Friday, 21 January 2011

Shale gas - by Richard... Friday, January 21, 2011

I see people are getting excited about a posting on shale gas and other unconventional fuels. This makes me wonder whether there is any great advantage in being too far ahead of the game. For instance, we wrote about this issue in August 2008 and again in September 2008. I had a good look at it in March 2010 - here, here and here. I returned to it briefly in April 2010 and again earlier this month. Fleetingly, only fleetingly, I sometimes wonder why I bother. Then I get back and write another piece.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

The "finality" of an election - by Richard...


"This country and its people have gone through hell and fire over the last number of years … We need to restore hope and confidence in this country and fix a system that has been manifestly broken," says Irish Labour leader Eamon Gilmore, on hearing that Cowen has finally caved in and named the election day - 11 March.

For a record of the quite extraordinary events that led to this, read the report in The Irish Times. I can't do better than this, and I'm not even going to try. As a taster: writes Miriam Lord, "One word kept surfacing, uttered by all sides: delusional...". Then click though to the links especially this one, and pick up the story from there. We have here a repository of journalism as it should be, writing the first draft of history. Savour it.

Also to savour is the delicious prospect of Cowen being thrown out on his ear, shunned by his own party and ministerial colleagues, who are treating him like the modern-day plague on their road to electoral oblivion. So says the English Daily Mail doing a catch-up, making it very clear that 11 March is a fire sale - not a date picked by Cowan for his own tactical advantage.

One early casualty, to join the Taoiseach, is the Climate Change Bill. The Greens, who were instrumental in precipitating the election, are to lose their "baby" - the only thing they had been holding out for. It, like Cowan, is toast.

The cartoon, taken from here, is two days old - marking the turn of events and the terrifying speed of the transition of fortunes. From victor of an artfully crafted vote of confidence, we get this wonderful picture of the wreckage of a political career. Nemesis will out - nemesis always follows, even if it takes much longer than most of us would like. We await the day when Euroslime Dave meets his.

For him and Cowan, though, here is a little aphorism to ponder over: "You can piss off some of the people all of the time, you can piss off all of the people some of the time, but you can't piss off all of the people all of the time". Your's will come eventually Dave.

COMMENT: NEW POLITICS THREAD

Print ready

It's only weather - by Richard...

Print ready

Plumbing bottom (not) - by Richard... Thursday, January 20, 2011

This article came across my desk, so to speak, with the following comment: "Not sure what I find most disturbing here; that an MP has this little sense or that Heffer chooses to devote his column to it."

At least it confirms my thesis that stupidity is not confined to any one sex. One does seriously wonder at the low grade of MP that is being let into the House these days, though. But, to be fair, we have been wondering that for some time. Nevertheless, we had hoped that they had plumbed bottom.

Clearly, they had not.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

One cannot help but observe - by Richard...


... in relation to the singularly ill-advised speech by Warsi, that we see a follow-through piecewhere the stupid woman tells us that her speech was: "... not about controlling the conversations that go on in people's homes. This is about drawing a line as to the state of anti-religious hatred or bigotry in Britain today."

One wonders whether she read The Daily Mail yesterday. In that context, one also wonders what Peter and Hazelmary Bull might think of Warsi. They might suggest that the "anti-religious hatred or bigotry in Britain today" - at least from state and official sources (and especially the Church of England) - is mainly directed at Christians.

Others of us might also wonder why anyone ever thought that this woman was a Conservative, and what qualifications she might have for being made a Conservative Party chairman, other than being a female with a brown skin and an ethnic background, amongst facile, shallow politicians who are obsessed with presentation at the cost of substance.

Appointing a "token female ethnic" however, has obviously done neither the party nor her any good. She has now demonstrated that which was always going to come out eventually – she is totally unsuitable for the job. Her race and sex have nothing to do with it, though, in any shape or fashion. That matters not in the least. But one should always draw the line at stupidity. That, unfortunately, comes in all colours and sexes, as Warsi has just proved.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Wholesale plunder - by Richard...

Earlier reports on the EU carbon trading suspensionwere talking about €7 million-worth of permits going missing. Then reports started telling us that the actual figure was €28 million – but that was only what had come out of the woodwork. Now the Estonain Free Press is talking about €40 million.

Despite the intangible nature, of the permits – they are all, selling permission to emit carbon dioxide – this is real money, which is going to come out of our pockets one way or another. Needless to say, the EU is stepping up the damage limitation attempts with Jos Delbeke, director general for climate action at the EU commission, claiming that the number of missing permits is equivalent to 0.02 percent of total allowances in the market.

A lot, lot more than that have gone missing though. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Most readers will recall that in 2009, the Emission Trading System (ETS) had been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately €5 billion from several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90 percent of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.

More recently, there was the Italian scam. On 17 December 2010, the Italian Guardia di Finanza, under the instruction of Milan's prosecution office, carried out raids on about 150 companies in eight different regions of Italy. These operations happened just a few weeks after the Italian Power Exchange (G.M.E) halted all trading in carbon credits due to a high number of abnormal transactions. The potential VAT-loss was estimated to reach €500 million.

Then, Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, said: "Organised VAT fraud remains a significant criminal activity in Europe. It is responsible for draining huge resources from central government revenues and undermining the objective of transforming Europe into a competitive and greener economy".

And here we go again, which is why they have suspended trading. This time, though, it is different. This seems to be "cybercrime" - attacks on five national registries, starting with the Czech registry but then moving to the registries in Estonia, Austria, Poland and Greece. They have been targeted, of course, because this is a stupid system for a stupid idea, wide open to fraud, doing nothing more than rip off money from honest people.

Either way, therefore, the money ends up in the hands of crooks – which is some small consolation. But you would think the crooks in the commission might actually look after the money they are stealing from us, and make sure the national systems - which they oversee - were secure. But they can't even do that. Then, I suppose, they have the advantage of being able to come back for more.

COMMENT THREAD

Print ready

Rescue on hold - by Richard...



Breaking news as of 16:30 GMT was that the rescue operation in the Okhotsk Sea had beensuspended "as weather conditions have deteriorated".

What was hoped to be the final phase of the operation to extract the trapped shipped was started at 21:30 Moscow time on Wednesday. "However, the deterioration of weather conditions (a cyclone is hovering over Sakhalin, and there is no transport connection) has suspended the active phase of the operation to get the ships out of ice," a source said. "Abnormally bad weather is characterized by zero visibility, strengthening winds and ice compression."



Earlier, we had learned that the rescue was continuing. With all the delays though, the icebreakers and the trapped ships have spent so long in the ice field that it had grown massively bigger – and thicker – and they were still trapped, making minimal progress.

Voice of Russia was telling us that, as of "this morning", i.e., when their piece was being written, the Krasin and Admiral Makarov had managed to escort the Bereg Nadezhdy only two miles. After that, it said, the icebreakers would return for the Sodruzhestvo, "that was left in a relatively safe zone earlier". "It is still unclear how long the whole operation will take," the agency was saying. That was very much a change of tone.

In an earlier report from TASS, however, we got the complete opposite. We have the two icebreakers piloting not the Bereg Nadezhdy but the Sodruzhestvo. I don't think they're wrong, or lying or anything like that, but there was a certainly a contradiction.

What I think might have been happening is that they running a sort of shuttle service, dragging one ship a few miles, parking it in relatively safe ice and then going back for the other one. Once the two ships are reunited, they then repeat the process all over again.


This has to be extremely fraught as the ice is clearly building up faster than they can break thought it. The reality is that they are deeper into the ice now that when the ships were first trapped on 31 December, now three weeks ago. And now, it seems, they are temporarily defeated, as the weather worsens.

Amongst all this, there is a confused story about a previous stop, triggered by a high ice pressure and repairs. I am not exactly certain, but I think this was the Bereg Nadezhdy, although there seems to be some ambiguity in the reports. Maybe it's just me. The reference to convoy movement being suspended on Tuesday "over a high ice pressure and high winds," confirms what we were reporting earlier.

As for photos, there is nothing new coming out of the system, but AP has done a video report and we've put it up (top). This is a composite, with what appears to be new and old pictures, but in fleeting glimpses, we get an idea of quite how bad it is there.

We also see for the first time the Sodruzhestvo under tow. From the angle it is difficult to see, but she looks to be close-coupled. I wasn't sure they could do that with such a big ship, but they do seem to be doing it. I’ve taken out a screen grab, cleaned it up and posted it (above). Quality is not very good, but at least you can see it for yourself.

Under current conditions, it is unlikely that we'll see much more in the way of new photographs for a while. There is a fight for survival going on out there. As always, I'll keep you posted.

Posted by Britannia Radio at 14:54