If we have to give aid - by Richard... Tuesday, February 21, 2012

If we have to give aid - by Richard... Tuesday, February 21, 2012

… would it not be better to spend it on issues which could make a real difference? Although not advocating that we should give any money at all to India, the money spent on climate change could perhaps be diverted to rail safety, dealing with a real rather than imagined problem.

Thus, recalling the piece last Sunday, where it was reported that £3.5 billion of public money has been paid out or allocated to projects addressing climate change abroad since 2007-08, we now stumble on the UK's International Climate Fund (ICF).

Worth £2.9 billion, provided via DFID (£1.8bn), DECC (£1bn) and Defra (£100m) (the latter with respect to forestry finance), the High Commission in India proudly boasts that a billion has already been spent (see below).

This would include – or so it appears - the UK's Advocacy Fund, launched on 6 September 2011, incorporating "a £10 million climate window" that will help strengthen the voice of the poorest countries in international climate negotiations.

The interesting thing here is that, had an Anonymous Donor given £10 million to the Heartland Institute for a "climate window", the warmists would be squealing blue murder. But when it is part of a £2.9 billion climate package, expropriated from hard-pressed British taxpayers, they are strangely silent.

Whatever the warmists might think, though, it would very much appear that the UK aid programme does not stand up to any serious scrutiny. There might be less opposition if the money was spent on serious, life-saving issues. But when it is being frittered away on nebulous issues such as climate advocacy, it is difficult to see how any of it can be justified.


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A very small tragedy - by Richard...

In the ongoing mini-drama over the acquisition of electronic-format documents by deception from the obscure Heartland Institute think-tank, the fabrication of another and the subsequent publication of the batch on a number of warmist web-sites, we see a further development.

This is the online confession by an even more obscure person by the name of Peter H. Gleik, who purports to be a "water and climate analyst", published in the Huffington Post.

His choice of outlet tells you much of what you need to know about Gleik, and much that you don't. But one's disinterest is somewhat strengthened by one of his allies, Andrew Revkin, who writes of the confession in The New York Times. Such is the self-absorption of this man, and his lack of perspective, that he writes of Gleick's use of deception as "his personal tragedy and shame".

But, Revkin writes, the "broader tragedy" is that his decision to go to such extremes in his fight with Heartland has greatly set back any prospects of the country having the "rational public debate" that he wrote — correctly — is so desperately needed.

These are, it seems, characteristically emotive words, but it is hard to accept the idea of this being a tragedy – much less a "broader tragedy", given all that is happening in the world.

As to the debate, though, there have been millions or articles on the subject of global warming, hundreds of thousands of programmes on the broadcast media and hundreds of books written, with as many websites on the issue. Rarely, it seems, has there been a broader debate on any one subject – and the warmists lost.

Now, the public is largely indifferent to the global warming thesis, treating alarmists claims more often with derision than the concern that their authors would wish. Thus, if Peter Gleick is not getting the continued debate at the level he wanted, it is a rather small tragedy.

Nevertheless, it has given the Heartland Institute a boost, and a much-needed fund-raising opportunity, and has given the increasingly narrowly-focused, self-obsessed "deniers" a new "gate" with which to amuse themselves. And Dellers is having a field day, which is always good fun.

Overall, though, the greatest achievement of the "deniers" has been to turn the subject into the tedious backwater that it has become. Without the prominence and the heat (if one dare say that), the political traction goes and eventually the scare withers on the vine, which it is now doing.

What is of greater concern now is the regulatory aftermath, where the costs and burdens of regulation continue to multiply. And they lie within the greater realms of politics, where too many in the global warning game fear to tread.

As always, it will be politics rather than science which shapes events, with the likes of the euro crisis having a far greater effect on global warming expenditure than a thousand persuasive scientific papers. The reality of the money running out tends to focus the mind. And against such particular events, Gleick and his "fakegate" is a very small tragedy indeed.

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'Twas thus ordained - by Richard...

"We have reached a far reaching agreement on Greece's new programme and private sector involvement that would lead to a significant debt reduction for Greece and pave the way towards an unprecedented amount of new official financing ... to secure Greece's future in the euro area", saysLuxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, at the end-of-charade press conference.

The official Eurogroup statement is here. "We reiterate our commitment to provide adequate support to Greece during the life of the programme and beyond until it has regained market access, provided that Greece fully complies with the requirements and objectives of the adjustment programme", say the "colleagues".

Off-stage could be heard banging, shuffling and muffled screaming from the fat lady, as she was bound and gagged, and bundled out the back door into a waiting van.

Already, Felix Salmon of Reuters calls it "the improbable Greece plan". His view is that the plan assumes that Greece's politicians will stick to what they’ve agreed, and start selling off huge chunks of their country's patrimony while at the same time imposing enormous budget cuts. Needless to say, there is no indication that this will happen, nor that the Greek people will tolerate such a thing.

Here then is a man saying that the deal could easily all fall apart within months; the chances of it gliding to success and a 120 percent debt-to-GDP ratio in 2020 have got to be de minimis.

Earlier, in the forum, we wrote: "there will be the appearance of an agreement ... which will then take a few weeks to unravel ... the game this time is to get themselves past the 20 March crisis. Then there will be another day, another crisis". Merkel's only option, we wrote even earlier, was tobuy time.

Now Salmon writes that Europe's politicians know the deal must fail. "But at the very least they're buying time: this deal might well delay catastrophic capital flight from Greece, and give the Europeans more time to work out how to shore up Portugal if and when that happens".

Wishful thinking that is, but for the moment it is the only game in town. "We continue to believe that Greece can be saved. Or at least we continue to say so", says one Eurocrat, according to The Economist.

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The dance must go on - by Richard...

It was all smiles when the happy colleagues met in Brussels, giving no hint of the tensions and acrimony that have marked the last week – and more. At the heart of the crisis though, there has always been that element of theatre, and no more so now, when the talks are running – especially as the outcome has probably already been decided.

One can imagine a scenario where all the "colleagues" are sitting in the lounge, doors closed and locked, the chaps with their ties undone and feet up, with the waiters passing round the booze. They watch television, roaring with laughter as their "spokesmen" feed in the pre-prepared statements, all designed to keep the drama going until the final press conference, when they straighten their ties, look serious again and tell the world what they have "decided".

Meanwhile, out in the cold, real people bleed, real people suffer, real people go hungry, and real people go bankrupt, their lives destroyed by the carelessness and indifference of their masters.

But the theatre is not quite that cynical, although it might just as well be. The outcome is pre-ordained … the "bailout" is going through, because it must. The small print will now emerge over the days and weeks, when we learn that Greece has taken another step towards Armageddon.

In the meantime, the very rich will get even richer, a lot of middle-income people will get poorer, and the very poor will either stay that way or die. The journalists will prattle and preen and some of them – a very few - will work out what is going on. None will say so clearly, because there are too many agendas to support.

Whatever is reported overnight, only some will be the truth. Much of it will be lies, or dissembling. None of it is worth staying up for. It will take weeks to get a feel for what really has happened, so the analysis can wait its time. In the meantime, the dance must go on.