Friday, 31 December 2010

It's still a local event? - by Richard... Friday, December 31, 2010


As we noted earlier, a crucial part of the warmist mantra is that the cold we have experienced recently was a local event, balanced by greater warming elsewhere. This certainly was not the case last year, when we had the Daily Mail offer this, fronting the heavy snowfall in Mongolia (pictured above).

That was on 7 January last year and here we go again, a week early with the People's Daily Onlinereporting on heavy snowfall in Mongolia. Mongolia actually had a terrible winter last time round, and clearly has not fully recovered. Thus we are learning of the death of thousands of livestock, with many more facing starvation, after a blizzard brought heavy snow to a county in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Wednesday night.

The snow, with falls of over three feet in places, has stopped animals grazing and the county does not have enough stored winter feed. It is currently short of 21.5 million kg of hay and other stored winter feed. And, with roads to five townships blocked, affecting 4,928 people and 248,000 livestock, things are not set to get better in a hurry.

All this is happening on top of the US blizzards and it is not yet January. The idea that the cold weather is simply a local event is, therefore, looking even thinner than it did. The warmists are going to have to do some more reading.

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Wikileaks and The Guardian - by Richard... Thursday, December 30, 2010

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Open thread: the stuff of politics - by Richard...


I'm going to try an experiment ... a combination of an open thread and a political essay written on-line, in real time, feeding off the open thread and building in my own ideas and comments.

The trigger for the thought is the aphorism, "all politics is local", which comes very much to mind when I read this piece in The Scotsman about the damage done to the roads by the recent cold spell (pictured. That is set to cost the Haggis Eaters at least £10 million in emergency repairs, which means that road authorities in England and Wales will probably have to find about £100 million.

Just walking from home to the paper shop and back suggests that this is going to be the least of it. The amount of frost damage is very evident, not least to the pavements which have been asphalted, supposedly for cheapness. To lay this topping is certainly cheaper, but then you get the utilities breaking into it, leaving porous joins when they "make good". The water then gets in and the frost heave crumbles the surface.

If there was a true local democracy, we would have been consulted about the change from paving stones (which look better as well), and we would have been able to argue that asphalt topping is a false economy. But on this, and many other issues, there is no democracy. There is no mechanism for arguing the toss - and we then end up paying through the nose for the repairs.

The other thought that comes to mind is how expensive this cooling is, compared with the warming. I don't remember the local councils having to rush out, spending hundreds of millions after a heat wave. In fact, in hot countries, one tends to see municipalities get away with crap roads, precisely because they don't have to worry about frost.


Like as not, the overall bill here will be very substantially higher than a mere £100 million. Earlier this year (25 August 2010), the Yorkshire Post was telling us that just North Yorkshire County Council was to cope with a £10m bill for mending the potholes. And, more than six months after what they were calling "the biggest freeze in 30 years", highways officials were admitting that they would struggle to complete the repairs before the onset of the winter which is now upon us.

This was the same with many other councils but, bizarrely, this was not just a question of money. Last October, it was being reported that 44 percent of the £362 million emergency funding given to councils to repair damaged roads had not been spent. Nevertheless, it was then estimated that £9.5 billion was needed in England and Wales alone "to bring the roads up to scratch".

But, even then, after two years of severe winters and localised intense flooding had had "an unexpectedly severe effect on the roads infrastructure", it was being argued that further research would have to be done should the severity of our winters continue.

Fife Council road services team leader, Mr George Miezitis, was saying that future strategies would need constant review "should these weather conditions become more the norm." But, as we struggle through the third consecutive year of such conditions, it seems the plan is to reduce spending on road maintenance by 15 percent.


And as our commentator points out, there is a link here with the water supply crisis in Northern Ireland, where the damage done to the distribution system has caused thousands of household to be without water. This is so ironic when we see that Northern Ireland Water has been in the forefront with its greenery, stating as late as October 2010 that: "potential impacts of climate change need to be factored into any long term decision making process."

Needless to say, the company - which is wholly government-owned - has blamed the rapid thaw, after a period of record low temperatures, and has also cited "historic underinvestment" in Northern Ireland's infrastructure as a contributing factor. Its enthusiasm for spending on climate change adaptation, however, is not mentioned. As Michelle Malkin so hilariously illustrates, though, there is something about the corporate mind that, once greenery gets in, common sense drains out. It is almost as if the two concepts cannot co-exist.

It is, thus, a pity but perhaps predictable that NI Water didn't spend a little more time addressing the vulnerability of its system to serious cold - which has caused a real interruption in supply - rather than giving "top priority" to hypothetical future concepts. But then, from train companies to airlines and airport operators, we are seeing the same thing.

The interesting thing here, though, is that other water companies are also reporting problems and, in many cases, they are using the word "unprecedented" in relation to the cold we have just experienced. Put the two together, as in "unprecedented cold", and we have some difficulty in maintaining the illusion that we are suffering from global warming.


An apparently different problem has been afflicting the owners of "condensing boilers", an issue picked up by The Daily Mail, the Shropshire Star and even the loathsome Guardian.

Five years ago, we are told, New Labour heralded them as the modern, clean and green way to heat your house. As a result, today there are already eight million such boilers in homes across Britain. In fact, since 2005 it is illegal to fit any other kind.

At the time, says the Mail, John Prescott claimed they would massively reduce your carbon footprint and slash your fuel bills. As a result, every year some 1.2 million old-style "dirty" boilers are scrapped in Britain and replaced by this wondrous new variety.

However, the recent cold has revealed a major problem, not so much with the boilers themselves, as the way they are installed. In the nature of the beast, the boilers extract more heat from the system, producing a water condensate which drain to waste.

Unfortunately, idiot fitters – oblivious to the fact that it occasionally freezes in the UK - have been installing the narrow bore drain pipes on the outside of buildings, and these have been freezing up by the tens of thousands over the holiday period, shutting down the boilers and requiring expensive visits by plumbers, charging anything up to £300 a time. British Gas, alone, apparently, have had 60,000 call-outs in Yorkshire alone.

Although EUReferendum towers is fitted with such a device, to keep the coal in the bath warm and dry, the private fitter who installed it had the sense to route the condensate to a waste pipe within the house. Thus, we have had no problems. And, had the government – which was requiring these boilers to be fitted – had the same foresight, millions of pounds would have been saved and no end of stress avoided.

But, once again, the focus is in the perils of global warming. Small wonder that, last Tuesday, theDaily Express published an opinion piece declaring: "The main climate threat is not the heat but the cold".

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Clever boy! - by Richard...

Says Met Office spokesman Dave Britton: "What has been quite unprecedented has been the prolonged nature of the cold. We have had some colder spells in December but what has been quite noticeable about this one is quite how prolonged it was and the amount of snow we had."

Someone in the Met Office must have looked out of the window.

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Is there a connection? - by Richard...


Between this (above) and this (below)?


As tales of delay and incompetence emerge, one wonders whether Mayor Bloomberg and his staff have spent so much time and money on the global warming obsession that they have failed to attend to the basics. There seems to be something of a trend here.

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Biggest Douche in the Universe Award 2010 - by Pete... Wednesday, December 29, 2010

A guest post by Peter North

Normally at this time of year the Biggest Douche in the Universe Committee's (pictured) job is an easy one. The BDIU award so readily falls to David Cameron year after year. But this year sees a new talent; the absolute pinnacle of douchedom. While Nick Clegg was a strong contender and David Cameron running high in the stakes, we had to make a special consideration this year. I am, of course, referring to that international man or moronicism, Julian Assange.

About two years ago I gave up any kind of blogging so as not to distract from day job stuff. Fighting idiocy is a full time occupation in itself and naturally one cannot do the job part time and expect to pass as normal (see one RAE North). So I have to be especially irked to find myself giving a rats hindquarters about anything these days for my own job security. But this year no-one has jolted me from my blissful indifference quite so rudely as Julian Assange.

Though it is not just Assange. It is the whole package from start to finish. There I find nothing quite so nauseating as Dianaesque public and media fawning over narcissistic minor celebrities, especially sexual deviants who consider themselves to be paragons of virtue. Not that this comes as any more of a surprise as the Wikileaks content.

It comes as no surprise either to see the left falling over themselves to paint this man as some modern day cyber-Che Guevara. But in this instance, what is surprising is that even right thinking people, and seemingly the whole UK libertarian movement (with some honourable exceptions), have let their collective brain drool out of their backside. Facebook is bulging with sentimental drivel about this utter fraud.

Leaving aside for a moment the faux sentiments exalting the virtues of democracy (while violating the basic right to freedom of association in publishing the BNP membership list) and the obnoxiously entitled "Collateral Murder" propaganda video in which an Apache crew follows exact protocols for dealing with suspected hostiles, we find that Zimbabwean democracy has taken a hit all for the sake of Mr Assange's ego.
Later that day, the US embassy in Zimbabwe dutifully reported the details of the meeting to Washington in a confidential US State Department diplomatic cable. And slightly less than one year later, WikiLeaks released it to the world.

The reaction in Zimbabwe was swift. Zimbabwe's Mugabe-appointed attorney general announced he was investigating the Prime Minister on treason charges based exclusively on the contents of the leaked cable. While it's unlikely Tsvangirai could be convicted on the contents of the cable alone, the political damage has already been done. The cable provides Mugabe the opportunity to portray Tsvangirai as an agent of foreign governments working against the people of Zimbabwe. Furthermore, it could provide Mugabe with the pretense to abandon the coalition government that allowed Tsvangirai to become prime minister in 2009.

It's difficult to see this as anything but a major setback for democracy in Zimbabwe. Even if Tsvangirai is not charged with treason, the opponents to democratic reforms have won a significant victory. First, popular support for Tsvangirai and the MDC will suffer due to Mugabe’s inevitable smear campaign, including the attorney general's "investigation". Second, the Prime Minister might be forced to take positions in opposition to the international community to avoid accusation of being a foreign corroborator. Third, Zimbabwe's fragile coalition government could collapse completely. Whatever happens, democratic reforms in Zimbabwe are far less likely now than before the leak.
For that reason alone I would toss Assange in Guantanamo Bay and this will not be the last such instance. But the anti-American left will have its pound of flesh and will drive by with the same disregard for the consequences of their own intellectual idleness and pomposity, as ever they do.

As to the morality of mass dumping, I have made the argument too many times to repeat it here. I am now completely robotic on this matter. My main observance would be to point out that there's a massive gulf between "public interest" and "the public are interested". Also the difference between loyal nationalist whistleblowing and internationalist espionage. Evidently there are those left and right who seem completely incapable of making the distinction. Julian Assange is no Daniel Ellsberg. Assuming there was anything particulaly moral about what he did. It has since passed into the narative that events and deeds leading to the fall of South Vietnam is a good thing.

But there is one revalation more disturbing than the contents of the mostly unrevealing cables. The support of Julian Assange and Wikileaks is telling of a society that has lost its way, one whose moral compass is in a flat spin. A society that prefers to see itself as the greater evil on Earth, one that would willingly assist in its own destruction to atone for its perceived sins. For that reason I have found reason to disassociate myself with anyone who could utter a word of support for this creature.

I think the best summary I can muster would be to echo the words of Charles in the comments ofLGF.
One of my main objections to the massive document dump approach is very simple, and based on the human right to a reasonable expectation of privacy.

When you just release every stolen document you get your hands on, you're not just a noble warrior for the freedom of information - you're fucking around with thousands of people's lives. In the case of these diplomatic cables, the consequences of having their communications leaked in some countries may be extremely severe, and not just for the people named in the documents. It's naive and irresponsible in the utmost to think there won't be serious problems for many people.

What did these people do to deserve having their lives disrupted by Julian Assange's galactic ego? So far, the vast majority of what's been released shows these people doing their jobs, to the best oftheir abilities. But now their names and reputations and possibly their freedoms and lives are at risk.

The whole concept of doing it like this stinks. It's cruel and irresponsible, and completely disregards the human beings involved.
So ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you the BDIU nomination for 2010.

Drum roll please... Julian Assange, you are the Biggest Douche in the Universe.

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They were all at it - by Richard...


It wasn't just David Viner who was predicting back in 2000 that snow would disappear. We also had the great Charles Clover then of The Daily Telegraph, who on 2 November 2000 was telling us: Britain "will gain from global warming". Northern Europe, he wrote, "will have fewer days of frost and snow and longer growing seasons because of global warming".

Winters in Northern Europe would be wetter and there would be a reduction in number of days with frost and lying snow. There would be no cold winters by the 2080s. Cold winters, which currently occurred once in ten years, would be half as frequent by the 2020s.

Interestingly, these gems came from a report commissioned by the EU Commission, as part of what was known as the "Acacia Project", the EU contribution to a major re-assessment by the IPCC. And the project co-ordinator and report editor was Prof Martin Parry, of the University of East Anglia – colleague of Dr Viner.

Of course, of the people working in the year 2000, all would be long retired by 2080, although the Parry team did create their own hostages to fortune by suggesting that there would be significant observable changes by 2020. By so doing, they set the level of expectations which, for a few years, the warmists were happy to reinforce.

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The fall of Moscow - by Richard...


Something that even the 1941 Nazi invasion did not achieve has been briefly imposed by freezing global warming – the closure of Moscow's airports. Reported by AFP and many others, things got so bad that "near riots" broke out as frustrated, cold and angry passengers expressed their opinion of Russian customer relations.

The problems are a particular embarrassment for Aeroflot, we are told. Russia's flagship carrier now operates out of a state-of-the-art wing of Sheremetyevo airport and has made enormous efforts to break out of its dowdy Soviet mold. But state television led its evening news broadcasts with Internet footage of exasperated passengers - many of them scheduled for one of Aeroflot's 153 cancelled flights - banging plastic security containers against Sheremetyevo's floor.

RIA Novosti news agency said that Aeroflot attendants were attacked at Sheremetyevo and AFP reporters saw hundreds trying to shove their way past Domodedovo's passport control as exasperated security officials called the police for help.

"There is absolutely no information and they just keep sending you from one place to another," growled a young man named Dmitry Menyayev. "People are on the verge of a nervous breakdown," another passenger was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Interestingly, the problems arose from a spell of freezing rain, which caused a power outage at Domodedovo airport, as well as coating roads with ice and leaving more than 300,000 people and 14 hospitals without electricity in southeast Moscow.

Sheremetyevo airport, on the other hand, blamed cancellations on a shortage of de-icer fluid – exactly the same problem that grounded Brussels flights – but further blamed "a German subcontractor that never provided with its regular shipment of de-icing fluid".

President Dmitry Medvedev has instructed his chief prosecutor to look into the affair, which the Russian media is reporting, and in some detail.

Tensions, The Moscow Times reports, were high late Monday in Domodedovo, where thousands of passengers spent hours with no food or drink except what they had with them and no information on when their flights might depart.

The airport - lit only by candles - suffered a 14-hour blackout Sunday. Some 8,000 people spent a sleepless night on the premises as more than 150 flights were delayed. Departure halls and local cafes at the airport were still unlit as of late Monday, and passengers, many on the verge of hysteria, thronged check-in desks for information on their flights.

An Interfax reporter described the inside of the terminal as looking "either like a movie about revolution or a horror film." Passengers said they had to spend time in the unlit halls without any help or information.

"It was completely dark, everyone was running around and nobody knew anything. I was shocked by the complete indifference of airport officials toward passengers," a blogger, Anna Goryainova, wrote (more photos on this site).

Perhaps Heathrow was not so bad after all, but then our time has yet to come. It remains to be seen how well we manage when the lights go out. But one thing is for certain, if this global warming can bring about the fall of Moscow, we are in for some interesting times.

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No worries - by Richard... Tuesday, December 28, 2010

After recent claims that all this bad weather is caused by global warming, it is comforting now to be told that this is "just natural variability pulsing back briefly overwhelming the greenhouse warming". The real problem is that: "Climate deniers think that unless you've got constant warming every year the greenhouse warming has gone away. And they forget about the natural variability".

But don't worry little people. We should expect now to see the global warming trend take over again.

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Posted by Britannia Radio at 13:08