A year ago - by Richard... Thursday, November 04, 2010

A year ago - by Richard... Thursday, November 04, 2010

Exactly a year ago, euroslimy Dave was telling us all how he was going to sort out "Europe". How different it all looks now.

Meanwhile, this man is in la-la land. But then, he does write for The Independent.

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It's all a load of Pollocks - by Richard...

We learn from the diligent Tom Nelson that the a $52 million Bering Sea global warming project, assessing the health of the Pollock fishery, is going down the pan – having been "hit by three coldest years on record".

At present, the Bering Sea provides roughly half the fish caught in US waters each year and nearly a third caught worldwide. But the warmists have been selling their usual bill of goods, that "climate change" – i.e., warming – is going to do for the fishery. "The experiments we did up there definitely suggest that the changing ecosystem may support less of what we're harvesting - things like pollock and hake," marine ecologist Dave Hutchins says.

But now they are finding that the unusually chilly water during the past few cold years has forced the young pollock into relatively warmer regions, where they can more easily fall prey to older Pollock, causing a potentially catastrophic collapse in the fishery.

All of which goes to indicate – as we have been saying all along – that the thing to worry about is cooling. All this fuss about warming is just a load of Pollocks ... or no Pollocks, that problem being one that seems to be shared by most of our politicians.

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"Ireland has been desperately unlucky" - by Richard...

So writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. He draws attention to yields on 10-year Irish bonds, which surged this morning to a post-EMU high of 7.41percent. For technical reasons, which I think I understand – which probably means I don't – this is baaaaaad. Ambrose says the bond crisis is snowballing out of control. But what ,makes the country unlucky, he asserts, is that it has not has had enough time to let its medical, pharma, IT, and financial services industries (don’t laugh, some of it is doing well) come to the rescue.

Far be it for me to dispute AEP's findings – he knows what he's talking about whereas I don't – I would nevertheless suggest he's wrong – after a fashion. He's right about Ireland being unlucky ... well, some Irish people, the good guys who voted against the Lisbon treaty.

As for the rest, they come from the same well-spring that supported the country's membership of the euro, and voted for their current batch of idiot leaders. In that sense, they are not unlucky. They get what they deserve – and deserve what they get. Electing stupid or venal leaders is not a risk-free option, as we are about to find out.

When Ireland finally goes down the plug-hole – and if it isn't this, it'll be something else – the chances of a domino effect are high. Ambrose says that Ireland going down, on top of Greece and Portugal, would make it a triple bail-out – which is not credible. There are limits to intra-EMU solidarity, he adds, as Angela Merkel showed by dragging her feet for months over Greece, and has shown all too clearly again this week. The EU bail-out fund is a bluff that cannot safely be called.

I just wish they would get the Armageddon stuff over and done with. It is an article of faith that the euro is going to go belly up and this constantly repeated "one bound and we're free" stuff is getting a tad tedious.

I really do want to wake up one morning soon and hear that they euro has crash and burnt, and that the "colleagues" are throwing themselves (or being thrown – I don't mind which) from the top of the Berlaymont. Then, at least we can get down to the task of reconstruction, and this time round perhaps make a better job of it.

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Between scares - by Richard... Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Are the tranzies jumping ship? Little Louise must have been weeping in her cups as she wrote this one ... and does that mean that the Dr Pachauri is also "largely irrelevant"? If so, that is something of a comedown from being master of the universe.

The very fact that the question is being asked, however, tends to confirm that the heat is going out of the global warming debate (to coin an unfortunate phrase). Apart from the committed protagonists on both sides, who increasingly take on the aspect of those learned academics who got so excited about angels dancing on heads of pins, the subject has virtually dropped out of the public domain. As an issue, it is dying of boredom.

Needless to say, the Greenies are casting about for a substitute. They have latched on to "biodiversity" as an interim scare - all part of the "Agenda 21" catalogue - but this has neither the same dramatic quotient nor anything like the same revenue-making potential.

We are almost getting to the situation where we will be seeing unemployed environmentalists walking the streets. As with unemployed actors who describe themselves as "between jobs", one might expect them to admit to being "between scares".

That said, we are not out of the woods, by a long chalk. The terminal phase of a full-blown scare is the regulatory phase, where laws are made to deal with with supposed threats highlighted by the original scare. This is most often where the effects are lasting and where real expense is involved. We are still dealing with the aftermath of the food scares of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

And that, of course, is where we stand now - with the Climate Change Act still in force, and ridiculous EU measures aplenty distorting public policy. They will actually outlast the scare. Such measures always do.

Thus, while we are picking out way through the snowdrifts, and bartering gold bars for rock salt, we will still be burdened by those espensive laws which our gifted legislators brought to us as their contribution to saving the planet.

But even now, somewhere, there are groups plotting and scheming, wanting to be the progenitors of the next scare - whatever that might be. And there will always be ranks of legislators willing to do their part, and protect the grateful public from yet another peril.

Would that the real truth could emerge, that the greatest threat to our health and wealth on this planet is idiot politicians, of which there seems an unending supply.

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