Lost in space - by Richard... Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Lost in space - by Richard... Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Rajendra wants to send mirrors into space. A better idea might be to send the old pornographer into space himself, permanently (joined by Louise Gray, of course). The hot air saved would bring the temperature down a degree or too, especially if they should be joined by the lost soul who wrote this tripe:

An effective climate regime can only be built on by (i) designing principles of fair allocation of the available carbon space and (ii) agreeing on an appropriate effort sharing formula. The inequitable access to the atmosphere becomes self evident in the fact that average emissions per human year for Annex I Parties in the past has been 13.97 tCO2e and that of Non-annex I Parties is only 1.98 tCO2e. Evidently Annex I Parties have not only used their entitled carbon budgets and exhausted all their entitlements from the future but have also used that have been entitled to the Non-annex I Parties. Implicitly, in a completely fair world and on account of historic responsibility of Annex 1, the Annex 1 need to immediately turn negative emitters. However, given that all Parties will need some time to adjust their economies and hence will need some carbon space to enable such adjustment, irrespective of the fact that they have already utilized it, agreement on entitlements for the future on the basis of available carbon space is essential.

A more tortured piece of prose it would be hard to imagine, but someone, somewhere did actually write it. And it will come as no surprise to learn that this is part of an advert for a TERI side event at Can'tcun, written by Manish Shrivastava, Centre For Global Environment Research, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. May God have mercy on its soul, as it goes on to write:

In this context the TERI side-event will discuss TERI’s proposal on how to operationalize the carbon budget approach. Realizing future entitlements into actions, under different scenarios of per capita equity based carbon budget, requires the pragmatic interplay of national and international responses. To enable this, a rethinking of policies, instruments and institutions is essential for an effective global climate regime. The side event will deliberate upon the relevance of, and challenges in operationalizing the carbon budget approach in relation to the limitations of domestic financial capabilities of India to remain within the available carbon budget for the next four decades. It will also discuss the significance of the link between the "historical responsibility" and required net transfer of financial resources from developed countries in achieving the 2 degree target.

Don't forget that we the taxpayers are kindly donating £10 million to this institute, to deliver this kind of tosh. I am sure we are all very grateful to our masters for supporting such a worthy enterprise.

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Forum - by Richard...

By popular request ... the forum is open for new registrations, wef 10:00hrs zulu. I'll keep it open 12 hours. When you register, please send me a quick e-mail with details of your username, and I'll activate your accounts.

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Completely mad - by Richard...

If ever there was an insane concept, it is the Nissan leaf, which needed a subsidy of £5,000 to make it just twice as expensive as a conventional, better-performing equivalent. So what do they do? They vote it European Car of the Year, with 257 votes from the 58 judges across 23 European countries.

There is something terminally sick about a group of people who can do something like this. Somehow, one is not surprised to find that the jury is comprised of motoring journalists. A sharp-eyed reader, however, notes that the registration ends in NBG. One would like to think that this was not accidental.

That the car gets the award, however, suggests a darker agenda. Have they be bought off.

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What is going on? - by Richard... Monday, November 29, 2010

Looking to do a round-up of the Irish situation, as promised last night, to be blunt, I don't think I really know what is going on, or what the next steps are going to be.

However, we do get the Daily Mail twittering about markets being "braced for another nail-biting session", with hopes that the "£72 billion bailout for Ireland" will calm share, bond and currency markets and stop the crisis spreading to other eurozone members including Portugal and Spain.

Next, we discover that what is singularly missing from all this are a few minor details – like the details of the financial package that was supposedly agreed over the weekend. And there's the rub. Nobody really knows what is going on – which makes much of the comment little more than extruded verbal material.

One thing is fairly clear though. If you take a population of five million and a debt of €100 billion (including interest), you are looking at every man, woman and child owing €20,000 ... each, just to pay back the EU/IMF "bailout". It would be cheaper to hand in the keys and leave the country.

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Poleaxed? - by Richard...

You know it makes sense.

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China bubble - by Richard...

I have been saying for some time that the Chinese economy is a basket case. With a highly insecure political system to boot, it is only a matter of time before it crashes and burns. And now, it seems, I have company.

Mind you, I would say the same of India. I do not believe the hype about that country. It will be dragged down by its innate inefficiencies and most particularly by the corruption of its ruling elites.

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Cravenly conformist? - by Richard...

"Far from being 'feral beasts', to use Tony Blair's phrase, the British media are overly respectful of authority. Newspapers and broadcasters tend to be suspicious of those who do not play the game ... ".

So writes John Kampfner in The Independent about Assange and the latest Wikileaks coup.

I would not have used the words "overly respectful" though, as that does not get close to the phenomenon. A better phrase might be "cravenly conformist", but even that does not really capture the essence of the beast. The closest I get is here with the discovery that:

News reporting is not a matter of discovering and publishing facts. Rather it is a process of gathering accounts from a very limited number of approved sources, and stitching them together to provide a defensible narrative. Any relationship with actual events, much less the truth, is entirely coincidental - and usually accidental.

Once you understand that, everything falls into place.

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Threat inflation - by Richard...

First, we had "climate change". Then we got "dangerous climate change". And now we have "extremely dangerous climate change", all on the basis of two-year-old recycled hype. They've lost it.

This is hardly surprising though. You cannot expect logic (or consistency) from warmists – their brains are not wired that way. Hence an interesting comment from Powerline blog about the New York Times and its treatment of the Wikileaks releases compared with the Climategate releases.

The money quote is that their statements on the two issues are "logically irreconcilable", which just about sums up the whole warmist creed. It really has been our greatest mistake - treating these people like responsible adults, capable of rational thought, instead of people suffering from a collective delusion.

Then you get this sort of thing:

Some of the world's largest oil, mining, car and gas corporations will make hundreds of millions of dollars from a UN-backed forest protection scheme, according to a new report from the Friends of the Earth International.

The group's new report ... is the first major assessment of the several hundred, large-scale Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) pilot schemes. It shows that banks, airlines, charitable foundations, carbon traders, conservation groups, gas companies and palm plantation companies have also scrambled into forestry protection.

All of which, of course, means that it is a money-making racket, which is what we've been saying for ages, with WWF one of the biggest potential beneficiaries. If they're not deluded, they're thieves. Take your pick.

What they don't realise is that, when presented with the latest Louise Gray fantasy, the reaction of most people is a mixture of amused contempt and amazement of the credulity of a once-respected newspaper.

But when you get these mental midgets telling us that "global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions," derision is the only sensible response.

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