greenhouse gases, both of which are extremely erroneous and misused for the purpose. The SBC says the temperature of the earth would have to be -19.3°C without an atmosphere, because solar energy is 235 Watts per square meter. With an atmosphere, the measured near-surface average is said to be 15°C. The atmosphere increased the temperature by 34°C by this analysis (The number 33°C is usually shown. Don't know why.).

The NASA energy chart says 41% of the energy leaves the surface of the earth by radiation. About 30% of that radiation is said to radiate directly into space, while 70% is absorbed in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. CO2 takes up 8% of the bandwidth for infrared radiation leaving the earth, which is 11% of the greenhouse gas influence. One side of one band (out of three) overlaps with water vapor; so the 11% is reduced by one sixth to 9.17%. This times 41% equals 3.76% of the assumed temperature of 34°C, which totals 1.28°C. This is how much temperature increase CO2 supposedly added to the earth before humans influenced the result. Doubling the CO2 would supposedly add another 1.28°C to the atmosphere.

There is a major error in referring to this number as sensitivity. It represents what CO2 in the atmosphere did during saturation of greenhouse gases. The number tells nothing of what will happen post saturation. Doubling CO2 in the atmosphere will not produce much increase in temperature after saturation. Due to saturation, this number crunching method is not appropriate for determining present-time sensitivity.

The Hansen fudge factor is also not appropriate for the purpose. Inherent forcing cannot be tweezed out. Due to inherent forcing, the fudge factor is not really a representation of sensitivity but a combination of sensitivity and forcing in addition to unknown influences over past temperature, which it vaguely parallels."deniers" claim it is the most certain and agreed upon fact of global warming.

The saturation question prevents a simple determination of sensitivity, unless one admits there is no sensitivity due to saturation. How then can sensitivity be the most certain fact of global warming, which even the deniers do not question?

Beyond these problems, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant is grossly in error, which means 34°C is nothing close to the effect which greenhouse gases or the atmosphere produced before human influences.

Why Sensitivity Contradicts Knowledge.

There are two perspectives on global warming. Extremely uninformed persons have a very simplistic view. They assume that heat would radiate into space, if it were not stopped by greenhouse gases. Scientists argue minutia, which keeps getting more minute, as they try to cope with increasing counter-arguments.

Most heat leaves the planet from the atmosphere, not from the surface. Uninformed persons do not know that. The Nasa chart shows 10% of the earth's energy radiating from the surface into space. The rest of the energy goes from surface to atmosphere through conduction, evaporation and radiation. The NASA chart shows 14% conduction, 45% evaporation and 41% radiation. It should be about 52% conduction, 45% evaporation and 3% radiation. The logic is that conduction should be about 20 times radiation (with normal wind). Cooling fans would not be used, if the ratios were much different from that. The NASA chart shows 3 times as much radiation as conduction on the surface of the earth, which is absurd.

The perspective of both uninformed persons and most scientists is that global warming is about heat entering the atmosphere. They error. The temperature of the atmosphere is about heat leaving, not entering. Heat entering the atmosphere produces an undefined result apart from heat leaving. This fact is due to the second law of thermodynamics, which says heat dissipates from warmer areas to colder areas. Heat leaving creates a steady state, called equilibrium.

Equilibrium means there is a temperature which causes heat to escape at the same rate it enters. For the atmosphere, that temperature is fixed by the rate of heat leaving. Increase the temperature, and heat will leave at a higher rate. But heat must leave the earth at the same rate solar energy enters. Therefore, the temperature from which the heat leaves is fixed by the amount of solar heat entering.

Scientists will sometimes mention equilibrium claiming or implying that more heat entering the atmosphere will shift the equilibrium temperature upward. The equilibrium temperature can't be shifted upward, unless something makes escape of heat more encumbered. The original greenhouse gases slightly encumber radiation escaping from the surface of the earth into space (5% radiation x 70% bandwidth = 3.5% temperature increase); but that effect ended with saturation of the gases. Any increase in greenhouse gases does nothing due to saturation.

The earth (surface and atmosphere) is cooled by radiation which goes around greenhouse gases, not through them. The escaping radiation allows equilibrium to be established, which fixes the atmospheric temperature in place, beyond weather effects, which could be quite significant for an ice age, but not due to greenhouse gases.

What became of western civilization?

Paul Craig Roberts

Not that long ago government and free market proponents were at sword’s point, but no more. With little left in the private sector to rip off, the financial gangsters have turned to the public sector and put to work for them the free market economists’ advocacy of privatization.

Governments themselves became part of the conspiracy once the politicians realized that looting public assets was an efficient way to reward their private benefactors. 

We can see the entire picture in the David Cameron government’s privatization of the British Royal Mail. The prime minister has described the looting as “popular capitalism” even though the British public overwhelmingly opposes turning over the mail service to a profit-making enterprise. 

The British government’s pursuit of policies opposed by the public shows the absence in Britain of the very democracy that British prime ministers, such as Blair and Cameron, are so anxious to help Washington spread with invasions, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran. 

Here is how the Royal Mail is being privatized or, rather, looted. 

First Cameron’s government, guided by the financial gangsters, undervalued the assets of the Royal Mail and assumed mail delivery charges below those that will be charged. This fictitious accounting allows public assets to be transferred to the politicians’ private benefactors at a price below their value. 

For example, all of the Royal Mail’s real estate is being transferred to the new private owners for less than the value of the Royal Mail’s London real estate alone. Neil Clark reports that one Royal Mail London depot is worth about one billion British pounds; but the entire real estate assets of the Royal Mail-public property-is being transferred to the new private owners for about three-quarters of one billion British pounds. The deal was so loaded in favor of the private purchasers that the share price rose almost 40 percent on the first day of trading. (This might have been some sort of nominal trading as the deal possibly has not been finalized.) 

According to reports, many of the mail carriers are going to lose their jobs, and the public, not the private purchasers, is stuck with the liability of the Royal Mail pension fund, which is about $55 billion dollars. So the private looters get the assets but not the liabilities. 

The purchasers are the financial gangsters in whose behalf economic policy is run in the US, UK, and Europe, and, you guessed it, Goldman Sachs made $33.5 million “advising” Cameron on the sale. 

Wall Street and the City of London, the two world financial centers so beloved and misrepresented by free market economists as financiers of investment and economic growth, are in fact legal, government supported, Mafia gangs that loot. Their profits come from looting. 

We are seeing them at work in Greece, where the sanctity of financial profits requires public assets to be sold at bargain basement prices to private interests. The deal requires protected islands of the national heritage be turned over to real estate developers, and public assets such as water companies, ports, and the state lottery be sold at lucrative prices to private interests consisting of the private banks and their clients. 

In Italy government indebtedness is forcing the sale to private investors of historic castles and villas and the Island of San Giacomo in one of Venice’s lagoons. These national treasures will be turned into hotels, restaurants, and resorts for the one percent. 

Are the British Museum and the Smithsonian next to be privatized? 

In America prisons are privatized despite the incentive this gives to produce inmates. 

Public schools are being privatized in the form of “charter schools.” Charter schools are a scheme to eliminate public sector teachers unions, and to convert their pay into private profits by bringing in contract hires to teach for a few years before they are replaced by a new group of contract hires. 

Western civilization, to the extent than any civilization remains, is confronted with a total collapse of economic and government morality. Looting and exploitation rule, and the presstitute media does its best to hide the fact.

Western civilization has been reduced to remnants-historical artifacts, picturesque villages in England and France, German efficiency, joie de vivre and good food in France and Italy, and architectural masterpieces and classical music created before our lifetime. 

In addition to Wall Street’s mechanisms for looting, America contributes technology for putting the entire world under constant surveillance, exploiting the information for economic benefit and for silencing dissenters. 

Western civilization has lost its attractiveness. As nothing remains but a shadow of its former self, it will not be missed as it disappears into a bottomless pit of corruption