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Saturday, December 08, 2007

CATASTROPHIC WARMING STRIKES GLASGOW

From this morning BBC Radio has been telling us about a proposed demonstration in Glasgow about global warming (they described it as climate change) which was promised to produce 500 demonstrators. The woman on before midday actually told us, on the BBC's impartial airwaves, to go join it.

This afternoon it started snowing.

RSS MSU satellite data for the lower troposphere show that November 2007 was the coldest month since January 2000. Other major teams that measure the global mean temperature have not yet published their November data.

The temperature anomaly was -0.014 °C. It means that the whole month was actually cooler than the the average recorded November. It was the first month in this century that was cooler than average.

The previous record low temperature anomaly in this century occurred in July 2004 when the anomaly was +0.053 °C. In other words, the record low for this century was improved by 0.07 °C. The continuing La Nina is the main reason behind the recent cold months; La Nina is expected to disappear in Spring 2008. January 2000, a month that was even cooler than November 2007, witnessed a La Nina, too. November 2007 was also a whopping 0.915 °C colder than April 1998.

Another reason could be an inactive Sun. We are expecting the solar cycle 24 to begin soon but it takes a longer time than expected and there are still almost no sun spots. Via a crucial mechanism, it means that we should be getting more galactic cosmic rays that should create more clouds.

The year 2007 is now very likely to become RSS MSU's 9th warmest year on record which really means one of the coldest years of our times. It will end up colder than all other years in the 21st century so far as well as 1998 (by 0.4 °C) and 1995. We explained that 2006 was very cold but 2007 will be shown as 0.1 °C colder.

Friday, December 07, 2007

ON EMPIRE

Jerry Pournelle, who, while considering himself a conservative, is opposed to Bush's war, has been discussing the Imperial ambitions of the neo-cons. He said this & added an email from me at the end:

..... We can mind our own business, only we don't. Our intervention in Kossovo was insane: here was an historic province of Serbia with a Serbian majority as late as the 1920's; which never ever had a policy of legal immigration of Albanians; and the US bombs Belgrade in order to enforce Albanian rights in a place few Americans could find on a map (and a majority of those would be Serbian)! This is roughly analogous to Russia bombing Washington to get the US to cede San Diego to Mexico.

That's where globalization leads. It leads to the US about to fight the Kurds to keep them from annoying the Turks, or else having to side with the Kurds against the Turks. Neither is an inviting prospect.

We defended Viet Nam during the Cold War because we had a national interest in Containment as a policy and if you are for containment you must do some containing. We let millions go to reeducation camps and become boat people because the Democrats in Congress smelled blood in the water and wanted Republican scalps, and couldn't be bothered to support an ally against a naked blatant invasion from the North by an armored army with more tanks than the Wehrmacht had at Kursk. That is a measure our our constancy and determination.

Globalization means domestic imperialism because empires need constancy of purpose and can't kowtow to the Senate. Rome was an Empire before Caesar, but it wasn't a competent one because Senate and People couldn't agree on how to govern it or how to govern the army or what to do about the Gauls, or how to suppress the pirates in the Mediterranean and Ionic Seas. Pompey took care of the pirates, then it took Caesar to take care of Pompey, and ---

Those who will not study history are condemned to repeat it. Imperial Republics do not last; either they cease to be imperial or, far more likely, they cease to be Republics. Venice was an exception for a long time and the Framers studied and discussed the Venetian Republic; I doubt that ten members of Congress know that or know anything about Venice and Venetia. And Venice did not seek to be global.

Perpetual war for perpetual peace.

==

Subject: On Empire

The pragmatic problem, for Americans of going for a world empire is that they are thinking small.

The history of Europe from 1568 (Netherlands' rebellion) to 1918 is of endless fights as to who got to be Holy Roman Emperor & rule Belgium. Meanwhile Britain, which had the advantage of being an independent land mass took the rest of the world.

In the long or even medium term what language is spoken on the Moon & Ganymede is more important than that of Kosovo & Iraq & need not cost more to influence.

Neil Craig

Thursday, December 06, 2007

TRUMP'S £3 BILLION INVESTMENT WELCOME IN IRELAND

A short letter of mine in today's Scotsman

"I see the Rev Ian Paisley is trying to persuade Donald Trump to give up trying to build something in Scotland and go to Northern Ireland (your report, 5 December). I never thought I would see the day when Mr Paisley would be seen as a sensible, constructive and moderate negotiator and the Lib Dems as ranting, destructive ideological extremists."
They edited to the extent putting in "to give up trying to build something in Scotland" instead of my original "to give up the Sisyphean task of being allowed to build something in Scotland" which I thought gave added meaning in light of the suggestion by councillor Ford that Mr Trump would be perfectly free to reapply. The idea that he is going to cool his heels & his £1 billion, waiting to see if he may, or may not be permitted to invest some time in the future is unlikely to appeal. This is the practical effect of our planning system plus all the public enquiries people inevitably call for, which, of course, is why they call for it.

"In Greek mythology, Sisyphus (Σίσυφος) (IPA: /ˈsɪsɨfəs/) was a king punished in the Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again, and repeat this throughout eternity.

Today, Sisyphean can be used as an adjective meaning that an activity is unending and/or repetitive. It could also be used to refer to tasks that are pointless and unrewarding."

Even the Scotsman don't expect their readers to recognise a classical allusion anymore. Perhaps it would have been better if I had referred to it as our Kafkaesque planning system.

Monday, December 03, 2007

RUSSIAN ELECTION

The Vienna-based OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said the election failed to meet many of the standards and also commitments of the OSCE, of which Russia is a member. The OSCE statement said the polls "took place in an atmosphere which limited political competition” and that "there was not a level playing field”. "Frequent abuse of administrative resources, media coverage strongly in favor of the ruling party and an election code whose cumulative effect hindered political pluralism” had tainted the polls, the observers said.

Having stood for the 9% Growth Party at the last election I would welcome media coverage which was merely biased towards the main parties rather than virtually monopolised by them. An atmosphere which allowed political competition (for example by those churches organising hustings inviting all the candidates rather than merely those & such as those) would be a welcome novelty. I don't think anybody can deny that the FPTP electoral system does strongly "hinder political pluralism", indeed its supporters give this as a reason to support it, since it provides the jots of "strong government" & "extreme" parties not being elected. Level playing fields are also conspicuous by their absence - I am convinced that if allowed to debate Nicol "nuclear is the easy answer so we mustn't let the common people know it" Stephen, LibDim leader, I would wipe the floor with him. Giving money to ASH, Friends of the Earth & the ubiquitous government advertising campaigns peaking shortly before elections also constitute "abuse of administrative resources.

I will certainly mention these to the OSCE should any passing inspector show any interest in British elections.

In fact no evidence has been produced that the Russian election was not conducted at least as well as ours, even excluding our undemocratic electoral system. The Russian people have quite sensibly voted for a leader who has provided 8% growth nearly doubling GNP in 8 years. Putin's fault seems not to be lack of democracy but lack of subservience to western leaders.

HERALD LETTERS ON GLOBAL WARMING

3 good letters in the Herald today (only the first is mine) which all give the eco-alarmists a measured kicking.

This is a reply to Paul Shaw's letter which is in turn a reply to mine. It has been published unedited.
-----------------------------------------
Reports of global warming are grossly exaggerated hobgoblins

I will certainly admit to being one of those unconvinced by the claims that we are undergoing catastrophic warming. It is the case, as Paul Shaw says (Letters, November 29), that some glaciers are melting. It is also the case that some are growing and some just sitting there. That there are currently glaciers in the Alps blocking places which, in Roman times, were used as passes, means that even the glacier evidence shows nothing outwith historical experience.

The major recent piece of evidence, which sadly has gone unreported by the British media, is that it has recently been proven that US records purporting to show current extreme warming were wrong. They were distorted by the fact that recording stations, which, a century ago were in open countryside, are now deep inside cities (in one case beside the outlet for a factory's air-conditioning system). The corrected US figures now show 1934 was the warmest year on record and four of the 10 warmest were in the 1930s. To be fair, this error has not been accepted by other countries but since the fullest records were kept by the US, and an even higher proportion of urban records, this is difficult seriously to deny.

Sir David King, a political appointee, is on record as having said that by the end of this century Antarctica will be "the only habitable continent", implying a temperature rise of more than 30 degrees and has subsequently, in what the BBC reported as his "strongest warning yet", said it would be three degrees. He may not be the ultimate authority.

I pointed out in my previous letter that there have been several periods in history when global temperature was significantly warmer than now (middle ages up to 1350, late Roman and pre-5000BC). These were uniformly periods of prosperity, looked back on as golden ages. Mr Shaw did not dispute this.
The late H L Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." I regard the current global warming scare and, indeed, the previous global ice-age scare of the 1970s and early 1980s, among many others, as being such hobgoblins pushed by a Luddite environmentalist movement trying to justify its existence and governments trying to justify higher taxes and more regulation.

------------------------------------------------

The 2nd letter takes Greenpeace to task for saying nuclear needs subsidy, & the Herald for printing this untrue claim without questioning it.

The 3rd, which is clearly from somebody who knows the subject is measured, pointing out both what we do know & what we don't & therefore all the stronger when it shoots hole in the Luddite case.

It has long been the case that online comments have been, on balance, extremely dubious about warming alarmism, but written material not sceptical. This is a heavy broadside which I think it will be difficult for the alarmists to let go unanswered so we may well be seeing a continuing debate in this lettercolumn.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

THIS WEEK'S COMMENTS

What the Greens stand for.

Kosovo - the world of 2007 is not the world of 1999. The NATO troops which would be used to protect the KLA committing genocide (as they surely would after "independence") would have to exclude Brits & Americans, who have their own wars & other NATO forces have not performed well in Afghanistan. Moreover Russia is not the weak power it used to be & the Chinese & Indians in the Shanghai Pact, would support them.
Finally the net has come of age. During the 90s it was possible for our media to lie continuously to us (calling our openly genocidal former SS friends "democrats" & the democratic Yugoslavs "Nazis), lying about the non-existent "rape camps" where, if our media were in the remotest degree whatsover honest hundreds of thousands of Moslem women were imprisoned to produce hundreds of thousands of Serb children, who would be in their late teens by now, had they existed, as well as the censorship of the real Srebrenica Massacre of thousands of serb civilian while pushing, Goebels style, the big lie of a massacre of the massacre of Moslem soldiers; fabricating photos (the ITN "concentration camp" video & the Guardian's "hanged woman" one) & censoring the genuine ones.

http://nato-media-lies-exposed.blogspot.com/

The net means these people no longer have the truth by the throat. The British people are basically decent & those who know anything about it know we have been lied to let our leaders commit genocide (any online forum, even the Guardian's shows how opinion lies). We will not put up with helping Nazis commit genocide again.


Monioat supports building houses

Will Hutton calling for protection of banks

David Abrahams & Paul Green - 2 property developers giving dodgy donations to political parties - what makes property developers particularly keen on donating to politicians :-)

Donation from Glasgow property developer. http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.1867238.0.0.php

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1870650.0.0.php £1 billion poured down the drain by 7 eco-fascist councillors.

smoking ban

What most people don't know is that while the Nuremburg Trials were carried out with a fair degree of integrity (even finding a couple of them, quite properly, not guilty) once it was over they were quietly let out the back door. Between 1950, when Germany was becoming a democratic freedom loving opponent of communism again, & 1955 virtually all of them were given early release on "compassionate" grounds. Sepp Deitrich was held till 1955 not because he had killed 15,000 Lithuanian Jews but because he killed 300 American POWs.

The major exception & poster child for how serious we were, was Hess who had been sentenced to death by Hitler & who therefore had no credit with all the democratic freedom loving ex-SS officers running Germany's army, industry & increasingly politics. Ever since Germany has been keen to protect its citizens accused of war crimes which is why almost everybody dragged up in recent years has turned out to be a very low level Pole or Lithuanian with no connections rather than, for example, Secretary General of the UN.


Kosovo http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/zoran_pajic/2007/12/stumbling_to_independence.html



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