That European government - by Richard... Friday, December 11, 2009

That European government - by Richard... Friday, December 11, 2009

With due deference to democracy – i.e., absolutely none at all – Baroness Ashton of Upholland is racing against time on behalf of her (and our) masters, the EU, to set up a pan-European diplomatic service before the next general election electorally-mandated reshuffle.

The idea is to get everything in place and locked in, to prevent David Cameron from interfering in the event that he takes charge of Britain's provincial administration. Thus, she wants all the structures and personnel in place, including the network of "embassies", making the new External Action Service (EAS) a federal Foreign Office for the EU with full consular powers.

"We would like everything in place before David Cameron becomes Prime Minister," said Andrew Duff, a Liberal Democrat MEP and leader of the Union of European Federalists. "If he is prepared to be obstructionist, then the establishment of the EAS is a good target, because the framework has got to be agreed by the 27 member states. It is a form of pressure that David Cameron is putting on us — but it is very good pressure because it means that we have to press on."

And in the unlikely event that he wants to do anything, once it is established, decisions affecting the EAS will be taken by majority vote. If Cameron is in Downing Street – if that happens – he will be powerless to effect change on his own. He will need majority support amongst the "colleagues" and will have to prevail upon the EU commission – of which Baroness Ashton is a vice-president – to make a proposal. The chances of that are nil.

Thus does the constitutional Lisbon treaty start to exert its malign grip, and not for the first time. Ashton is already embroiled in a controversy over her decision to replace foreign ministers at European Council meetings. Since the Lisbon treaty came into force, relations between member states were no longer considered "foreign policy" but were now "domestic policy", so the foreign ministers are no longer necessary, she says.

And will the media stop reporting EU affairs as "foreign news"? I think not.

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That elusive temperature - by Richard...

In order to make its claim that the global average temperature next year is to be the highest on record, the Met Office goes to two places of decimals. It thus forecasts an annual average of 14.58°C compared with 14.52°C in 1998 - almost 0.6°C warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average.

Such stunning precision, however, is somewhat at odds with the diffident explanation of the provenance of the Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT) on Nasa's GISS website. It offers this narrative:

Q. What exactly do we mean by SAT?

A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.

Q. What do we mean by daily mean SAT?

A. Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every 2 hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.

Q. What SAT do the local media report?

A. The media report the reading of 1 particular thermometer of a nearby weather station. This temperature may be very different from the true SAT even at that location and has certainly nothing to do with the true regional SAT. To measure the true regional SAT, we would have to use many 50 ft stacks of thermometers distributed evenly over the whole region, an obvious practical impossibility.

Q. If the reported SATs are not the true SATs, why are they still useful?

A. The reported temperature is truly meaningful only to a person who happens to visit the weather station at the precise moment when the reported temperature is measured, in other words, to nobody. However, in addition to the SAT the reports usually also mention whether the current temperature is unusually high or unusually low, how much it differs from the normal temperature, and that information (the anomaly) is meaningful for the whole region. Also, if we hear a temperature (say 70F), we instinctively translate it into hot or cold, but our translation key depends on the season and region, the same temperature may be 'hot' in winter and 'cold' in July, since by 'hot' we always mean 'hotter than normal', i.e. we all translate absolute temperatures automatically into anomalies whether we are aware of it or not. 

Q. If SATs cannot be measured, how are SAT maps created?

A. This can only be done with the help of computer models, the same models that are used to create the daily weather forecasts. We may start out the model with the few observed data that are available and fill in the rest with guesses (also called extrapolations) and then let the model run long enough so that the initial guesses no longer matter, but not too long in order to avoid that the inaccuracies of the model become relevant. This may be done starting from conditions from many years, so that the average (called a 'climatology') hopefully represents a typical map for the particular month or day of the year.

Q. What do I do if I need absolute SATs, not anomalies?

A. In 99.9% of the cases you'll find that anomalies are exactly what you need, not absolute temperatures. In the remaining cases, you have to pick one of the available climatologies and add the anomalies (with respect to the proper base period) to it. For the global mean, the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 14 Celsius, i.e. 57.2°F, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58°F and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse.

And the helpful person responsible for this explanation? Ah! NASA Official: James E Hansen.

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Dangerous climate change - by Richard...

Police in Iowa are reported to have arrested a man who assaulted his wife when she refused to help him shovel snow. Officers said they went to the residence early Wednesday afternoon after the 44-year-old woman said her husband struck her in the head with his chest and attempted to pull her out of the house.

The woman complained of pain in her head and leg, but refused medical treatment. She said she had been quarrelling with her 45-year-old husband because he had accused her of being lazy around the house.

Well, they said climate change was dangerous.

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An official diet - by Richard...

From leftie extraordinaire Tim Lang, formerly of the London Food Commission. He wants us to cut back meat and dairy consumption. In the early eighties, it was to reduce animal "suffering", in the late eighties and early nineties, it was to reduce food-related disease. Now it is to save the planet - different reason, same cause.

It only needs a two-word response, and the second one is "off".

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An unhappy bunny - by Richard...

Johann Hari in The Independent is not a happy bunny. He writes:

The world is being told that this is an emergency meeting to solve the climate crisis – but here inside the Bela Centre where our leaders are gathering, you can find only a corrupt shuffling of words, designed to allow countries to wriggle out of the bare minimum necessary to prevent the unravelling of the biosphere.

...

This system has been made incomprehensible because if we understood, ordinary citizens would be outraged. If these were good faith negotiations, such loopholes would be dismissed in seconds. And the rich countries are flatly refusing to make even these enfeebled, leaky cuts legally binding. You can toss them in the bin the moment you leave the conference centre, and nobody will have any comeback. On the most important issue in the world – the stability of our biosphere – we are being scammed.

But, he says, there is one reason why I am still – despite everything – defiantly hopeful. Converging on this city now are thousands of ordinary citizens who aren't going to take it any more.

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Climate scientist attacked - by Richard...

Nobel laureate, renowned climate scientist and good friend of former US vice-president Al Gore, Dr Stephen Schneider, was verbally attacked today during a press conference at the United Nations Climate Talks in Copenhagen. He was shaking visibly after the confrontation.

Since he is still alive, Schneider may care to reflect how unlucky he was that it was a verbal attack. His religion is distinctly lacking its quota of "climate martyrs". He could have gone down in history as its first.

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A different crisis - by Richard...

Plaintive little "voices off" at the Copenhagen slugfest are coming from the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO), in the shape of its director-general Jacques Diouf. He is complaining that talks are neglecting the food crisis. 

Instead of concentrating on the industrial policy, he says, the delegates should be looking for measures which can both curb climate change and boost food production. "Roughly around 31 percent of emissions come from agriculture," he says, and changes in husbandry and cropping practices could help reduce those emissions while improving overall productivity.

This has barely created a ripple in the overheated atmosphere of the summit, although we did get lurid headlines from The Daily Mail, telling us that climate change will see a further 100million people going hungry by the middle of this century.

According to its studies, the World Food Programme is saying that the number affected by hunger could rise by between 10 and 20 per cent without action to tackle global warming, with two thirds of the increase concentrated in Africa.

Yet, despite the low-key treatment in Copenhagen, a mere 300 miles north in Oslo, president Obama was taking possession of his Nobel prize, declaring that the world had to come together to confront climate change. "There is little scientific dispute," he said, "that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades."

However, if the "big freeze" forecast for next week in Europe is any guide, following on the back of unseasonably cold weather in areas as far apart as the US and Tibet, then the problem is not going to be global warming. The prospect of a significant shortage of food may be real enough, but the greater danger is global (or at least regional) cooling.

Even according to the official record - interpreted by Dr Lucia Liljegren, an atmospheric researcher with the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University, current temperature levels are even now below the "best-case scenario" postulated by the IPCC (see graph below - the lower of the lines).


According to Peter Taylor, in his new book "Chill", this is just the start. He maintains the world is cooling. Magnetic activity of the sun – which many to believe to be the real driver of the climate – is at an all-time low. There is a possibility of a repeat of the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century when the Thames froze every winter and famine spread through Europe and China.

Even with the benefit of the recent warming period – and higher recorded CO2 levels which improve plant productivity – the world is already on the brink although the pessimistic forecasts earlier this year did not transpire. Stock levels have sharply rebounded from the 2007-08 record low and are forecast to climb even higher by the end of 2009-10 to stand at around 160 million tons.

This, nevertheless, falls short of the projection this year of an increase in global wheat stocks to 171 million tons. But it is a considerable improvement on 2007, when the world saw global carryover of grain stocks fall to 61 days of global consumption, the second lowest on record (below).


China is, of course, the big player. Against a total global production of 642 million tons for 2008-9, its output amounted to an estimated 113, increasing from just over 96 million in 2004-5. 

Thus, at present China accounts for around 16 percent of global wheat output, which compares with 20 percent for the EU countries, 11 percent for India and nine percent for the US. However, China only exports around three million tons. Its main effect on the global market is exerted by its own self-sufficiency. 

In what is a totalitarian state, where reliable domestic news is hard to come by, there are disturbing indications that this level of production cannot be sustained. 

A combination of drought and the increasingly high level of water pollution is said to be creating severe food shortages. Even the chronic air pollution is said to be having an adverse effect. Whether or not "climate change" is man-made is highly disputed – whatever Obama might say – but few will dispute that air pollution is having a significant effect on Chinese rainfall patterns.

Thus, even without any global climatic effect, there is a distinct possibility – some would say certainty – that China's status as a net exporter of wheat could change – and very rapidly. The largest regional exporter of wheat flour is Kazakhstan, which is also the world's leading exporter of this commodity, supplying 1.85 million tons, ahead of the EU at 1.35 million ton, Argentina and Turkey both at 1.2 million. It is to Kazakhstan that China would likely turn, drawing down product to the extent that it could have a significant knock-on effect on the rest of the world.

But if that is a possibility without any climatic effect, low temperatures could make the situation substantially worse. In the winter of 2007-8, we saw reports of heavy snowfall in China, with severe freezing and substantial crop losses in what was called the "Winter Snow Disaster". Cumulative losses exceeded $20 billion. 

Likewise, last winter, China also experienced severe winter conditions, which were virtually unreported in Britain. Record low temperatures killed 500,000 animals and left three million people on the edge of starvation.

With unseasonably early snow being reported in Tibet this October, and asnow emergencydeclared in November in the north – which had the region's heaviest snows in six decades, leaving 38 dead and thousands stranded – it would be a brave man who would guarantee the current high levels of food production in China.

And what is happening in Asia is being replicated in the United States and Canada. After two hard winters, this year we see again unseasonably early snowfalls. Even yesterday, we were readingthe headline: "Deadly storm sweeps across America". Nebraska received more than 10 inches of snow, the most the state has seen in December for 50 years, and Des Moines, Iowa, recorded its second highest December snowfall – 12 to 15 inches – since records began in 1888.

Importantly, what is missed amongst all the cries of impending Armageddon is that global warming – certainly at the levels experience at the end of the last Century – is largely beneficial in terms of food production, as indeed was the Medieval Warming Period which brought considerable prosperity to Europe. Even at temperatures considerably higher than were experienced in the 1990s, temperate agriculture (which provides the bulk of the global food supply) would remain a beneficiary.

On the other hand. as Taylor points out in his book, natural climate change, especially cooling, is dangerous for the very large numbers of people who are vulnerable to climate change - the urban poor in the developed world, including the UK, plus the poor nations currently dependent on food aid. 

Already, global agricultural productivity growth is only one to two percent a year. This is only just keeping pace with population growth and increased demand. But cooling would reduce or even eliminate that growth and the food surpluses upon which we all depend. 

What is more, the biofuels programmes aimed at preventing climate change will expose them to greater risk by decreasing the amount of land available and raising food costs. This problem, coupled with increasingly expensive energy supplies, will affect everyone world-wide and drive up transport and manufacturing costs to levels even rich countries will struggle to afford. The poor will suffer dreadfully.

If this stacks up to an impending crisis, however, for Europe and especially for the UK, it will be unique at several levels. Looking specifically at the UK, it has to be said that agriculture has probably never had such a low profile in the national consciousness.

Even 20 years ago, all the major national newspapers had dedicated farming correspondents. But these have now been replaced by environment and life-style specialists. In the beginning, they did write occasionally about countryside matters and farming. The output, though, has dwindled to the point where routine agricultural coverage has vanished from the dailies. I cannot recall a time when less was written in the media about the subject.

Instead, the focus is on "global warming". Agriculture comes onto the agenda mainly in respect of its contribution to reducing CO2 emissions.

Similarly, we no longer have a Ministry of Agriculture, this having been subsumed in DEFRA – the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Activity, as it has been called. Most people would struggle to name our agriculture minister, and fewer still would have any idea who the shadow minister is. Even fewer, perhaps, actually care.

As for our real government – the one in Brussels – until recently we had the feisty Mariann Fischer Boel who, last time I looked, seemed to have acquired the title, "commissioner for agriculture and rural development". That should tell you something.

Her claimed concern was to "…modernise the CAP and free farmers to respond to growing demand", with yet another "reform" in progress under the disguise of the a "Heath Check". It was supposedly part of a package of measures intended to be a "European response to mitigate effects of rising global food prices". As always though, the intent was to reduce direct payments and shift financing to "second pillar" rural development and environment, with a bigger slice of the cash going to non-farming enterprises.

Now, perhaps, the pendulum has swung too far. Sarkozy certainly thinks so as he communes with his new commissioner designate, Dacian Ciolos. Although a Romanian technocrat, he has spent so much of his life studying and working in France that he regards it as his adoptive country. A French EU agriculture minister in all but name cannot be good news for British agriculture.

As for what his policy might be, we have very little idea. For a meeting last week, the French government convened what it called the "G22" - senior ministers from 22 European states - in an attempt to influence a rethink of the CAP.

However, it did not invited Britain or other so-called "reform nations" - the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Malta - all of which have argued for a full overhaul of EU farm subsidies. To this day, we have no real idea of what transpired.

The inherent problem here is that, by design, the CAP is primarily designed to deal with the problem of agricultural surpluses. It is a funding mechanism, not a stock management system – not one ever designed or intended to deal with shortages. In the entire history of the Community, there has never been a situation where there have been food shortages. And now it is to become even more distant from reality as the "CAP budget" is to take on a whole new meaning. Out goes money and in comes "carbon" to create a carbon budget.

Locked into this collective madness, governments have lost sight of one of their primary functions is maintaining food security, part of which is holding reserve stocks of key commodities for times of shortage or emergency. Since the EU took over agricultural and food policy, the strategic direction of those stocks – and their financing – moved to Brussels, where the focus has been anything but food security.

Now, with Brussels obsessed with "global warming", a Francophile at the helm of the EU commission and a policy direction that is, to say the very least obscure, there is the terrifying prospect that the machine is looking in the wrong direction. When or if there is a crisis, we will be singularly ill-prepared. One fears the only response will be "let them eat carbon".

This madness is, on balance, a far greater hazard than anything Mother Nature can throw at us. Farmers over the ages have shown endless creativity, adaptability and resilience in dealing with changing physical conditions. What no one yet has been able to devise is a way of making farming politician-proof. And now we are in an era where state intervention is moving into a new and terrifying dimension, all based on what is most probably a false paradigm.

That is a different crisis, one for which there may be no solution.

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An unfortunate juxtaposition - by Richard... Thursday, December 10, 2009

Just as The Daily Scarygraph is prattling on about next year being the hottest on record, its website page announcing the glad tidings (for the warmists) we get a much higher profile story on: "Deadly storm sweeps across America".

"At least 17 people have died after a huge storm swept across the American Midwest and New England," we are told. More than a foot of snow has fallen in 12 states as blizzard conditions buried cars under snowdrifts as much as 15 feet deep.

Most of the deaths were due to traffic accidents, the paper says. In Kansas, visibility dropped to only 50 feet while in Iowa a major highway was closed, leaving lorry drivers stranded. Hundreds of schools closed, thousands of homes lost power and flights have been cancelled across a wide area.

The Midwest is accustomed to bitterly cold winters but the strength of the storm, which also brought ice and 50mph winds, still took the region by surprise. In Madison, Wisconsin, the worst affected area, more than 19 inches of snow fell and the local university was closed for the first time in nearly 45 years. "It is a rare event because people are used to dealing with snowy conditions," said a university spokesman.

Nebraska received more than 10 inches of snow, the most the state has seen in December for 50 years. Des Moines, Iowa, recorded its second highest December snowfall – 12 to 15 inches – since records began in 1888.

Some call it the Gore effect - I can't think why. Meanwhile skiing looks excellent, worldwide - except where the snow is too deep for access.

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