It's snowing all over the world

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

It's snowing all over the world

Ice in the Arctic is often twice as thick as expected, report surprised scientists who returned last week from a major scientific expedition. The scientists - a 20-member contingent from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Italy - spent one month exploring the North Pole as well as never-before measured regions of the Arctic.

Among their findings: Rather than finding newly formed ice to be two metres thick, "we measured ice thickness up to four metres," stated a spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research of the Helmholtz Association, Germany's largest scientific organisation.

Then we get this from the United States: "Sorry, Al Gore, but Public Cares About the Economy, Not Global Warming".

Gallup Poll Editor Frank Newport says he sees no evidence that Al Gore's campaign against global warming is winning. "It's just not caught on," says Newport. "They have failed." Or, more bluntly: "Any measure that we look at shows Al Gore's losing at the moment. The public is just not that concerned." What the public is worried about: the economy. 

He adds: "As Al Gore I think would say, the greatest challenge facing humanity . . . has failed to show up in our data."

On the British front, we get reported by The Daily Mail, "Ed Miliband's global warming law 'could cost £20,000 per family'", with a report stating: "Laws aimed at tackling global warming could cost every family in Britain a staggering £20,000 - double the original forecast." 

This follows the Met Office forecast for a "warmer than average summer". It has been cold and wet ever since that report – we even had the central heating on here. And skiinfo.com reports, "It's snowing all over the world", even telling us: "Last week of winter in France, but it's still snowing", with the southern hemisphere ski season starting five weeks early.

Sooner or later, even our loathsome media are going to put two and two together. Then, those idiot politicians who have embraced the global warming scam are going to look even more stupid than they do already. The reckoning may be delayed, but it will come.

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NATO exercises in Georgia go ahead

Later today I shall try to write about what might or might not have happened in Georgia yesterday and the whole row about Russian diplomats and NATO. For the moment, it is worth noting that NATO exercises in Georgia are going ahead without the participation of four countries: Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Serbia.

Moldova has the odd problem or two of its own at the moment and the other three, presumably, do not want to antagonize Russia.

One hates to be rude about supposed allies but one cannot help asking whether the absence of those particular ones is of any importance. Far more important is the fact that the exercises are being carried out at Georgia’s Vaziani military base, where they took place in mid-July of last year, three weeks before the Russo-Georgian war.

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Think about it?

"We're just a matter of weeks away from polling day, and the number of people who see the EU as the most important issue facing Britain is at rock-bottom."

This is the complaint of a blog called Think about it, which happily describes itself as:

A dynamic community of bloggers, journalists and journalism students, a forum alive with debate and discussion, a creative portal to inspire youth involvement with the 2009 Parliamentary Elections, brought to you by the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

The graph is from Ipsos MORI and the blog offers a number of reasons why interest should be so low. But the one thing it does not give us is perhaps the real reason – that the EU and anything to do with it is so utterly tedious, so low-grade, so mind-sappingly dull and devoid of vitality that the only sensible response is to wish it would crawl under a stone and die.

Meanwhile, if I hadn't heard it myself, live, direct on a feed from Sky News as I was preparing to do a live interview with them - the satellite van parked outside, much to the puzzlement of the neighbours – I would not have believed it. 

"On 4 June, vote for change … vote Conservative", said Mr Cameron. Change what, pray? The number of Tory MEPs we send to Brussels to collect their pay cheques?

What other changes did he have in mind? Did he have the local elections in mind, where he wants the vote to be a referendum on Mr Brown? "In this Party, we believe in localism," says the Boy.

But where is the "localism", where you are supposed to vote for local councillors to represent you on local issues? What price local democracy when the Boy wants to use the local elections to "give this weak, useless and spineless [national] Government a message it won't forget"?

And don't even start me on "vote for change" as a slogan. I know the Boy is keen on recycling, but isn't that carrying it a bit far? Is that the best the geniuses at CCHQ can come up with?

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Perceptions

I have mixed feelings about Max Hastings. I only met him once, and he seemed more than a little remote (which is one way of putting it). My feeling was as if I had become the sort of substance one scrapes off the bottom of one's shoes.

Nevertheless, I have read most of his books and still regard his "Overlord" as the best written account of the 1944 Normandy campaign – not that he was "there" of course. Others of his books are not as good and, with many of his contemporary opinions, I profoundly disagree.

Even then, as with other commentators – some of whom one instinctively distrusts – Hastings occasionally writes something which makes you sit up and say, "Yes! You are right!", even if only because it accords with one's own thoughts and prejudices.

In The Daily Mail today is one of those pieces, this one headed: "Thatcher's legacy - and why America is falling out of love with Britain all over again."

Hastings takes the scenario of how the extraordinary transformation wrought by Mrs Thatcher – the victory in the Falklands War, and the prosperity of the past 20 years – caused American respect to Britain soared. We achieved recognition as a remarkable comeback story, a reliable supporter on the world stage, an important player among second-division powers.

Thus, asserts Hastings, for the past quarter-century, the British have been able to hold their heads high in America. The future, though, looks different. Britain is understood here to be the worst casualty of the economic crisis in the developed world. It is plain that our success and apparent wealth of recent years have been much overstated. Then comes the bombshell.

Beyond our economic woes, we are told, it is dismaying to hear sharp criticism in Washington of the British contribution in Afghanistan. We think we are trying pretty hard - spending £3billion a year and accepting a steady drain of casualties in the battle for Helmand province. Yet many American soldiers and strategists are unimpressed. Hastings continues, a section worth quoting in full:

'The British Army is not the force it was 20 years ago,' claims a U.S. general who has held a senior command in Afghanistan. 'It is casualty-averse and lacks boldness. It is too ready to call in air support rather than "mix it" with the Taliban. I would describe most of the British commanders and officials involved in Afghanistan as defeatists.'

I reeled before this barrage. I told the general that the British Army thinks it is making a pretty impressive effort in Afghanistan. Indeed, the British soldiers who have striven so hard in Helmand, and have paid so heavily in casualties, are doing everything that could be asked of them.

Our Government faces special problems because the war is unpopular at home. This is why Gordon Brown last week rejected the Army's case for sending 2,000 reinforcements out there.

My American friend, however, returned to the assault. He said: 'You people kid yourselves that the Afghans like you. They don't. They tell us that you behave towards them with imperial condescension. They say your soldiers treat Afghan soldiers as if they come from a lower caste.

This last charge was echoed by a civilian strategist I met, who also has a lot of Afghan experience. I suggested that the Afghans tell all foreigners what they think they want to hear. British soldiers hear bitter criticism of the U.S. Army, and especially of its carelessness about civilian casualties.

But it seems to me less important whether the allegations against us are justified than that a substantial body of Americans believes them. No one in Britain should fool themselves about the US attitude to our withdrawal from a combat role in Iraq, marked by a ceremony outside Basra last week.

The Americans perceive the British Army as having suffered a defeat. They see us as leaving southern Iraq with our tail between our legs. Contempt for our showing there increases scepticism about what we are achieving, or not achieving, in Afghanistan.

Hastings then writes:

… I was shocked by the vigour of criticism of our performance on the ground by influential people in Washington, both in and out of uniform. If you read any of the half-dozen most prominent American books published about Iraq and Afghanistan during the past year, you will discover that the British are mentioned only in a few sentences, most of these unflattering.

If there is one thing more depressing than being engaged in a tough, maybe unwinnable war on the other side of the world, it is receiving a 'C' grade from our senior partner for our part in it. I believe that we must keep trying in Afghanistan, not least to demonstrate our support for the U.S. But we should not fool ourselves about our standing in American eyes. Economically, politically and militarily, Britain does not look impressive.

The key assertion is, of course: "The Americans perceive the British Army as having suffered a defeat. They see us as leaving southern Iraq with our tail between our legs. Contempt for our showing there increases scepticism about what we are achieving, or not achieving, in Afghanistan."

Hastings, hedging his bets, writes: "It would be good to be able to dismiss the doubts and criticisms … Yet most touch a nerve." Readers of this blog will know that we have come to the same conclusion. Our "take" most definitely accords with the "perceptions" he records. He suggests we must keep trying in Afghanistan, not least to demonstrate our support for the US. I would agree.

But mere "trying" is not enough. We must succeed, and we have a lot of ground to make up.

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Tuesday, May 05, 2009