| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
 |
|
This was too good an opportunity to avoid being opportunistic.
---------------
Putting Out Californian Fires January 10, 2025
For good. Or at least back to normal.
The southern California wildfires have a personal interest for me. Not because I have any Californian connections to speak of but because
| I have access to a theory that accounts for the present ones. |
It is uncontested the root cause of the fires is the lack of rainfall over several years in the Los Angeles catchment area. It is also uncontested the root cause of the lack of rain is a combination of global warming (general), El Niño (cyclical) and happenstance (űbercyclical).
| Uncontested by everyone apart from applied epistemologists. |
We point out the orthodox explanations are unlikely to be correct:
1. Global warming has been around long enough — and has been gradual enough — to discount global warming, insofar as we understand it.
2. Californian weather records have been around long enough to be able to say it cannot be cyclical unless present day southern Californians are truly unlucky.
Applied epistemologists are the only people around permitted to say “We don’t know†which is not as negative as it sounds because it allows us to argue:
| If we don’t know, and if everyone else is wrong, that can only mean a paradigm error is present i.e. some basic assumption about the causes of rainfall is being treated as ‘self-evidently true’ when actually it is false. |
So, there you have it. The present understanding of the hydrological cycle is fundamentally flawed. Just to thoroughly frighten the horses, we argue that rain does not come from where you thought it did, the evaporation of seawater, but somewhere else. You can’t get much more fundamental than that.
We have a new model which may be right or it may be wrong but it stacks up better than the current one. That at least we can guarantee because we are in a position to compare old with new.
| And it isn’t, I promise you, even close. |
It is all handily set out in a YouTube. You will have to excuse the production values and you will have to risk an hour of your time on what might turn out to be a will o’ the wisp, but you can’t say you weren’t told, California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=5uNQIMcKNTM
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
It seemed important six months ago but probably doesn't exist now.
-----------------
Why is Deepseek so important? January 29, 2025
The emergence of a world-conquering AI app put together at a trifling cost is the final piece of evidence anyone will need to arrive at the conclusion:
| There’s no stopping China. |
But just in case there is any doubt let me remind you of a few salient facts:
1. For most of human history, China has been the number one nation
2. This iteration of China has only been in existence for seventy-five years
3. It has gone from basket case to World No 2 in half that time
4. Its economic progress appears to be exponential rather than arithmetic
5. Its army is the largest in the world
6. It has built a blue water navy in no time flat
7. It is the largest, most effective investor in the Third World
8. It is in the throes of constructing complex diplomatic networks
9. It is ruthlessly effective in suppressing domestic opposition
10. It has a government and population that is sure of its superiority.
| So what are we going to do about it? |
The short but necessary answer is ‘Nothing’. In the sense that it is futile adopting policies that seek to prevent it. The Old Masters can bust a gut either slowing China down or speeding themselves up, but that will just put off the evil hour by a few years. And everyone arriving at that point in a condition of exhausted à outrance would surely be the worst of all possible worlds.
A better strategy would be to encourage China into paths that would make the new World Policeman a better custodian of the planet than looks likely at present. But that has its own problems, viz
1. The Chinese would never listen. Their chauvinism is breathtaking and their suspicion of previous world policemen is well-founded.
2. Do we know what the right path is? Saving the planet is the priority and that may require a force more dominant than the merely economic, military and cultural superiority that have been the hallmarks of previous hegemonic powers.
Perhaps we should consult Deepseek.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Grant
|
|
|
|
Why do anything?
For the last thirty years the Chinese have been working like dogs - Pekinese? - to supply the world with good but cheap goods. In return all they have asked for are little pieces of paper which we print in their billions.
In fact, we don't even print them now. They are just entries in a spreadsheet.
I think the Chinese will be mightily cross when they realise how stupid they've been.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I'm not referring to you here, Grant.
----------------
The mighty have spoken Jan 30, 2025
BBC Newsnight: You voted against a third runway for Heathrow in 2018 when it was a Conservative proposal. What’s changed?
Minister for Airports: There has been a revolution in airplane technology since then.
Newsnight: That is the reason you changed your mind?
Minister for Airports: That’s one of the reasons.
I’ve racked my brains but I can’t for the life of me think what that other reason might be. Newsnight were no help, they moved on to other things. But I found out later when a mate of mine who serves drinks in the BBC bar recorded this on his smartphone
Newsnight: You voted against a third runway for Heathrow in 2018 when it was a Conservative proposal. What’s changed?
Minister for Airports: There has been a revolution in airplane technology since then.
Newsnight: That’s a bunch of bollocks and you know it.
Minister for Airports: Of course I know it, I’m not a complete twat. But it was on the Treasury Briefing note so what choice did I have?
Newsnight: I know that, I’m not a complete twat. I hope you appreciated me not following up.
Minister for Airports: Of course I did, I’m not a complete twat. I’ll mention it to the spin people. This policy of turning up to be grilled on Newsnight which, I might remind you, Tory ministers always refused to do, is still early doors.
Newsnight: I'll mention it to our spin people.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Government ministers refusing to defend their policies on the telly is a problem faced by all MSM, which has never found a solution to it. They have even amended the original, "We asked the government but they refused to comment" to "We asked the government to comment but nobody was available."
It is a convention observed by all MSM that they don't seek out party fruitcakes to defend party policy, they accept whichever official spokesperson the party sends along.
But if a party adopts a blanket policy of not sending anyone along, the MSM is entitled to seek out one. "Government policy has run into a storm of criticism, here is the Tory MP for Barking to put the government's position."
We'll soon find out which is stronger: the government or the MSM.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
A plea to re-introduce colonialism
-----------------
For want of a wrench, a country was lost February 10, 2025
The Gezira irrigation scheme was started by the British in 1925. It turned a million hectares of Sudanese scrubby waste into a land fit for growing cotton on the grand scale. What made it so efficient was all the water came from the Blue Nile by gravity alone and the clay soil kept seepage down to a minimum.
This was not done, you may be sure, for the benefit of the Sudanese. It kept the Lancashire cotton mills supplied with cheap cotton. Nevertheless the Gezira scheme was soon the mainstay of the entire Sudanese economy.
When it did become Sudanese, in 1956 with independence from the British (and the Egyptians), the first thing that started falling into decay was the machinery needed to turn raw cotton into bales fit for sending to spinning mills. Nothing sophisticated, it would be recognisable to Rhett Butler, but it did require a few Rhett Butlers to keep it running and they had all gone home.
Which in turn meant cotton growing itself was soon no longer economic. So the locals started growing other stuff. Food to feed the growing population of Sudan, that kind of thing.
Then oil was discovered in Sudan and the government refused to stump up the relatively small amounts necessary to keep the irrigation system in good order. Who cares about local food when you can import it with your spangly new petrodollars?
So the farmers started dredging the channels themselves by hand and by bullock and on a small scale. The million hectares started to shrink commensurately. After a bit of civil war, the major canals starting silting up and all now is gone. Or soon will be.
What is infuriating is how straightforward everything is in the right hands. All the ingredients are present just lying around. Including, though not literally, the fellahin putting in their customary backbreaking shifts. It just requires the right hands pulling the right levers. The fellahin themselves could do it with a bit of brisk organising from the top.
But, alas, our ideology does not allow this. Not so much infuriating as heartbreaking.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
You may have forgotten but an American president once laid claim to the place so I slipped in some theory.
----------------
Greenland: this is the way it is February 11, 2025
The Law of the Sea is clear(ish) on the subject.
A23a is an iceberg that has just broken away from Antarctica. It is about twice the size of Greater London. After spending many years aground in a shallow part of the south Atlantic it is now floating free in a vaguely northern direction.
The Russians had an occasionally-manned research facility on A23a but they have now removed all equipment and personnel. Because nobody can own an iceberg. Nobody can own any part of Antarctica, thanks to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, though twelve countries maintain claims of sorts to parts of it.
| The Arctic has a similar, though less ratified, status. |
Although there is no Arctica in the way there is an Antarctica, international law is presumptively the same for both. Greenland is an iceberg that has run aground in a shallow part of the north Atlantic ocean. The weight of ice has pushed up the seafloor so that a perimeter of ocean bottom is now above sea level. As the Greenland iceberg melts this collar of temporary land will gradually sink below sea level and will eventually
| revert to being an ordinary part of the sea floor. |
But meanwhile this temporarily raised ‘land’ has been occupied by several thousand Inuits as well as others, including Danes, who assert sovereignty over the whole iceberg. Although this claim has not been formally contested by any other country — or by the Inuits — this is largely because nobody has felt the need. Economically, Greenland has proved more of an encumbrance than a benefit for Denmark, though a certain amount of prestige attaches.
Whether the Danes (or the Inuits) have more than squatters right may be moot, but there is nothing in law to prevent any other nation from using the iceberg for any purpose whatsoever with or without permission of any current claimant.
| Unless otherwise forbidden by international law. |
It remains to be tested what those prohibitions are. Current Antarctic law is that military use is strictly forbidden but the situation in the Arctic is more nuanced. Both Russia and the USA have established a certain amount of latitude when it comes to the free passage of nuclear submarines and quasi-military ice-breakers but no permanent institutions have been established apart from early warning systems which, it could be argued, are best seen as anti-military.
| Can Trump go for it? Yes, in law and with circumspection. |
The USA has made formal commitments to Denmark in the past but these are political more than legal. Subject to change. The politics though may be prohibitive. Denmark is a member of the EU, so cannot be ridden roughshod over without a certain amount of calculation.
Denmark is also a member of NATO and could, in theory, evoke Article 5: an attack on one, is an attack on all. It is doubtful if the Americans will rush to defend them against the Americans. Though I suppose if they did, the Americans would win either way and isn’t that the Trump philosophy?
| It doesn’t matter how much you lose so long as you win. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
More theory getting slipped in.
----------------
Do you know what a Zud is? March 7, 2025
No, nor me, but I do now.
It is the name given to a particularly severe winter in Mongolia where mild winters are severe enough. They come along about once every decade and Mongolian herdsmen are well used to dealing with them. Or rather, putting up with losing a lot of their herd every ten years or so.
For the last thirty years zuds have been coming thick and fast, and more severe than normal too. What happened thirty years ago? The communist government in Ulan Bator was overthrown and the free market, central Asian-style, was introduced to Mongolia.
| What’s that got to do with the weather? |
* Nothing, say the academic wiseacres, the increasing frequency of zuds is yet another consequence of global warming.
* Everything, say the applied epistemologists, who are not mesmerised by global warming and prefer to examine alternative causes and effects (as well as global warming) before jumping to undue conclusions.
For instance, they hold that the hydrological cycle is not powered by the evaporation of seawater, as academic wiseacres believe. Applied epistemologists argue
* Sea-level is the equilibrium point where no further evaporation takes place. The oceans are just latent reservoirs.
* The hydrological cycle is a continual interchange: water vapour in the atmosphere evaporates, producing rain that falls on plants, which return it to the atmosphere via transpiration.
* Producing rain further east — due to the turning of the earth.
* Which in turn falls on plants that transpire water vapour etc etc in a process that continues all the way round the world and starts again in an endless cycle.
| So back to Ulan Bator thirty years ago |
In the days of Mongolian communism, herding was strictly controlled. It was still the mainstay of the Mongolian economy (and culture) but the number of herders and the size of their herds was kept in balance with the carrying capacity of the Mongolian steppe grasslands. Zuds came along every ten years or so but the loss of animals was quickly made up in subsequent years of normal winters.
| All was right — or at any rate stable — in the Mongolian world. |
When the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Mongolia came to an end as well, and a more relaxed laisser faire regime came to power. Mongolian herdsman were free to expand their herds — or flocks, being mainly sheep — to whatever the free market dictated.
| Which was well beyond the carrying capacity of the Mongolian steppe. |
1. As the grass was overgrazed, so the transpiration of water vapour the steppe had hitherto been producing started to fall.
2. As more and more of the Mongolian steppe started turning into semi-desert the number of animals ought to have started falling too, creating a self-correcting cycle.
3. But the new ability to import Suzuki jeeps and all the other paraphernalia of modern wide-ranging animal husbandry meant animals numbers continued to grow.
4. Until more and more of the Mongolian semi-desert started to turn into full desert.
5. These new extensive Mongolian deserts were not only producing insufficient water vapour for its own needs, they were no longer producing the rain countries to the east of Mongolia had been receiving for aeons. But no longer were.
6. One of which was California which started experiencing droughts on an unprecedented scale.
7. The academic wiseacres could not blame global warming for this because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour, not less.
8. So they blamed El Niño instead.
9. When asked why Californians were suffering from El Niño’s on an unprecedented scale, the wiseacres thought for a moment. “That’s down to global warming.â€
10. It would not be correct to call the academics ‘mutton-heads’ just because the cause of California’s droughts is sheep. That would be an insult to sheep.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
A professional Greenie of my acquaintance thought this 'a trivial problem'. I think it demonstrates he's the problem.
------------
Drive a car, do you? April 14, 2025
You’d better read this then.
Whenever I say recycling should be made a criminal offence, people think I’m joking. When I say I’m perfectly serious, they still think I’m joking. When I insist for a third time, they walk away shaking their heads. ‘That Mick, the things he’ll say to get a laugh.’
| This is because recycling has attained ‘apple pie’ status. If I ever tell you apple pie ought to be criminalised, I’ll be joking. |
Although you won’t be converted, I can create a mild unease by describing what happens when it is time to change your tyres. About every five years for the average car. You may think tyres are posterchilds for recycling:
* They are homogenous (all rubber, aside from a bit of metal bracing and some chemicals).
* They are easy to collect. The bloke putting on the new tyres takes the old ones away. No wheelie bins, no trips to the recycling centre.
* They are straightforward to deal with. They get shredded in a giant… er… shredder.
* The end product, ‘rubber crumb’, is endlessly useful for playgrounds, sportsfields, road underlay, all sorts.
* There is a sophisticated infrastructure for achieving the above.
It costs more to recycle tyres than playgrounds, sports fields et al are prepared to pay so, somewhere along the line, money has to change hands. Otherwise no-one would recycle tyres. In Britain (but it’s much the same everywhere in the the developed world) the government levies three pounds for each of your outworn tyres.
| Cheap at the price! You love doing your bit for the planet when it costs you twelve sovs, top dollar, once every five years. |
Just give the money to the nice gentleman in the overalls and he’ll write everything down on an official form so you can drive off on your new Michelin radials with a song in your heart and not a care in the world.
He (it could be a she but you’ll find that’s mostly propaganda) will put your old ones in a big pile ready to be collected by your local, officially registered, tyre recycling plant. There’s no call for cowboys in this business.
| There’s not a lot of call for rubber crumb either. Not at three pounds a tyre. |
So only about ten percent of your local officially registered tyre recycling plants recycle tyres. Just enough to show willing. The other ninety per cent ‘compact’ the tyres, put them in containers and ship them off to licensed compact tyre recyclers. I say ‘shipped off’ because there is even less money in compacted tyres than in whole ones so it is only economic to do anything with them in third world countries.
| What happens when the container arrives? |
The compacted tyres, having arrived in India if they are ye olde British tyres, are offloaded and driven straight to an official Indian-registered compacted tyre recycling plant.
| Except for one fairly obvious flaw. |
Recycling compacted tyres is a wholly mechanised operation, there is no advantage in it being done in a third world country. It could have been done cheaper in Britain and without the ten thousand ship-miles. So
* after all the forms have been filled in and sent to the Department of the Environment in London, with all the boxes ticked
* after the customary ten percent of compacted rubber tyre has been offloaded and recycled to show India’s signed up to saving the planet too
* after the other ninety per cent has been taken another thousand miles to nameless, unregistered, moonscapes of desperate people living in pools of black gunk composed of bits of old tyre, bits of old tyre oil and bits of old rubber that can be made into something even more desperate people are prepared to pay for
| Your tyres have been recycled. |
Now you may not know about any of this but everyone in the tyre recycling business knows about it because it has been going on for years and is regularly brought to the attention of anyone who cares to know. Which is not everyone. I heard this on the BBC last week, so it must be true
| “I am shocked. We never had proof before.†Peter Taylor, spokesperson for the UK tyre recovery service. |
So it will be ‘action this day’, right? Not quite yet. It is not so much that this is the only way known to Man that tyres can be recycled with even a semblance of utility, it is something else entirely...
| The whole thing is illegal under all kinds of international agreements freely entered into by successive British and Indian governments, so if they are going to do anything about it they will first have to say |
“We’re awfully sorry, we’ve been conniving scumbags for as long as anyone can remember. But for a very good reason. Unless you are prepared to pay a king’s ransom every time you change your tyres so we can take them off to British plants to turn them into British rubber crumb that no-one will pay more than peanuts for, we are going to have to put those tyres into landfill and you won’t tolerate that, will you, you and your stupid childish beliefs in the virtues of recycling. So just shut the fuck up while we carry on being conniving scumbags on your behalf. Deal?â€
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
